Yes: those Big Decision members are embracing their second phase career with glee and have followed up last year's ‘Twenty Four' EP  with another  one entitled ‘Those Days Are Gone' which they recorded last November in Leicestershire again with the same original lineup. The constituent tracks being   "Those Days Are Gone", "Sinking Feeling" and "Give It A Chance".

Emotional awareness presumably looms large in their writing given the titles of tracks such as "Shake The Feeling" last time & "Sinking Feeling" on this one. Given their commitment to their creativity after three & a half decades, this sort of motivation is hardly surprising, though I find it interesting how much has spilled over into what they write about: occasionally overtly but there is a case for detecting an interest in reflecting on the more metaphysical aspects of life: something I suppose has been encouraged by the journey each has been on since they first formed.

Metrics don't really exist for the proposition "getting better as musicians" even if one assumes they have done. Listening to the music of their first phase incarnation, they sound pretty good back then. However if you (like me) listen out for it, you can hear a lightness of touch & greater confidence in knowing what not to play as well as what… which must reflect experience. That said, there also appears to be a deliberate adhesion to the musical values they started off with: an integrity of economy seeming to not want to waste a note nor to embellish songs needlessly with tricks picked up over time. That is certainly to their great credit.

There is also a surprisingly high quotient of wistfulness involved, especially for a band who seem to have embraced enjoyment of living as a key motif. The sheer foolishness of what they observe around them seems to spur the writing (and they don't necessarily exempt themselves from criticism) and again you get the impression that whatever motivated them to make music again, it was to say something worth saying, that they wanted to get off their minds rather than just (self) indulging in making stuff for the sake of it.

This is a lean & well honed EP: well worth the effort that went into it & well worth your time in giving it a listen.

Happy Birthday!  Well it probably isn't yours today but it is that of Faith from Daydreams & to celebrate,  she & Joseph have released their second single, "Just Breathe" (a follow-up to debut "Map to No Place").

There are I suppose a number of cues to what it might sound like before you have even heard it: the title, the artwork & the precedent of the earlier track strongly suggest something more ethereal and unbounded by the pull of the planet too much.

And you'd be pretty much right.

Once again, these two members of Permanent Daylight have correctly identified one of their songs which merits that lighter touch and taken it down the gentler road.

I'm not sure how much they are channelling a late 60's vibe but as with their debut, I hear echoes: the backing reminds me of "Everybody's Talkin'" somewhat and it's good to come across musicians in tune with that period when simpler acoustic arrangements underpinned lyrics of adult reflection & nuance & allowed the song centre stage.

Considering that one of the singles from their other band was called "Bittersweet", you know that they don't deal in trite platitudes but seem to prefer songs of duality where often opposed emotions are explored & balances sought. This may be out on a birthday but it's not really a party record but instead deals with ideas worth considering every day of the year: ones which are timeless and long explored by musicians and artists in other media across cultures & centuries.

The confessional tone of the words are matched in emotional courage by the whole arrangement: this is wearing your heart on your sleeve and not providing anything to hide behind on the record. It takes some bravery to strip yourself off this much in terms of what you are singing about & how you are performing, but the confidence they have in themselves to do so is evidenced in the restraint of "Just Breathe": and that simply adds to the sense of truth & charm.

If you enjoyed the Sofa So Good debut single "Psychic  Flashes" (which we reviewed in February 2025 and you can also find on ‘Hot Music Live Presents Volume Fifteen' and delighted in how  Lani Kayah & Scrumblebear transformed the Septic and the Tanks song "Continental Breakfast"  (their remix is on the ‘Extended Playtime' EP), then you'll be pleased that their own debut EP called ‘Seagull So Good' is now available.

Featuring "Psychic Flashes", you'll also find two new songs on there: "Moira's Wet Fish" and "Paws to the Floor".

The former, a pleasing drum & bass orientated paean  to the Spon End landmark, however takes off from that starting point in what is now becoming a Sofa So Good trademark: a trajectory of such originality & radicalism that while it has an anchor back in the inspiration, the samples liberally sprinkled throughout the bubbling original electrobeat track don't seem very likely to have been field recordings from the actual premises or indeed any other commercial fishmonger. Or if they were, one can't imagine the business surviving long given that you'd imagine the more successful would tend towards the prosaic retail of seafood rather than discussing the issue of communicating with fish with customers or the ethics of selling dead ones. Try that in Spon Street & you'd freak a few people out I think.

The second song displays less paranoia (as well as 100% fewer lyrics) and to my ears pays homage to the first era of electronic pop music. If the pair for their next project manage to invent a time machine (and why not?) they could do worse than to take this one back to say 1981 and make good profit auctioning it off to aspirant chart seeking bands as a backing track to set them on their way.

The key I think is that they describe the EP process as "lots of fun to make": they clearly make their music for the love of it & in addition to being good at what they do, the pleasure is part of what they communicate. There is much humour in "Psychic  Flashes" and "Moira's Wet Fish" which you'd have to be pretty insensitive to miss. While danceability & the lower end of the sound spectrum are obvious important parts of their DNA, I think emphasising this aspect is very crucial to why I like it: much electronic music has taken itself extremely seriously over the years: from time to time arguably too much so, and if Sofa So Good are providing a corrective, more power to them.

For those of you who are looking forwards to seeing DANE-O perform at the ‘Hot Music Live Presents' fundraiser for The Tin on April 10^th alongside Duke Keats, Reign The Girl Band and Shanade, the release of his latest single "Writings of a Letter" (the follow up to "Spoken Word") will be pleasing.

This one may surprise those familiar with his releases to date: but that's a good thing surely. In fact as he gears up for his debut album, DANE-O is keen to make it clear that his music has range and so this single will help prepare you for the mix to come.

It nevertheless shares much of the intensity of his other songs and while swapping to synths certainly shifts the sound from the acoustic guitar used last time, the unwillingness to compromise on his vision also remains. We have layers of overlapping voices & instruments creating a dense collage here & if DANE-O prefers to prioritise the integrity of his conception over more mainstream approaches, he also shows respect for his audience in setting them challenges of unpicking (should they wish to) the strands of meaning & intention.

Tickets for April 10^th to hear this music live are available in advance (saving you money on the door price) via:

https://events.humanitix.com/hot-music-live-duke-keats-reign-shanade-dane-o

I'm really excited to reveal the lineup for our June 5th 'Hot Music Live Presents' fundraiser for The Tin 

Featuring so many local legends making their return to the Coventry stage, you'll get to enjoy Deathsex Bloodbath, Batsch, Little Girl Screaming (in full band format) and Stegosaurus Sex Party.

To ensure you get your ticket (and save on the door price), please visit:

https://events.humanitix.com/hot-music-live-deathsex-bloodbath-batsch-little-girl-screaming-stegosaurus-sex-party

From just looking at the lineup of Banoffee, Permanent Daylight, Reiss Pinder & The Illusion, I knew we had a wonderful night of the freshest local original music ahead of us at the latest (the eleventh) ‘Hot Music Live presents' fundraiser for The Tin.

However if there is one thing which beats even the prospect of artistry of this quality, it must be so many revelatory performances: each one offered something even I hadn't anticipated.

Opening the night were The Illusion: another great band to emerge from the  ‘Live On Stage' project which The Tin run in conjunction with Coventry Music. Therefore there were many in the audience wholly unfamiliar with them to date but (as I do) I checked out the reactions of those watching & not only was the level of approval extremely high (and as ever there were plenty of other musicians in attendance) but I was approached by a number of people to offer unsolicited plaudits & asking for details.

I've mentioned before my admiration for the young bands emerging from the project in terms of their fearlessness on stage & staggering ability to adapt to absences of key members (I think part of the confidence encouraged by the mentors includes this resilience): you literally could not tell that there was depping going on, let alone that this was only their second gig in front of an audience not comprised of members of the project.

The Illusion have skill: they also have a commendable attitude & should go far: do look out for them.

In the case of Reiss, I am a great fan of his band HEK but hadn't ever caught one of his solo sets, so although I knew one band song he played and his current single "By Your Side", most of his set was new to me: and included some stunning new material recorded in the last few weeks which I urge you to look out for as it is released over the summer.

Obviously he is a charismatic live performer when in band context, so as you might anticipate, he commands attention when he's by himself. However what is clear when seeing him like this is why he's operating in this way: in addition to all the great rock songs he brings to HEK, he also writes deeply emotional ones which demand a stripped back delivery and in which he exposes himself to a degree which caught even me (and you know how much I rate his compositional & performance talents) by surprise.

Look out for his upcoming material: you'll be as impressed as people were last night & he tells me at his other recent appearances.

Permanent Daylight of course have been playing regularly since graduating from ‘Live On Stage' as well as bringing out a number of well received singles etc. In fact their body of work now has grown to the point where difficult choices need to be made while composing setlists. It's a good problem to have & judging by the wonderful new song they played last night (look out for Joseph channelling Johnny Marr when it comes out) their writing is developing as much as their playing. At the moment they are performing perhaps more regularly than ever before (look out for both them & Project Overload among many other bands playing at the Heart of England Music Hub  Festival at The Butts Stadium on Sunday) and seasoned fans all felt that they just get better & better. I have to say that they'll get no argument from me. At this rate they'll soon be getting longer set times & then the song choice decisions should ease. Thanks too to Faith who depped on bass for The Illusion in addition to the set with her own band.

I have raved so much about Banoffee that you might think I was reaching a point where further accolades might come at a more measured pace: indeed I thought as much. But no, Banoffee are that elite level band who still stimulate paradigm shift type reassessments.

To be honest, while I knew that they sometimes played with a drummer, I'd only ever caught Ella & Cia as a duo. I consequently considered their exquisite songs as being perfectly realised live in an intimate setting. Now I know better. Like all the best writing, these same songs work well in strikingly different arrangements: and believe me they unleashed a level of power I'd never dreamed of.

The drummer was Nevaeh and in one of those moments which seem to crop up in many of these shows, I only discovered afterwards that this was only the second show they'd played together & believe me folks, you couldn't tell. They just seemed so perfect together & as I say, reinterpreted Banoffee songs in a way that stunned me.

They too now have a setlist conundrum issue: too much excellent new material nudging out old favourites including songs I fully expected.

Banoffee are quite rightly making waves now with more & more gigs in London including one at the Islington O2 coming up: the word is spreading.

Locally to us, they play the next Sofar session along with NYOTAA, who in one of those coincidences which makes reviewing such a joy, was part of the team helping out last night.

Of course wonderful music only works when you get to hear it as the artists intended, so credit to Laura Birkin who engineered the sound to perfection with the assistance of Jake from Stereotypical.

It's only three weeks to the next event in this series & what a lineup we have for you  on April 10th: Duke Keats, Reign The Girl Band, Shanade & DANE-O.

Advance tickets are available via:

https://events.humanitix.com/hot-music-live-duke-keats-reign-shanade-dane-o

 Out now is the single "Sound of the Wolf", Cat Mead's follow-up to the well received "Fantasise With Me" which also adorns ‘Hot Music Live Presents Volume Sixteen'.

Given that Cat has travelled to Warwickshire from as far away as you could conceive of, it's fascinating to hear how she's adopted an idiom of her current base: not only does the song sound as if it's come from the depths of English folk but it has an almost Elizabethan flavour to it: something those used to the Stratford influence are reasonably used to, but one which must have tickled to creative fancy of this recent arrival. It's interesting to hear a fresh take on something we might almost take for granted. There are several Shakespearean plays into which you could plausibly & successfully insert it.

That's also due to the stately & poetic language Cat utilises. I love her explorations of phrasing & vocabulary but also how she adopts more oblique perspectives on her subject matter ("Fantasise With Me" being another fine example). There is little more depressing as a reviewer than ploughing through a morass of platitudes if not outright cliches and clearly Cat has no truck with these: she either woks to swerve round them or perhaps her creative mind just isn't wired for stating the overworked obvious.

Not surprisingly, she is working here via the medium of metaphor and given the imagery which she adopts, the deeply rooted musical structure, the lushness of the layered vocals and the darkness of the tale, it comes across as something the Brothers Grimm might have written to set the scene for one of their tales: one could easily picture Cat singing her song in the depths of a primeval Germanic forest. Well I can at any rate.

Cat Mead is many things as an artist & we are just beginning to learn what some of them are. This is quintessentially classy songwriting & just as its own roots are deep, so it has the qualities to sustain over an equivalent period of time into the future. Aren't we lucky that she's selected here to dwell & play?

Look out for Cat playing alongside other musicians including ‘Hot Music Live Presents' featured favourites Shanade & Jack Blackman on 14^th April at Southbound in Leamington

Despite launching their recorded music on the world in 2019 via their self-titled EP, Shanghai Hostage have since been characterised as the classic singles band: the occasional (and hence highly anticipated) release of individual songs honed to perfection so their many fans can process them undistracted by accompanying tracks. This works very nicely in my book: it certainly helps the reviewing process.

Nonetheless, when people speak of leading local bands, this quintet are cited by so many and one of the duties which comes with such status must include having an album in your discography. And here at last is ‘Funk Won't Let Me Go'.

To be fair, you know these songs by & large. Singles "The King", "Convent", "Free Lovin' Woman" and "The French Song" have all been awarded places in the lineup and the remainder are highlights of their stunning live sets: now you get to listen to the likes of the title track (you may have sung on this live yourself) and "Mole Butterfly" in the privacy of your own homes.

I say "quintet" but the evolution of ‘Funk Won't Let Me Go' has witnessed a variety of musicians pass through the Hostage ranks and various guitarists & drummers therefore play on the songs recorded during their service alongside the founding core of Sophie (keyboard & vocals), Beth (guitar) and Rich (bass guitar). Sadly the latter is leaving due to personal relocation & hence the album can stand to this highly popular musician's legacy and the launch at FarGo on March 21^st is also a chance to bid him farewell & thank him for pleasure brought. I have no idea how he'll be replaced: few other bass players desert the stage to play amongst their audience so often: a move which is such a part of the band's live DNA.

If the lineup changes make your head spin a little anyway, when you go to the said gig, you'll get to see Justin from Duck Thieves playing guitar: but he is kindly standing in while Ben is Down Under and doesn't in fact play on any of the album tracks: and then you need to take account of the many Ian plays on before he left. And drums are by Dom or Zeke to a large extent. Confused? I'm sure Shanghai Hostage won't mind you being a little that way. Humour is as much part of their thing as skewering misogyny and pomposity. And indeed commenting on personal metamorphosis.

I did actually talk through the "who plays on which song" business with Sophie at The Tin the other evening & very helpful she was too: however too much fine detail I feel would make this article a series of lists rather than a reflection of the glories of the songs so big respect to the whole cohort of contributing musicians. (I'm not sure Pete Frame is intending to do one of his "Rock Family Trees" around Shanghai Hostage but he'd have his work cut out connecting everyone & their other bands…)

An album whose tracks were recorded between 2020 and 2025 will necessarily demonstrate the artist's process, though Sophie also indicated that the big breakthrough for them was in terms of getting to grips with production: lessons learned with that debut EP have informed all subsequent releases.

Beyond that naturally a whole load of factors must have applied: getting to know each other's playing, adjusting to new playmates, self development as musicians, music they were listening to, outside events etc: they must all be in there somewhere.

No one can write about the band without deploying the word "funk" (the album title reinforces that) and it's fascinating how the incredibly disparate musical backgrounds of the various members seem to have found common ground in "music to make you dance": given their other previous bands etc it's possible that not merely some but possibly all of them acquired the funk to some degree in order to make this music….  while the different traditions coming together have definitely created that magical melting pot in which great music is made, it's intriguing to consider that this may be that rare phenomenon: a band created with relatively few commonalities of musical style who've coalesced into a great group via their underlying approach to making music instead.

I'd better complete the track listing though at some point having named only six of the ten cuts: the others being "The Protector", "Trash Muffin", "Forbidden Fruit" and "Sleepwalking into Disaster".

Given the range of contributors and the previously mentioned factors, although the funk is the glue which binds the set together (as the title suggests obliquely), the diversity of actual music & song themes is extensive.

Gender equality & justice is a key interest but that's the more comprehensible end of the spectrum: by "Mole Butterfly" we're hitting the surreal end: yes we all get metamorphosis but not between those two creatures: at least not in our world. You do in theirs.

It's a whole heap of fun for sure but within the sugar coating of humour, serious issues are at stake. Stripped of the visuals of nuns' habits etc, perhaps these are more prominent on record which is no bad thing. In fact all the songs, regardless of subject, have an earnestness of delivery. Whatever they are singing about & whether you fully get it or not, you know they mean it.

Some of it is really heavy (check out "Trash Muffin" for some delightfully dirty dirty sounds) while others display a lightness of touch and nimbleness that in all honesty exceeds the usual British stabs at funk & approaches the sort of level of sophistication of the original US pioneers: I hear much of The Meters in songs like "Forbidden Fruit" or "The Protector" for example.

So what happens next? Having effectively captured Phase One of their career in recorded form, do Shanghai Hostage have some sort of tabula rasa going forwards into the next chapter? Well I suppose they do.. not that getting these songs out & tweaking the lineup by themselves trigger any sort of new approach necessarily: I have always got the impression that the band operate on instinct more than calculation and hence no-one can ever second guess their next song: even they seem surprised by some of them. I'm guessing that the funk will be in there somewhere though. Personally I'd love to hear what might ensue if they could collaborate with a brass section……

Grail Guard loathe racism & today sees the release (on TNS Records) of their ‘Still No Future' album on which they make this crystal clear over the course of ten songs.

Some ("People Just Like You", "Anxieties" and "Our Streets" have been very recent singles, others have been shared in demo form over the last couple of years: most you'll know if you've been to a gig (but for the record the song titles are "Cruel Britannia", "Insomnia", "Safe Space", "Alan", "The Rotten", "Still Fucked Up" (a version of which you will recall from ‘Hot Music Live Presents Volume Twelve') and "Rats").

These songs are built for clobbering bigots & do so via a cunning combination of overwhelming fury (the band have managed to extract the maximum of this from each song since the demo forms) and clearly stating the unanswerable arguments which rip the arguments of the bigoted into tiny fragments (not that racist ideology has a terribly profound intellectual base to begin with of course).

I had better repeat (from earlier articles) the points that racists are probably too dense & stuck in their ways to grasp Grail Guard's excellent points, however well articulated, but at least these fine anthems (which they are) give heart & encouragement to all those fighting fascism.

If you haven't yet read ‘Empireland' by Sathnam Sanghera, then I recommend it. In the meantime ‘Still No Future' functions as a pretty accurate rendering of it into musical form.

It's difficult therefore to identify the prime aspect of these songs: polemic, rallying cry or celebration of the values of the righteous. Why can't it be all three? I imagine that Grail Guard are attempting to keep things going on several layers. This set really gives the notion that punk is by nature simplistic: either musically or philosophically. It's a stick the form has so often been beaten with (unfortunately identikit punk bands who go for a uniform look & sound don't help) but from the start the genre addressed issues of race, gender, identity, ecology & many more and to me this elevates it way above blander noodling which in some ways satisfies the cravings of those fetishising "technical excellence" even when singing platitudes.

In fact, characterising ‘Still No Future' as being a series of diatribes against racism would actually find me guilty of simplification: Grail Guard take aim not just at this vile target but at its associated nastinesses from macro level (the whole corrupt system of capitalism which spawns bigotry in "The Rotten") to the specific: in this case a piece of work named "Alan" and his lack of empathy.

Don't overlook the album title either please: the band are conscious that punk emerged fifty years ago  during another peak of right wing thuggery and they wonder what has been achieved: especially given the corporate, governmental & global backing for racist rhetoric & policies which has developed in the intervening years.

Grail Guard fan Sick Dick Warlock (of Stegosaurus Sex Party) has already gone public with his admiration for the album (" (I) remember seeing them the first time a couple years ago and saying to the Steg lads "this lot are born ready" - they had a furious energy from the get go and it's plain to see the work they put in") and in expressing the wish that "..it might just smash through to something bigger" he was referring mainly to both the band and the wider local scene. However I think that the sentiment could apply also to the aims of Grail Guard for the album. If half a century of punk rock & organised anti racism has led us from the street thuggery of the National Front to the rise of Trump and Farage etc, then it's not only not been successful enough but needs to step up further and "smash through" to a much broader and effective counter attack on intolerance. Let's face it, that's what these songs are all saying in ways which don't leave any room for misinterpretation.

The new Dolly Mavies single "Truman" (out today) is issued under the banner of "post folk" which anticipates any comment that I would have made about the style: she definitely comes out of the highly successful folk rock style which has launched her upon our collective consciousness & sustained her for the last few years but like the best artists she has clearly reached a point where she wants to transcend any narrow categorisation beyond that acknowledgement of a starting point for her musical journey.

Given the electro drum beats which usher the song in, she doesn't waste time signalling that this is progression. It's quite a funky song underneath the trademark lush & haunting vocals and you also get treated to some subtle bass playing of a similar groove from time to time. It's still mightily atmospheric but the accent tends to highlight her sense of playfulness and bring that out more and we are moving into dance territory as you might imagine.

"Carpe diem" is the general message here ("a reminder to us all to embrace the now, and really live, even if just for a fleeting moment") and given the cover art, I think we can safely assume that the title nods towards the well known film.

One quite understandably can in listening, lean exclusively towards Dolly herself given the mesmerising effect of her voice but this song also reminds us that "Dolly Mavies" is a group too and the fine ensemble playing, which is so unselfish in supporting the singer & her song, is also of the highest quality & has such a vital role in the quality of "Truman".

Permanent Daylight will need little introduction to readers: one of the fastest rising local bands (nurtured by the "Live On Stage" project run by The Tin and Coventry Music), you can check them out on March 20^th when they play alongside Banoffee, Reiss Pinder and The Illusion at our next fundraiser for The Tin.

What you may be less aware of for the moment is that nestling within this trio, matryoshka style, is the duo Daydreams, comprising Faith and Joseph and which is a vehicle for their songs less suited to the full band.

Now with the release of their debut single, "Map  to No Place", the cat is out of the bag.

Like a jewel, it sparkles and also like some form of cut gem, it has multiple facets which enable that phenomenon.

Despite just being two musicians, I detected all sorts of resonances. The very group name summons up quite a few sixties connections (The Monkees, The Alan Price Set and perhaps above all, Mama Cass. I even had a scent of an old Marvelettes song). However strong though the sense of soulful pop might be, this is not a track steeped in the essence of retro-stylings. It has an edge to it (like those gemstones) and perhaps the other take away from the 1960s might be that psychedelic approach: "Map to No Place" displays a series of kaleidoscopic faces to the world.

Most of these are in fact much more contemporary than the ones I've started with. For every blissful classic ballad moment, we get a reflective introspective one which is much more redolent of a world after shoegaze was invented than before.

Given the tone of the song, I feel that their decision to go with the duo format must have been calibrated with the finest of precision: laser tooled judgement. The subject matter could reasonably have been part of a Permanent Daylight song and while much of the song relies on an acoustic guitar, warm dynamics are regularly introduced via overdubs (or an additional instrument?) and the track surges sonically, becoming surprisingly big periodically to underscore the depth of the emotions Faith is singing about.

It was the right choice I'm sure: the profundity of the intense passages comes from the intimacy of the collaboration, but "Map to No Place" is no simple acoustic ballad. I don't know what other original tracks they have up their collective sleeve but this is a great calling card for establishing this part of their creativity in its own right. Keep on playing it & new aspects hit you. To be honest, I have to commit myself to publishing this review so here it is, but I'm not at all sure yet that I've satisfied myself as to my own grasp of the ultimate conclusion of the song. Sometimes I think it's quite pessimistic (it's definitely marinaded in melancholy) but then I play it again & ask myself whether it's someone mourning the loss of a relationship or someone trying to make sense of it in order to try to save it?

Perhaps I'll never resolve that conundrum, and that's not a bad thing: as I say, "Map to No Place" has many subtleties to offer us.

"Past Lives", the new Robert James Grey single comes out today, the follow-up to his ecological polemic "Paradise Is Burning".

This one addresses completely different themes and is one of his own favourites from among his body of work. It's worth saying too that his recorded canon is quite small, especially for an artist who has been as esteemed as he has for so long.

This is not a criticism (I've noted before that keeping your fanbase wanting more & excited by releases when they do occur are sound strategies) and quality control is definitely part of this.

I might also say that Robert's intensity as a writer & performer suggest that there is only so much emotion we can process at a given time (I wonder what the reaction would be to a whole album if he ever chooses to go down that path) and he must be pretty exhausted after recording each track.

He also tends to specialise in matters concerning the heart, whether relationships or in this case a more internal reflection.. as he says: "it's a song about the process of shedding our past lives and embracing our current journey." Such interest in the more profound aspects of existence make for not just emotionally enhanced songs but due to the "bigger picture" questions under his artistic microscope, they are much more likely to retain our interest compared with ones about more ephemeral concerns.

Since there can't be anyone to touch him for space within his songs (I admire how not only does he keep arrangements down to a minimum but also sings and plays so consistently slowly), there is plenty of time to drink in what he's saying & you won't miss anything given the stark clarity.

Robert praises the production  of James Kenosha: rightly so. While simplicity of arrangements helps keep things this clear, it also leaves no room for error in either performance or process: you have no option here for burying anything in the mix.

I don't know in detail why he likes this one above others: it could easily be some personal resonance of the subject matter. However the lyrics are particularly poetic which offers an alternative explanation and finally, although the overall sound is close to where he usually goes, "Past Lives" has its own more jazz orientated classic torch song feel which I'm sure he enjoys playing. As I'm sure you'll enjoy listening to just as much.