The Feeling have a new single out in digital format on April 14th with a CD/7” release to follow on the 21st. It’s a gut wrenchingly insincere piece of drivel that I played once and will never play again. Think of faux ‘warm melody’ type affairs cynically designed to push every button going yet anyone with a shred of integrity should be able to see through this nonsense with ease. The only saving grace could come in the form of a Tom Middleton mix but the poor sod has his work cut out with this one. He’s a DJ not a miracle worker.

Martha Wainright fares little better, she’s plugging an album called ‘I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too’ the opening single will be ‘Bleeding All Over You’ (out May 19th). Before I go any further it would seem Martha has sewn up the “worst title award” not once, but twice with these offerings. The single has a whimsical sense of melody and fairly strong production but as a whole it offers little new.

Moving swiftly on we have a split single from Field Records. Actionier play “big, singalonga math rock” whatever that means but the track ‘Freeview’ is strong stuff. Pleasantly misleading the listener with its initial gentility, it arrives good and proper with the ferocity of approach that being dropped in freezing cold water will lend you, from that point onwards its breakneck all the way. It’s earnest though and compelling enough to draw me away from my traditional listening habits for a while. Flipside duties are handled by Nottingham’s Kill Chaos, they tread a more immediately familiar path. Its rock in one of its most familiar forms eschewing ‘fake girls and ID’s’ with a thunderous backdrop of drums and dense meshes of guitar. Not bad though and as a single this really is worthy of your time.