Summer Daze

Starring

Billy Reeves, Birds In The Brickhouse, Broken Chip, Comet Gain, The Mayflies USA, Stereophonics

The Front Runners

A Strange Peace : Birds In The Brickwork

Birds In The Brickwork made one of the most beautiful ambient records of recent times, with ‘Twelve Months Vol 2’. Their 2023 album ‘A Strange Peace’ dives deeper through the waters of haunting melody into an ambience that may change the way you hear sound.

Tempted? You should be. This album contains moments that have you asking “Did I really hear that?, like a strange animal sound ahead on the path in pitch blackness or the sound of a faraway train barely carrying to you in the dead of night. This feels like the aural equivalent of the Gaia concept, presenting sound as a living thing, full of ripples and shudders that are destined to be unnoticed as we move about our days.

The special talent of Birds In The Brickwork’s special skill is to apply a stethoscope to sound, magnifying and revealing its full complexities. Some passages manage to sound harsh but soothing simultaneously. Closing track ‘A Still Room’ ends with a period of near silence, like the receded echo of all you’ve heard before it. It’s difficult to explain, but needs to be experienced.

This is a more ambient album than the melodic and tuneful ‘Twelve Months Vol 2’, but melody still exists at the heart of something like ‘From Green To Grey’. As with ‘By Water (At Night)’ it may be skewed out of shape and he may mix tunefulness and stuttery white noise, but he always reveals the quiet beauty behind the surface. This is hushed but absorbing, thoughtful and considered, slow moving but mesmeric.

You do need to work at this free from distraction. It may not have the calming immediacy of some of his earlier work, but you will find the strange peace disclosed in the album’s title.

Taster Track : From Green To Grey

The Chasing Pack

When Lord God Almighty Reads The News : Billy Reeves

Life gets too much sometimes. Billy Reeves should know. He had a first stab at fame with theaudience, and left. In 2001 he survived a near fatal car accident. He recovered and returned to music. He's experienced a lot of life and he needs to give vent to his feelings about it.

Thankfully, although he told us that a pessimist is never disappointed, there’s just enough optimism in these songs to keep us hooked. It’s an impatient optimism in ‘Generation Game’ and one that hopes that the voice of reason can carry the day as on ‘Better Than Wages’. It’s needed because the prevailing feeling across the album is one of scratchy, desperate, helpless frustration that’s about to blow. 

Billy Reeves sings like a jabbing finger in your chest. You can feel him catching his breath and pushing down his demons. That’s not good, not healthy. At other times you feel he may be taking his chance to be the man that rants helplessly outside your tube station, gurning and blasting spittle at passers by. That’s ‘Bstrds!’ for you.

But, and this is important, it’s listenable and catchy, impressive in its emotion and not unpalatable. ‘Generation Game’ starts as stuttery electro pop before building into something friendlier. If it’s words you enjoy, listen to ‘Relentless’. The way he drops the album title into the lyrics is a masterclass of timing, rhythm and delivery.

Electropop suits these songs. The influence that kept coming to mind was Blancmange. They share an edgy, jittery sound that, even in its darkest moments, is undeniably pop.

There’s one song that stands apart from the rest. ‘I’m On Drugs’ is quieter as if medicated. You’re left feeling that drugs, whether prescribed or self administered are not the answer. They’re potentially a shield, but just as likely a prison keeping you apart from your real self. They make a silence for lambs rather than allowing lions to roar

This is not always an easy ride, but it is a compelling one.

Taster Track : Relentless

A Distant Blur : Broken Chip

Summer’s arrived! The temperature has hovered around 30 degrees and last night the house stayed above 26 degrees. That kind of heat saps patience, but patience is what you need for listening to this record.

You need the patience to dig deep to find the musicality amongst the drones, white noise, hisses and static. I can accept this as musical art speaking for Broken Chip but it’s all too often speaking in a language I can’t understand.

‘Found’ sets out the album’s stall with its introductory ambience making for some interesting atmospherics. It’s progressing somewhere, but where? ‘Across The Void’ and ‘Elegy of Decay’ are just two examples of pieces that are tuning up for something that never arrives. In the early stages of the album it seems that we’re simply listening to the crackle of static above the rise and fall of drones. 

Music attempts to break through the noise, like an alien peeking cautiously through the fabric of the universe to study a new life form. This is music that you need to listen to repeatedly, to get past initial bewilderment and subsequent irritation at the seeming lack of structure and momentum. In the end it may become something that you can’t let go. It will become as much a part of you as the sound of the blood coursing through your veins. 

On first listen in this heat though it feels for me like the wrong music at the wrong time. Where’s the thing to cling to that carries me through and is worth coming back for? I need, above all, something to remember.

Fortunately I take a break, returning to complete my listening in mid morning. It seems to work. I’m hooked by ‘December 1972’. It’s the most musical piece here and the birdsong suits the climate well. It’s still fuzzy but its hisses are less disruptive than the sound of static. This is something I can listen to more than once.

This is a challenging listen that all but defeated me. Sometimes you need to choose your listening battles. For me, it’s not here.

Taster Track : December 1972

Letters To Ordinary Outsiders : Comet Gain

Some bands are happily wedded to the past. Others, like Comet Gain, feel imprisoned by it and still seek ways to escape. 

It’s ‘Hearts of Scars’ that sets out their stall with lines like “It would have been easy to surrender to all this useless squalor” and flagging the promise of “No future days”. It’s never depressing. It’s too full of anger and frustration to wallow in that murky pit. Comet Gain simply want to make some noise and demand that you hear it. 

Songs are rooted in their personal pasts, musically and lyrically. Some might hear Northern Soul in the brass that cuts across the album. Others might hear it as the trumpets of the Book of Revelation raising the dead and holding them to account. The truth lies somewhere inbetween. Songs like ‘Danbury Road' hold no fond attraction for the past, they’re filled with a simmering need to escape it. This leads to a brooding, romance for a past life including hopeful dreams for something better.

This is all out, take no prisoners, pop, a squalling noise and a jangling joy. It’s raw and ugly but, in songs like ‘It’s A Wonderful Life, But There’s Always Further You Can Fall’,  it’s also noble in its passion and desperate determination not to be sucked down. There are many pop touches - the brass mentioned earlier, the “ba, ba, bas” of ‘Do You Remember ‘The Lites On The Water’’ - but they’re pop moments soaked in steroids. The price you pay is that the choruses and melody sometimes feel second to energy and passion..

They’re to be applauded for their mission to preserve the pop of the past in their own inimitable way. Their sound has the sketchy but vivid pop of Orange Juice, the tsunami feel of The Mighty Wah in all their incarnations and the acerbic disillusion of I Am Kloot. 

Take them as they are. With all their flaws, Comet Gain still have much to offer..

Taster Track : Yeah, It’s A Wonderful Life, But There’s Always Further You Can Fall

Kickless Kids : The Mayflies USA

The Mayflies USA have returned after a 20 year hiatus with their brand of American power pop, emphasising the melodies and harmonies at its core.

The ‘U.S.A’. is helpful because this is music that is the sound of college radio in a way that we don’t have in the UK. It calls to mind their indie rock darlings such as early R.E.M. and Weezer. Rest easy though, it’s also not too far from UK favourites such as Teenage Fanclub.

They perform what they offer in their Spotify bio. That’s big songs, strong choruses and nice harmonies. This is confident indie rock, sashaying and swaggering itself out of your speakers. After 20 years there’s an inevitable looking back, taking stock before moving on. That adds to their retro appeal and they haven’t felt the need to update their sound. It wasn’t broken, so why fix it?

There’s an appealing sense too that they're picking up the bones of their friendship. On ‘Less Lost’ they sound like the kids they once were, best friends back together again

It sounds quite straightforward, but it’s actually quite difficult to capture the fairy dust that makes a great song rather than one that is back in the pack of songs that are ‘merely’ good. The Mayflies USA find it in ‘Thought The Rain Was Gone’, ‘Less Lost’ and ‘Summer Kept Slippin’ and hint at it elsewhere too.

‘Kickless Kids’ is the perfect accompaniment to bring teenagers and forty somethings together at a summer barbecue. It won’t change your life, but it may turn an awkward day into something a little bit better.

Taster Track : Thought The Rain Was Gone

Make ‘Em Laugh, Make ‘Em Cry, Make ‘Em Wait - Stereophonics

This is an enjoyable slice of classic rock that shows how, over 30 years, the band have smoothed out and rubbed away any aggressive edges to their music.

It’s been a long time coming. They’ve always tried to keep one foot in the Jools Holland ‘Later’ camp, and the other in crowd pleasing Hootenanny celebrations. They’ve perfected the showbiz tricks implied in the album’s title, and the gleeful tone of that suggests they have no regrets about the shift. 

There’s a happiness in their playing that’s a delight to hear. This is a band that has attained rock legend status, while keeping their music fresh and enjoyable. It’s a sound with one ear on the festival crowd and another on the Radio 2 audience. It’s the sound of a band that has transitioned from indie rock to classic rock. And it’s the sound of a heritage band making good new music for long standing fans who continue to lap it up and don’t want them to change.

They’ve been at it for more than 30 years now. Inevitably they’ve reached the stage where they’re looking backwards as well as to the future. It’s most apparent on ‘Backroom Boys’, but the sense of nostalgia for the early days accompanied by a feeling of regret for something lost pervades the whole album. There are moments here to contemplate how far they’ve come to end up where they have.

As always, Kelly Jones is the dominating presence. He shows here that he’s no longer the battling troublemaker who could pick a fight in a nunnery. On ‘Seems Like You Don’t Know Me’, he’s less an angry young man and more a tired, resigned and middle aged one. Moreover, when the strings that carry the sound of ‘Colours of October’ make their entrance, you’d think he was a tender and romantic one.

Stereophonics haven’t kept fire in their belly as their peers Manic Street Preachers have. That’s OK. This is an album that their fans and festivals will love.

Taster Track : Colours of October

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