-Music Videos on my Mind- Tuff Love’s “Slammer”

“THEY’RE HEADED FOR THE BIG TIME,” scream Metro. “[Tuff Love] GRAB C86 FUZZ POP BY THE SCRUFF OF THE NECK AND GIVE IT A DAMN GOOD RUFFING (sic) UP,” yell The Guardian.

Hype, hype, hype and more hype. The British music press is the world’s greatest at over-inflating the importance of bands they want you to like. This often means that when other countries take notice they ultimately feel underwhelmed, most often it's  the American music media that start taking pot shots at our ability to take something pretty routine and present it as revolutionary. Likewise, no other press has the terrifying knack for building up things only to destroy them like the UK media does.

In the case of Scotland’s Tuff Love, one believes that Julie Eisenstein (guitar, vocals) and Suse Bear’s (bass, vocals) handy tribute to American alternative lo-fi guitar music may prove attractive to the international market, especially to the country which developed and then largely abandoned this sort of thing.

It’d be grand if Tuff Love became massive. One can never have enough white girls’ with guitar bands around, and we so desperately need a paradigm shift when it comes to pop music.

-Music Videos on my Mind- LoneLady’s “Groove it Out”

One is convinced that if an advanced alien civilization is monitoring activity on Earth then they’ll make additional efforts to tune into our sound waves.  It’s at this point they’ll focus greater attention on the astounding sonic frequencies emanating from Manchester, England, and will make it their prime objective to somehow get there. Should that happen then they’ll be in for the most astronomical of anticlimaxes because instead of the cosmically hip environs they thought will greet them, they’ll be confronted with urban privation and monumental grimness.

Nonetheless, our alien admirers will most certainly keep their faith in Manchester being the greatest rock city in the world. LoneLady (our kid, Julie Ann Campbell) is another of Manchester’s sonically gifted daughters who, if she keeps on making tracks like this, is going to be huge. LoneLady is an adequate stage sobriquet for Ms. Campbell because she records and produces everything herself. She is the ultimate bedroom artist and demonstrates just how amazingly effective and accessible modern technology is if the person using it has proper talent.

Groove it Out is a giant of an alternative pop song, though; this ongoing trend for not commissioning cool music videos is most frustrating. Wrap Records, who actually also make movies, ought to have realised that this track is destined for European domination and should’ve put together something pronto. Our alien mates won’t be impressed by their laziness.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Bahamas’ “All the Time”

Bahamas is more than a paradise holiday destination; it’s the stage name of a Canadian nu-folk artist called Afie Jurvanen who makes happy-clappy pop songs swimming in blissed-out grooves and melodic eccentricities. Jurvanen is in the UK at present and one hopes that his heavily British influenced sound will score well with Blighty audiences. After all, All the Time has ELO written all over it, though, lest we forget, ELO happened to be one of those rare British bands that were massively popular in the States and pretty overlooked at home.

Here’s hoping Jurvanen’s success works in reverse and the UK warms to his cast ashore soundscapes and sun-kissed harmonies.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Rozi Plain’s “Jogalong”

It’s surprising that a song featuring such a bizarrely amateurish music video has become a BBC radio hit. Shows as varied as prime time middle-aged evening slots, to Saturday seriously early morning alternative club culture wind down shows, have chosen Rozi Plain’s soothing Jogalong as their tune of the moment.

London based Rozi is another addition to the ever popular genre of music I call nu-folk. Nu-folk is positively crap at the best of times, but it’s Rozi’s no-frills approach that is most welcome in this era of rubbish stadium embracing banjo acts like Mumford & Sons and The Lumineers. Rozi, for now, is keen for her songs to take centre stage, eschewing the desire to incorporate stylised professionalism and grossly heightened levels of theatrics. This is simple and honest song writing that mines the interesting interior life of its creator.

There is also something admirably UK about it all in that it’s dour and dowdy. That’s meant as a compliment because there’s something so truly British about keeping things depressingly simple. Also, Jogalong’s melody harkens back to the type of music featured in 1980s educational programmes, which perhaps explains why the BBC is all over it.