Album review: 'Joe Symes and the Loving Kind' - acoustic abysses of harmonious, bluesy depth and rousing, ambient melodies

Love is almighty and unpredictable. Music love is so too. It strikes you, often by surprise yet comes with the pleasant feeling of certainty and intensity. You fall for songs that bare the composists', vocalists' and instrumentalists' soul and emotions, that reveal tonal, vocal and lyrical characteristics to cherish, that unleash enthusiasm about and eager excitement for the music to play on. It's somehow magical and once your under the music's spell you're mesmerized … and you're wondering, wondering if there's any chance to see the artists behind those compelling compositions live. Often it takes less to realize you can't. At least you can't see them all. Social media makes music accessible though: it's an easy and rather quick process to find songs, all you need to do is to listen. To the musicians promoting it, to the sound that is about to evolve. In the age of connecting and sharing, you're also offered acceptable alternatives (yet not equally qualitive options) to make up for missed live shows: live streams of performances, live in concert dvds and live albums.

A blog update: Let the music be heard... thoughts on artists&songs (including a song review of TiTORS iNSiGNiA's charity single 'Freedom Fighter')

                                    

                         

                                   'Can nobody hear me? I got a lot that's on my mind .....'

                                                                                                                                Imagine Dragons - Hear Me 

  

Silence. Noise is anticipated and one can sense the distant, the yet undefined but already animate and strained reverberation of impetuous, of eager tonal eruption that is about to grow stronger, that is about to resonate. Silence. Of even more depth right before its expiration. Then – a singular, maybe at first reserved sound, soon a complex and sonorous sequence of chords and chimes – intense in vibrancy, stimulating in timbre, determined to appeal to one's senses, to eventually stirr one's soul. It invades the air, rings in one's ears, it's heard. Silence once more. Only the insipid echo of bygone melodies in one's head, but … a lasting tonal imprint on one's heart.

EP review: The Wild Young Hearts - ‘Pretty Girls’. No shallow but complex and steady rock music

Cover of  'Pretty Girls'

With the narrowly defined and conclusive title the 4-piece LA based rock band The Wild Young Hearts, formerly known as Streetcar Rendezvous (when people struggled to pronounce and write their band name correctly the guys thought it would be best to make it more obvious and easy and TWYH was born) has chosen for their second EP (‘Pretty Girls’), the listener might anticipate and connote light and shallow music, music one has heard before somewhere else, music that covers themes often dealt with: love, relationships, attraction, heartbreak. But if the audience is willing to look deeper, to grant the songs time to evolve, it soon finds that the themes might mainly be nothing new, the music approach and execution though is striking. In fact the staging and arrangement of songs on ‘Pretty Girls’ show both diversity and notability.

Rock 'N' Roll advocates: The Wild Young Hearts 

Album review: ‘Fair City Riots’: TiTORS iNSiGNiA make a noise and cause a stir with unaltered, rough yet thrilling and inspired rock music

Coincidence or fate, I distance myself from deciding on this, but one thing is certain: the run of events that led to writing this review appeal at least to me inevitable and can be traced back to a moment in my life I still recall as a very precious and defining one: it has been the day that I started writing song reviews. And it has been the day I was introduced to remarkable and refined rock music, genuinely embodied by the St. Helens based four piece indie rock set TiTORS iNSiGNiA. 

Can you feel the blues? - The Ganders grip with grungy, grand and ambient sound. EP review: 'Hurricane' (2011) & 'Slipping In' (2013)

Never change a working concept:  The Ganders’ music relies on the thrusting and edgy vocals of Darren Jordan, as well as on its bluesy but vibrant and imposing instrumental arrangement that hits the mark by combining hooking guitar, blurry yet brisk bass (Dan Hickman) and dynamic drum (Paul Byrne) sound. With songs as energetic and forceful as theirs, the listener soon finds himself  under a spell of grungy and enigmatic vocals, fascinated by a sonorous and vigorous instrumental staging: rapid, rousing drums bond with  precise, strident still striking guitar riffs and ravishing, obscure bass melodies. Concisely, these are the defining tonal elements which enhance both EPs  - ‘Hurricane’ (2011) and ‘Slipping In’ (2013) - of the 3 piece, Birmingham based bluesy rock band.