I continue to send my humblest of apologies to the creators of the iconic NOW music compilation series of tri-annual releases. Their compilations began in 1983. I posted and compiled the first WOW That’s What I Call Mayhem collection back in March 2024. Volumes 2, 3 and 4 followed in August and September. Volume 5 was put together and posted in early January this year! So you must be ready for volume 6, right? I certainly hope so, because here it is! This includes the first 20 singles we reviewed in 2025 in another wonderfully maniacal eclectic playlist for your listening pleasure! With 70 minutes of music, click the Spotify link below and lose yourself in the music!
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Here is the Mayhem chart for January 2025. Regular readers know the chart is based on my Spotify listening habits. These are gathered over the last month by obscurify.com. After a slight blip last month my taste in music is now apparently 99% more obscure than the rest of the UK! The chart remains contemporary-ish (but if a classic artist releases something new they might feature in the chart). However, last month’s top three “Legacy” artists were David Bowie, Linda Ronstadt and Bill Withers. Obscurify also suggests the most obscure artists I have listened to for January and they are Liz Davinci, Jackie’s Boy and Herorangecoat. Last month Herorangecoat also made it to number eight in the artist chart. For the first time in months Delilah Bon has not made it into the chart since we restarted it more than a year ago. But another Mayhem chart regular, ALT BLK ERA sit at number two in the artist chart. Party Nails is the number one artist for January following the release of her wonderful album ‘Pillow Talk’ in that month. Top of the song chart for January is a firm favourite here at Mayhem Towers and someone we have championed for a long while. It is the supremely talented Kindelan with her latest offering “Drowning The Killer”. So without further ado here are those charts in full! Click on the Spotify link below to listen to the famous (or infamous) five!
Mayhem Artist Chart January 2025
1 Party Nails 2 ALT BLK ERA 3 Lambrini Girls 4 The Apocalypse Disco 5 Robo 6 Lola Young 7 abs 8 Herorangecoat 9 Brògeal 10 Used To Be Apes
Mayhem Song Chart January 2025
1 Drowning The Killer – Kindelan 2 Manhattan – Pennine Suite 3 Safe & Sound – Pip Lewis 4 A New Dream – Gregory Darling and Julian Lennon 5 Vice – Rizzle Kicks
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Sadly this was the only Independent Venues Week gig I managed to get to this year, and it was a great one! There was only one support band, and what a great choice that was. It was York’s mighty Pennine Suite. This band are the real fucking deal and they just get better every time I see them. They were firing on all cylinders in this short but explosive set. Nick’s made me think of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground taking a more pop based turn. Louise’s voice adds huge depth to their already wonderful sound. Meanwhile the pulse of the band was deep and powerful and supplied by Louis on drums and Moe on bass. This was overlaid by some shining guitar sounds and riffs from Harry. Every song was great but the two huge highlights for me were “Make Up” and “Manhattan”.
The headliners Brògeal, (pronounced ‘Bro Gale’), are Falkirk’s finest folk punkers and they blew us away with a fiery set that kept the audience moving the whole time. Brògeal are excellent ambassadors for Falkirk. But more importantly they are an incredible band with full on punk and folk credentials which they were on their sleeves. If the Pogues and the Proclaimers can achieve success with glorious celebratory Celtic rock, folk and punk sounds then Brògeal deserve it too. The band are Daniel Harkins (guitar and vocals), Aidan Callaghan (banjo and vocals), Euan Mundie (bass), Sam MacMillan (accordion) and Luke Mortimer (drums). It was Daniel’s birthday so we celebrated it by singing that well known song to him. The band brought a great following to York with them and that group started the party and made sure we were all involved. A particular highlight for me was “Girl From NYC” to which I danced and sang like a maniac. Their music is wonderfully uplifting and whatever genre gang you feel you are in I reckon you will love this lot. I am half Scots and I am proud of that heritage, even more so when I see such massively talented Scottish bands like this. After this performance I believe that Brògeal have become the first group of Scots to besiege York since the Scottish Covenanter army did during the First English Civil War in 1644.
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The last time I saw the magnificent Pennine Suite play live was in June last year at the Fulford Arms. They played some new tracks that night and one of those was “Manhattan”. A song from a York band that was inspired by New York. What I said about it then was “The new track “Manhattan” is thunderously good and needs to be a single, RIGHT NOW! Harry’s guitar was magnificent on this track and the power and drive from the mighty rhythm section of Moses and Louis is a close to perfect as you could get!” Well whether they listened to me or not I really don’t know. But the song was released as a single towards the end of 2024. (Yes I am a bit late with it, but the song is too good to ignore!) It has a wonderfully crisp production with Nick’s voice oozing emotion and sounding very fresh. This is indeed a great live banger but it sure works as a great single too. The rhythm section is at beast levels, Harry’s guitar lines intertwine with some fine keys from Louise. The harmonies, hooks and riffs work with each other like a well serviced formula 1 engine. The result is a near perfect slab of first class pop rock from a band that have the potential to enter the music world’s equivalent of Formula 1 competitions and join the big league.
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Here is the Mayhem chart for July 2024. Regular and constant readers know that the chart is based on my Spotify listening habits over the last month gathered by obscurify.com. Apparently, my tastes have fallen to 95% more obscure than the rest of the UK! A drop of 1% from last month. Blimey am I becoming mainstream? The chart remains contemporary-ish (but if a classic artist releases something new they might feature in the chart). However, the top three “Legacy” artists for last month were David Bowie, Elton John, and Alice Cooper. Obscurify also suggests the most obscure artists I have listened to and for July those were PERCY, WREX, and Tercelvoice. There is a top ten artists chart and a top 5 songs chart. There is the usual eclectic mix of artists, including three that were in the top ten last month, Kate Nash, Scene Queen, and Delilah Bon! Delilah has been in the artist charts for eight consecutive months. The only artist to appear in both lists for July is Kate Nash. Female artists and female-fronted bands make up 50% of the artist chart! The number one song is “Everyone Is A C*nt Except Me by Judy Raindrop (actually Judy doesn’t exist, the song was put together by those wonderful and funny people at Laughter Tracks). So without further ado here are those charts in full! Click here for the Spotify song playlist.
Mayhem Artist Chart July 2024
1 Eminem 2 Kate Nash 3 Eels 4 WREX 5 Tercelvoice 6 Bridge City Sinners 7 Millie Manders and the Shutup 8 Childish Gambino 9 Delilah Bon 10 Scene Queen
Mayhem Song Chart July 2024
1 Everyone Is A C*nt Except Me – Judy Raindrop (Laughter Tracks) 2 Collateral Damage – Avalanche Party 3 Typical Fantasy – Pennine Suite 4 So Naïve – Fever Dreams 5 Wasteman – Kate Nash
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Pennine Suite go full-on happy student disco with the new track “Typical Fantasy”. There is even a disco ball on the cover! It sometimes has a feel of the Killers and drives along like a perfectly tuned Rolls Royce. “Typical Fantasy” is infinitely infectious and creates the most wonderful pop pandemic for your ears. The tune sits with you for a long while after it finishes. This band gets better and better every time!
Click here to listen to “Typical Fantasy” on Spotify.
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Tonight was a chance to see a few bands that I hadn’t seen for a while. The headliners were Pennine Suite who I last saw in January 2022. Support was from Fulford Arms Battle Of The Bands 2022 winners the Palava, I last saw them at the BOTB final in December 2022. The first act on stage was the White Roses, I last saw them in February of last year, they are not simply a rock band, they are a truly entertaining band. Each time I see them they get better and better. Vocally Eliie draws on Joan Jett’s rawness and Stevie Nicks’s completeness while Jack’s guitar is a highly original and essential part of the band’s sound. The voice harmonies evoke Fleetwood Mac. “This Town” is a great song, but the anthemic epic that closed the set was extraordinary indeed! They have a new EP due soon and on the strength of this set I reckon it will be a classy release!
The Palava have grown immensely in emotion, scope, skill, and ambition since I last saw them. Their songs have grown into more complex and wonderfully played mini-epics. There were some really great jazzy, punky, and funky licks with great use of some nicely incorporated major 7th chords in some of their tunes. They maintain an infusion of ’60s psychedelia and a pinch of 90s Indie.”Remedy” (which in its recorded version features Kitty VR) and “Lie To Me” were incredible highlights, but even those two Palava specials pale against the next single “Foreign Ground” which sounds like it will be the band’s best song to date. They looked like they were loving playing live, and that just enhanced their performance.
If I was a headliner I would not have fancied following the Palava onto the stage, but Pennine Suite raised their game and blew the fucking house down! They are a band on fire, but not just a little flame, I am talking super nova levels of heat! The set opener “Everything Begins” (what an appropriate song to start with) reminded me of the Cure. The depth of their sound grows with every gig. Louise’s keyboard licks, riffs, and motifs add huge breadth to the band. Her playing on “M.O.W.O” gives an eerie circus-like feel to the song. The new track “Manhattan” is thunderously good and needs to be a single, RIGHT NOW! Harry’s guitar was magnificent on this track and the power and drive from the mighty rhythm section of Moses and Louis is a close to perfect as you could get! The crowd was spontaneously chanting the band’s name four songs into the set. Clearly the crowd fucking love this lot and was in full voice from start to finish. There were plenty of highlights in their twelve-song set, the biggest for me was a pounding “Pass On You”. But even that was surpassed by beyond epic and truly awesome upcoming single “Tropical Fantasy”, when Pennine Suite rock out they do it like a huge bastard rock god. Frontman Nick has grown wonderfully confident over the years since I first saw him fronting the Receivers more than five years ago. He really commands his audience and the new songs are just so good. I am not sure where this thought popped up from but I would love to hear Pennine Suite do a funky cover of a Lou Reed song, maybe “Vicious” from ‘Transformer’. This was a stunning end to a brilliant night of live music.
As a footnote, I went on for a couple more drinks after the gig with Simon P from Northern Radar Promotions and Rusty and Pete from ace York band Lost Trends. Note to self, don’t do it again, and avoid a hangover from hell!
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It has been a while since the last Mayhem Singles Round Up so I thought how about one that focused on bands and artists from or based in York? This post contains songs from eighteen different artists and showcases the diversity of styles, the strength of music, and the depth of the music scene in my adopted city of York. All these tunes were delivered into the world by the magical music stork in the last few months. OK fact fans, three of these acts have a link to the school that I currently work at, can you guess which ones? Click here to take a listen to a Spotify playlist of all eighteen tracks, which is more than an hour of fab music! In case you are interested, the order of the songs was simply drawn out of a metaphorical hat 🙂
“G.U.N.N.E.R” – YouVee YouVee get proper heavy on this blockbuster of a tune. Shades of early Kasabian and even Black Sabbath abound!
“Start A New” – Bull – This is a band that moves closer to perfection with each release and “Start A New” has the makings of a Bull classic. The harmonies are good enough to melt even the hardest of hearts with the genius of adding a school choir too.
“Make Up” – Pennine Suite – I reckon this is Pennine Suite’s finest song so far. It has power, awesome vocals, and a chorus that sticks around in your head for quite a while.
“In Ecstasy” – Shed Seven featuring Rowetta – York’s musical titans the Sheds are back and with an absolute banger featuring the unmistakable vocal support of the magnificent Rowetta.
“Break In The Weather” – Benjamin Francis Leftwich – A gorgeous ballad of heartbreak that shows the emergence of buds of hope. Potentially a real tearjerker.
“Rebellion” – Anthea Drive – Is this Anthea Drive’s heaviest tune yet? I think so. Full of mountainous, immaculate riffs and roaring vocals.
“Your Mind’s Closed” – Offbeat – A delicious slice of indie pop that will get everyone moving a indie nights everywhere. I felt like the ghost of Altered Images haunted this tune a couple of times.
“Said And Done” – Fendry and Liv North – British rap is alive and well and Fendry might one day be at the forefront of it. This delightful collaboration with Liv North has parallels with some of Eminem’s work with female vocalists like Rihanna. Ace beats and rap that bleeds feelings and passion.
“Alive” – The Apocalypse Disco – If the apocalypse is truly on its way then this bunch must be on your end-of-the-world soundtrack. This joyous slice of electro does make me want to stay alive though. Dance to it and tell the four horsemen of the apocalypse to fuck right off!
“Marionette” – Vaquelin – a deep, dark tune from one of my favourite rock bands, Vaquelin. As usual, the guitar sound is immense as are the vocals. But the stand out is the drumming which would give Bonham and Moon a run for their money!
“Kelly’s In The Garden” – Heavy Bloom – A wonderfully chilled indie-style pop tune, like Air with added guitars. This will be on my summer playlist for next year.
“Tomorrow” – Fervent Red – This hits you like a hard-edged Beatlesy Brit Pop tune. It has a slight psychedelic vein running through it and a rather nifty chorus.
“Solemn Power” – The Exceptional Mr. Hyde – Is this electro dance or heavy rock? Actually, it is both. If Hawkwind began in the 21st century they might sound like this. This bodes well for their upcoming album!
“Last Train To Selby” – PERCY – Those West Yorkshire Superheroes are definitely back on form. A song that only PERCY could deliver. A great singalong that highlights a ghost on the train lyric. Check out the excellent video below.
“On My Mind (Radio Edit)” – CHAZ – A pounding piano-led house anthem that would move even the comatose. Dance music is alive and well in York as this debut single from CHAZ proves. The vocals are brilliant too.
“Save Your Time” – Rosettas – This captures some of the energy and power that the Rosettas have on stage. A great tune from a great band and every member is on top form.
“How Can You Be” – Everything After Midnight – My favourite Everything After Midnight song from the first listen. It has been aired live in a different form. But now it is an all-round close to perfect tune. The guitars smack you in the face in a good way while Steph’s vocal is close to heavenly.
“Fixed Point” – Heartsink – Those cheeky pop-punk chaps Heartsink have another great tune for our delectation. A little more acoustic than usual, at least initially. But a song that turns the riffage and passion up to 11 towards the fade.
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Here comes the fifth Mayhem Singles Round-Up for 2023, it includes eleven songs that have been passed on to me or recommended during the previous few weeks and months, there are some really brilliant tracks. It features four acts that have appeared on Mayhem’s pages before. Three of those bands are from Yorkshire, and I think one of the new to Mayhem artists is too. Let me know what you think of this great collection of tunes! You will find a YouTube link to each song in the title (or a link to the audio of the track) and a link to the artist’s website or one of their social media pages when you click the artist’s name. You can also find the link to a Spotify playlist of all these songs by clicking here.
Perhaps their rockiest track to date and it makes me even more excited for the new album. Harmonies and hooks made in heaven and a chorus that hangs out in your head for ages.
Who would have guessed that such a stunning band would arise from the ashes of the Receivers, but Pennine Suite have released an absolute classic of a tune with “M.O.W.O.” I can’t wait to hear this at a gig. It has screaming guitars, magnificent vocals, and wonderfully weird keys at the intro and outro. I bloody love this song!
This is a song that I discovered by a great alignment of chance, my wife was out walking our dog Ziggy along the River Foss close to where we live in York and came across Janita filming a music video, for this very song! It is a fabulous slice of modern R&B with magnificent pop sensibilities and a touch of early Joan Armatrading. I know absolutely nothing about Janita, other than she is a great singer and this is a fabulous tune!
This lot aren’t big on writing bios for their socials, this is probably because they focus more on creating fantastic dark pop-rock songs with an old-school emo vein just like this.
Monad is Tel Aviv musician Eshchar Nachmany and with this track, he has unleashed a rock-tinged slab of almost manic EDM. I bloody love this, especially the gorgeous orchestral overtones.
This is a jaunty, poppy, and yet dark break-up song, following hot on the heels of the rather fantastic “Keep Her”. One listen and I was hooked, after the second listen I was addicted! Erin’s album is out later this month and I reckon it will be bloody good!
Fred is the former guitarist/ keyboard player from Noah and the Whale and with this tune, he shows he has a knack for producing great music. It has a sad, lament style, a 70s US West Coast vibe, and is simply a stunningly good rock ballad.
I am quite a fan of Kunt and the Gang and all their associated outlets; the Kunts, Krown Jewels, and others. Now that Aussie Paedo Rolf Harris is dead, why not celebrate with this wonderfully irreverent little ditty from Kunt and the Gang. If you are easily offended perhaps don’t play it. If you are a Rolf Harris fan, can I simply ask what the fuck are you doing here?
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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.
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?
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’
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.
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!
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“
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!
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.
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.
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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