With Just A Hint Of Mayhem

Music reviews, gig reviews, fun trivia and extra added random stuff!

Mayhem Singles Round Up Part 1 2023 February 15, 2023

Filed under: Review — justwilliam1959 @ 11:28 pm
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It has been way too long since our last singles round-up. So here is the first for 2023, it includes twelve songs that have been passed on to me or recommended during the previous few weeks and months, there are some really classy tracks here. This is quite a Yorkshire-centric list, but I have lived in Yorkshire since 2007, so why not? Let me know what you think of them! You will find a YouTube link to each song in the title and a link to the artists website or Spotify page if you click the artist name. You can also find the link to a Spotify playlist of all these songs by clicking here.

“Chu Chi Face” – Madam Misfit

Feeling down? Feeling blue? I know exactly what you need to do! Just listen to “Chu Chi Face” by the frankly incomparable and obscenely talented Madam Misfit. This tune is a 21st Century (or 19th Century) take on the song originally featured in the 60s children’s classic film ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang‘. Madam Misfit does her Electro Swing Thing with it and takes it to another funderful dimension. Watch the video and if you are not smiling by the end of it get your face muscles looked at. The only gripe I have is the dunking of chocolate covered biscuits……why?

“Rebound” – Millie Manders and the Shutup

A cracking single from a cracking band, this bigs up their pop-punk chops, a song that needs to be all over the radio!

“Green Eyed Ocean Smile” – Honeytrap

This has the feel of a classy chilled 80s synth track with a real 21st Century vibe. For me, this is HoneyTrap’s finest song to date. It was released as a single last year and is now a part of their recently released EP, ‘Fenêtre Forming’

“Glue Song” – Beabadoobee

Bea gives us a truly gorgeous love song, which will be perfect for chilling in the garden, the park, or at a festival this summer

“The Cvlt Song” – Astrology For Men

This is a band that includes Luca from Vaquelin (more of them later) and it is a soft loud and frankly stupendous metal anthem in waiting.

“Scottish Snow” – Pennine Suite

York’s Pennine Suite are back with yet another great single. The way Nick and Louise’s vocals intertwine make this song linger in your head for ages, and I do mean that in a good way. If Bananarama did perfect jangly indie songs, this would be one of them.

“By The River” – Apollo Junction

I love bands that produce great music and seem to get better with every release. This bodes incredibly well for album number three from one of Leeds’s finest bands. Instrumentally the band is on fire and Jamie’s vocal pulls out all the stops. This has left me dreaming of the finest alternative 80s hits!

“On My Own” – The Kut

Possibly the hookiest, catchiest rock song in ages. I love all the “whoa whoa” backing vocals. Expect to hear your postman whistling this tune! If you love this, and why wouldn’t you, check out the earlier release “Fun When You’re Winning“

“Social Cyanide” – Vaquelin

Those Vaquelin boys are back with a really bluesy slab of classic rock. It has some softer-sounding moments, but even they have razor-sharp edges. The riffage is ace and can I hear strings low down in the mix or is that treated guitar. Album number two will be something very special indeed!

“Hazel Frustration” – Kindelan

This is the latest release from Kindelan, following hot on the heels of the rather splendid, “The Other Side”, these tracks will eventually form an EP. “Hazel Frustration” is a song of relationships and heartbreak, Kindelan styles it in a wonderfully softer modern R & B style. I have been a fan for quite a while and she continues to get better with each release.

“Reset” – Wolforna

What a fabulous slice of heavy rock this is, filled with gargantuan riffs and softer moments that evoke the less hard side of Led Zeppelin. The vocals are outstanding.

“Fatal Flaw” – Thrillhouse

This opens like a skilful take on peak New Order and moves on to draw on the likes of OMD and Eccho and the Bunnymen. A tremendously good pop scented rock track which is so joyful to listen to.

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Pennine Suite – The Crescent, York – Friday 21st January 2022 January 30, 2022

Filed under: Review — justwilliam1959 @ 12:05 pm
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This was a rescheduled show from that slack period between Christmas and New Year and I was so pleased it was rescheduled as otherwise, I would have missed it. It was also amazing to catch up with so many old friends, maybe, just maybe, we are getting back to some kind of normal. This was going to be my first opportunity to see the headliners, Pennine Suite. But before I talk about them there were three support bands who were rather spiffingly good!

The first band to take the stage was Honeytrap who I first saw back in November 2021 at the Fulford Arms when they supported Seagoth. Back then I described their set as fucking awesome! I stand by that for this show too, although I will add one word to the original two and say that they were super fucking awesome! I can sense an ancestral link with some of the finest British bands, including the Verve and the Small Faces. Kell Chambers’s vocals suggested he could give Steve Marriott and Richard Ashcroft a run for their money. His voice is soulful, passionate and at times shows he can make delicate sounds just like Kurt Cobain in the quieter Nirvana moments. Will Daniels’s guitar work is among the finest of his generation and has at least some roots back to Jonny Greenwood, John Squire, and Bernard Butler. Bassist James Butterworth kept the band ticking over with his finely tuned Rolls Royce bass lines. Meanwhile, drummer John Gilbert was absolutely on fire. This was a near-perfect set, but if you made me pick my favourite part under threat of death then I would plump for “Renegade” which was stunning. If you haven’t seen or heard Honeytrap yet then you need to rectify that immediately!

Next, it was the turn of Trueman and the Indoor League who I first saw back in October at the Crescent when they were supporting Avalanche Party. In those few months, the band has upped their game even further. Trueman is a real showman who puts across his kitchen sink, soap opera, everyday life stories like Jarvis Cocker on speed. Lyrically they are perhaps bedfellows with early Suede, the Arctic Monkeys, and Pulp, which is good company in my opinion. The band has a saxophonist this time and that broadens their sound wonderfully. As a result, they came across like a Poundland E Street Band (and I mean that in a good way) with a shot of 80s live Bowie!

 Tonight’s penultimate band was Pavilion. I last saw them back in those heady pre-Covid days of February 2020 at the Victoria Vaults in York when they supported the Golden Age Of TV. They were good then and they are even better now. Definitely one of York’s finest bands. The set tonight sounded at times like a stripped-down Cream with the odd injection of Inspiral Carpets. Olly’s guitar was at times sublime, while Noah’s vocals were first class. Even more impressive was that Olly and Noah had also played as a part of the Indoor League just before.

This was my first opportunity to see Pennine Suite live, I had seen their previous incarnation the Receivers, who are sadly no more. The band retains Nick, Louis, and Harry from that band and now they have become a five-piece with the addition of Louise and Moses. Would they just be the Receivers 2.0? Most certainly not, the expansion to a bigger band has enhanced the sound magnificently. Nick was a good frontman in the Receivers and now he is a great frontman his confidence, swagger, and voice have grown at an explosively exponential rate! There were some Receivers songs in the set, “Only Human” and “Impatience” were particular standouts. The band showed their added versatility with Louise taking vocal duties for one tune. Pennine Suite have hit the ground running and tonight they played with the firepower of a Saturn V rocket. Particularly Louis who played the drums like the fate of the planet depended on it! The Receivers are dead, long live Pennine Suite!

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Seagoth – Fulford Arms, York – Thursday 11th November 2021 November 13, 2021

Filed under: Review — justwilliam1959 @ 12:16 am
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I am so loving the return of live music, I think that might be the single thing that I missed most during all these Covid lockdowns. Tonight was a headline slot for Seagoth, an act that is new to me, what did I think of Seagoth? Well read on dear reader, I need to tell you about the support bands first. Kicking proceedings off was Seattle On The Mantle, band names are definitely getting stranger and more surreal these days aren’t they? I really thought I wouldn’t like this lot, first impression, unfairly based on the way they looked was Mumford and Sons who I am not a fan of. Then the first tune seemed to be an amalgam of so many identikit provincial indie bands from the early noughties. But to their absolute credit, Seattle On The Mantle definitely grew on me and won me over. Their songs are most definitely story songs, seemingly about everyday life. At times the lyrics teetered towards cliche but quickly stepped up to be clinically clever, and I mean that in a good way. Musically it would be very difficult to fault them. The sound is jangly indie with a 60s pop sensibility. You have to love their wonderfully weird and warped sense of humour too. Dedicating songs to “living legends” such as John Lennon, Dennis Wilson, David Bowie, and Leonard Cohen was darkly hilarious. Now I really need to check out this band’s recorded output.

Next on stage were Honeytrap who are getting a fair amount of hype and exposure at the moment. I reckon I can sum up their performance in just two words, fucking awesome! However that would be lazy on my part, so I won’t, although I stand by the sentiment because Honeytrap is a fucking awesome band. They Channel the Verve at their early ‘Mad Richard’ peak and vocalist Kell Chambers’s voice hits the highest rock peaks with apparent ease. As well as a Richard Ashcroft influence I sensed the rawer vocal aspects of Kurt Cobain in there too. The songs seem to be sad laments, but delivered with forceful emotion and set to some howling, high-class rock music. Guitarist Will Daniels is clearly a talented guitar player and he also uses his effects pedals wonderfully. For me, Daniels’s talent is akin to that of the magnificent Bernard Butler in his Suede heyday. I felt he even added a prog injection at times. There were many high points in this set, but I must single out the immaculate performance of “Candles” which is a stunning, atmospheric, anthemic rock masterpiece of a song. You need this band in your life right now!

Unless you are familiar with Seagoth, and I wasn’t until tonight, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was something to do with the Whitby Goth weekend, but it isn’t. Seagoth is singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Georgia Ochoa. Is this the finest dreamy, psyched-up, indie, dance pop in the world? Probably. Georgia is a true musical genius and she has surrounded herself with a supremely talented band. They are all good but the bass player (apologies, I can’t find her name anywhere) is off the scale good. I have seen some great bass players over the years; Flea, Bootsy Collins, Stanley Clarke, Lemmy, Tina Weymouth, Peter Hook and Bernard Edwards to name just a few and this lady definitely goes into the list. She treats her bass like a proper instrument and not just a supporting tool! I have a little rant I need to make too, why do people come to a gig and disappear after their mates band has played? So many of you missed a fabulous set from Seagoth who in my opinion will go on to play much bigger venues, especially festivals. Melvin Benn are you reading this? The new Seagoth EP is pretty special too, click here to check it out on Spotify.

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