Tag: eighties

Talk in Code Announces New Single; More Than Friends

Atmospherically anthemic and reinforced with that infectious rhythmic groove we’ve come to love Talk in Code for, More Than Friends is chockfull of it, and it’s their latest single, to be released on Friday 22nd August 2025 via Regent Street Records….

Even if you’re accounted for now, happily married and matured like a fine wine, the recollections of a blossoming relationship and the eagerness versus apprehension it provokes will never be pushed down a dark alley of your memory lane; successful or epic fail, they live inside the mind forever, I’m afraid! Frontman, Chris Stevens said of the single, “we’ve all been there, in a situation waiting for the other to make the first move, to validate our feelings, or save face!”

I could tell you a few stories, but will save you the agony! Especially as the earliest would be set in the eighties, about getting hot under the collar over girls in rah-rah skirts, leg warmers and dippy-boppers! But that’s the beauty of this song’s simple premise; if you’re older the irresistible eighties feel to the sound assists you in extracting the emotions needed to savour a memory or two, and you’ll stare back up at your Morten Harket or Kim Wilde poster, should the blu-tac not have dried out, praying they’ll bless you with a cure to your longing!! Billy Joel, you charlatan, it isn’t that easy to tell her about it!

Whereas if you’re younger and, as gen z generally are, far more practical to be praying to Smash Hits pullout posters, you might relate the song’s narrative to a newfound emotion, sharable on TikTok. But the eighties vibe still functions as a mechanism, because, let’s face it, musical innovators of the eighties are the catalysts to contemporary pop. I was careful here not to suggest eighties music was better, though with my rose-tinted specs on, the thought was! 

And that’s what makes Talk in Code so universally engaging; it bridges a needed gap between eighties new wave electronica and nineties indie pop. In goes the synths, guitars riffs, the immortal choruses and rousing hooks, and what it exhausts is fresh and pumping, modern yet as timeless as Chris’s Adidas jackets, like someone slipped a rocket between the bum cheeks of Tony Hadley, and whip, zoom he’s top of the download chart faster than you could cry Oasis.

For the reflective mood to the band’s artistry, which this track seems to strengthen, More Than Friends might be considered typical for the band’s direction, but as ever, they are growers, and after a listen or three you’ll find the quintessential is challenged with each new release, because this band are tight, they’re professional, and bounded by great PR, management, and a truly loyal fanbase. A base which will be singing this back to them, in blue sunglasses, at their numerous live performances within the next month!

The single’s launch party is at the Vic, Swindon, on Friday 22nd August. Tickets HERE

Another cracker, Talk in Code. For everyone else, pre-save it HERE!

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Favourite Waste of Time: Chatting with Owen Paul Ahead a Devizes 80s Gig

July 1986, Madonna was asking her papa not to preach, Chris De Burgh was fantasising about a lady in red, and they were the only two things preventing a feelgood summer cover called My Favourite Waste of Time reaching the top of the charts. It was recorded by Owen Paul, who arrives in Devizes for a “tribute to the eighties” gig at the Corn Exchange on Friday 21st March. I caught up with him ahead of this, and we chatted merrily about the hit, his origins and influences, mullets and all things eighties, oh and what to expect from the show….

After clearing up uncertainty over his two forenames, Owen is his, Paul derived from a younger brother’s name, we moved onto the way I envisioned this meeting. I imagined we’d be dancing on some tropical beach in white sleeveless t-shirts and sporting mullets, as was the video to his pop smash.

“Yeah,” he laughed, explaining about a gig last Saturday in Exeter with Radio 1 DJ Pat Sharp, “it was the battle of the guy that used to be the world champion of the mullet people!”

A tropical theme was so eighties too, I said, from Wham to Blacklace, we all wanted to go on holiday, we all wanted to be on that beach in the My Favourite Waste of Time video. “You’re absolutely right,” Owen responded, pointing out the gig last weekend was in a theatre called Tropicana. “It was one of the strangest shows I’ve ever done. Club Tropicana, just for the event, right?  The show started at 2pm and run ‘till 8pm. I said to my manager, ‘we’re gonna play in the afternoon?’ She was like, ‘yeah. You do the thing in the afternoon, people come dressed in eighties clothes and they forget their lives for five minutes.’ Apparently, it’s a thing; adults like to go to a show between 2 and 6pm, so they can get back to watch Casualty!”

I assured Owen I must be the exception to that rule, but Owen was still giggling, “or Strictly!”

But were the contents of the show like what we can expect to see in Devizes on the 21st, I had to ask. For the record, while tagged with the idiom “one-hit-wonder,” Owen is a prolific recording artist who is still releasing new original material; will he be playing these? “Even though I still do songs, when it’s an eighties show like in Devizes, it’ll be full on eighties-tastic, girl singers, dancers, and we’ll sing Bowie, U2, Deacon Blue, Crowded House and more.”

Time to drop my million-dollar question which had been floating around my excuse for a brain since knowing I was to chat with Owen. That the term one-hit-wonder, which Owen was bequeathed at the time, must be quite disparaging for an artist with a wealth of other works. I asked him how he felt about it at the time, and how he feels about the label now.

Not to blow my own trumpet, he replied, “if I think of all the interviews I’ve done in recent times, that is the best question I’ve ever had! No one has ever asked that of me because they’re always scared. And you’ve asked, so that’s fine. I’ve got to tell you the truthful answer, right? And I mean this with all my heart. I know a million acts who’ve never had a hit. And I have. That ahead gave me the doorway to be here forty years later, playing festivals all over the world. So I don’t think it’s disparaging at all. I think it’s a complete opposite. I think I’ve had a hit, when I know people more talented than me,” Owen exampled a mildly successful Scottish band called The Blue Nile, “they had ‘Tinseltown in the Rain,’ the closest thing to them having a hit, (reached No. 87 on the singles chart in 1984) They’re an incredible act, but I had a smash that went global. They never had. So I don’t think of it as disparaging at all.”

In this I think Owen misunderstood my question, that it wasn’t the having a one-hit-wonder which I thought might be disparaging, rather being labelled a one-hit-wonder which could be, but hey, it was a calculated and flattering response anyway!

Being I’m walking Owen down memory lane, I wanted to take him further back, being aside My Favourite Waste of Time being an acoustic guitar-led feelgood anthem delineating eighties pop, Wikipedia claims it was the Sex Pistols which first inspired him.

“The basic story is this, and this is completely true,” Owen elucidated, “we had a basement, which makes us sound posh, but it was a council flat. My brother and his mates from school used to come back to our house, and they used to rehearse and make an absolute racket of a noise! And this is like 1975-76ish. I was too young; I wasn’t allowed to go downstairs. I used to sit upstairs and listen to what they were doing, and they would play singles of whatever was going on, and they played the Damned, The Clash, The Strangers, and then played the Sex Pistol’s Anarchy in the UK, and I’m upstairs going, what, the, hell, is, that?!”

“And I’m going off the back of the seventies when it was prog rock and all the stuff where you had to be a virtuoso and play for ten hours. And it really changed me, and the guys who’s downstairs in our basement, turns out to be Simple Minds; you wanna write that down?!!”

Noted in awe, Owen, thank you. His brother Brian was the Simple Minds drummer, and guitarist Charlie Burchill, he informed me, “would come upstairs to my room, ’cause I was not allowed down there, and I had a guitar. My dad was publican, and when people couldn’t pay their bill, you make them get on and perform.” Owen told how Charlie showed him an E chord, an A chord and a D chord, “and he said that’s all you need, and I said ‘thanks!’”

We talked of the 3-chord simplicity of eighties pop, Owen extended this by getting technical on learning structures from the likes of The Velevt Underground. “And then,” he explained, “off the back of that, I started to make my own noise.”

On his first band, Venigmas, Owen explained how at just sixteen they left Glasgow for London, and he told his mum, “I don’t think we’ll be back.” Owen spoke of the changing scene, the new romantics, but was adamant he was a “rock guy.”

“Because everyone thinks you’re an overnight sensation. I was eight years or more in the industry before I got signed to Sony. They signed me as a rock act, and then I stupidly made a pop record! And that became my real problem. Because I saw myself as a Bowie guy, I thought you could do anything. I thought you could do funk, you could do rock, soul, and pop; that’s what I thought. How naive was I?!”

Owen recorded two songs for Sony, the one we all know was nominated for a Brit award. He spoke fondly of recording it and how they immediately knew it was a hit, then suggested “but at the same time, in my heart I went oh-no. I’m in trouble here.”

I speculated aloud, asking him if it was because the music industry will typecast him as pop, and he replied, “you’re absolutely right; that’s what happened. So the record comes out, it’s a worldwide smash. It got me on Smash Hit’s cover, on Saturday morning, telly; I’m shiny, bubble-gum pop guy. That’s where I am, right? Now, the record label wants ten more tracks which sounds like that…. but I’m a rock guy!! You can see the problem?!”

If all sounds weighty, I must point out Owen finished this sentence with a giggle, recalling his moment in the spotlight playfully. But we compared it to his freedom now to write, and his new song Fly With Me, which I observed reminded me of Cat Stevens or George Harrison. Again, he found my question about it, “interesting. I don’t get it asked much. I think ultimately, I’m a Celt, Scottish and folk music is everything to us. I’ve always been like that, every song I hear in my head, when I’m doing new tracks sounds like a folk song. But when you’re in the eighties and you’ve got a record deal, they don’t want that, you turn that into a pop song.”

Owen continued to explain how, with his guitarist Howard, decided to produce a folk album after an acoustic gig, but clarified, “folk is the fifth of it all.” This seemed like a convenient time to move away from the roots and back to idea he was coming to Devizes to do an eighties show, and people will lap that up. “I love that about eighties shows,” he revealed, “I didn’t do them for a long time, nearly twenty years. I pretended that I wasn’t Owen Paul or sang that song. And then, I did a thing on telly called Watchdog, Rouge Traders. They were investigating this company with security cameras and asked me to walk in at the end and sing (and he did sing it for me!) you’re mine…!”

“I thought, hang on a minute. Is this because I didn’t pay my tax bill?!  Are they actually chasing me?! I double checked, and it turned out that it was the BBC, and it was fantastic and really funny! The next day, my phone was exploding. My website was exploding with pictures going ‘oh my God, Owen Paul isn’t dead,’ can you do this show?!”

Owen recalled with joy, how it felt to now do retro festivals where, “the most amazing thing occurred to me. After me not wanting to be Owen Paul, that guy, that song. I get to the beginning of the song, and obviously it’s not like there’s an intro, it just goes bang, you know? And then suddenly, I’ve got 20,000 people singing that back at me.”

Regardless of how you might feel about the commercialisation of it, I try to imagine that and offer to Owen that it is truly is the testament to his work. “Yeah,” he responded so positively, “I think I grew up as well. You know, I’ve been doing this for a while now and I’ve realised if you’re the wrong side of forty-five, so you’re an eighties kid and you’ve got two kids, a mortgage, bills and you’ve got all your rubbish; you want five minutes away from it all.”

Which is, in turn, the best advert for the upcoming show! We continued for some considerable time, I was enthralled he spoke about Howard Jones on first name terms, being asked to do a number of celebrity shows, like Strictly. We talked about dance music, Britpop, and the changes these brought, and even from the effect of streaming services on the industry, to the youth of today identifying with the songs of the eighties. It was becoming clear one of us needed to break the chat through fear of day becoming night, and maybe back again.

It was a wonderful conversation which knew no natural end, because though I was honoured and slightly in awe of Owen Paul, we chatted like old school friends at a reunion. If the nineties saw me shun the commercialisation of the pop of my youth, Owen caused me to rethink it again, and it was a pleasure.

Owen Paul brings his eighties show to the Corn Exchange on Friday 21st March. Tickets are aptly £19.80, because it’s promised you’ll be transported back to the 1980s! Have I got time to grow a mullet?

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Deadlight Dance New EP Chapter & Verse

Marlborough gothic duo Deadlight Dance are due to release an EP of new material. It’s called Chapter & Verse and it’ll be out on Ray Records on 13th September 2024……

Nick Fletcher and Tim Emery, aka, Deadlight Dance, stripped back a collection of their favourite new wave-goth classics and recorded them at the 12th century All Saints Church in Alton Priors last November, releasing them as an album, The Wiltshire Gothic, in March. If the Wiltshire Gothic excelled in uniqueness for acoustically recreating the sounds which inspired them, Deadlight Dance prove they’re no one trick pony with this new EP, as while it equals to the eminence of The Wiltshire Gothic, it does so for entirely the opposite reasoning.

After this acoustic beauty of echoing mandolins the effect is immediate, Deadlight Dance pull out heavy synths on this EP, a stark difference you may also find in their live gigs, swapping from acoustic to synths at the halfway house. It’s electronica punchy and as positively eighties as the original new wave and gothic songs they covered for The Wiltshire Gothic, of Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim, et al, but all five tracks are their own work, completely original.

The only similarities with the last album is that there’s a theme, this time within the subject matter rather than the production, and naturally, it’s as proficiently entertaining. The concept here is something to appease their old English Lit teachers at the Sixth Form where they met, as each track is inspired by a book character, in one word titles. So, the tracks are Montag, Rosemary, Charrington, Judas and Monster, leading me to rustle my mind’s archives as to the books they represent; I got four out of five without Google, honest, sir, do I get a merit mark or something like that?!

Opening sonic, like OMD in their prime, book-burning firefighter Guy Montag of Fahrenheit 451 is the first subject and this is the only tune here which uses a sample, from the 1966 film adaptation I’d imagine, but I’ve not seen it, only read the book like a good boy! Obviously, futurism fears, flames and the controversial connotations of Ray Bradbury’s magnum opus is ideal for a gothic related song, and we are off to an engagingly good start.

The second song is the one I guessed incorrectly, it’s the girlfriend of the neurotic Gordon Comstock in Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Rosemary Waterlow. Concentrating on her relationship frustrations, the song is a haunting echo in plodding synths, again, an ideal candidate for Nick’s howlingly vocals.

Sticking with George Orwell, though this one remains instrumental, the antique dealer come undercover Thought Police agent in Nineteen-Eighty-Four, Mr. Charrington is the next subject. Again, it’s a haunting sound enough, it needs no vocals, it twists in metallic scraping undertone, dark and mysterious futurism, it would evoke the perfect mood for the score to any possible remake, or in turn the soundtrack to the previous UK government who seemed to view Orwell’s masterpiece a self-help guide; apologies, couldn’t resist adding that!

Fourth tune in, is called Judas, no prizes for citing the book it comes from, but after the gloom of Charrington, the sound is surprisingly uplifting, capturing the pop side to classic goth rock, like The Cure. I’m undecided if the song is sympathetic to the actions of Jesus’ grass Judas Iscariot, if it furthers to question the integrity of the bible more generally, or both. But it’s an interesting atheistic angle, and an astutely written song.

There’s a bass stomp verging on techno intro to the final song, Monster, reminding me of a fast coming of Jaws, then the synths swirl and Nick’s off thirty seconds into the melodic narrative of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, or the The Modern Prometheus, a gothic novel indeed. It caused me to consider Frank Miller’s reinvention of Batman, a character who’s mysteriously shadowy edge was lost through the passage of commercialisation, particularly via TV, and how he gifted us The Dark Knight version.

Frankenstein portrayals are so commonplace, and often comical, it obscures the harrowing nature of the original story. As they do with all the book characters here, Deadlight Dance captures the mood, the intensity and torment of Mary Shelly’s monster, through music, as by Sergei Prokofiev captured the characterisations of Peter, the Wolf and other animal side characters. It’s an absorbing prose, excellently manufactured, and brings gothic rock of yore back into the forefront. Not forgoing, when contrasted with the Wiltshire Gothic, it shows diversity in Deadlight Dance, both are returns to “concept” in albums, something dearly overlooked in today’s one track Spotify world. It leaves me wondering where they’ll go next, but feeling confident each new progression will contain cognitive connotations amidst this hail of gothic rock, and these are the elements which makes each release a treasure.

Chapter & Verse will be released on Ray Records on 13th September 2024, across streaming platforms and available to buy on Bandcamp. Follow Deadlight Dance socials to keep in the know.

Find Deadlight Dance supporting Canute’s Plastic Army at the Tuppenny, Swindon on 19th September. 

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Talk in Code are All In for New Single

Swindon indie pop virtuosos Talk in Code released their brand new single, All In, Yesterday, via Regent Street Records. And We. Love. Talk in Code here at Devizine Towers….

Bridging the gap between eighties new wave electronica and nineties indie pop, Talk in Code are producing original timeless anthems. All In is unarguably their finest example to date.

With an upbeat euphoric ambience and a racing chorus to a rousing hook, it hints at Sam Fender but relishes in reminiscence of the memorable pop of A-Ha or Spandau Ballet; one can almost envision a comic book drawing of a distressed Morten Harket, banging his head on a doorframe; ah, school disco era seems like yesterday!

The narrative is one of hope for a rekindled romance, that maturity will warrant it successful this time around. The mood is optimistic, creating an engaging, danceable riff with pulsating rhythms under a shimmering soundscape.

Recorded with Sam Winfield at Studio 91, Newbury (Amber Run, The Amazons, Fickle Friends) The track is the fifth release on Regent Street Records, in partnership with Phoenix Music International and Horus Music. All In continues to ascend Talk in Code to beguiling pop greatness.

Frontman, Chris Stevens said of the single, “the song’s narrative takes us through a journey of recovery from adversity and mistakes over the sound of a pulsating rhythms and glistening soundscapes enough to want to hit the dancefloor ‘Mr. Brightside’ style!”

“We feel it’s a true statement of our thumping, upbeat anthems we’ve become renowned for.”

Talk in Code have been supported by BBC Introducing and Amazing Radio networks together with achieving editorial streaming playlist placements with Apple Music, Soundcloud and FLO. Live they are a versatile force able to suit a variety of festivals and venues, and they extensively tour. Highlights this summer are Minety Music Festival, Home Farm Fest, Napton Festival, Aston Clinton Beer Festival, Box Rox, and The FullTone Festival.

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The Hawks: Stephen “Tintin” Duffy, as You’ve Never Heard Him Before….

Never did understand his 1985 hit Kiss Me, when it went “kiss me with your mouth,” because, figures; there’s no other cavity more apt or commonly used for kissing. Of course, being twelve when it charted, as much titillation as the magic upturned calculator number 5318008, was to be had replacing the word “mouth” with other anatomical parts.

Bit sad, in reflection, but think Stephen “Tintin” Duffy and you’ll be excused for thinking of jazz nouveaux fused art pop, the wick of commercialised electronica, of love better than wine, but as I recently discovered, that is far from the icing on the cake…(see what I did there?)

Just as homeowners strip back kitsch lacquered chipboard to discover an art deco fireplace hidden by seventies post-modernists, Seventeen Records have unearthed archived demos from Birmingham’s seventies post-punk wannabes, Obviously Five Believers, later changed to Subterranean Hawks and regretfully shortened to The Hawks. And it’s Stephen “Tintin” Duffy, as you’ve never heard before.

Often veiled fact is Duffy had been a founder of Duran Duran, just one school band of Birmingham Polytechnic, but when he left education, he also jumped ship in ’79, a year before they were signed by EMI. Through the maze of side projects and band amalgamating, the Obviously Five Believers formed from an original Duran Duran line-up, Duffy and Simon Colley, and another Stooges-inspired garage punk collective, TV Eye, Daves Twist, Kusworth and Paul Adams. “If we’d stuck to Obviously Five Believers, we may have stood a chance,” says Duffy, “it’s how I still think of us. I think we only changed it because Bob Lamb couldn’t fit the name on the cassette boxes.”

As was the rapidly changing scene, the band were short-lived, lasting from ’79 until Christmas ’81, despite being adored by those who managed to see them. With one highly collectable single, ‘Words of Hope’ released, the hope lessened. “When we didn’t get signed by Rough Trade,” Duffy recalls, “we didn’t really have any other ideas… or a Svengali.”

Proto slackers in a city that never developed the support networks, the label entrepreneurs, of a Glasgow, Liverpool or Sheffield, The Hawks undoubtedly had most of the signifiers already in place for the ‘Scene In Between’ that would emerge just a few years later.

Forward wind to 2019, Duffy and Kusworth were reunited, agreeing to release a retrospective album from Duffy’s cassette archive. Sadly, David Kusworth passed away later that year, so, as good as his word, and with the assistance of Grammy-winning engineer John Paterno, Duffy has set the tracks free, in honour of his friend. Obviously 5 Believers is released on Friday 27th August 2021.

“We didn’t make demo’s, blue prints for future single or albums, we played live and I sang over the top, just to see what we sounded like,” Stephen reminisces. “These are like field recordings from a much simpler time. Simple in that we had no lust for fame and fortune, we had no manifestos beyond our fringes. We wanted to sign to a small label and play some shows but somehow we couldn’t fulfil even those modest ambitions.”

For those content to accept eighties pop, to dress in cliché leg warmers, diddy-boppers and dance around their handbags, this is not for you. Those intrigued as to how and why the sound was watered and marketed, and to rediscover its roots as post punk garage bands, this is a must-have. For while the melancholic track ‘Aztec Moon,’ hints to recognisable Stephen “Tintin” Duffy, it’s not    absolute, rather ploddingly psychedelic rock, and it’s away from the norm of tracks on show here.    If ‘Big Store’ reflects rather what you’d expect from a Talking Heads and Smiths fusion, ‘Bullfighter’ defines new wave in a method not unlike the Jam and other mod revival bands of the era.

All the Sad Young Men alsoreminded me of that mode, yet, in composition and theme, you could pick out and predecessor of synth-pop, of inspiration for Visage and, dare I suggest it, The Pet Shop Boys. Yet, though this stimulating and provocative recording is as one might expect, raw and rudimentary, the route to the archetypal polished electronica can barely be heard. Likewise, the album caused me to seek out some demos from the original Duran Duran line-up on YouTube and it’s captivating to the unaccustomed ear to hear just how underdone it was in comparison with later chart hits. And in so much, how the music industry moulded these acts to suit the technological changes.

I ponder time and time again, how ardent cohorts of post-punk could be sucked into tacky eighties hit factories, such as all-girl trio Bananarama, who found fame collaborating with Fun Boy Three, and rather than stick with Terry Hall, by 1986 thought signing to Stock Aitken Waterman was a good idea, it was, but only for their bank accounts. Que Sera, Sera, perhaps you had to be there at the time, but fair to suggest, it was always about a wage. Though Duffy himself succumbed to the pop machine, he moved progressively, was cutting-edge in recording early chill-out house with Roger Freeman of Pigbag in a project called Dr. Calculus Mdma.

All in all, what you have here is a hidden piece of music history, and through its retrospection, it is an interesting, beguiling and enjoyable unearthed archive… of which, obviously I’m far to young to recall any of it… (not sure why I needed to add that bit!)

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Devizes Chamber Choir Christmas Concert

It’s not Christmas until the choir sings, and Devizes Chamber Choir intend to do precisely this by announcing their Christmas Concert, as they have done…

Cult Figures; Deritend, Yes Mate!

It’s not just me, is it? Eighteen seconds into the Cult’s She Sells Sanctuary, you know, when it breaks, and you’re like, that’s it, right there. It matters not what youth culture you were into, at the time, or even now, it doesn’t give a hoot about your favoured genres, haircut, colour of anorak, age, gender or race, it just does it, and you, you’re like, as I said, that’s it, right there.

Something similar happens with this Cult Figures album Deritend, out last week; heck, if they haven’t even got a comparable name. Perhaps not so nostalgia-filled, as these are all originals, though the sound harks back to an era or yore, when cookies were in a biscuit barrel rather than your web browser, Tories were governed a demoness made from iron rather than a clown made of teddy bear stuffing, and a wet wipe was when your mum spat into a handkerchief and wiped it over your Space-Dust covered chops.

Mind, as happens when I’m sent files not numbered, it lists them alphabetically rather than in the running order, so the opening track is actually the penultimate Camping in the Rain, but it makes the perfect intro into the world of these London-based masters of retrospection. From its off, it’s, well, off, leaving me to reminisce about those classic post-punk new wave bands of the eighties. At times though, as it’s a mesh of this and reflective of the scooterist mod culture of same period, I’m thinking of the likes of the Jam and Merton Parkas too. Contemplate the musical differences are subtle, though worlds apart at the time, and this sits comfortably somewhere in-between.

To add to their perfection of authenticity, one must note this is the second album from Cult Figures, and is comprised of tracks written in their earlier incarnation between 1977 and 1980, just recorded more recently.

The real opening tune, Chicken Bones, has the same impact, something beguiling and anthemic, setting the way it’s going to go down. Donut Life, which follows, sounds like carefree pop, the Chords, for a comparison. In fact, as it progresses the guitar riffs of next tune, Lights Out, is sounding more pre-gothic, Joy Division, yet with a catchy whistle more akin to The Piranhas. Things get really poignant with Exile, almost dub Visage meets the Clash, and Omen extenuates the seriousness of a running theme.  

“Deritend draws a line under the past,” they explain, “all eleven tracks composed and recorded since our 2016 comeback, simultaneously reflecting a maturity gained in 40 years of life experience, whilst still embracing the accessible three Ps of the early days; punk, pop and psychedelia.” The album’s title owes to a historic industrial area outside Birmingham’s centre, “a few miles from where Gary and I grew up.”

The mysterious iconic name was a bus route terminus and has a strong emotional connection to the band, “evoking the nervous excitement of those long rides into town on our way to Barbarellas. But it conveys so much more: Deritend is an album that reflects on the past, speculates on the future, but for the most part is fairly and squarely a comment on the lives we are living now.” They convey this well, for through its retrospection, subject matter, growing up with the dilapidation of a working-class industrial chip, could equally apply to then, or now.

A timeless piece of art within a captivating musical style which embraces the traditions of generation X, just curled up at an edge like an old poster on the congregated iron fence of a closed factory. I mean Silver Blades and White Noise crave you dive back into punk; there’s a definite Clash feel to the latter. As girl’s names for titles generally do, Julie-Anne is archetypical upbeat but themed of desire, and the sound of it is particularly challenging to pin down, there’s Weller there, but a drum roll you’d expect Annabella Lwin to surface from (of Bow Wow Wow if you need to, Google it, youngster!)

Most bizarre and experimental is the brilliantly executed talky sound of Concrete and Glass. Cast your mind back to 86, if poss, remember Jim’s tune, yeah? Driving Away From Home by It’s Immaterial, and you’re not far from the mark.

The aforementioned Camping in the Rain which could’ve been the opening track, is next, and it’s the epithet of all we’ve mentioned. This combination is not juxtaposed cumbersomely like a tribute act, rather the genuine article lost in time, and it, well, in a nutshell, absolutely rocks. The finale, Privilege is plentiful to summarise; Clash-styled punk rock, themed on the expectations of irritated propertyless youth, akin to Jimmy Cliff’s You Can Get It If You Really Want.

But, unless all you want is a zig-a-zig-ah and to spice up your life with commercialised bubble-gum pop, nothing here is oven-ready for criticism, just relish yourself in a bygone era, and rock.

The Lost Trades Live Stream their new album on Friday; tickets here

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Steatopygous go Septic

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The Wurzels To Play At FullTone 2026!

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DOCA’s Young Urban Digitals

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Jol Rose’s Ragged Stories

There’s albums I’ll go in blind and either be pleasantly surprised, or not. Then there’s ones which I know I’m going to love before the…

Vince Bell in the 21st Century!

Unlike Buck Rogers, who made it to the 25th century six hundred years early, Devizes’ most modest acoustic virtuoso arrives at the 21st just short…