There's no real theme to this small selection of singles today, except that it's been one of those utterly wasteful, pointless days which grind you to a halt and offer nothing but a stinging slap in return for your best efforts to face them down. It's times like these when the contents of my iPod take on an inordinate, perhaps unhealthy importance as I shuffle through the tracks looking for a musical crutch to get me around the next unexpected bend in the road. So, this pair of recent releases have popped to the top of my listening list at just the right moment to rescue an otherwise written-off day - and long may this continue to happen.

Amber Wilson - Raise The Alarm/An Affirmation

I've remarked elsewhere about the number of 'guy and guitar' acts around just now, and it's probably only fair to say that equally there are a lot of female singer-songwriters doing the rounds too. There is something simple and complementary about a female vocal and an acoustic guitar which is hard to explain, and given the amount of this stuff which finds its way to my collection, I'm not about to knock it. However, it's even better when something comes along which surprises and defies expectations like Amber Wilson's recently released single.

"Raise The Alarm" begins with just a nagging guitar melody and the tense echo of Amber's voice. She is joined by enough mournful cello to keep the brooding mood in place, but just when you're resigned to the song ending much as it began things build to a perfect storm of a guitar-fuelled ending which also propels Amber to new vocal heights. None of this surprise shift of register of course, drowns the remarkable, gymnastic voice which manages to survive this curious mutation from acoustic ballad to out-and-out rock classic completely intact. The arrangement of "An Affirmation" is perhaps a little simpler and more straightforward, but it still allows plenty of space for Amber's gorgeous vocal to play, hitting clear-as-a-bell highs and whispered pensive lows. Again, the accompaniment is simple, uncluttered and manages to deftly enhance the thought-provokingly assuring lyrics rather than going for overblown and cloying, which is apparently all too easy it seems these days.

Beautifully written, sensitively delivered and lyrical pop music sung by someone with a near indecent amount of talent. There's not a lot to argue with here and it's available for a ridiculously tiny sum. I've heard only good things about Amber Wilson for some time now, and it's great to have finally caught up with this release.

Amber Wilson - Raise The Alarm

"Raise The Alarm" is available from iTunes, Amazon and virtually every other online store you can possibly think of.

The Moth & The Mirror - Germany

As soon as the genre-busting, convention-disrespecting patrons of Olive Grove Records announced they'd be working with this band, it was bound to prove interesting. Perhaps most notable initially for a lineage which claims links with Admiral Fallow, Reindeer Section and Frightened Rabbit among others, on the evidence of the recent slow-burning, epic taster "Lights In The Sky" the last thing you'd likely expect from The Moth & The Mirror is an out-and-out floor filling disco hit. However, buried in this heady, addictive mix that's exactly what "Germany" appears to be at it's core. Wonderfully big, clattering beats introduce things, with choppy slices of eighties-sytle Postcard-era guitar slashing through. Meanwhile Stacey Sievwright's sometimes ethereal, sometimes insistent vocals shift mood with every twist and turn of the track. There are so many facets to this song that it's almost embarassing to list its high points - a moody, shoegazey middle section tumbles into an almost choral a cappella interlude, before finally everything shifts up a gear. I defy anyone not to end up dancing around stupidly while Stacey raps out the refrain of "shake me up and shake you out" over a proper old-fashioned soul stomp of a beat, and accompanied by perhaps the best soaring, heart-swelling guitar solo I've heard all year.

I find it difficult to convey just how utterly engaging this song is, and how once you've heard it you'll be convinced you can't remember a time when you didn't know it. For your single pound you also get a remix by Strike The Colours which makes no bones about the track's dance credentials, morphing the whole thing into a fantastically bleepy, pulsing anthem. This is what pop music should always be like, pure and simple.

The Moth & The Mirror - Germany

"Germany" is available digitally via iTunes or Bandcamp. Also available at Bandcamp is a strictly limited CD release, packaged with Olive Grove Records usual flamboyance. The Moth & The Mirror's debut album "Honestly, This World" will be released on 10th October.

Both a strength and a weakness of the network of bands in Glasgow is its incestuous nature. The entire family tree is no doubt fantastically obscure and many dimensional, with individuals often featuring in many bands at once or drifting in and out of them over time. This of course makes keeping any sort of track of bands and members almost impossible for the listener. But this camaraderie surely pays dividends when the chips are down, and it's heartening to see a scene in action where collaboration seems more common than competition, most of the time at least. And, somewhere on the edge of this dizzying, intriguing and remarkably complicated world are John Knox Sex Club - at once connected via other bands and allegiances, and somehow very much separate from what's happening. They have a minimal online presence, which musically speaking nowadays is akin to becoming a cave-dwelling hermit. But behind this deceptively quiet, almost reluctant exterior is a raging storm of noise and tension. Having stabilised around a six-piece line up, "Raise Ravens" is the second substantive release for a band which reputedly never intended to record anything at all.

If anything truly deserves the much overused 'epic' tag it is surely the opening 'Kiss The Dirt'. Just shy of a portentous thirteen minutes long, this starts out as an almost gentle, lyrical sweep across an urban landscape of tower blocks and abandoned houses, but becomes almost evangelical rather like the John Knox Sex Club live experience. A pseudo-religious refrain of "all that is lost will be found" tops a mesmerizingly repetitive shard of violin, ending in a thunderous explosion of bass, guitar and drums. Sean Cumming desperately howling his oaths to the very end with a repeated, humbling "I'll kiss the dirt beneath your feet". From the outset then, this is awe-inspiring and almost uncomfortably moving music. In comparison, "Above Us The Waves" is a gentle piece with the violin carrying a soaring, life-affirming melody. But even here there is a hint of darkness with a shudder of delay-laden distorted guitar beneath the impassioned vocals. Lyrically too, the close-observation gives away a morbid and dark undertone - dead wasps, the smell of fresh earth - Cumming weaves claustrophobic tales which are highly suggestive and unsettling but never graphic.

Emer Tumilty's strangely sorrowful violin ushers in "Sweet Sing The Rails Go Leave, Go Leave" with the gentlest of guitar lines in the background, reverberating and chiming. A beautiful, well placed instrumental which provides a sense of release and sanctuary. But still dark tinged and sorrowful. Initially "The Neighbours" is driven by Cummings melodic vocal lead, a domestic drama delivered via forensic observations: "her mother disappeared into tiny worlds of figurines". The chorus is a swell of voices, including a higher register female voice which provide a counterpoint to Cummings insistent exhortations. Detailing a private world of obsession, there is a sense of a desperate clinging to the past and implied violence. A duet of sinuous guitar and whooping violin drives the song onwards, weirdly, incongruously upbeat, to its crashing nightmarish climax, before a quiet sad coda makes the implicit explicit and we are left with fear and tension. Interesting in its obscure origins "Katie Cruel" is a gentle, almost delicately delivered traditional song. A strangely unspecific tale of regret which doesn't really reveal much about the predicament of the eponymous heroine, the song's origins are buried somewhere in Scotland and filtered though a transatlantic crossing somewhere around the time of the American Civil War. Utterly beautiful violin work is again the star of the show, winding an appealingly melancholy tune around the lament of the vocal. Finally, "The Thaw" comes on like Codeine or Slint, all pensive post-hardcore minor chords and taut Albini-style tinder dry drums. Dueling guitar and violin melodies shift the song in more chaotic directions with Cumming speaking the lyric in disturbingly calm, measured tones over his own singing. A squall of noise reflects the confusing intensity of the blizzard, before gentle plucked violin notes drip into a quiet, tensely melodic passage with a desperate imploring reminder that "the grass grows beneath the ice and snow" delivered over spirals of noise and shrilling strings.

Reading back, I suspect my ramblings are barely adequate to convey quite how this music works. Somehow John Knox Sex Club combine a firm grasp of tradition with the confidence to twist it to their own ends, rather than slavishly repeating things. Allied to a quietly powerful rhythm section which anchors the wayward violin and burst of searing guitar, the result is a record full of pent-up tension and menacing quiet passages which contain the threat of unexploded devices. When this energy is released the maelstrom is compelling and beautiful. However reluctant John Knox Sex Club feel about self-promotion, there is absolutely no way that something this powerful and darkly lyrical should remain unsung.

You can buy "Raise Ravens" from Bandcamp as a digital download. An extra pound gets you a beautifully packaged CD in a gatefold sleeve, printed and hand-assembled by the band themselves in addition to the download.

John Knox Sex Club - The Neighbours

It's six weeks now since I did an organised railtour, and I've fallen into a pattern of revisiting places rather like I did a couple of years back. This way, I still get my beloved rail journeys but end up somewhere I visited some time ago, with the intention of looking at the place through fresh eyes. Over the last few weeks I've gravitated to the southern end of the West Coast Main Line - not least because the range of cheap London Midland tickets has made some interesting journeys possible. Today again I used these to build a trip over familiar territory - an early start as ever, though delayed a little by signalling problems close to home. Still time for my customary refreshment at Bristol before boarding the 07:00 to Birmingham. Indifferent weather, but good just to be out and about. A change here for a Nuneaton train which was a little busier, and something of a wait once I arrived. Busied myself with a trip to the nearby supermarket which I'd discovered a couple of years back, getting back to the platform in time to see celebrity Pendolino 390054 pass by, a little before a tour using 50044 on the WB64 Virgin rake. Didn't mind the minor delay this caused to proceedings at all, and we were soon off and heading up the Trent Valley to Stafford. A quick switch here, as I've become used to making, and onto a Liverpool-bound unit for the rest of the trip.

Arriving at Liverpool remains a familiar experience, though the station is a much open and lighter proposition since the area immediately outside the trainshed was cleared. The concourse still feels oddly squashed at it's northern end by the 1980s retail and gateline block, but the exit to the south is impressive. Got my legs working with a wander down the steps and into the city - familiar enough territory, and I've got this far on recent trips. Noted though how Liverpool is built of layers of redevelopment - the recent work near the station gives way to the 1970s entrance to the City Centre - brick underpasses and a confusing hotel/shopping centre complex. Then, in the city itself, I began to encounter Liverpool ONE. I'm not sure what, or indeed where this is - its a sort of pervasive mall which has commandeered the street-pattern for it's own ends. I can't find a map of it either, and that causes me unease. Suffice to say, there is an area of what appears to be normal, if tidy and well-maintained, city streets into which the Big Issue sellers won't stray.

I decided to walk towards the docks - where I hadn't been for maybe ten years. Here another layer of development becomes apparent. Between the city and the dockside there had been an uneasy strip of former warehouses. Some had just begun to enter new use when I was last here - as loft apartments and clubs - but much remained derelict despite being on the route to that much championed resort at Albert Dock. Now though, one side of the street is a shining curve of modern hotels and boutiques. The other side retains it's old buildings, but they are all in use now. I pass a giant Tesco store, discretely fitted into the streetscape and realise something rather frightening - the local transformation has even subdued the massive retail giant which is Tesco, the much-defended brand being forced to share a sign here - "Tesco Liverpool ONE". The curve of the street delivers me to the new Bus Station, already moving from it's position near the railway when I visited years back. Beginning to feel like I was in some comic-horror film, I noted that here too things had changed - even at the "Liverpool ONE Bus Station"!

It becomes apparent here from an uneasily sourced map, that I've walked the edge of the development. Hanover Street, formerly a mildly menace-laced plunge into dereliction is now the edge of Liverpool ONE. Here I decided to brave the six-lane highway which Wapping has become to get to the original development zone - Albert Dock. Little has changed here since it's late 1980s transformation into a cultural hub. The Tate still busy with punters, though looking a little tired in it's design now. No giant weather map floating in the dock since "Richard and Judy" defected to evening TV and minor scandalmongering. What is interesting is how the area to the north of the Dock is changing. Stumbling over the mock-antique cobbles - currently being replaced it seems with exact replicas of replicas - and the restored bridges takes me into the Canning Wharfs area. What is most immediately apparent is how a black shard of a building has obliterated the skyline. The Liver Building cowers behind this obsidian monster - which in other circumstances could be rather dramatic. Here though, it just subtracts from the city. I edge around it, noting signs which describe how "government cuts" have called a halt to development of the docks. Making the point, a semi-permanent ring of metal fencing makes you walk the long route around. The signs, amusingly, built with funding from the Dept. for Culture Media and Sport. Enough in the bank for the testy politicians of Liverpool to declare their independence as per tradition then, with some sort of Recession-based Theme Park. Rounding the black glass office with camera out, a security guard takes an interest. He's bored, alone and is ignoring all the Japanese tourists with cameras. I don't want a repeat of last week, but he settles for walking a few paces behind me, pretending to peer into the empty offices. He need not really pace the circuit, you can see straight through the building anyway.

Back into the city, and the heart of Liverpool ONE. It's teeming with shoppers, it's spaces managed carefully to exclude the undesirable. On the fringe, a small protest about the impending release of Jon Venables was taking place. A single angry woman barking into a megaphone, while her friends offer a petition to bystanders. None of this inside the unofficial cordon though, and my walk back to the station unravels the layers of development, while dodging retail-blinded shoppers who seem to come at me without seeing me - an achievement in itself perhaps.

The journey home is sleepy and thoughtful. I'm not sure what to make of Liverpool now. It had always felt a hopeful, developing place - but now the work is done, it has lost something of it's character perhaps. It has also lost the 'Beatles as a Brand' mentality to some extent too, which is probably a good thing. Fewer businesses seem to stake their unsteady survival on the legend of the Fab Four. I wonder, if I'll encounter similar changes elsewhere as I re-explore other cities? It's an interesting if rather alarming journey.