Despite the best of intentions, 2026 hasn’t panned out the way I’d have wished and so, once again, the Ginger Quiff has taken a back seat. Here are some shorter than normal reviews of some of my favourite albums released in February
Sloan Brothers – Love and Other Diagnoses
I fell in love with the music of Sloan Brothers at the time of their 2022 System Update album, reviewed here, an album which came at me from leftfield and hit me for six. Sometimes you review a band or album and then maybe never listen to it again. System Update isn’t one of those albums, it is one which I revisit time and again, and I’m stoked that Love and Other Diagnoses has come along and does nothing to dampen my ardour for their music, if anything it re-ignites the flame and gives me another set of, sometimes heart-aching, charmingly honest songs to swoon over.
There is something about the arrangement and delivery of this set of songs that draws you into the world of Sloan Simpson. There is a soulful warmth to the music that wraps itself around me like a hugely welcome hug, an aural safety blanket if you will, and when you add his lyrics, which have a genuine candour and in the knowledge that they come straight from his heart, he’s laying himself bare for the world to see. But there is nothing uncomfortable about that, the songs have a way of chipping away at any hard exterior I may try to build, the defences I put up every day just to get through somehow unscathed, and they pluck away at your heartstrings, the more I listened to the album the more I felt that real raw emotion and I often felt heard as an individual, as if the lyrics were speaking to me personally.
Perhaps it’s the hopeless romantic in me, perhaps it’s the recognition of very real issues like depression (f33.2) or crippling social anxiety (Kiss Bliss) in the lyrics, whatever that magic ingredient is, Love and Other Diagnoses is like a breath of fresh air, an album which I could both listen to in order to lift my spirits in moments of quiet introspection but I could also blast out the speakers at ear-splitting volume in joyous celebration of love and life despite the shit life throws your way.
The album opens with a statement of intent, Gimme Love Songs gives a pretty good picture of what you can expect from the rest of the album, with Sloan decreeing his passion for love songs that “make me feel like I belong,” blending melodious guitars with his candid lyrics because of course he “used to listen for guitars” and “rock and roll is here to stay.” This song encompasses what the whole album is about, the desire for human connection and love against odds stacked against you – “I love love songs, they keep me hanging on, to the dream that I can find someone like I believed when I was young” he sings as he expresses a desire to be in that “club of famous people like Elvis and The Beatles and Ramones.” I think the first time I listened to the album, I pressed repeat on the song several times. Immediately after this soaring opener, he reveals the other side to the songs with the frank and forthright song about love and mental health illness, f33.2 (recurrent major depressive disorder) which he “looked up in the DSM” (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) where he explore self help books and methods but “can’t fall out of love with you.”
The rest of the album continues to explore each of these topics in a sensitive and often upbeat manner, in a style that sits somewhere between Beat Happening and The Lemonheads, sometimes melancholic on the likes of Everything Must Go and IYKYK, sometimes feeling almost throwaway on the suitably catchy Earworm Song, to joyously uplifting on songs like the rambunctious Kiss Bliss and the strident beat of Heart Rate. Elsewhere there is a bit of a pastiche of The Cars on My Best Friend’s Girlfriends Friend, and later the power pop of Big Thing could easily have been an actual song by the band. despite the subject matter of the songs, they are never self indulgent or overwrought, quite the opposite, these songs capture the essence of humanity, and the overriding feeling of hopefulness and buoyant optimism in the face of the burdens and shackles of life. Love and other Diagnoses is an utterly life-affirming album.
Molly Vulpyne Band – Houndstooth and the Hum
First coming to my attention as one half of The Vulpynes, Molly has been making waves in the punk scene in recent years with the Molly Vulpyne Band, and has now released her debut album the vibrant and pulsating Houndstooth and the Hum. The band’s sound channels the spirit of the likes of Auf der Maur and Veruca Salt, opening in style with the suitably titled Hook, it’s jittery, antsy intro then opens up with tense hook laden guitar riffs creating an immense introduction to the album. It Don’t Fit has Molly continuing to shows a mastery in the invoking of a brooding intensity, the song building to a clamorous peak. Throughout the album the songs are laced with an underlying sense of menace that threatens to explode at any moment, none more so than on I Wanna Be Your Filter which lulls you with it’s hypnotic melody before it bursts into life with a full on aural assault.
14 shows another side to the music, with an effectively sparse arrangement, just Molly and a guitar, showcasing her voice which delivers an emotional punch with it’s plaintive, sorrowful delivery. My Expiry picks up the baton re-injecting the adrenaline fuelled rebellious attitude back into proceedings and this single gets better with every listen, it’s Hole-like riffing soundtracking a defiant statement of affirmation “tell society I’ve still got it in me.” Ripe is probably the grungiest song on the album with crunching deep down and dirty riffs aplenty, which also seep into Ur a Fad underlining this pacey single. Molly ends in contumacious mood with the powerfully assertive “fuck you” song Ode to Your Farewell.
I can imagine these songs really shine in the live arena, so I hope to get a chance to see the Molly Vulpyne Band live at some point in the future.
The Screamin’ Kick – Looking From My World
Living up to their name this band have come screamin’ and kickin’ their way out of Edinburgh with this unwavering breathless assault on the eardrums. With a line-up of members from bands that reads like a list of the great and good of the Edinburgh underground scene, Looking From My World is the band’s debut album and is a raucous statement of intent.
Album opener Filthy Rich kicks off with an rumbling bass heavy intro before it ignites into an unrelenting fuzzed up garage punk manifesto while Not Gonna Forget has the band in more reflective mood, but loses none of the forthright assertion in it’s lyrics. The album’s title track follows and the pace is fiercely uncompromising, swirling hammond organ blending seamlessly with the fizzing thrum of the of the guitars and the rumbling rhythm section, topped off with the vociferous gravelly growl of the vocals from Alexander Bunch.
The rejuvenating properties of music are celebrated on the straightforwardly titled Rock n Roll, “it keeps me alive” sings Bunch, a topic which they revisit later in the album on the uncompromising Tombstone with it’s opening line “Rock n Roll will save our soul” going on to say “’til my tombstone tells you that I’m dead I’ll never fall.”
As a whole the album has a welcoming cocksure strut to it, the band are a shit hot tight unit creating a defiant swaggering maelstrom of high intensity rock n roll energy, a fuel injected furore that will have you reaching for the repeat button time and again.
Heavenly – Highway to Heavenly
It’s been thirty years since indie-scene stalwarts Heavenly last released an album, in the shape of 1996’s Operation Heavenly, it’s follow up Highway to Heavenly is a welcome return to the fray and comes at a time when the indie-jangle sound is being brought to life again by a whole new generation, none more so than by Scottish duo The Cords who released one of 2025’s best albums, reviewed here. The serendipitous timing is likely to win them a whole generation of new fans alongside those of us who are in our, ahem, second flush of youth.
The album opens with recent single Scene Stealing, a seemingly upbeat pop song with fresh melodies and feel good vibes. However, this melody hides a darkness at the heart of the lyrics, of toxic male celebrities in the manosphere taking advantage of their position. This ability to tell a story that paints, in this case a vulgar picture, is at the very core of Highway to Heavenly, and what makes the album an essential listen. Across a couple of verses and a chorus, each of the the songs is like an Allan Bennett kitchen sink drama, drawing you into each little microcosm of life, each tale fascinating and either despising the antagonist in the case of Scene Stealing or rooting for the protagonists, the unfortunates and the good guys elsewhere.
What also makes this such a compelling listen is the relatability in the lyrics, it feels like a closing of the circle on the four albums featured here from the feeling of being seen on Sloan Brothers to songs like the brilliant Portland Town with its tale of just wanting to fit in and one of the other singles from the album Excuse Me, the story of mistaken identity in the quest for love perhaps too close to mirroring a personal situation from my dim and distant past for comfort, but all the same making it probably my favourite song on the album. The songs are packed with a mix of gritty realism and scathing takedowns alongside songs packed with a real tenderness and compassion in a series of pin-point accuracy observations of the human condition, all soundtracked by Heavenly’s signature jangly guitars and soaraway harmonies. That tenderness is displayed in bucketloads on the fitting final song on the album, That Last Day, a song of remembrance for those we’ve lost along the way, but live long in our memories, the song is touching without being overwrought with grief, in fact it is packed with a melancholic optimism, a sadness for those we have loved and lost, but a joy that we had them in our lives.