I found this track on YouTube a couple of months ago. Tin Pot Operation are a band from Belfast. I’ve known the lead singer, Anto O’Kane since back our university days, so it was a pleasant surprise to come across the band (and a bit weird seeing him in a music video!)

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I wrote back in April about Stuart Revnell - an unsigned singer/songwriter from London who’s got a great pop rock sound.

Well, Stuart has released another song on his website and on MySpace. The new song is called Off My Mind. Having listened to Stuart’s other material, I can say for sure that Stuart has his own distinctive style.

Once again, in addition to writing and performing the song, Stuart engineered and produced it himself.

He has also - in his generosity - made the MP3 available on his personal website. If you loved Stuart’s material after my initial interview, you’re bound to enjoy this track.

Julian Carax is an intriguing character. There’s very little information about him on his MySpace page or anywhere else for that matter.What I can tell you is that Julian is currently resident in Paris (yes, the one in France) but he’s headed for Canada at some point in the future. He’s also a rather talented musician. Like many of the other artists I find via MySpace/Virb/etc, Julian plays most of the instruments on his EP, Turnpike.

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We heard about Beth Williams recently and went over to YouTube to check out her video for Love Is Sunshine. I think we can class Beth as undiscovered talent, since I can’t find any more information about her - not even a MySpace page!

Love Is Sunshine is a perfect summertime tune, fresh and funky, and Beth - to her credit - has a soulful but gritty texture to her vocals. There’s a distinct hippy element to the lyrics: “Come across the fence/I wanna be your flower child/You’ve gotta tend my garden/Coz there’s something growing wild” OK, maybe not the ‘growing wild’ par, but you get the drift… :)

The video is quite cool too - it features Beth walking/dancing through a garden (which is growing wild, BTW) and which is constantly morphing and changing. The effects are quite cool, but the slightly comical thing is the disconnect between Beth’s dancing and the song. While the song is pretty sweet and upbeat, Beth looks a little bit aggressive, like she’s auditioning to be a lapdancer. With her dark tousled hair and her thick eye makeup, hotpants and gyrations…and all the time singing about how love is sunshine for the soul….

All the same, that’s a minor quibble. I recommend you check the track out, and hopefully we’ll see more of Beth in the future!

Sometimes when you’re listening to mainstream music, you get a craving for something a bit more aggressive. Something with a bit of kick. So, discovering Throw The Fight on Virb the other night was just the tonic.

Throw The Fight are a 5-piece from Minneapolis, and they produce a brutal but melodic brand of metal that I really enjoyed from listening to their Virb page.

The songs the feature on Virb (and MySpace) are taken from their EP The Fire Within. Endless Struggle takes a Maidenesque twin guitar attack and mixes it with a driving metal track. Sort of Sum 41 on steroids. If this type of metal is your thing, you should also check out These Apologies and Our Horizons, both fantastic tracks.

From what I hear, Throw The Fight are gaining popularity in the US:

selling over 5,000 copies of their first self-recorded e.p. Current stats for the band include over 100,000 plays and over 24,000 friends on Myspace.com, 54,000 plays on Purevolume.com

These guys are definitely worth keeping an eye on!Throw The Fight are

• Paul Kreuger - lead vocal
• Aaron Huppert - bass
• Joey Ulrich - guitar / vocals
• Cory Huppert - drums
• Ryan Baustert - guitar / vocals

I’ve been toying with Virb.com, an A1 community for musicians and artists. Far better than MySpace. Virb.com rocks!

I’ve also been drinking inadvisable quantities of red wine this evening….

Anyway, while browsing Virb I came across Silversun Pickups, an indie four-piece from L.A. These guys are just amazing - I would kill for their guitar sound! They have an album called Carnavas which I am dying to hear. I’ve asked for a review copy so that I can cover them here. Hopefully they’ll oblige me…

Anyway, for a taster of their stuff click the Silvergun link above and listen to Lazy Eye. You will not regret it!

Back before we launched this music blog, someone recommended Stuart Revnell to me. Stuart is a singer/songwriter living in London. Prior to his current solo career, Stuart was the frontman for now-defunct Utopia Station.

These days, Stuart’s working on building up his own material with a view to getting a recording deal. When he’s not writing cracking tunes, he spends his time cultivating weird moustache configurations (only joking).

Anyway, I visited Stuart’s MySpace page and checked out some of his songs. What I discovered was a sample of some very chart-worthy pop-rock songs of an exceptionally high standard. Listen to Chain Reaction (one of my favourites) - a simple but effective love song with a crystal clear guitar sound and distinctive, memorable chorus.

Chasing Miracles is another outstanding tune - there’s a slight American tinge to the instrumentation, but that’s not a bad thing. Revnell’s vocals are gritty, but without being annoying or over the top. It’s amazing that he writes and produces this stuff himself.

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