Boom? Bust? Boom A Bang Bang?

Starring

The Big Dish, Billie Marten, The Marias, My Raining Stars, Natalie Bergman, NewDad, Now Always Fades. Polo and Pan

The Front Runners

Momentum : My Raining Stars

Listening to My Raining Stars is like discovering a new and wonderful recipe made from familiar ingredients - in this case shoegaze, jangle pop and Phil Spector. You’re left gasping “How did no one think of this before!”

Every special recipe has a magic ingredient. Here, it’s the voice of Thierry Haliniak. His vocals create the sound of a wide eyed European troubadour fronting an early Creation Records band, probably Teenage Fanclub. But as they evolved to shed their noisy skin, Thierry stretches his arms to embrace music from across the full spectrum of pop’s rainbow. The music may be intentionally grubby, but his voice is pure and almost innocent as it rises up to point the right way ahead. You might lose the melody in the wall of sound but never in his voice.

The stage is set from the opening moments as My Raining Stars jangle their way through the buzzy noise that carries ‘For Good’. ‘Better Life’ introduces a soupcon of baggy, best imagined as playing over a sunsoaked Festival field. ‘Stop The Time’ simultaneously sounds as if you are in the front row by the security barrier but the music is coming from far away. It’s a high octane phenomenon that is both brilliant and affecting. ‘Special Place’ melds it all together into something approaching pop perfection.

If the shoegaze flavours are the most pronounced, they contain more energy than we’re accustomed to hearing. These songs are influenced as much by Oasis and Manic Street Preachers as they are Slowdive or Ride and they are illuminated with the sparkle of the best of the C86 generation. It’s a mix that gives the unexpected silence towards the end of ‘Lovers’ and its faint reprise such power.

My Raining Stars deliver the best kind of indie rock, with a winsome heart.

Taster Track : Special Place

( This is an updated review of an album I first reviewed last Easter. Second time around I found even more to enjoy, so wanted to pass these new thoughts on.)

My Home Is Not In This World : Natalie Bergman

They say write songs about what you know. Natalie Bergman knows grief from the death of her parents in a road accident in 2019. And she knows the enduring impact it has on all aspects of your life. From that she’s conjured one of the best and sweetest pop albums of the year.

It takes a while to realise the depth of songs beneath the pop glitter. Think Memphis era Dusty Springfield, ‘Jolene’ pleading Dolly Parton and any number of classic Motown songs with sweeping strings and great choruses for the excellent run of five songs that opens the album. Midway through the album though, there’s a switch to something inescapably autobiographical.

The cornerstone of the album is ‘Didn’t Get to Say Goodbye’. It’s a reminder that grief lingers and it’s the point that the motivation behind the album becomes clear. Now, the songs are clearly directed to partners, to her brother and, redemptively, to her young son in ‘Song For Arthur’. They’re songs that tell of a life in progress - of coming to terms with unimaginable loss and regret, of the vulnerability that comes from needing new partners and dreading further abandonment as relationships break down.

This is not a miserable album. In picking up the pieces of a devastated life, she’s transformed them into sunny pop. One pop classic follows another. ‘Stop, Please Don’t Go’ would have been a highlight at any time in the past sixty years. Magically, these are songs tinged with hope. It’s a desperate hope at times, optimistic at others. It’s fragile too, like a Bambi struggling to walk but eventually succeeding and moving strongly into life. (That’s not the only parallel, as Bambi also experiences the most heartbreaking moment in the Disney universe!)

Following the car death tragedy, Bergman rediscovered her faith and remains a devout Christian. It’s apt that this is acknowledged in the closing song ‘California’, a 21st century hymn. 

This is a brave album, and one that it is a joy to discover.

Taster Track : Stop, Please Don’t Go

22:22 : Polo and Pan

Back in the 70s, as families started to venture to sunnier climates on package holidays, they’d sometimes come back raving about songs they’d heard over there that would be brought back alongside the duty free sangria, oversized sombreros and kiss me quick hats. ‘Y Viva Espana’ was a cringeworthy example; Plastic Bertrand’s ‘Ca Plane Pour Moi’ a better one. Whether they still sounded good on a rainy Autumn Wednesday day in Stoke didn’t matter. They brought happiness home with them.

Musically, Polo and Pan are much better than either of those examples, but they serve the same purpose. These songs are memories of the good times, the better times and they will linger with you through Winter keeping you warm and content.

This is music that you’ll have heard playing in a poolside bar, on a sunsoaked Mediterranean cafe terrace or creeping from the club as it closes after a memorable night out. It’s music for when you can drop all pretences and be the happiest version of yourself. The songs are suffused with a sweet naivety, as if grown ups have rediscovered their childish pleasures. Visualise this music and you’ll see smiles and sunshine.

The child reciting a poem in ‘The Piano and the Violin’ about a piano and a violin discovering and falling in love sets the tone. It’s a definitive happy ending, an Oscar Wilde fairytale set to music. At its best, in ‘Petite Etoile’ and ‘Bluetopia’, it’s music that is as much about creating the right atmosphere as it is about being a great tune.

The more acoustic ‘22:23’ is lovely, the modern equivalent of a pony trap ride down a seaside promenade. The faintest of shadows arrive with ‘Summer Is Almost Over’ but it feels more like a fond au revoir than a lasting adieu. ‘Laszlo’ is ear worm Heaven, addictive and happy.

This is French pop at its finest - Air with added good humour. Treat yourself and listen to it.

Taster Track : Petite Etoile

The Chasing Pack

Rich Man’s Wardrobe : The Big Dish

It’s said that everyone has their musical decade. It establishes and defines everything they will come to love about music. Equally, perhaps, everyone has a lost decade when they drift away from music. 

For me, that would be around 1986 to 1995. It coincided with settling into the world of work, starting a family and being short of time and money. Looking back, there’s always a background worry that you’ve missed out. I wondered if that applied to The Big Dish, who were unknown to me until revisiting the work of Stephen Lindsay, their co-founder, singer and guitarist. And that’s why I was happy to devote a morning to listening to ‘Rich Man’s Wardrobe’, their career retrospective.

Good news - I can hear no reason why The Big Dish weren’t huge in their day. They combined the indie jangle sound of Scottish pop - try ‘Wishing Time - with the era’s love for production as big as Carol Decker’s hair. 

But it’s the production that dates it. You needed big songs to garner airplay, and without airplay you didn’t sell records. The tunes are secondary to pounding drums and full orchestrations. It sounds expensive and not very indie, not very bedroom pop. Give the songs the same treatment that Stephen Lindsay afforded his solo work, and you could have something special. As it is, this serves as a swansong for the sound of corporate sponsorship before bedroom pop, streetwise hip hop and the much more maligned but direct sounds of Britpop blew this approach away.

It’s a shame, because Lindsay sings with feeling and sincerity. The band plays with considered expertise. ‘Jean’ shows that they were adept with a lighter touch, calling to mind Lloyd Cole's early work. ‘Swimmer’ is distinctive, almost incantatory in its repetition.

Listening to these songs now, they sound like a radio that plays all day in the background. Sadly - and it’s not the band’s fault - this is less a collection of lost gems and more a crumbling monument to a currently unfashionable era.

Taster Track : Swimmer

Dog Eared - Billie Marten

Billie Marten dropped out of university after six weeks, not as an act of rebellion but because her peers were taking the course insufficiently seriously. 

She wasn’t about to let others waste her time and, perhaps, that accounts for the impressive maturity to be found in these songs. She’s only 26 for Heaven’s sake, but her songs have the depth and understanding of someone twenty years her senior. Rather than whooping it up in her mid twenties, she’s trying to make sense of it all and settle down. I’m reluctant to class it as women’s music - its appeal transcends that - but it is so personal and drawn from experience that it would be nonsensical not to acknowledge its roots. 

There’s a determination to be heard in her own voice. ‘Crown’ has an unforced, gently quirkiness that helps her to sound distinctive. ‘Clover’ has the kind of relaxed vibe that can only make her likeable. On one level this is perfect Sunday morning pottering music, straight from the Rickie Lee Jones / Norah Jones stable of pleasing, classic songwriting. It may not be fashionable but it is timeless, and in keeping with her acknowledged musical influences including Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Jeff Buckley, Joan Armatrading and others.

Dig deeper and there’s another level to explore. There are songs here that can inspire, comfort and even change lives. On ‘Goodnight Moon’ and elsewhere her voice has notes of weary resignation and acceptance. On ‘Planets’ her voice is full of the huskiness that comes from too long days and too many sleepless nights. She’s equally happy to let her music speak for her too. The fade outs to ‘Leap Year’ and ‘Goodnight Moon’ show that her confidence in this is well placed.

Someone, somewhere is planning a degree module in female singer songwriters. Billie Marten will be part of its central canon.

Taster Track : Clover

Submarine : The Marias

I stumbled across The Marias as they played over the in store hifi of a well known record shop just off Cambridge Circus, called FOPP. It’s a store that gives off an indie vibe, where it’s a pleasure to browse for half an hour or so. They’re owned by HMV, the most corporate of record stores, and there are times when that backing leaks through. The same can be said of The Marias - they're an attractive indie sound with big business sensitivities. 

It’s a highly likeable mix, poised at the place where the poppiest sounds of Dubstar and even Saint Etienne meets the best manufactured pop. Like Sarah Cracknell, Maria Zaradoya’s  hushed and seductive vocals deservedly draw the fans but the band contribute the ideas and the woozy relaxed vibe that will keep fans locked in.

I like this a lot, even if I suspect that I’m not part of the intended audience. Listening to it I felt a little like the parent taking a teenage dependent to a gig and enjoying it as much as they do. The secret is that The Marias have the gift of a seductive and powerful pop touch in their melodies. In days gone by, their singles would have taken up residency in the Top 5 and they’d be drowning under a cascade of Radio 1 Record of the Week accolades.

Songs come thick and fast and if that makes them hard to differentiate, it’s a small price to pay when the songs are as strong as ‘Love You Anyway’. The melodies of ‘Hamptons’ and ‘Run Your Mouth’ are like the first intimations of a sugar rush. ‘No One Noticed’ allows you to feel lifted and weightless’. ‘‘If Only’ is the song that attracted attention in FOPP,  a torch song filled with mystery, promise and a stripped back piano. It’s a song more than capable of creating a word of mouth buzz.

If the devil now resides in corporate music, he can still generate some very good tunes!

Taster Track : No One Noticed

Madra : NewDad

When I started this blog one of the major reasons was to review how records sounded when listened to in less than ideal circumstances. I identified “a cat who clambers over  your i-pad while you're listening to it” as an example of this. Add to that two pens that had one job that they failed to do - transfer their ink to the page as I recorded impressions, and you’ll appreciate that this was what  Pop In The Real World was created for.

There’s an upside to this. If you can make a favourable impression under these conditions, you’ve made a good album. Take a bow NewDad.

This is an album for the Stranger Things generation. It's dark and troubling, but youthful and accessible too. It’s not the first album that treats the transition into adulthood as a sickness, but it is one of the best. It’s a confusing time, a time of uncertainty and doubts about feelings and identity. Inevitably it’s introspective, and these songs draw you in claustrophobically. It may not be a world you want to live in for any longer than necessary, but it’s one that will strike a chord with many.

Musically it builds its effect across the whole album. As a whole, it can’t help but feel gloomy. Whole genres have been built around less, and you’ll find more than a touch of grunge, lightened by a generous helping of shoegaze chimes. I was reminded more than once of the darker side of Garbage, particularly on ‘Sickly Sweet’. I liked Julie Dawson’s vocals a lot. They avoid histrionics and are thoughtful and pure. They contribute to the haunting feel of songs such as ‘Change My Mind’, complementing the wonderful guitar outro.

I’ll be giving this another listen. NewDad have a new album out in September - ‘Altar’. I’ll be returning for that too.

Taster Track : Sickly Sweet

Into The Doldrums - Now Always Fades

On the face of it, this could be an album that is heavy going. The doldrums are an area that will leave you becalmed and stagnating, unable to escape your surroundings and reliant on forces you can’t control to escape them. The name Now Always Fades (real name Xavier Bacash) sounds at first like a warning, but it could also be a reassurance that the doldrums will one day end. All three elements play a part in this intriguing and ultimately satisfying album.

Into The Doldrums is a darkly lovely record detached from the daylight world. It’s fully immersive, slowly shifting shape as if suspended in its own bubble solution. It’s happening, slowly all around you. It feels as much like a sensation as something you can listen to. It pulls you gently away from your moorings, numbing you as it does so. This is music that drugs you as if you were falling under an anaesthetic, under the influence of alcohol or suffering extreme tiredness.

And yet… it also brings with it the promise of hope and beauty.

Several of the songs are sung by Lili Hall, and they’re key to the overall effect. They provide light in the style of guest vocalists on albums by Air and Zero 7, offsetting the intense heaviness drawn from, say, dub mixes of Massive Attack songs. Her vocals drift above the heavy electronica coming to you as if from a celestial Siren. The acoustic, albeit treated, guitars ground the songs in your real world. The electronica is always intriguing. It’s deliberately muffled in places. Out of phase beats, reverb, and echoes add an otherworldly experience to the mix. The ever present heavy bass is pierced by shards of softly, higher pitched flutters and lightened by flakes of occasional brightness. It’s never allowed to smother you.

Downtempo electronica performed this well, and realised this fully seems to be a lost genre. We can thank Now Always Fades for keeping its embers alive, bringing warmth to a part frozen world.

Taster Track : Branching Moments

As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/42qDXrw3nLMlCSg45kCnRy?si=4499207642034207 or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.

The link to the Youtube playlist is https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwV-OogHy7EjHZr5_M3m0Zn5LEu_F3fMm&si=OhQF-ZPaBjUn4VMT