Vital Idles – Left Hand

Glasgow DIY/indie underground four-piece Vital Idles debut on new label Upset The Rhythm with ‘Left Hand’, their follow up to a couple of self-released demos and a single full length 7” release. Utilising the expertise of fellow Glaswegian engineer Andy Monaghan and Edwin Stevens (aka Irma Vep), the group, spearheaded by their eerie yet endearing vocalist, Jessica Higgins, look to emerge from a somewhat esoteric musical cocoon and spread their newly acquired bigger-budget wings.

The first thing that stands out about Vital Idles is indeed singer Higgins, who has an almost Morrissey-esque feel to her vocal style and lyrics, and offers us up her own muddled musings on life, sometimes sounding like she’s talking to herself, sometimes to anyone who’ll listen, and sometimes to no one at all. There’s plenty of whimsical wisdom and world-weary wit to be found here, and these contradictions and freshly formed cliches give the album its greatest charm; her outlook on life feeling something like steering through heavy traffic and just about managing to avoid hitting anything. The rest of the band’s sometimes fragile sometimes feverish backing proves the perfect canvass for Higgins’s paintbrush-flicking delivery, resulting in a very rough around the edges self portrait of a group who have been firmly planted in the trenches of their sound and are now ready to weather a run over the top.

After the riotous rollicking of opener “A Premise”, the band are quick to showcase a certain degree of variety to this sound with the differing numbers that are “Solid States” and “Chains”. The former has a kind of cloak-and-dagger feel to its main riff and proceeds at a cautious but calculating pace, whereas with “Chains” the intrigue lies in the upbeat almost vanilla guitar riff that accompanies Higgins’s shoulder-shrugging lyrics, and will deceive you into missing the deeper meanings that are hidden in plain sight. Other highlights include arguably the album’s only foray into epic/anthemic territory, the immersive and bleak “Cave Raised”, and the feel good/not so good vibes of “Like Life”.

A thoroughly valiant effort from a band that enjoys life on the outskirts of musical conformity. This latest offering at times seems to tease a merging with the metropolis, but ultimately Higgins and co opt to retain their mystique by mingling in the moonlight and shadows.

Gabriella Cohen – Pink is the Colour of Unconditional Love

Following on from the 2017 release of her highly acclaimed debut album “Full Closure and No Details”, Gabriella Cohen swiftly offers us up its sequel in the form of “Pink is the Colour of Unconditional Love” – and the melancholy mistress of Melbourne can fully expect to be receiving similar plaudits for this effort as well.

Now if her debut was all the more impressive for being recorded in a mere ten days, the story that accompanies the creation of this album is the journey it would embark upon prior to its completion. Having recorded the majority in the rural countryside setting of a farm in Victoria, Australia, Cohen found herself heeding the call of the road, and took the project with her on a tour that would see the finishing touches applied everywhere from a canal boat in England, to the coasts of Portugal and the mountains of Southern Italy. Adding sprinklings of these surroundings to her work is done as effortlessly as a chef discovering new ingredients as they travel the world and masterfully incorporate them into already established signature dishes.

“Pink is the Colour of Unconditional Love” kicks off with “Music Machine” and lead single “Baby”, which set both an upbeat, but at the same time laid back, tone, before Cohen starts to introduce us to the more whimsical and introspective side of her song writing evident in tracks like “I Feel So Lonely” and “Miserable Baby”. The album never really returns to the out-and-out single material of the opening two tracks but neither does it suffer for it, and listeners will feel as if they are falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of emotion that is Cohen’s soul. Further album highlights are “Mercy”, with its excellent Doors-esque finale, and the superbly named “Neil Young Goes Crazy” which, rest assured, is everything it promises to be and more.

Brimming with all the sounds of summer, whether it be taking a stroll down Venice Beach, Los Angeles in the baking hot sun, or pulling out the acoustic for a sing-song in the shade outside a cafe in Mexico, this is a record which promises you Autumn will never come. Frequently accompanied by a dreamy doo-wopping choir and always by nebulous and narcotic rip-roaring guitars, Cohen’s vocals are as lazy, hazy, and sexy as ever, and the vibrant variety of colours on her musical palette intermingle pleasantly on the triumphant canvas that is “Pink is the Colour of Unconditional Love”.

The Love-Birds – In the Lover’s Corner

Having spent their time since 2016 establishing themselves as one of San Francisco’s premier guitar bands, anthemic jangle-pop four-piece The Love-Birds follow up their 2017 four track 7-inch EP “Filled With Hate” with a full length debut album in the form of “In The Lover’s Corner”. The album also represents the band’s first offering on Trouble in Mind since their affiliation with local label Empty Cellar Records, who put out their EP, but despite being mastered by Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake, the album stays true to its roots with album artwork by Shayde Sartin (Fresh & Onlys, Sonny and the Sunsets) and a two part recording completed by Glenn Donaldson (Art Museums, Skygreen Leopards) and Kelley Stoltz.

“In The Lover’s Corner” gently lures you in with opening track “Again”, which combines some pleasant acoustic strumming with a first dose of delicious jingling from lead guitarist Eli Wald, who provides the album with a kind of burly Byrds-esque sound that quickly becomes its signature. The next two tracks “Hit My Head” and “Angela” respectively serve as the group’s first two single offerings on the record, and introduce us to a far more lick-driven, fuzzy, power-pop sound. The album goes on to offer a variety of different moods for its listeners to zone into, whether it be the catchy pop-fection of “December (Get To You)”, the anthemic majesty of “Weak Riff”, or the rapid and raucous rocker that is “River Jordan”, there is almost certainly something that will tickle your ear drum here. Closing number “Failure and Disgrace” manages to sound something like the entire record condensed into a single track, providing a fitting farewell to – though far from an accurate description of – this engaging and triumphant debut.

There’s plenty of nods to their main influences here (Teenage Fanclub, Pavement) but this doesn’t stop The Love-Birds succeeding in carving out an identity of their own; one of tuneful, melodic meanderings woven by a combination of memorable guitar licks and jingles, super-cool vocals, and a steady and reliable rhythm section that’s always ready to take the sound where it needs to go. This is a band to fall in love with, to hum and sing along to, and definitely one to expect great things of now that “In The Lover’s Corner” has arrived and the The Love-Birds have well and truly landed.