“We wanted to write and produce songs in the spirit of the old days,” says Europe founder member and frontman Joey Tempest. True to his word, Come This madness fulfills the promise of the 2024 single Hold Your Head up as a sign of things to come.

A full package of soaring melodies and big choruses joust merrily with strong connections to their past as a similarly strong assortment of songs peppers the whole the record. Europe take a leaf from their own album closer Nothing Can Follow This and move in for the kill.

One of those albums where every track might be someone’s favourite. Like your seasonal tin of biscuits, there’s plenty of variety from which to choose. This Time Of Year offers power balladeering with lashings of sentiment to the big drama effect from the organ on Scandinavian Eyes (our pick) and The Devil’s Back (particularly in the “I’m free to be me” delivery) has Europe in Deep Purple territory for not the only time on the record which is out lasting impression. Kudos to Europe keys man Mic Michaels although John Norum is far from missing in action.

The latter means in our books that the ‘return’ of Europe is not so much a celebration of their glory days but of the genre of melodic Hard Rock in general.

From the Green Room Social to the 5150, “world class talent and local treasure” Katie Knipp releases a second live album – what she calls “my love letter to live music.” And off she goes to blast of the faces of those gathered and proceeds to do exactly that as a raw and wild Snata Cruz Blues kicks in.

Standards set, Katie and the band rarely let up, accelerating into a bone-shaking and inspirational she’s on truly righteous form. A band that crank out variations on Blues drenched hymns as Katie provides a constant stream of incantations in a set that’s both wastes not a note and is hard to fault. Despite being only a third of the way through the set, Dirty Cables is a thrilling highlight as the group continue to swagger and provide the footings for a soulful recital. Legendary characters Tom Bell and John The Revelator join the bus as its rollocks and rocks along.

Of the three covers included in the set we pick on Springsteen’s State Trooper whose brooding original gets its neck wrung and given a real swampy and dirty new coat. A seal setter on an album from Katie that serves notice as the reminder that :“nothing can replace the experience of human beings gathering together in a room and creating something real.” Well said!

Cornish Alt Folk singer-songwriter of Irish heritage, Sam Horan follows up on a batch of promising singles with a full blown debut album. A musician inspired by the likes of artists who’ve earned a reputation of single name identification, Young, Carthy and Drake, his songs are delicately composed, woven together by intricate guitar-picked arrangements and subtle vocals and the production carries an up close yet spacious vibe. No frills – what you see/hear is what you get

The music might be steeped in Folk, but draws inspiration from a range of sources; the harmonic
conventions of Jazz gently guide him as he checks his chops on Paths and yacht rocks his way dreamily through A Momenr, whilst the lyrics feel more akin to Indie Folk, which lends the music a personal intimacy as he reflects on Ancestors and the passing of storms.

Sam switches focus from the internal to the bigger picture as he addresses the power of the passage of time on Time in a series of musings that see him mulling over I’ll Get By. The sentiment of “I wish I could fly so high,” in Why is a nice little snapshot of the sort of bouts of hopeful and wistful escapism that the collection presents.

So, having been bowled over by the single, is the album any good? Well, Mark McCambridge, from Belfast, who trades as Arborist, knows a fair old bit about song construction, and, by employing a myriad of textures and instrumental tones, makes damn sure it is.

With 11 songs, the mood is indisputably woozy and chilled, his gentle voice paired to ambient soundscapes, all managing to creep up on your consciousness, a slow seep rather than a sonic bang. Whilst the rhythms tend towards the electronic, it is fumes of warm americana and folk that cascade around the icier electronica. Thus pedal steel, pianos and twangy guitars feature often, contrasting and complementing any more kosmische aspects.

Opener, Looking 4 Love slides in a subtle hook, sticking suddenly fast as a harp sweeps you into the harmonium led chorus. Then, more country and Irish influenced songs, particularly Bye Bye Johnny Cash, follow, with, also, a nod to Philly for Go Kill The Fatted Calf. Dream Of A Rose is an instrumental, with beautifully programmed percussion and a lush synthetic retro organ sound, whilst Sono Io is sung in Italian and could see you a cornetto in seconds.

I’ve Been A Flâneur may be, I guess, a confessional, but, as McCambridge returns to the acoustic sway of What Is It You’re Asking, and the superior piano ballad of Exploded View, the album is motoring up to a cheeky close, with that splendid single, Taming Of Horses.

We don’t like Skip Forward Sallys at ATB. Play it all.

Without wanting to come across all Alan Partridge, what is the trouble with love? The highs and lows and the, yes, trouble it can cause, is addressed on the title track and the rest of the album a subject made for Blues Rock of the Joanne Shaw Taylor style.

And thank HMV playlist for drawing attention to What Good Is My Love? that features Orianti, while on the subject of guests, regular oppo, Joe Bonamassa helps to kick off the set on the title track. A set that’s the latest in a series of recent top notch albums from Joanne Shaw Taylor who we’ve also witnessed ripping up stages on tours over the past few years.

JST’s purple patch of late continues in the constant stream of class in all departments from songwriting to production and performances and guitar slinging excellence. The tribal pulse of Hell Or High Water is ready made for extending into a stirring live jam

Big production numbers (This Is Who I Am the newest in her list of contenders should there ever be another Bond film) or those that do the job of ‘bringing things down a bit’ allow for breathers as the excitement levels and tempos are roused and peak with Never Gonna Please ‘Em All sees the Joanne Shaw Taylor soul show crank into top gear. I know which songs I want to see in the set for the Manchester RNCM return next May. Spoilt for choice she may be now with an ever expanding catalogue of equally acclaimed songs, but as she sings with a certain confident swagger accompanied by a brassy swell, “only you can tell that this is who I am.”

This is an absolute joy! Sure, you can have all your world fusions and ethnobeats, but ditch the doof doof, why don’t you? Acoustic, largely, alchemy at it’s best, Bamako Express, based in Ghent, are a quartet who can merge African poly-rhythms aplenty, balafon, n’goni and djembe, with strings more of a Flemish persuasion, making it sound as effortless and natural as carbonnade and jollof. On the same plate.

With songs sung in Bambara, a language of Mali and Burkina Faso, guitar and violin complement and contrast beautifully the trans-Saharan soundscape to provide light, tight and easy listening, as subtly complex as anything put together by sequencer and synth.

The gloriously uplifting effervescence of Yira Ye opens proceedings, and the mix of balafon, vocals, electric guitar and violin is perfect. It is the two Africans, Ousmane and Joël Diarra, who take on the vocals and traditional instruments, whilst Anouk Sanczuk adds the violin and Florian De Schepper the guitars.

Thereafter the mix is of instrumentals, often built around Sanczuk’s playing, with the tinkle of rhythms keeping al in balance, and songs, these embracing styles, from desert blues to more afro-caribbean crossover material, like a less densely populated Orchestre Baobab.

Hard to pick favourites, but the dancier vibe of Groove Du Croco is hard to resist, bringing in a hit of Game Of Thrones, Esso’s or Dorne. Alternatively, Tchena Bodzja contrives to be, at least to my ears, a first example of Balkan/Burkino Faso fusion.

Come, let yourself be lulled in to the eerie ethereality of this uncompromising self-styled drone-folk futurist. But this isn’t any harsh monotone keening pipe/box maelstrom from modern Dublin, this is a breezier wide open skies acoustic majesty, from Kingston, coastal NY state, tinged also with a fair old taste of peyote psychedelia.

Previously performing as Aaron Carroll Hodges, sometimes as Longshoreman, of late he has taken more to this new identity, which reflects his heritage, being also the name of his Japanese paternal great-grandfather. Utilising a mix of vocal harmonies, dashes of field recordings, and layers of guitar and piano, there is also the subtle inclusion of more kosmische elements, leaning into experimentalism.

Opening with the gentle picking of Blue, enticing clangs of doomy electric guitar add interest enough to keep listening. Hana then goes in for the kill with the gorgeously layered Fields Of Light. And if it carries a hint of Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball, actually, so much the better.

Over 10 songs, the mood becomes slowly more intense; Appearing at Dusk is a slow coagulating instrumental, and could be the soundtrack for a Gothic Western. But Shōmetsu / Kodō, the penultimate song, is a bit of a magnum opus, near 8 minutes of ethereal tone poem, drawing on his roots. As it progresses, so it seems to come delicately apart, if still maintaining form and substance, leaving you oddly discombobulated. it is superb, building to a very Angelo Badalamento climax. You need the debrief of The Great Darkness, which follows, to recover.