Hannah Rose Platt
Fragile Creatures
(Xtra Mile Recordings)
★★★★★

IN 1869 The Edinburgh Seven as the first women to study medicine at any UK university, they were game changers. However, The Senatus voted against their graduation — they were awarded their degrees posthumously in, wait for it, 2019 ie 150 years later.

This mesmerising collection of brilliantly written melodic songs is the Bristol-based Scouser, Hannah Rose Platt’s “offering and a tribute to female pioneers in medicine; and an endeavour to honour, and give voice to, the unsung heroines in the history of our health.”

Platt’s voice deceptively soft and uniquely versatile offers solace but the lyrics still hide menace.

In the forceful, rock-infused Young Men Need Their Wives Platt ridicules with disdain the therapists who pressured her to stay in abusive relationships, while Curious Mixtures is a paean to the herbalists of old: “Tonic and tincture / No spells, no scripture /... You could drown for this.”

Exquiste, momentous and magnificent.

Kemp Harris
The America Chronicles
(Kemp Harris Music)
★★★★★

KEMP HARRIS was born in segregated Edenton, North Carolina but worked as an elementary state school teacher in Newton, Massachusetts for 38 years where, by all accounts, he was that teacher who kids remember for the rest of their lives. “The children were glued because of his storytelling abilities,” former colleague recollects.

“I’m just taking my views as a black gay man in this country, looking at what’s happening in our government, just the world in general,” Harris told the Newton Beacon.

He taught his students political participation and his conversationalist songs are microcosms of fascinating political refection composed in a variety of genres alluringly blended in a signature sound — he’s been called “a master weaver of American musical styles.”

From the pulsating rock infused Standing Your Ground “Another black boy murdered / Cause’ of standing your ground,” to the wonderfully vaudevillesque This Is America, Right. 

Sublime and edifying. Miss not.

Spear Of Destiny
Janus
(Eastersnow)
★★★★★

AS Kirk Brandon bellows: “Theres a hunger in the nation that’s tearing it apart,/ have you the heart to change,” in Land Of Shame, much like he did since forever, the relevance’s painfully intact.

This offering of rearranged songs from past albums is de facto a settling of old scores with record companies which wanted “somebody they could manipulate and put in the charts,” Brandon sighs, adding: “With this, I get a chance to go back and put it down the way it should have been.”

Spear deliver every song with breathtaking punk panache, validating Brandon’s moniker as “the Wagner of rock.”

March or Die, Strangers In Our Town: “Our little town has changed/ And the people say they’re to blame/ There are strangers, there are strangers, there are strangers in our town,” or There’s A Whole World Waiting have their edge restituted with finesse and aplomb.

An absolute vindication.