2025, week 4. 10 Singles

Grey skies, fog and no fog, "no" rain, lots of rain, wind and no wind, we are seeing it all this winter. Even very mild frost. In general its just dull outside with hardly a clear sky in sight. That spells the winter of 2025. Luckily we have the music, so let's go!

Drown! Soft Plastics

Soft Plastics debuted on this blog in May 2021 with its single 'Loozer'. A whole bunch followed and the album 'Saturn Return', nearly two years ago. Come 2025 and the New Zealanders present a new single, Drown!. It is a surprising one, for the following reason. Drown! is a perfect mix of the two sides of Soft Plastics. At times the band presents songs that are sometimes too soft for me, with too little happening to keep my attention. Drown! tends into that direction, before it becomes clear that the band builds up a whole truckload of tension. When it's released in the chorus and the following solo, the song gets a glorious sheen, bordering on magic. The ethereal backing vocals behind Sophie Scott-Maunder's lead vocal and over the spooky lead guitar does everything such an addition should. Soft Plastics wind the song down again before it ends, restoring the order of its universe. Drown! is a great single and to think I nearly scrapped it, as with so many singles going around decision are made fast.

Enemy. The Yets

The Yets debuted with the EP 'The Yets' in 2022. The South Carolina duo, guitarist-producer Craig Anderson Snook and vocalist Robin Wilson is on route to release its debut LP 'Pinup Girl' on 7 February. Enemy is the final single preceding the album. None of the previous made it to this blog but Enemy has. It is a gothic song with matching dark overtones. Singer Robin Wilson is a woman of a certain age and her voice matches this in an intriguing way. She has double tracked her vocals. The dark one matches her age, while the higher one lends her voice a dreamy quality providing Enemy with two distinct sides, where everything drops away. Underneath her voice Snook built layer after layer of dark sounds accompanied by a complex drum rhythm. My guess is from a machine. Musically the song matches some of goth rocks romanticism and brings a band like Para Lia to mind. Enemy is a song to study as well as listen to.

The Music Man. David Ramirez

In 2018 I saw David Ramirez play in Q-Bus in Leiden, a venue with nearly always perfect sound. It's so easy for an artist to make a great impression there. Before the show his album We're Not Going Anywhere was on the blog and in 2021 a single. Come 2025 and Ramirez returns with a piano ballad that brings to mind ballads from the 1970s, like Peter Skellern's 'You're A Lady', a song with power and melancholy in one. The Music Man is song of a grown man who looks back on his youth and how he grew into the music man who draws the crowds to hear his music. But not everything's alright judging by the mood of the song. The build up is beautiful though, but nothing like I had expected to hear from David Ramirez. That apart, The Music Man works and deserves to be heard.

On The Brink / Not Fooling Me. Brad Marino

Brad Marino is on this blog like forever my brain tells me. The first time was only 2019 though. Of course that is already close to six years. Since than he became a staple artist with singles and albums almost once a year. In 2025 Marino is cleaning out his closets and came across a bunch recordings he had recorded but not released. The album is called 'Rarities, Remixed & Unreleased' and On the Brink and Not Fooling Me are released as teasers. The former is a rocker in the finest Brad Marino tradition. Somewhere between The Ramones and The Romantics he manages to find another great melody that invites, well almost demands to be shouted along to. The song has a great riff and all the solo notes a good rock songs needs. The latter song is softer and slower, the kind of song I do not associate with Brad Marino. Without coercion I will always opt for On The Brink, let's rock, baby. The darker song and more 60s influences is alright. Marino gets away with this other side with ease, as the song has a great melody and sound. The kind that could get a The Kik treatment here in NL, as in a translated lyrics and make everything a tat poppier. Even Brad Marino leftovers sound great, but don't leftovers often taste better the next day?

A Moment. Kensington

For those from abroad. Kensington is most likely the biggest rock band from NL of the last decade, even ever, as I know no other that played so often for such huge audiences including the biggest stadium here. And then there singer left. The remaining three indicated to continue and found a new singer in American Jason Dowd. If anything, Kensington has become even more Kings of Leon than before. And more powerful than the American band even in its greatest success 'Sex On Fire'. No. I've never been a Kensington (nor Kings of Leon) fan and did not expect much from A Moment, but as these sort of rock songs come, A Moment is certainly powerful. Kensington returns with a bang and in such a way that catches the ear immediately. It must be stressful returning, as it is the question whether fans accept the change of singer. On the basis of this single, the answer for now should be yes and the benefit of the doubt, etc.

Stay For The Night. Pink Turns Blue

Pink Turns Blue is around since 1985 and managed to stay off my radar for 40 years! That could have been a record, were it not that this year I also discovered Mekons, from 1979. The band consists of Mic Jogwer (vocals, guitar), Paul Richter (drums) and Luca Sammuri (bass) and named itself after a Hüsker Dü song. Stay For The Night is a hypnotic song that repeats the same electric piano notes almost all through the song, with the exception of an instrumental interlude that brings together U2 and Pink Floyd, believe it or not. The single is a dark song, with Mic Jogwer singing with a dark voice. Because of this, I place the song in the 1980s immediately. The lead guitar part is more modern though and more optimistic in sound then most post punk, goth songs in the 80s ever were. The new album will be called 'Black Swan' and the band goes on an extended tour of Germany and the U.S. this spring and summer.

Extraordinary Wings. Heartworms

Heartworms is another new name on this blog. It is the project of singer-songwriter Jo Jo Orme from London. A lot of what you hear might come out of a box, yet Heartworms manages to build the song step by step and makes the tension higher with each step. Not that I'm hearing things that I haven't heard before. It's more that Orme sucks me into her song by the 10 seconds. Just like Stay For The Night right above here, Extraordinary Wings does not know a lot of variation. It is in what is added to the song that makes it so interesting and finally even exciting to listen to. Jo Jo Orme subtly changes the intonation of her voice and the music follows her. More than enough reason to write about the song here. There's an album coming up, 'Glutton For Punishment' and it's out on 7 February. (And then I run into another Heartworms, from Washington D.C. on the Internet, but I'm almost certain I'm writing about the right one here.)

T & A. Blondshell

Although it was only at the very start of 2023 that Blondshell debuted on this blog, Sabrina Teitelbaum's nom de plume can be found a lot here. Today, she returns with another song towards her second album, 'If You Asked For A Picture', slated for 2 May. T&A was a titled claimed by Keith Richards on The Rolling Stones' 'Tattoo You' album. In 2025 we get to hear it from a woman's perspective. I invite you to listen to the text and wonder like I do what kind of person Teitelbaum is singing about. I'd opt for dump now and not for wait and see, but that's me. Blondshell presents an alternative rock song with some pop overtones in the melody and vocals. The song rocks but is obviously more than just a rock song. It is darkish but strives to le in some light. T & A shows the rocking side of Blondshell in a pleasant way.

Downstream (feat. John Anderson). Bonnie Prince Billy

Will Oldman for decades now works under the name Bonnie Prince Billy. He's about to release a new album 'The Purple Bird' on 31 January. Based of what I'm hearing here it is an amalgam of his own version of Americana and Irish folk. To start with the first verse. Oldham sings like he always does with a soft-toned accompaniment, as sparingly orchestrated as possible without having no accompaniment. In the second verse a tin whistle comes in and slowly but surely the music is expanded with the Irish side, in the way it is played. In the third verse the contrast with John Anderson's voice (not to confuse with ex-Yes singer Jon Anderson) is created. His rough voice is so different from Oldham's it simply turns the song upside down.. Downstream is Bonnie Prince Billy's version of beauty, as that the song is.

Walk A Million Miles. Garret Vandermolen

With Walk A Million Miles American artist Garret Vandermolen puts his listeners into a musical time machine.set for the mid-1960s. The sound of the Rickenbacker guitar was made a staple sound by (then) Jim McGuinn of The Byrds, influencing many artists right up to George Harrison of The Beatles. The distinct sound can be heard through the decades, like R.E.M. and current Dutch perfect pop band The Maureens. VanderMolen does his own take on the sound, as he doesn't use the Rickenbacker to make his song shine brighter. Walk A Million Miles is a melancholy song and the Rickenbacker underscores the melancholy mood of the song. Everything in the song underscores the feeling of wanting or even having to move away as far as possible from where things currently stand. The muting quality of snow is used as a metaphor for sneaking off and not looking back. The 1960s remain a huge reservoir of inspiration. Even 60 years down the line..

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