The Hit Parade - Oh Honey I...

This blog prides itself on its integrity and prescience. Eight weeks ago it blew its research budget (£9 inc postage) on the new single by Acton's Tycoons of Teen, The Hit Parade.

Today, another copy of the single arrived, telling me it's released on 19 January with a note from The Hit Parade's nom de normale, Julian Henry, suggesting, correctly as it turns out, that I might like it.

Oh Honey I... sees The Hit Parade switch on their home recording studio after listening to Phil Spector's Back To Mono, waiting until all the needles are on red and then increasing the emotions to breaking point.

This 7" represents no stylistic or lyrical leap. The song might be inspired by Shelagh Delaney's A Taste Of Honey, but really, after our Jules sings "If love has all the answers then how did I become so hopelessly lopsided and helplessly undone" it's clear the old milksop is singing from his own romantic misadventures.

Maybe after 34 years in the game Julian's right to acknowledge ruefully: "As Edwyn said I'm simply thrilled to play my guitar and talk to you through a dead medium like this."

There's a new album called Still Julian (of course it's called that) coming later this year.

Any friends in London want a copy? I don't need 2 copies. And I don't want to go to the post office.

Bill Direen & The Bilders ‎– Chrysanthemum Storm

One of the upsides of the vinyl revival is reissues of rare underground records. Bill Direen's releases in various guises - Bill Direen & Friends, Bill Direen & The HAT, Builders, Six Impossible Things, Vacuum, an album under his own name which was Flying Nun's first long player - have been prised from under the floorboards. They're all worth your time, none more so than 2008's Chrysanthemum Storm, originally a CD only, which I rate as among his finest works.

Even though Direen is a true one-off, the influences here are most obviously Lou Reed's Transformer (two of these songs aren't far off Perfect Day) and Bowie's Berlin trilogy. But imagine, if you will, mixing those with Roxy Music busking on second-hand electronic equipment, Tom Waits' mongrel blues and the tormented rage of those early Microdisney singles.

The lyrics, too, are a joy, not least if you take pleasure in bleakness and black humour. There's life and death in Try Again In Ten Minutes, which is a dismal rumble through the queues at the maternity ward and the cemetery, and the elliptical "he was unfocused, she was into hocus pocus".

20 new songs from 2017

All new songs, pretty much all new acts, in what used to be the annual compilation I made for friends who have more important things to spend their money on than new records, or just not enough time.

"Used to be" because I'm not making CDs of this one, unless you fulfil the unlikely criteria of wanting a CD, I used to give you an annual compilation and you're reading this. Really? Get in touch.

I'm making no claims on this compilation's authority - I know, brilliant records by The Stroppies, Suggested Friends, The Love-Birds and Swiftumz, for example, aren't included - but I'll brook no argument on its quality.


Mental Haven - Hater


Malibu Entropy - Rips


Heart Paste - RVG


Know Where to Go - Dag


What Time Is It In Portland? - Bonny Doon


Go On Down - Snails


The Isle Of Arran - Loyle Carner


Samantha - Dave & J Hus


Figure It Out - Sprinters


Stupid Things - Girl Ray


Oh Well - Wurld Series


My God Has A Telephone - The Flying Stars Of Brooklyn, NY


How Quickly Your Heart Mends - Courtney Marie Andrews


Big School - Mo Troper


Old Time Feeling - Mope Grooves


Washing Machine - Marble Gods


Say Sue Me - Good For Some Reason


Climate Change - Display Homes


Latent Teenage Fantasy - The Whooperups


Secret - Honey Harper

Honey Harper - Universal Country

In which William Fussell from Mood Rings and Promise Keeper packs up the keyboards, ditches the trance, waves goodbye to electropop and decides he wants to make music "that sounds like The Carpenters and Simon Garfunkel having a baby, and then Merle Haggard and Townes Van Zandt made a baby. Then those two babies grow up and get married in Texas."

It's an excellent decision. This music sounds like it was written during the morning's first glass of whiskey and recorded after the evening's last beer. It's country music at its most vulnerable and passionate, all drowsy and romantically resigned.

In a year where country has informed some of the best indie records - Dag's Benefits Of Solitude and Bonny Doon's debut, for starters - where Courtney Marie Andrews has made one of the best albums and where even Son Volt made a comeback, Honey Harper's earnest romanticism stands tall.

Mo Troper - Exposure & Response

Matthew Sweet said about powerpop: “Somebody who’s just discovered The Who, the Raspberries and The Kinks will make it sound new and organically interesting again. People ought to stop saying, ‘Rock is dead’.”

Powerpop supremo Mo Troper has a song, Big School, on his new album that I had to check isn’t a cover version. It’s got a pop perfection that suggests it’s always existed. If you get it, and surely you will, then it’ll probably be in your life forever.

Exposure & Response sets out its stall with Rock And Roll Will Change The World. I can’t dispute its optimism and can only revel in this album’s simple teenage beat of extreme emotions where either school’s just about to break for summer or your girl left you and you’re waiting by the telephone.

A final word for Dictator Out Of Work, which sounds like a lost Beulah song (man, I love Beulah), all trumpets, melancholy and sweet despair. I love this Mo Troper album, too. Rumours of rock’s death are greatly exaggerated.

Whenyoung - Actor

Actor is sharply metallic, lean, punchy, sensual and in-your-face immediate. It sounds massive. If the charts still counted then this would be released in early January rather than mid-December so they could have a proper hit. It’s a hit all the same.

The references might be obvious - The Strokes and all their 70s NYC forebears, and they might have some Libertines and Ash records in their collection - but Actor transcends its influences.

Whenyoung could turn out to be just another rock band, they might rather unfortunately be named after The Killers’ When You Were Young, or they might be your new favourite band. None of that matters. It’s all about this one song now.

First Base - Not That Bad

First Base stick to what they know - bubblegum punk - because they’re very good at it. If it sounds like they can dispense two-minute pop songs with ease - and it does, these songs are effortless, carefree and fun - then remember it’s taken them 4 years to follow their debut album and there have only been a handful of singles in twice that time.

If writing pop songs was as easy as First Base make it seem then everyone would be doing it. The template is pretty much unchanged since, well, whatever you think the golden age of rock’n’roll is. First Base’s template is early Beach Boys, Fresh by the Raspberries and the first 5 Ramones albums. 

So there are - of course there are - songs about girls (Judy, Sandra), but First Base really nail their aesthetic with a love song to a guitar (This Guitar Of Mine) declaring with utter devotion that “she sounds like trash but she’s always right by my side”. 

They even make a bid for Eurovision powerpop glory with Ding Dang Dong. Pop music doesn’t really get much more simple and joyous than this.