QUIZ SHOW – Flotsam EP

On the surface, Quiz Show appears to be a rather inauspicious name, but on their debut album, this band immediately showed a vast amount of potential. Then again, that’s something that should be expected from a gathering that originally included Guided By Voices drummer Kevin March with Shudder To Think’s Jesse Krakow and Chris Matthews. Their first release created a great buzz around the still new band, and despite a line up change – Joe Billy replaces March, who was likely busy recording one of the year’s twenty GBV albums – the three tracks that make up this follow up EP make it very clear why.

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THE REAL GONE SINGLES BAR #48

Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore the various individual mp3s that have landed in our inbox over the previous few weeks. This time around, we bring you a very melodic number from a sometime Ministry collaborator, a complex one man show from a British prog musician, a quick hit of country, a near flawless slice of power pop, and more besides. As always, we hope you find something new to enjoy, or something that gives you the curiosity to dig a little deeper.

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SET FEUX – Set Feux

Set Feux features the talents of vocalist/keyboardist Diana Planche – a musician who first broke through as a member of Canadian indie pop band The Paint Movement – along with her husband Barzin, and wearenotwhoweare man Kevin Kralik. On this debut album, it often feels as if it’s Planche who’s in the driving seat, even if she doesn’t have complete artistic control. The material isn’t ever busy, but the very relaxed world that Set Feux creates, seemingly effortlessly, allows the album to be filled with all manner of fine music. In just nine songs, this self titled release takes in elements of light dream pop, mellow and almost soulful tunes, downtempo vibes that occasionally hint at the warm trip hop of Morcheeba, a pinch of light country and more besides. You might read the usual lazy claims that Kate Bush and Fleetwood Mac have been pivotal influences within the Set Feux sound, but if that’s the case, those never dominate the end result. The tunes here are far more lax, and even more distinctive in their own way.

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PRAYING MANTIS – Defiance

With a run of enjoyable albums that began with 2015’s ‘Legacy’, Praying Mantis seemed to go from strength to strength over the following decade. Granted, a few of the tracks on that album and its successors (2018’s ‘Gravity’ and 2022’s ‘Katharsis’) were a little heavier sounding, but Chris and Tino Troy’s gifts for a strong melody continued to set the band apart from so many of the second tier acts associated with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and when dropping into numbers boasting more of an AOR/melodic rock hook, the band sounded as good as ever.

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A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS – Change Your God / It is Time

For those who’ve followed the musical progress of New York shoegazers A Place To Bury Strangers since their early days, the band’s gradual, and very natural shift into more commercial sounds has likely formed a very interesting journey. For those who discovered the band a little later, these “commercial sounds” could still feel cold and confronting, but somewhere beneath their distortion and darkness, it should’ve become increasing clear that these Jesus & Mary Chain obsessives were capable of wielding a great tune.

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