I feel weird even writing about other bands after the death of EVH.

My first born is even named after him, with a V instead of the W because my wife didn’t like Edward, she liked Edvard.

But life goes on and I just got my ears around AC’s new song “Shot In The Dark”. But that’s for a different post.

The Pineapple Thief

From Somerset, England.

This is their self-produced thirteenth album.

And I only got onto their train a few years ago and I’m slowly going through their back catalogue. And as much as I want to have my finger on the pulse to all new music and to what is good, I am always late to the party.

The band is made up of the main songwriter Bruce Soord on guitars and vocals, Steve Kitch on keyboards, Jon Sykes on bass and Gavin Harrison on drums.

It’s hard to explain their sound, with influences ranging from Porcupine Tree, A Perfect Circle, Pink Floyd, Muse, Radiohead, The Police, Marillion, Queensryche (Promised Land era) and Genesis.

“Versions Of The Truth” is moody and progressive, with the Chorus catch-cry of “It’s not how I remembered it”.

And they are pushing the boundaries that Pink Floyd created on this song, especially the sounds and moods from the “A Momentary Lapse Of Reason” album.

Then “Break It All” sounds like it came from the “Promised Land” album from Queensryche.

“Demons” sounds like the best Porcupine Tree song that they didn’t write and “Driving Like Maniacs” has a pretty basic music foundation with an emotive vocal line. In the old days this piano led tune would be on the charts. Check out the Chorus.

“Leave Me Be” sounds like a song from Powderfinger, one of Australia’s premier hard rock bands before they called it quits while “Out Of Line” is impressive. It has this acoustic guitar pattern that keeps on repeating and a vocal melody which is addictive. It’s very Porcupine Tree like, more in the vein of tracks like “Trains” mixed with A Perfect Circle with Gilmour like vocals.

“Stop Making Sense” has sounds that appear on “The Police” and Marillion albums. Even Gotye used those sounds on “Somebody I Used To Know” and “The Game” closes the album off, with a subliminal message to press repeat and listen to the album again.

The Smashing Pumpkins

“The Colour Of Love” is a good song.

It reminds me of “Love Song” from The Cure, so it’s very different from the Pumpkins sound I like, which is more or less captured on two albums, “Siamese Dreams” And “Mellon Collie”.

Nevertheless, I am interested to hear more.

Smile Empty Soul

They always stick around in my life with a song or two from each release. The glory from this EP goes to “Land Of The Lost”.

Billy Raffoul

“Big City” has this Springsteen and Gaslight Anthem vibe which I dig, so it was a pretty easy save. Musically its an acoustic guitar, harmonica and a vocal line. And that’s all you need sometime.

The Score

From New York City, which is going through a decent second wave of COVID-19 illnesses.

So how did The Score come into my life?

Well, my kids were listening to the song “Best Part” from em. It had enough there to get me curious to check em out.

Their sound is like the Imagine Dragons sound when they broke out big and a sound which Shinedown would push on their last few albums.

And I had no idea how massive the band is. On Spotify they have 4.28m monthly listeners. Some of their earlier songs are over a 100 million streams, while the songs “Stronger” and “Born For This” which appear on this album are at 54m and 34m streams respectively on Spotify.

So I did some reading.

The Score is basically two dudes.

Eddie Anthony sings and plays guitar and drums. Edan Dover sings, plays keyboards and produces.

I think this is the sign of the times. You don’t need any extras who don’t contribute to the song. The days of just being a drummer or just a bass player or just a guitarist in a band are over, unless you play instrumental music. And in the history of music it was always one or two and maybe three writers in a song.

So I’m listening to the “Carry On” album, released towards the end of August 2020.

“Golden” is basically an 80’s song, all dolled up and ready for a night out in 2020.

Take be back to my youth, bring me back to my roots
I don’t know where I am going, but I know that its golden

It doesn’t matter that we got older because our youth and our roots are what made us who we are. Those innocent and hopeful dreams, every single one of em, golden till the end.

“Running All Night” is another song worth of attention.

“Alone in the dark just my thoughts in a room”

That’s the scary part of life. We could be at our worst or at our best. We could be the most creative or the most depressed.

“I’ve been running all night in my head”

And that’s what we seem to do on a daily basis. Our thoughts move from different paradigms into a blend of paradigms and into a single paradigm. Running through different scenarios of certain events and what if’s.

And there are songs like “Fire” and “Stronger” which sound like they came from the recent Shinedown album.

Well Part 5 is done and from the looks of my playlist, there will be one more part to close off the September releases.