Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore some of the individual tracks that have landed in our inbox over the previous few weeks. This time around, we bring you a superb light indie track, a really intense slab of metal, an 80s star continuing to forge ahead with a solo career, and more besides. As always, the SB continues to mix future classics with the unexpected, and we hope you’ll find something new to enjoy…
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In punk terms, Rob Moss mightn’t be a household name, but he’s been a part of the US alternative scene forever. He’s been a member of Government Issue, Artificial Peace and, in his own words “a bunch of other bands”, and much like Kurt Baker, that Muck dude from Muck & The Mires and Dan Kopko – who features on this 2024 release – his relative lack of fame really doesn’t matter. What he has brought over the years in terms of musical energy and enthusiasm is far more important.
Between the arrival of a new album from Silver Dollar Room and a new single from up and coming band Wird, it’s started to feel as if the last quarter of 2024 is spawning a grungy revival. Here’s something else that fits the bill. Aussie rockers Hello Enemy can be heard channelling Silverchair on bits of their current single ‘Hit Or Miss’.
In 2023, US rockers Nectarous released ‘Whiskey Hustlin’ Woman’, a great single that flaunted a massive 70s influence. The way it blended the Southern Style of Lynyrd Skynyrd with a dose of 90s style funk rock – particularly notable through an infectious guitar riff – was particularly cool, if never entirely fashionable. In some ways, it set the band in place as a more melodic Black Stone Cherry, and more than suggested there would be more great music ahead.
Formed during the pandemic of 2020, Wird are a London based band who revel in big riffs and grungy noises. Taking various influences from the 90s, they shared their ‘Screwed’ debut in 2022, which immediately cast itself in a Puddle of Mudd vein with its post-Nirvana Cobain-isms, and chugging approach, before ‘Clown’ took the band into slightly heavier climes with the aid of copious amounts of feedback and a sludgy guitar riff that equalled a number of second division grunge acts.