Pynch - Beautiful Noise

Back with their second album, Pynch return 

When they first appeared on the Speedy Wunderground label with Disco Lights, Pynch have slowly built a loyal following based upon their clever rhythms and technical prowess with an ear for a hook with vital vocal delivery. Their first album 'Howling at a Concrete Moon' was an amalgamation of their singles with some filler but nevertheless a great listen about the disenchantment and allure of city life.

Today, they release their sophomore album Beautiful Noise. For some bands, this is always referred to as the difficult second album. But Pynch are not like some bands, they are a special four piece and have been since they released the slacker/covid-19 anthem 'Somebody Else' a track written before the global pandemic but whose tale of alienation and loneliness meant more within the troubled times.

The new album begins with 'Forever' and it is a reminder that Pynch unlike a lot of their contemporaries are well aware of the strength of the intro to a track - an enticing conduit for fans to get excited before Spencer Enock's distinct vocals come through.

Throughout the album, there is that spirit of DIY and shoegaze, a feeling that they are going to make music that they like without the hope that it connects but the belief that it will. There are winks to current music trends in 'Post-Punk/New-Wave' with the band themselves refusing to be pigeon-holed coupled with the single 'The Supermarket' with its driving bassline.

Upon further listenings, this album is a joy, for fans of early New Order whose post-Curtis' death were works of disillusionment along with the late 80s Depeche Mode. Think of 'Microwave Rhapsody', a song about sitting around and daydreaming; their unique knack of making universal the kitchen sink dramas they illustrate bodes well when they see the larger world available through touring.

They have already travelled to wider parts of Europe and the East coast of America; their guitar/electro sound sitting nice with the recent nostalgia binge of the Strokes/Yeah Yeah Yeah's period.

Title track and the longest one on the album, is perhaps their most, angry song, the lyric is about wanting to stay in bed and ignore the beautiful noise he sings about. And yet despite the heaviest sounding song, Spencer's forlorn earnest vocal remains engaging and it even detours into a jazzy sound ending which is rich and different in their scope. 

Even the penultimate track 'Come Outside' which showcases Spencer singing with drummer Julianna Hopkins, shows another avenue of invention possible to the band in future outings.

This is not so much a band with a foot in the door ready to eat at the top table, they are ready to kick that door down fully and announce themselves.

Self-released and self-produced on their Chillburn Recordings label, Beautiful Noise is out now on all formats.

Rebecca Schiffman - Before The Future

New York born singer-songwriter, Rebecca Schiffman, releases her fourth album on 25th July entitled Before The Future.

Born and raised on the East Coast, Schiffman has seemingly found her musical home on the west coast and the city of Los Angeles. This album features a multitude of guest artists and collaborators ranging from Deerhoof's Chris Cohen and Tim Carr (Perfume Genius) to name a couple. These new collaborative forces also changed her style of recording from the ten day relocation to the studio as she did with her first three albums; instead this album was recorded in more piecemeal due to the input of others. 

Starting with the title track and another with Cohen, creating this euphoric and anthemic sound for said title track that runs to nine plus minutes (an usual feat to front end an album with a long track). That track is about the grief from the untimely death of a childhood friend. It is the difficulty of grief and understanding of that emotion that is the underlying theme of the album throughout, as heard on 'Rudy's Song' which is about her bereavement for her beloved dog.

Schiffman has a gorgeous lilting voice, a soft delivery that works well with the pleasant melodies being played. Reminiscent of Margaret Glaspy in terms of singing style and Lori Anderson from yesteryear; Schiffman has crafted an album of a sunny disposition but with a more serious undercurrent to proceedings.

And yet there is joy such as 'Little Mr. Civility' about her two year old son, the new life in the world can change your outlook on many things. For Schiffman she did not want to become demonstrative in terms of making the rules and being strict, and this juggling of nature and nurture is the touchstone of the song.

All in all, this is an album of being aware of your feelings, expressing them the best way and how moments can channel or alter creative output. Schiffman is seeking balance between her long in the tooth East coast attitude and new found West coast sensibility; and in some ways she may have found it.

Before The Future is out on all platforms from 25th July

My thanks to OneBeatPR for the review opportunity.

Friend or Foe? - Ken Lussey

 

New entry in the Bob Sutherland WW2 series, 

out July 14th from Arachnid Press

Ken Lussey returns with Bob Sutherland and Monique Dubois with another thrilling, fast-paced tale set amidst the height of World War Two in Scotland.

It’s late June 1943. Bob and Monique Sutherland’s journey home from Malta is interrupted, first in London to hear Soviet claims of a German spy in Scotland and then by a shoot-out between US military units in Lancashire.

 

Having returned to Edinburgh, they remain only briefly before travelling with a Military Intelligence 11 team to Galloway to track down the spy. How best to catch a ghost who may already have uncovered vital military secrets? Can they find him before it’s too late? 

When two Soviet agents arrive in Galloway to help, Bob and Monique need to work out the difference between friend and foe. Does the German spy exist, or is he a Soviet invention intended to lure MI11 into danger?

Lussey as ever writes with such an assuredness in proceedings ranging from rations and the ability to drink champagne during wartime. This is thanks to his diligent research which even touches upon precise train times in Scotland. It is these details that help elevate this work above mere folly/

The most enticing entry of the book is the beginning when the Battle of Bamber surfaces; a real life occasion when Black American GIs had a fight with British civilians. This melding of fact and fiction always raises Lussey's works to that of importance and how we should look to the past to better understand our present, and how little has been learnt in nearly 80 years of passing.

Enticing and frantic, Lussey has again written a thrilling book of action set in real-life incidents a melding of fact and fiction in great unison. Another pleasing entry in this unique and special series.

Friend or Foe? is available from Arachnid Press now 

Getting Away - Kate Sawyer

New summer read by Kate Sawyer

This was a very pleasing read. A word of caution though, you will require a family tree/understanding of genealogy to remember the names and relations of all the people. However, once you get your head around that - this book was entertaining and enlightening. 

Using family holidays as the means to show familial relationships and how they alter over the years, decades and generations coupled with the ever-changing types of family holidays - from day outs to the beach by train, to the growing market of package holidays booked on Ceefax, to the globe-trotting gap years of the grandchildren.

Indebted to the work of David Nicholls, nevertheless Sawyer has crafted a work that is original yet familiar, comforting but challenging and by the end the reader would have developed a lump in their throat. Delicately handled with poise and guile by a writer with nuance. As you get nearer to the present day, the writer is able to incorporate the ever changing landscape of communication - using tweets, emails and magazine articles as a changing style of writing from by-gone eras of postcards and diary entries.

Sawyer writes with assuredness having an ear for how characters talk to each other, and she does this well with her plethora of protagonists ranging from the overweight police officer, to the shy retiring teenager who was born premature and must keep on fighting for his place in society

This is a book that will stay with the reader after completing it, and is a real find and a must for the summer of this year.

My thanks to Compulsive Readers for letting me be part of the blog tour for this title and the preview copy in advance.

Getting Away is published by Zaffre/Bonnier Books, thanks to them 

God As My Witness (2025)

A new documentary examines the Catholic clergy molestation scandal in Louisiana, screens at the 33rd Raindance Film Festival this June. The film is directed by Lindsay Quinn Pitre.

A harrowing and hard watch of a film over its 82 minute run time, about the lengths and depths of depravity men of the cloth went to hide their illicit behaviour.

The film is produced by Michael Brandner Sr, who in 2018 discovered a set of love letters from a priest to his younger brother, Scot. Scot committed suicide in the early 1990s at the age of 29.

After the first twenty minutes of talking head personal accounts of individuals who suffered molestation at the hands of clergymen. The film then shows the legal ramifications as attorneys of New Orleans brought claims against the church. The church faced so many clerical claims it had to file for federal bankruptcy protection in May 2020.

The case has cost the Archdiocese more than $40m in fees which remain unresolved. 

Tellingly, the film is left open-ended as this is an ongoing case with more people still to come forward. It allows you to see the story come to the viewer at this pace which is deliberate under the circumstances.

Heartfelt due to the personal nature of the Brander situation, this is a film that is a good companion to the Alex Gibney documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In the House of God (2012) which itself delved into the claims of abuse in the catholic church and touched upon in the Oscar winning film, Spotlight. 

This is a poignant documentary that is as much about healing as about the horrific acts put upon this vulnerable individuals.

God As My Witness has its World Premiere at the 33rd Raindance Film Festival on 26th June.

My thanks to Raindance for the screening link for review.

What The Dark Whispers - MJ Lee

 

Book 11 in the DI Ridpath series released 3rd July from Canelo

Having had the pleasure to read the DI Ridpath series from its genesis in the years prior to the global pandemic, it is the first time in my long tenure of reading that this reader has followed such a new detective series and character from its inception to the present day. Following, enjoying and anticipating.

Lee returns along with Ridpath in a Halloween set tale that sees the maverick Ridpath again having to uncover the truth behind a series of recent murders in the Greater Manchester area which may or may not be connected. A man sets himself on fire at a petrol station, a family is brutally murdered in their home and a single mother is strangled by her daughter.

Ridpath under his guise as policeman and assistant to the Coroner, has to battle familiar office politics - those who have been promoted ahead of him - with his embatteled support staff who endeavour to do the right thing despite the best efforts of those to merely tick a box. 

This along with his daughter, Eve, going through the tumultuous period of hormones and school coupled with the conclusion of the last book - What The Dead Want - where she was attacked by a male teen; with the two navigating their life together without mother, Penny around. 

A familiar experience when reading Lee's series (and this can be said for his contemporary Marion Todd) is that the books start off sprightly with the problem laid out before our hero in the first act. Only when he starts investigating and is at loggerheads with a superior officer, does the narrative gain pace and reads at a clip that is enjoyable as this reader digests with aplomb.

The last act of the book as the answers become clear to Ridpath and his team - a credit and salute to the leg work and diligence of police work - before the murderer can kill again, is pulsating and heart racing. The last quarter of the book flies past with a mixture of thrill and enjoyment as the plot unravels

Written with flair, pace and tension, Lee again has written a thriller of exceptional quality that in time may well rank as one of the best in the series overall. Lee like Ridpath has done it again.

What The Dark Whispers is out from Canelo on all formats from 3rd July 

Row (2025)

Premiered at the 2025 Raindance Film Festival, Released 5th September 

Row is written and directed by Matt Losasso.

It tells the story of a woman washed ashore in a blood stained boat as part of a doomed trans-atlantic World record attempt. While she has survived, her three shipmates are missing and presumed dead. She attempts to piece together her fractured memories.

The premise of this film is a good one and it does create an effective claustrophobic atmosphere of the cabin fever that takes hold of the shipmates in treacherous waters. However, these confinements are also restrictions and with a young cast trying their best, they are unfortunately let down by a quite a damp script which falls too swiftly into cliché and signposted direction of narrative flow.

This is a pity as the potential is clearly apparent with little nods to the work of John Carpenter and his evocative scores and economical storytelling, and yet that is all this film is, wanting to be something more than it is.

Female lead, Bella Dayne, is lacking in her conviction of performance sadly when the film desperately needs a strong one for the stakes required and with the whole narrative upon her shoulders. Sophie Skelton (Outlander) shows some brief spark in her time onscreen. 

For something so tense the pace is incredibly plodding and pedestrian. No rhythm or tension is apparent, perhaps the writer-director could have done with a polish of his rudderless script. 

It is frustrating when funding goes to films such as this, when the message is not clear and nothing new is being spoken of and with an overlong run time, this film really needed to have a good pay-off which unfortunately when it arrives it is with as little fanfare as the two hours that preceded it and lacks any sort of resolution for the tested audience.

Shot without any invention or colour, this is a film that is unwittingly all at sea.

Row receives its World Premiere on 21st June at 33rd Raindance Film Festival

Row has been nominated for four awards at the festival: Best Performance in a UK Feature (Dayne), Best UK Feature, Best Director of a UK Feature (Losssso) and Best UK Cinematography.

My thanks to Strike Media for the screener link