There Is Always Plan B. Always!

Starring

Allo Darlin',Flaer, Roge, Sam Blasucci, Turin Brakes, West 11 and Beth Hirsch

The Front Runners

Bright Lights : Allo Darlin’

This is a lovely demonstration of what happens when indie kids grow up without losing what made them special in the first place.

If you thought indie music was mainly a bunch of wannabe stars rocking around on guitars and providing diminishing returns once their initial fireworks have started to burn out, Allo Darlin’ may give you cause to think again. 

They were always quieter, always had a point to make but made it simply and evocatively. Now they feel like an indie band that has left the chaos behind and are seeking to make sense of it all. They’ve brought the full reflective weight of life experiences to their songwriting. ‘My Love Will Bring You Home’ is even a disguised  love song to their children.

This is an album that looks back, explicitly on ‘Historic Times’. It’s full of uncluttered songs that avoid unnecessary effects. It’s delicately poised between soft regret and the remembrances of wistful but sweet memories. It’s like a sunset as it dips beneath the horizon - half clinging faintly to a happy sky and half already immersed in a melancholy sea.

In some ways it’s a shy album. Melodies aren’t quite singalong but they capture and hold your attention. They’re drawn from real life, with great lyrics and near poetic expression. ‘Slow Motion’ drips understated sadness in a compellingly honest reflection on unresolved emotions. Musically it winds and twirls like a murmuration of starlings. ‘Northern Waters’ is almost cosmic in its guitar work.

‘Bright lights' is a superficially unassuming album that tries to remain grounded and resists the temptation to soar. There’s an indie folk vibe throughout but what leaves a lasting impact is the simplicity and honesty of the songs. This is indie in the spirit of the Marine Girls or The Innocence Mission.

Allo Darlin’ - it’s good to see and hear you again.

Taster Track : Northern Waters

Preludes / Burrow : Flaer

This is gorgeous music. It’s so gorgeous that, having planned to listen to his short 2023 album ‘Preludes’, I immediately followed it with his most recent release, ‘Burrow’.

There are rare times when you’re lucky enough to wake up refreshed and suffused with an all over glow of happiness for no specific reason. The day is gloriously sunny, with a gentle temperate breeze, so it’s not too hot. That early morning coffee can be drunk outside and it hits the spot. If you know that feeling, you’ll love these recordings.

They’re ambient and evocative. Church bells, dogs yapping, children playing unaware they’re being recorded, the loveliest sound of a cooing woodpigeon and, surprisingly, the sound of a racing commentary heard through the window as the race approaches its climax. Every found sound is laden with memories of an idealised past and enough in itself to give you goosebumps. They capture what it could mean to live in England, but not in a nasty Nationalist sense or one that blares jingoism. 

Flaer specialises in the music of kindness and tolerance, of appreciation and gratitude for what matters, of the feeling that it is good to be alive. It’s unhurried but over all too soon. It offers you the luxury of having time and allows you to settle yourself in your environment.

Musically these are not generally tunes in the sense of refrains and hummable melodies. Silence is allowed to breathe into tunes such as ‘Sunshine’. You respond to the found sounds and the music does what abstract ambient music does best, providing a backing free from distraction that allows you simply to be. The one piece that approaches a fully realised tune is ‘Sticks’ with its echoes of “Tea For Two’. The cello and thoughtful piano of ‘The Hill’ are in perfect harmony with the atmosphere.

These are rare examples of music that soothes and uplifts in the same breath. They are to be treasured.

Taster Tracks : Hew (from Preludes), Sticks (from Burrow)

The Chasing Pack

Curyman II : Roge

What the world needs now is love sweet love, or so Bacharach and David told us. That’s still true, but a healthy dose of the happiness contained in this album doesn’t go amiss either.

This is balanced between music for those who know the samba from watching Strictly , and those who recognise the perfection of Brazilian vibes for Summer Sunday listening with a glass of chilled wine and the doors open to the garden during a heatwave.

That’s a very middle class image, unlikely to resonate with those that live in inner city tower blocks. But this is for everyone. It is, by some standards, a middle of the road album. Let’s think about that for a moment. The middle of the road is where you nudge aside the rules and divisIons of the Highway Code and, for a short while, discover the freedoms available to you every day. 

‘Curyman II’ is a warm, delicious album that promotes friendship and connection. It doesn’t demand reverence, it encourages conversation as it plays. Samba is timeless music. ‘O Tope Do Coqueiro’ stretches languidly back to the sixties, when Brazilian music spread its wings and reached out to the world of mainstream pop. It feels embedded in Summers of Love, even as it ventures into social and political issues. 

No matter how it’s dressed up, Roge’s music is all about the rhythms - in the music and in the vocals particularly where they become a joyous call and response between Roge and his backing choir.

‘Curyman’ sets the tone with a gentle mix of sweet flavours from strings, percussion, woodwind, acoustic guitar and lullaby vocals. ‘100% Samba’ lives up to its mass market title and had me swaying in my seat and tapping my toes. ‘A Ro’ is just one example of music that wears a contented smile. ‘Vido Voa’ is music for any era and that’s the root of its ability to connect.

Friendship. Happiness. Warmth. Connection. Why wouldn’t you dive headfirst into this world?

Taster Track : Curyman

Real Life Thing : Sam Blasucci

For the keen follower of contemporary pop, Sam Blasucci has an annoying quality. He’s the complete opposite of cutting edge. If his music were a weapon it would be a pink foam sword. It’s almost impossible to be mean about his music in a review. You might as well criticise a puppy for scampering around while you’re trying to relax.

From the off, it’s undeniably pleasant and harmless, amiable and likable. It makes few demands as it drifts by and leaves fewer memories. Professional is probably not the word most singers and songwriters would want at the head of epithets about their songs, but that’s what this is. This is classic songwriting done well for a cocktail lounge audience.

This is the kind of music that the uber cool amongst us would not want to be caught with in our Spotify library. It’s like being caught watching a soppy 70s sitcom when you thought you were alone in the house. You could introduce this to your parents and have no qualms about allowing your child to attend it as their first unaccompanied gig.

And yet, music fans would miss it if it wasn’t around. It keeps alive the spirit of US AOR / MOR radio, raided by Radio 2 today and Radio 1 50 years ago. You wouldn’t want to lose the drifting sax, the chugging medium pace, the piano with its Randy Newman hints of ragtime, the vocals that tempt you to hang around for one more song or the delightful woodwind flutters that populate ‘Behind Closed Eyes’.

This eventually leaves you with the lingering smile and cosy feelings of a middle aged rom com soundtrack, caught as you head out the door for your latest slice of indie cinema verite.

‘Real Life Thing’ is an iced coffee of an album. It’s certainly chilled, but you’d never confess to it as your favourite drink. It’s as misplaced as a mother’s warm embrace for her returning uni student in front of all their friends, but as welcome too.

Taster Track : Behind Closed Eyes

Spacehopper : Turin Brakes

Turin Brakes are as old as the millennium, and they’re testimony to the value of having a clear plan that plays to their strengths.

Those strengths include the strong relationship between founder members Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian and a steady band alongside them. And of course, their ability to write high quality songs hasn’t done them any harm either.

They don’t claim to be fashionable. They'd probably hate it if they were, actually. They’re settled and established in their musical clothes which remain a comfortable fit. You could argue that they’ve grown a little safer over the years, ambled more into the realms of folk rock leaving behind the startlingly alternative sound of their Mercury nominated debut ‘The Optimist’. If that’s true, it’s because they’re older now, more settled and write songs with a community feel. Their peers have grown with them and they don’t need a new audience. There’s something about them too that feels completely English.

Scratch the surface of songs like ‘Today’, ‘Lullaby’, ‘Almost’ and ‘The Message’ and you’ll find they owe as much to the West Coast as they do to London and the Home counties. The connection between Knights and Paridjanian remains strong and accounts for their special brand of harmonising. Choruses arrive with the inevitability of a red kite swooping down on prey or meat laid out of them. They’re held in abeyance until the moment for them to break is exactly right. It’s an exercise in perfect control and musical understanding.

Even their prettiest songs can’t disguise the fact that they are choirboys with rock at their core. The band are both inventive and powerful - but only when they need to be.. You can hear it in ‘Pays To Be Paranoid’, and in the closer ‘What’s Underneath’. They’ll be storming exercises live, and you can catch them on tour later this year.

Turin Brakes are what music sounds like when it’s played by men who have perfected their craft.

Taster Track : Today

Atlantic Coast Highway : West 11 (with Beth Hirsch)

Imagine dreaming of a fairy tale career in pop. Imagine that tale turning into an undeserved  nightmare. Wouldn’t you want one more crack to prove you had what it takes and it could make you happy?

Songwriter Mark Shaw invested that hope in The Train Set, indie stalwarts of the 1980s never quite breaking through the pack to achieve wide recognition. Beth Hirsch rightly earned critical plaudits for her vocal contribution to Air’s classic ‘Moon Safari’. And then what? Precisely. Phil King made it as bassist with Lush, Felt and the Jesus and Mary Chain but the experience of Lush’s reunion left him never wanting to make music again. 

They’ve collaborated to make an album together that offers the chance of personal redemption, and it’s a good example of classic radio friendly pop that’s lovingly and meticulously put together. It’s a marriage of their different pasts that doesn’t put a foot wrong, but neither does it risk failure.

This is the music of people that have settled down and remain a little surprised by that. They know how to write and deliver a technically excellent song to wow any songwriting workshop, but they haven’t invested it with passion or a sense of musical personality. It feels muted and held in check, like a football team playing for a draw. It might be the ideal accompaniment for stirring a cocktail but it won’t be something to stir the soul. It’s something to chatter over.

There is much here that impresses - in its sound, the jazz inflections to the vocals, the unexpected coupling of the cocktail lounge and the Americana bar.There’s a vocal looseness to opening track ‘The Greater The Love’ that bodes well for the album, except that it remains the high point. I liked what followed but came nowhere near loving it.

‘Atlantic Coast Highway’ is an album that feels like testing the water and something to build confidence. Now for album number two to fulfil the potential shown here.

Taster Track : The Greater The Love

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