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I’m going to say it: you can make a case that The Black Hats are the closest Oxford has to Bon Jovi.

It’s not that Nick Breakspear’s ever more accomplished trio sound an awful lot like the New Jersey stadium rockers-they are too punky, too rough around the edges and haven’t been airbrushed into massive-sounding studio perfection. Nevertheless, there is in the swagger of Breakspear’s major-key working class anthems an echoing response to the confident blue collar affirmation purveyed for years numberless by the Tri-State eighties stalwarts.

Their current EP, Magnets, sees the band at their terse, disciplined best, in contrast to their patchy and sometimes repetitive album ‘What’s Not to Understand?’. The eponymous track sets the tone pretty well, with Ian Budd’s jaunty bass line underpinning Breakspear’s genially yobbish rhetoric. He might claim that he is a ‘magnet for trouble’, but you know the sort of trouble he’s referring to is a cuff on the chin by Fozzy Bear, rather than anything more distressing or permanent. Unusually for the Hats, there’s a bit of understated synthesizer squelch in the mix, and in general the record feels bigger, brasher and a bit less garage-bound than previous recordings. Producer Lee Christian is no Bob Rock, but he’s successfully coaxed a more substantial sound from the three, and I think their style of music could do with that.

‘Getaway’ represents prime danceable classic rock, combining swedging beats, Breakspear’s ardent, raspy tenor and some simple but effective harmonies. Better yet is the urgent, angular ‘Just Fall’, my favourite Black Hats song, and featuring one of Breakspear’s finest vocal performances. In the past he’s sometimes sacrificed tone for attitude, but here he is just a great rock singer, with no reservations.

‘Magnets’ is the sound of a band growing in confidence and ambition. After the rather cramped, snappy feel of the album, this is grand, energetic and tune-filled rock, made by musicians who are supremely committed and are finding both their voice and their space.

Clearly, they were not born to follow.

The Black Hats Myspace

By Colin MacKinnon.

No-one would have believed, in the last years of the twentieth century, that ornate, theatrical pop music would ever be seen again. Whilst Travis was paving the featureless yellow path that led to Coldplay’s ubiquity, the ears of the scene were either tuned to dour, po-faced post-rock expanses in the form of Mogwai and Godspeed or the mumbled introspection of Low and The Tindersticks. And yet, some survived who believed in the power of drama, who revelled in the communicative possibilities of façade and pretence, who felt that musical invention was better shown by intricate, intelligent orchestration than by the portentous length of tracks (or their titles). And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us.

Whilst cabaret pop hasn’t precisely taken over the world, Borderville’s gloriously over-reaching debut album seems a perfect zeitgeist Polaroid, a record so theatrical it should come with a glossy programme and an unfeasibly overpriced ice cream. And it’s an incredible piece of work, welding Bowie’s cracked actor dramatics to off-Broadway torch songs, with crescendos direct from Queen’s halcyon days. Joe Swarbrick may not have the most agile – or even tuneful – voice in town, but he may well have the most expressive, alternating between stage whisper and Christ-pose rock howl to wring every ounce of emotion from elaborate rock opera opuses. The wonderful “Short Sharp Shock” is a prime example, capturing the whiff of deflated expectations as a band packs up after a show, offsetting some emotive, barely pitched yelps with massed Original Cast Recording backing vocals. Everything about this surprisingly varied LP is overdone to a T, and Borderville have clearly realised that, whilst sincerity and chest-bashing might do the trick, emotions can be far more powerfully expressed if we all realise they’re artificial. The mask is always more frightening once you know it’s a mask.

The rest of the band is also superb, dealing in the wild dynamic variations that can only be achieved with sensitively controlled ensemble playing. Keyboard player “Woody” Woodhouse deserves especial praise for his improbably fluent runs across the ivories, the synth whoops of live favourite “Glambulance”, the tipsy stumbling solo of “Lover, I’m Finally Through” and the jerky mazurka of “Short Sharp Shock” particularly standing out. What’s most impressive about the record is how much variation the band achieves with a relatively sparse sonic palette: it would have been all too easy to drench everything in swooning strings and ersatz effects, but Borderville have retained the sound of a simple rock quartet and pushed it into some intriguing places

No matter how unfair we find it, most of the world considers every damn person in Oxford to be a limp-wristed, pretentious, teddy-clutching silver spoon sucker, honking away about Byron and ponies. A review of Winnebago Deal some years ago in the NME said something like, “What are you lot so grumpy about? Was your 15th century quad not properly manicured this morning?” Yes, even the whiskey-soaked death-grunge hollers of two hairy creatures from darkest Eynsham brought forth plummy images from Uncle Monty’s most rose-tinted recollections. We feel that, if this is how the world sees us, we should embrace it. We’ve already given the world the preppy Bowdlerised art-funk of Foals and Stornoway’s warm-jumpered folk poetry, let’s complete the picture with Borderville’s greasepainted bombast. Cherish them.

Borderville Myspace

By David Murphy

Slightly belatedly, here is a non-scientific, but highly alphabetised selection of our favourite records from last year. If you don’t disagree vociferously on the Comments page, we’ll be highly insulted.

Contributors: David Murphy, Colin MacKinnon, Mark Wilden and Alex Lloyd.

Alphabet Backwards: Alphabet Backwards
Gr8 bnd v g pop lol [Send to entire address book] (DM)

A Scholar & A Physician: She’s A Witch
The funnest ball of funny electro fun anywhere in the world this year, from Truck’s production go-to boys. (DM)

Borderville: Joy Through Work
“A band’s reach should exceed its grasp/ Or what’s a heaven for?” – Robert Browning (nearly).(DM)

Les Clochards: Sweet Tableaux
Oxford’s wry Gallic café indie children deliver a blinder.  Sounds like fat Elvis twatted on crème de menthe and blearily stumbling about the Postcard Records’ bordello.(DM)

Grumpily romantic Anglo-French chansons with dazzling accordion flourishes and spookily sweet two-part harmony. (CHM)

Hretha:  Minnows/ Dead Horses
Orthographically frustrating upstarts produce clinical post-rock excellence.(DM)

Jessie Grace: Demo
Silky, sensuous, lounge bar pop from ukulele-wielding Buckinghamshire lass-massive voice, bigger tunes . Paloma Who? (CHM)

The Gullivers: Legerdemain
Bleakly stylish post-punk minimalism, now with added singing. A band to revisit. (CHM)

Mephisto Grande: Seahorse Vs The Shrew
A revivalist hymn meeting seen through Lewis Carrol’s mescaline kaleidoscope.(DM)

Message to Bears: Departures
If the Oxfordshire countryside ever needs a soundtrack, this is it. Resplendent beauty everywhere, with beats, samples and strings expertly combined with pianos and Jerome Alexander’s diamantine guitar. Why isn’t this guy huge? (CHM and AL)

Misfit Mod: Islands and Islands
Sleepily lovely electronica from the talented Miss Kelleher. Dan Mitchell’s review captured her voice in one word: pellucid. (CHM)

Peerless Pirates: Demo
Swaggering, timber-shivering, Smithy indie pop. Smell the rum and smash  the tavern. (CHM)

PRDCTV: It’s Never Too Late To Have A Happy Childhood

Promising folktronic EP from OxfordBands scribe and recent Ninja Tune signing who’s clearly heard a Four Tet record or two and knows how to put his own stamp on it. (MW)

The Relationships: Space
Beautiful chiming indie pop coupled with the most articulate lyricist ever to have flâneured the Cowley Road; think R.E.M.’s Reckoning crossed with Betjeman’s Banana Blush, record collectors! (DM)

Mr Shaodow: “RU Stoopid”
Serious messages, approachable humour, lyrical dexterity.  His best yet, and that’s some benchmark.(DM)

Spring Offensive: EP
Everyone’s favourite band at the moment, but you heard it here first. Five lads from a rather good South Oxon school, playing highly inventive angular rock- where have we heard that before? (CHM)

Stornoway: Unfaithful
The startled bunnies of lit-pop had a meteoric year.  Let’s be honest, you won’t get long odds on their debut LP featuring in the list next year…(DM)

Tiger Mendoza:The Hope Sick

Vocal-led electronica from former Toy #1 guitarist gone solo and recent winner of the 2009 DJ Shadow Remix Project.  Glitchy and twitchy, warm and chunky – this is an artist worth keeping an eye on. (MW)

To Liesel: Dear Jane
The Fleet Foxes of Oxford? Not now, but later. Ardent musical love letter wrapped in heart-breaking harmony. (CHM)

Vileswarm: Sun Swallows The Stars
An experimental dreamteam of Frampton and Euhedral, offering “doom drone”: does exactly what it says on the tombstone. (DM)

Richard Walters: The Animal

Finally!  The debut Richard Walters album.  Kept us waiting long enough.  Worth the wait, though – delicate and precise, and full of heart.  There’s not a single thing I’d want to change about this record; it’s beautiful from start to finish. (MW)

Oxford has a proud history of periodically throwing up musical gems for the mainstream to embrace in its fickle bosom. Ride, Supergrass, Foals, Radiohead; we’ve had some gudd’uns. Now Stornoway seem set to join that illustrious list, if their undoubted talent and the BBC’s benevolent gaze are anything to go by.

With such successes to pat ourselves on the back for, it’s easy to overlook Oxford’s diverse and vibrant musical subcultures. Andy Cartwright and his Seabuckthorn project is a torchbearer for the style of instrumental, guitar-lead composition that is fast becoming a local speciality, centred round the Bucks-based label Dead Pilot Records (home to the likes of the brilliant Message To Bears).  Distant Summer Storm, Seabuckthorn’s fourth release, sees Cartwright widening his horizons from previous outings. While the influence of twisted folk Americana is still evident, the scope and range of this album is altogether more ambitious and experimental.

It’s the sheer diversity of Cartwright’s songwriting capabilities that really impresses on Distant Summer Storm. Opener Galloping Into Thin Air throws us into a melee of clattering guitars and gunshot snares, giving way to a beautifully harsh sea of resonant synth and pensive fingerpicking; it almost sounds like Yorke et al.’s Bodysnatchers in parts, and that’s no lame compliment. The title track is a tribal boiling pot of relentless congas, ruthless bass pulses and wailing strings, climaxing in waves of frantic chimes and echoing flutes that conjure up vivid images of the unforgiving beauty of the African savannah. It really is a standout moment on an album riddled with highlights.

Next, Cartwright moves from the savannah to the buffalo plains, with Somersault of Thought and Between Dreams neatly showcasing Seabuckthorn’s Americana influence; neither song would sound out of place as the soundtrack to a Wild West showdown. Not content to rest in the comfort of familiarity, Cartwright begins a delicate exploration of the boundaries of electronica in the second half of the album.  After a brief sojourn into ambient territory with the flowing synth soundscape of (Untitled) come two tracks that owe more to the early work of Four Tet than the American West. Cartright has the wonderful and rare ability to paint vivid and powerful pictures with sound; at times listening to this album feels almost like watching a film without the pictures. Don’t expect to see Seabuckthorn following Stornoway to the BBC hot-tip lists any time soon; but this is one for Oxford to treasure nonetheless.

 Seabuckthorn Myspace

By Alex Lloyd

Being a Christian, I always had a mild downer on Wire Jesus’ choice of name, but that didn’t stop me enjoying the Reading-based group’s output, an easy, unfussy brand of non-threatening psychedelia. Emerging from their recent-ish break-up (no divine intervention need be posited) is Amy’s Ghost, a five-piece fronted by Amy Barton, who was previously slightly overshadowed as a vocalist by the excellent Mike Murray. Judging by new single ‘Lullaby’ she is thoroughly enjoying her new, more prominent role.

There is a bit of overlap between the new and old groups, both in personnel (Tim Perkins’ baroque cello is as important as ever) and style. ‘Lullaby’, like several old WJ tunes, is smart piano-led pop, heavy on spectral, syncopated drums and contrapuntal, multi-tracked vocals. Barton’s singing is charismatic and urgent, with a hint of the kind of anxiety Natalie Imbruglia conjured so unexpectedly on ‘Torn’.

There are other promising things dotted around their Myspace page. ‘Afraid’ effectively showcases Amy’s glistening soprano over a sparse background of dusty-basement pianos and distant, thuddy beats. In the debit column, Barton’s philosophical musings on the consolations of faith aren’t very original and the arrangement needs more work to keep the punters interested, but the core of the song is solid. ‘Turn to Run’ has a little of that hippieish Bat for Lashes pseudo-Celticism I usually dislike, but Barton’s close harmonies are inventive and unforced.

In summary, I feel that the new band doesn’t yet have the quality in the songs to match the likes of Wire Jesus’s wonderful ‘Six Foot Crow’ , but Amy’s Ghost is already a good deal more than just a sequel. Talking of sequels, perhaps they can take inspiration from the New Testament: St. Paul didn’t turn out so badly.

Amy’s Ghost Myspace

By Colin MacKinnon

You may remember from a few years back Mitch Benn and The Distractions’ seminal hit ‘Everything Sounds like Coldplay Now’. This spot-on (if rather obvious) satire was intended to chuck a spanner into the workings of that pitiless machine that endlessly grinds out a stultifying succession of sensitive, wafty, piano-based stodge for the undiscerning Tesco Mum. Sadly, pop music seems immune to satire: hair rock and metal survived Spinal Tap, and the Coldplay clones endure: The Feeling, The Kooks, Snow Patrol, and the whole troupe of worthy old carthorses continue to plough their furrow, to the sound of squeaks of ecstasy from the likes of Fearne Cotton, the silly old mare.

To Liesel, an Oxford-London quintet, sound an awful lot like Coldplay, but they have a little bit about them, so don’t run away just yet. The instrumental stuff is workmanlike: gnarled and trembly piano, big distorted guitars that come by three-quarters in to signify Epic (you can set your watch by them!) and lots of splashy cymbals. So far, so numbingly generic, but To Liesel’s new wrinkle is that they have stuck a load of reverberant Fleet Foxes harmonies over it all, and the effect is often quite pleasing and even, in places, awkwardly beautiful.

Strongest song on the demo is ‘Dear Jane’, which uses the device of an exchange of comically earnest love letters to pile on the sentiment, but I have to curmudgeonly accept that it probably works-teenagers are like that. The lead vocalist has an undeniably pretty falsetto, and the backup singing is pristine and spacious. A little folkier is the gently lilting ‘My Name is Ocean’, which might be cousin to one of Stornoway’s more mystical ballads.

Less successful is the overlong and turgid ‘Ashes that Stain’, a piece of machine pop lacking the immediacy and pathos of ‘Dear Jane’, as well as the latter’s hooks, which I admit left me guiltily snagged. They really are an odd mix, this lot: instrumentally safe to the point of indolence but vocally expansive and searching. At any rate, it will be fun to see them at the Jericho later in the month (with the excellent Minor Coles) to see if they can cut it live. If so, and if they can wean themselves off their more cloying influences, then Oxford may be graced by some gorgeous choral pop in the near future.

To Liesel Myspace

By Colin MacKinnon