Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore some of the more interesting individual tracks that have landed in our inbox over the past couple of weeks. This time around, we bring you an unexpected cover tune, two slices of top drawer power pop, and among other things, a great track that bends elements from various different genres into something genuinely interesting. As always, we hope you find something new to enjoy.
*
Rising Irish rock band Black Dog Moon have recently released their second album ‘Hell and Back’. Built around an old school sound, the record’s harder edged tracks ‘Neon Queen’ and ‘Heavy Shot of Love’ show how well the musicians can work a thunderous melodic metal riff or two, but it’s when channelling more melodic influences that the album really comes alive. The album’s clear standout ‘Black Hearts and Diamonds’ shares a classic 70s blues rock feel and comes absolutely loaded with confident lead guitar work that appears to draw its biggest influence from Gary Moore’s “slow” reworking of Thin Lizzy’s classic ‘Don’t Believe A Word’, while the buoyant melodic rock of ‘1985’ sounds like Meat Loaf fronting a party rock band with rootsy undertones.
In 2024, Graham Bonnet and his band took to the stage at the legendary Whiskey A Go Go in Los Angeles. On this night, the intimate venue saw the veteran performer plough through a sixteen song set that celebrated many of the highlights of his long career.
The audio from the Graham Bonnet Band’s 2025 live release ‘Lost In Hollywood Again’ might not sound quite as vital as 2017’s unexpected Alcatrazz reunion in Japan (released for posterity on ‘Parole Denied’), but it’s clear that Bonnet – a man well into his seventies at the time of this show – still loves what he does, and is more than capable of summoning a huge amount of volume at a time of life when some of his peers sound like a shadow of their former selves.
In the summer of 2025, The Rockerati released the ‘Black Book’ EP, a four song release celebrating a retro rock style that built upon the year’s previous single releases in a way that suggested the Brighton based band had reached peak confidence. Their earlier releases had attracted attention from a couple of major rock mags, but there was something about these DIY recordings that came a little closer to sharing a raw and honest sound.
As their name might suggest, Messiness make music that doesn’t always fit neatly into a box. By taking elements of rock and indie, a swathe of older psychedelic elements and a pinch of alt-pop, their debut album shares sounds that are always interesting, even if they don’t always work.