Tag Archives: Ryan Hamilton

Sizzling summer singles

17 Monday Aug 2026

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Let’s pretend your biggest worries right now involve finding a beach towel, a ride to some beachy locale, and keeping sand out of the radio. And if you’re particular about your summer playlist you can needle drop your way through the 21 tunes gathered here to get some ideas.

We kick things off with a new song from Australian band Beddy Rays. “Morning Light” has a rollicking indie rock sound not unlike The Front Bottoms or Catfish and the Bottlemen. Definitely singalong-able. It’s hard to put your finger on just what Murfreesboro, Tennessee band Piglett is doing style-wise. And I really like that. Their recent album On The Upswing alternates between moody alienation and slightly less moody alienation. “The Rock in Your Shoe” is a sweetly melancholy number carried along by its spare electric guitar work and vulnerable vocal attack. I really dug Jody and Jerms 2025 LP Love Descends so a new single from the band was a welcome development. “Grace” is no disappointment, marrying their impressive range of stylistic elements – folk, pop, indie rock – with their usual aplomb. Why isn’t Richmond, Virginia’s Dazy a big star? Everything about this act’s sound and demeanor says huge impact to me. Their recent double-sided single “Big Problem” / “Gravity” sounds like a cross between Beck and Sugar Ray and that’s a winning combo. Toronto’s Zuffalo sound like a seventies throwback on “Hellos Are Free,” a track from their recent album Flock of the Town. The vibe is the rock side of country rock, a bit Band-like or reminiscent of The Jayhawks.

Cheeky Chris Stamey has put out an album covering old tunes but dubbed it Modernism. That could have a number meanings ranging from sarcasm to interpretation. Whatever the intent, it’s an inspired collection drawing from The Kinks, The Beatles, The Everly Brothers, Sly and the Family Stone, and many more. But I’m drawn to the mesmerising reworking of Stamey’s own tune “Of Time and All She Brings to Mind.” I keep hearing REM. But that’s hardly surprising because when I listen to REM I often think I’m hearing the Stamey’s previous band The dBs. Ryan Hamilton has a new LP Haunted By American Dreams and right now I’m loving “That Girl” and its particular mix of chiming guitars and a Tom Petty melodic drive. Definitely replay-able again and again. Leeds band The Rise and Fall offer up a range of choices on their second long-playing release Coma Chameleon but I found myself drawn to the driving, sonorous “Pigs.” The guitars never let up while the vocals sound like a blend of church monk chorus meets Pugwash. What’s not to love? Vista Blue are so on top of popular culture. They’re always coming out with timely cuts about politics, sports and entertainment. This time they draw inspiration from the summer smash movie The Odyssey with “Wooden Horse.” The song notches down their usual frenetic pop punk attack for a more measured melodic pace, to great effect. First Leeds now Sheffield: Yorkshire’s music scene is definitely getting a look in here. This time it’s First Prize with a pleasant song entitled “Goodbye to the Day.” I hear more than little of 1980s Haircut 100.

On “Wherever” My Raining Stars so evoke a melancholic late 1980s UK guitar vibe it was like I was transported back to Manchester’s Arndale walking street. “It Will Take Me A While” from the same LP Toy Club is pretty sweet as well. Scottish lush guitar pop masters Dropkick are teasing us with a song well in advance of a new album Throughlines, coming out in October, cleverly titled “Side Note.” The mood is dreamy but with a touch of unresolved tension. Definitely LP appetite whetting. I initially thought the title to Lolas new single was “Summer Song” but turns out the band has produced another fine bit of hooky pop with a political theme. The actual title is “Summer Smog,” effectively soundtracking our world-on-fire 2026. Not that we need reminding but The Goods want us to know that “Summer’s Almost Gone.” But here’s the good news – this track is jangle-gorgeous. Almost like Teenage Fanclub meets the Beach Boys. San Fran’s Richard Turgeon may have (slightly) slowed the pace of his prolific releases but he spares nothing on the creative front. His new single “Let’s Hide Away” captures the uncertainty of our present times, balancing an earnest, low-key vocal against an alternating spare-versus-wall of guitars backdrop.

It feels like it’s been a while since we’ve heard from Philadelphia’s 2nd Grade. “Cellophane Girls” reminds me how much I’ve been missing them. Just listen to these shimmering lead guitar lines and subtle melodic hooks. Bliss! Another reliable set of guitar hook-masters come in the form of Seattle band Shake Some Action. Forget the Pacific Northwest for moment, this act sounds like they’re from swinging London 1966. That mod elan is definitely there on their latest solo single “Last Long Weekend.” Now for something a bit different, Ben Guterl from Forth Wanderers and Dan Howard from Victoryland team up as Billboard Style doing a song called “Billboard Style.” The track has a relentless drone that is curiously soothing and danceable to boot. Westside Cowboy have got a new LP out entitled It Goes On with cool tunes like “Kick Stones (The Boys)” and “Pin Up Boys” but I’m going to double back their January EP So Much Country ‘Til We Get There to showcase “The Wahs.” This is another track with a relentless quality to it, banging on with a buzzy guitar backdrop and a sunny singalong melody. The tenor of the new Hardwicke Circus single “Behind the Lines of Reason” is all 1980s sonic melodrama. Definitely montage worthy.

Wrapping things up this round is a fantastic tip from our friend Ralph for Melbourne, Australia band Hexham Heads. Last year they put out a fine self-titled EP but the track that has me hitting replay right now is “In Time,” their contribution to most recent Popboomerang collection, Shake Your Popboomerang 4. Light, jangly, with just a touch of XTC here and there.

Let’s pretend its mid-July rather than mid-August. Plenty of time to give a newly minted summer singles playlist a few beach spins. And you can hit the hyperlinks above to find plenty of raw material for it here. Definitely.

Photo courtesy Thomas Hawk Flikr collection.

A James Bond song redux

15 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by in Poprock Themepark

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Songs BondI don’t often get to use a word like ‘redux’ but when I do it’s definitely for collections like this. In Songs, Bond Songs: The Music of 007 twenty-five artists ‘restore, bring back’ and ‘present in a new way’ the entire canon of theme songs from the James Bond movies, with an accent on indie, poprock treatments. Why bother, you might ask? Well the Bond canon is unique in so many ways. The quality of the songs stretching over a half century is surprisingly strong and consistent. And, as is apparent from the performances on this record, they are open to broad and varied re-interpretations. Some performances here are fairly safe and unremarkable but most try to do something original with the basic raw material of their specific Bond song. I won’t comment on everything but rather just highlight what I think are the more unique, sometimes daring, and ultimately single-worthy remakes from the collection.

It makes sense to start with the ever-present James Bond Theme itself. Peppered throughout the various Bond films, often featuring wildly different arrangements and orchestrations, the theme never failed to raise audience excitement, at least for my crew of 1970s ten year olds. What different kind of treatment could possibly be offered up now? Well Lannie Flowers rises to the challenge, offering up a self-referential postmodern pastiche of the theme, including bits from songs that were themselves influenced by it. First, Flowers cuts up the traditional parts and puts them back together in a new and interesting way. The basic electric guitar hook is there and played just a bit faster with a nice trebly bite. Then at 1:13 he throws in a riff from McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” which ultimately segues into the orchestral Bond-ish intro that appeared on the Beatles’ American album recording of “Help” – brilliant and inspired!

Next up, the amazingly talented and criminally underappreciated Wyatt Funderburk’s cover of Bacharach and David’s “The Look of Love.” Is he Dusty Springfield? No, nobody can touch that goddess. But what we have here is a classy treatment that offers up some nice vocal and instrumental twists, vibing ever so slightly on the Pet Shop Boys at times. In the ‘didn’t see that coming’ department, Ryan Hamilton put out a very boppy poprock record recently (2015’s Hell of a Day) so handing him Louis Armstrong’s rather laconic “We Have All the Time in the World” might seem a curious choice. But it works. Sometimes spare, sometimes intricate acoustic guitar work undergirds Ryan’s spacious take on the vocal. Very car-top-down wind-blowing sunshine music. Shifting gears, can you be an undiscovered superstar? Because Mike Viola has it all going on: record producer, movie music provider, songwriter, recording artist, etc. But his synthesizer-laden remake of Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does it Better” highlights his impressive vocal talent. Ultimately, understated and ear-wormy.

What we see on this record is a tendency to downplay glamour and bombast, staples of the Bond music genre, in favour of subtlety and nuance. Take the Freedy Johnston contribution, for instance. Now personally I’d gladly listen to Johnston sing his grocery list – there is just something about the combination of his voice and acoustic guitar. But his re-imagining of Sheena Easton’s “For Your Eyes Only” adds up to more than his usual genius. He has such a light touch on the vocal and guitar, it lets the tenderness and vulnerability of song really come through. Another surprising cover featured here is Jay Gonzalez’s samba-inflected take on Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill.” He really rescues this tune from its overwrought mid-1980s over-production, demonstrating there really is a song here and it’s a good one. Look Park’s cover of “The World is Not Enough” represents another rescue mission, this time recovering the hooks buried in the original Garbage version. Hard to believe this is the same song. But if ever there was a song doctor, it would Chris Collingwood from Fountains of Wayne, working here with his new vehicle Look Park. Last up on this Bond remake playlist is Big Box Store’s playful remake of Madonna’s “Die Another Day.” I had a soft soft for the original, even if it was a bit busy and overwrought at times. BBS strip away everything that is not essential, anchoring the song in what sound like the low buttons on the accordion. Eerie, haunting, and catchy.

Songs, Bond Songs is a creative project put together by Curry Cuts, some guys who seem to have nothing better to do than dream up kooky compilation ideas and then get a whole load of cool bands to go along with their crazy schemes. I say we encourage them.