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Singles Round Up 2025 – February – Part 3

March 29, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

The Mushroom Club – Afraid

Trippy psych sounds abound on February single Afraid from Glasgow based garage rock band The Mushroom Club.

Pales – Uppercut

Uppercut comes from French alt-rockers Pales latest EP, Crush. Both the title of the EP and single are appropriate adjectives to describe the sound of the band, the crushing intensity of the guitar riffs and the layering of vocals and instruments on the single coming together in a glorious melee and rising to a knockout crescendo

Pales

Self Esteem – 69

Perhaps not one to add to your workplace playlists, as Self Esteem celebrates every sexual position imaginable but draws the line at….… Read the rest

Singles Round Up 2025 – February – Part 2

March 28, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

Mark W. Georgsson – Tripping With You

Mark W. returned in February with this boisterously energetic slice of cosmic psychedelia, Georgsson will play his first gig since 2022 supporting Brownbear in Coatbridge.

Mark W. Georgsson

flinch. – i heard monogamy and the patriarchy are best of friends (and Tennyson wrote that poem about his best friend)

Winning the February prize for longest song title is the always wonderful flinch. I heard… is a prime example of what flinch. do best, making their point quietly and assertively, thought provoking lyrics paired with gentle guitar riffs and sung in the familiar hushed tones are interspersed with excerpts of an interview with Avril Lavigne.… Read the rest

Singles Round Up 2025 – February – Part 1

March 27, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

Dead Pioneers – Post American

Another incendiary single from the new album from Dead Pioneers, in the form of its title track. Post American is huge attitude fuelled attack on white nationalism and a swipe at “giant toddlers with demands” and the country “built on genocide” and “slave labour”, in a year which beggars belief where one of the first acts the orange one took was to take rights away from just about everyone who isn’t a white cis male. Powerful stuff.

Dead Pioneers

benefits- Divide

Closer to home benefits have plenty to say too, with another attack on nationalism and “patriots” and the divide that continues to grow within British society.… Read the rest

f.o. machete – Mother of a Thousand – album launch gig – Nice n Sleazy

March 27, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

Two sold out album launch gigs in one weekend! Monsieur, with these gigs you are really spoiling us… Well to be fair, this one should have been in January but Storm Eowyn had other ideas. Tonight Paul was pragmatic about the whole affair, “Mogwai were due to be playing the same night, there was only ever going to be one winner there” was his deadpan comment from the stage.

Mother of a Thousand is a phenomenal album so whoever else may or may not have been playing this Sundays night in Glasgow there was only one place I wanted to be, and the band can be safe in the knowledge that after a such a mind-blowing gig, the album was well and truly launched.… Read the rest

Singles Round Up 2025 – January – Part 8

March 2, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

The bumper final part of the January singles round up… including a link to the playlist for all January’s singles.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Stitches

As another taster for their forthcoming album Death Hilarious following up last years Detroit, the Black Sabbath-esque pulsating doom metal throb of Stitches is a tempting aural amuse-bouche, whetting the appetite for what auricular delights the album will serve up.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs

Ian Donaldson – Just Another Rock n Roll Song

January’s offering from the ex H2O frontman comes from his latest album, Dreams From Tenement Land, Just Another Rock n Roll Song once again focuses on a subject familiar to his solo work, with Donaldson in reflective mood once more, this joyous celebration of life and music, looking back on his love for Glam Rock, glamming away his Saturday nights, the impact and influences on him in his youth forming the basis for his career in music.… Read the rest

Singles Round Up 2025 – January – Part 7

February 22, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

Vampire Slumber Party – Polka King Of the Midwest

Part seven begins with a joyous blast of full throttle pop punk in the form of this boisterous three minute anthem from London based Vampire Slumber Party, it’s like the early noughties all over again.

Vampire Slumber Party

Gypsy Pistoleros – Whatever Happened to the Old Town

Another earnest glam punk rocker from the greasepaint daubed Gypsy Pistoleros, the lyrics initially yearning for time gone by, before the mid song tempo rise tells a different story “I ran away from the old town” sings Gypsy Lee Postolero, before the song closes out in more meditative mood as he ruminates about “home”.… Read the rest

Singles Round Up 2025 – January – Part 6

February 19, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

Swervedriver – Volume Control

The last part of the round up finished with Miki Berenyi, one of the most recognisable vocalist/guitarists of the 1990s indie scene fronting Lush. The part starts with one of the prime movers in the shoegaze scene of the era, blasting into the scene with mighty juggernauts of sound like Son of Mustang Ford. The band now have 6 albums under their belts and in January released this track from a new EP coming in March.

Swervedriver

Ditz – Four

Four is one of the highlights of the bands new album, Never Exhale, the follow up to the potent debut, The Great Regression.… Read the rest

f.o. machete – Mother of a Thousand – Album Review

February 12, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

After an extended hiatus of a dozen or so years, the mighty machete returned to the fray in style around this time last year with a live show supporting another legendary Scottish band who had also returned after too long out of the limelight. That show in Room 2 featuring The Hedrons and f.o. machete will live long in the memory, both bands at the top of their game, with The Hedrons celebrating the release of their long awaited sophomore album and f.o. machete quite obviously just stoked to be back playing live. Now it is f.o. machete’s turn to release a new album, their hotly anticipated follow up to My First Machete.… Read the rest

Singles Round Up 2025 – January – Pt 5

February 10, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

Gates of Light – Advance

An incessant drum beat underlining Louise Quinn’s shimmering vocal gives way to an intense throbbing electro baseline (that somehow gives me 1980s TV show Miami Vice vibes) which gets under the skin as Louise’s breathy dreamlike, almost otherworldly, vocal begins to take hold and give you a woozy spaced out feeling that entrances you and you can’t help but let yourself be taken under its spell.

Gates of Light

Sweet Unrest – How Are You Feeling?

The energy ramps up several notches when Sweet Unrest pick up the baton and runs with it, pounding staccato drums set the furious pace picked up by frenetic guitar bursts, everything coming together like an inescapable burning fireball hurtling towards earth.… Read the rest

VIDEO PREMIERE – Burnt Log – Sharks

February 10, 2025 By neilho27@sky.com

The Ginger Quiff is delighted to bring you the VIDEO PREMIERE of Sharks, the new single from Burnt Log. Burnt Log is the solo music project of Midlothian based Andy Smith, whose last single Sleeping featured in my January Singles Round Up. Sharks is the latest single to be released in a year where Andy’s plans include further singles and collaborations and a third album from Burnt Log.

Musically Sharks has a vulnerable, dramatic and bewitching melancholy which at times verges almost on a disturbing starkness when you match the music with the lyrics. The song is a gloriously discombobulating fusion that somehow has the ability to both soothe with its mesmerising arrangement, but which could also give you sleepless night, with it’s lyrics serving as a warning to us all that we are all under constant attack from people trying to steal the money we’ve worked hard to save “for a rainy day.”… Read the rest