Our Tracks Of The Week contest has been a fixture on this website for more than 13 years, bringing you somewhere north of 5000 different tracks, and this week, it was Erk Grönwall’s turn to celebrate as his new single Written In The Scars became the latest track to triumph in rock’n’roll’s premiere weekly song contest. So congratulations to him.
Congratulations also to Cardinal Black, whose Saving Grace single wasn’t too far behind, and to The Jailbirds, whose Where Is The Rock N’ Roll? offering positioned them on the podium for the very first time. This week, eight more Monsters of Rock are ready for your ears. Enjoy them.
Ayron Jones – Glad You Came
Oooooh hello Alice In Chains! Or rather, 21st-century Seattle star Ayron Jones, though there’s a very generous nod to Cantrell and co in this thumpingly oomphy, roughened hard rock beefcake. Brooding, groovy and shot through with Jones’ soul-gravel voice and strident, Kravitz-y guitar soloing, it’s a seriously appetising first taste of his next album, Excuse Me – his first in three years, and due out in the new year.
Nicotine Dolls – Gimme Sympathy
One of the on-the-rise groups worth having on your radar, Nicotine Dolls make a deliciously cool, filthy racket on Gimme Sympathy, all thick swaggering guitars, stomping drums and, in frontman Sam Cieri (he hit the spotlight via America’s Got Talent, but don’t let that put you off), a singer with the raw power and drive of a prize-fighter pushing hard for his first title. Need a hit of straight-shooting, punchily executed rock’n’roll? You could do a lot worse than this.
Joanne Shaw Taylor – Never Gonna Please ‘Em All
We love Joanne’s ballads (smooth yet nuanced affairs with feet in pop and soul, at least as much as the blues), but it’s toe-tapping bluesy rock’n’rollers like this that tend to really stick with us. Never Gonna Please Em All rocks, rolls and struts like Stevie Ray Vaughan trading licks with Joe Bonamassa – capped with the kind of classy, powerful Telecaster solo of which she’s a master at this point. Nice.
Eddie 9V – Satisfy The Way I Do
The Atlanta-bred Auerbach protege channels his sunkissed Al Green side on this soulful lil’ number from his excellent upcoming album, Down Here. Smooth yet toe-tapping and naturally packed with cool colour (swampy funk, blues rock’n’roll, RN’B…) it affirms him as one of Nashville’s current crop of smart, rootsy voices to keep an eye out for – maybe even catch him live, when he comes to the UK in March 2027.
Floor Jansen – Everything Is Moving On
Out of Nightwish and diving into a new solo chapter, symphonic metal’s own Xena Warrior Princess punches high and hard on this latest single – think leather-booted theatre, strings and heavy guitars, with a swooping, stirring pop melody at the heart of it all. “For me, this song is about being awake to the life you have now,” Floor says. “We so easily tell ourselves we’ll do something later, but life keeps moving. Enjoy it, take the chances that matter to you, and make choices that feel right for who you are and where you want to go. Sometimes that also means letting go of things that no longer feel right.”
Scarlet Rebels – God’s Honest Truth
The Welsh rockers continue to up their game on this pensive, mid-tempo banger from their next album Flawed By Design. Written as singer/guitarist Wayne Doyle processed the death of a friend, contemplating “what the point of it all was”, it marries emotive, nuanced melody with big driving guitars. Contemporary rock’n’roll with an old school heart and dashes of grunge in its veins.
The Lemon Twigs – Look For Your Mind
The Lemon Twigs’ most recent album Look For Your Mind arrived in May, and now the title track has received single status. It’s exactly what you’d expect from the D’Addario brothers, with a lolloping Ticket To Ride-style pop-psychedelic sound augmented by the kind of apparently effortless songwriting that’s become their trademark. Throw in some Byrds, some Nazz, even some Monkees, and you’ve got the gist. Lovely stuff.
Henge – Brains
And now for something completely different, as celestial rave-proggers Henge conjure up a squelching, demented hunk o’ disco space rock. The spectral magnificence of Brains is accentuated by a video which finds the band performing inside an actual brain, which must surely be a first for any type of music, including that produced by musicians from another planet. “The human brain is truly a thing of wonder,” says frontcreature Zpor. “And I naturally felt compelled to write an ode to it.” We presume that the rest of the band – Goo, Sol and Nom – agree.
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