As the working weeks descend into a bit of a strange, stressful rut I'm once again beginning to really value these escapes. As winter approaches, railtours become sparse but cheap tickets seem marginally more plentiful, so I find myself building my own trips once again. This generally means zipping around the country, with a loose mission to cover unusual bits of line, but mostly ending up with extended coffee breaks where I can watch the world go by. In some ways I'm very easily pleased, but by others' standards Sheffield is a hell of a way to go for a cup of coffee!

Today didn't start promisingly, with the Temple Meads branch of Starbucks not open on arrival at the station. Whilst sipping hugely inferior coffee and watching the staff inside resolutely failing to open, I fired off a rather bitter email to their customer services. As I was waiting for the 07:30 this morning I was here a little longer, and the store still hadn't opened as I headed for the platform. Onto the train, which should have given me a straight-through journey to Sheffield via a diversion to Lichfield City. As I settled back, music on, I noticed the rather over-attentive Train Manager chatting generally to the carriage. Catching the end of her speech, it seemed that there was a problem with the windscreen and the unit would be swapped at Birmingham New Street. Quite why she chose to speak this monologue to each carriage in turn rather than use the perfectly adequate PA which we would all have heard, I don't know. On arrival, efforts had been made to make the switch easy, just needing to walk forward to the set in front of us. However, lots of people had been allowed to board the train before we arrived. Coupled to a problem with reservations because of the diverted route, this meant no seats for most of the people who'd booked. Some zealots ranted. I just waited, finally getting a seat just after leaving Birmingham. My ire, and my will to write a complaint letter subsided as we sped on via the Cross City Line, calling at Lichfield, then rejoining the mainline at Wichnor Junction. The first time I've done this route in daylight for a long time.

At Sheffield, I wandered out into the city and as usual took a much longer circuit to get to my coffee shop of choice than necessary. It was a bright, chilly morning up here, and finding my usual seat and watching the slightly better wrapped-up than usual population of the city wandering about was a fine way to spend an hour. Finally decided to head out into the chill, and stumbled down the hill to the station to do a bit of shopping and head for the 12:47 to London which was sitting in the bay platform 7, all ready for boarding despite being early. I planned to wander the station a bit first, but a sudden freezing shower of rain persuaded me onboard. Found a seat in First Class, and settled in for the ride down to London. Once through the East Midlands and onto the comparatively quiet Midland Main Line, I found myself dozing a bit and only really waking up properly at Luton. Enjoyed the run into London via this route immensely as it's not an arrival I've made often. Having a little more time to appreciate St.Pancras was rather good too, and I found myself wandering the upper level today rather than making a dash for the underground station. Walking around to the end of the Eurostar platforms, I realised that the main entrance arch was again open now that the hotel was complete. So, for the first time in a decade or so I headed out through this grand entrance, orienting myself by the memory of the old station - a dark, rather quiet and forlorn place with mysterious corners and grimy, forsaken spaces. It's good to see this amazing transformation, and a huge increase in services, but I do slightly miss the blackened old place, littered with trollies and silent between departures.

Down the impressive ramp and over the road for more, possibly ill-advised coffee. Then, just as the sky turned pink and the sun began to set, onto a 205 bus for the journey along the Euston Road which I've grown to love. This was the perfect time of day for it, and I had enough time not to worry about it taking a little longer than usual, as I looked for the landmarks - the mansions on top of Baker Street station, the canopy over the road at Marylebone, the beginning of the suburban sprawl as the flyover heads west and we turned south for Paddington.

The final leg of the trip home was uneventful, relaxing and a chance to finally finish Iain Sinclair's "Ghost Milk" which has dogged my travels for a while now, not being an easy read in some ways. Perhaps these trips are my very own 'grand project'? For now though, they remain a very important escape. People still think I'm fairly insane I'm sure, but they'd probably be more disturbed by my sanity if I didn't disappear around the country like this on a regular basis!

Pop music - it's probably what got us all here, where we're likely listening to music we almost certainly regard as very different to those first, embarrassing purchases we made. But pop music in the sense of 'what's in the charts' is becoming a decreasingly relevant, advertising-led tie-in to the latest film or TV franchise, while the more 'adult' focused end of the music industry disappears into a gloomy zone where soundtracking 'goal of the month' or the winning moment in Masterchef is a bands crowning glory. Here then are a brace of EPs which have recently appeared which provide two different takes on intelligent, carefully built pop songs - pretty different in approach, but both making an effort to squeeze as much thought and as many ideas into the songs as possible. Mercifully for all concerned, I don't either will claim the "as seen on TV" badge any time soon, but both are worthy of your attention.

Morris Major - Itchy Blanket EP

This arrived in my inbox completely by surprise and has captured a mood here at Songs Heard on Fast Trains. Morris Major, an Edinburgh-based four-piece, is the outlet for the songwriting talents of Matthew Harrison. And despite being a fairly straightforward proposition musically, it's those cleverly constructed tunes which lift this head and shoulders about others ploughing a similar furrow. An appealing tangle of guitars heralds "In Amongst My Ideas" which captures that fear which generations of creatives have suffered: "I never seem to think of anything which sounds original". There is, it's fair to say, a bit of potential middle-aged angst going on here, as the frustrations of a part time musician are explored. There's never enough time - and wouldn't it be great to wind the clock back a little, but retain all the wisdom and experience? Is music a youngsters game? Well certainly not if this slice of moderately twee, clanking, deft and clever pop music is anything to go by.

Some swish, 1950s arpeggios tinkle among the neatly tapped rhythms of "Seymour Grove", supporting a heartfelt, openly emotive cry of a vocal. as a lyricist Harrison clearly has the ability to tell a story in little tightly-packed snippets of lyrical cleverness. These songs hark back to a time when popstars were heroes, and it wears it's own icons on its sleeve clearly - with little references to The Smiths, The Go-Betweens or even maybe The Violent Femmes evident too. We're back in familiar territory as Harrison intones "My mind is worried about what my age is" on "Youth In My Heart", which is otherwise an effervescent track brimming with redemptive enthusiasm and vitality.

"Itchy Blanket" is a curious EP of likeably timeless pop which seem obsessed by the passing of time and it's effects. With it's simple but perfectly executed tunes and thoughtful songs, it suggests that Morris Major could have a huge amount more to offer before long. It's a free download from Bandcamp too, so there's really no excuse not to have a listen to this.

Morris Major - In Amongst My Ideas

Bottle of Evil - Inside Looking Out

Bottle of Evil are one of those outfits which have hovered on the edge of my consciousness for a while. Heard on podcasts and mentioned in dispatches, for whatever reason it's taken me a while to get around to a proper listen to the work of Derek Bates and Steven McGilvary until the release of this new EP prompted further investigation. "The Boatman" begins, and indeed ends as a disarmingly simple folky ballad, morphing somewhere mid-song into a shimmering, psychadelic pop sprawl. "I Can See Your Face" is a harder-edged proposition, tripping in on echoing drums and a burst of satisfyingly shoegazey noise which echoes Bates' previous work in Genaro. The drifting, dislocated vocal suits the tone perfectly. It's like the best of 1990s indie colliding with gentle acoustic pop, which is a far more appealing proposition than I make it sound, I promise! After a final, explosive chorus the temptation to go for the hackneyed 'big' ending is resisted with a gentle, sparkling fade to silence.

Next, "Move On" is a shuffling, reverb heavy slice of gorgeously shifting pop - and thus becomes perhaps my current favourite on the EP, with it's little hints at a Galaxie 500 sound buried in there somewhere. The rumble of fuzzy bass, the chiming lead guitar and the whisper of multi-tracked vocals all adding up to a delicate soundscape. Finally - and by complete contrast - "Collider" kicks off as a triumphantly fuzzed up surf instrumental, which mutates into proper old-school metal soloing. It's absurd twists, turns and shifts of tempo as it rocks out are hilarious but enjoyably well-executed. It just serves to illustrate the fact that these guys are incredibly talented musicians, who have found in this set-up the freedom to explore and enjoy their craft.

"Inside Looking Out" is a little more focused and maybe a little less consciously ambient and electronic than their self-titled debut LP which I've gone back to with a vengeance after hearing this. This EP manages to cover more ground, and touch on more potential future directions than most bands manage in a full-length recording. It can be downloaded from Bandcamp for as little as £2.

Bottle of Evil - Move On

I recently read a blog which suggested that somehow releasing things on cassette was some sort of wilful hipster act of assured obscurity. As someone who ran a tiny label long before CD writers and blank media were cheap enough to consider and before the internet made it easy to distribute music, I suppose I recognise a necessity and a pragmatism in the format which might be lost on those who've grown up buying CDs or downloading digital music. For me then, perhaps releasing cassettes - despite their recent decline towards obsolescence - still has a sense of purpose. And after all, it's still perhaps one of the most direct and accessible routes available between the musician and the listener. So, I can't help but wonder how the writer who dismissed cassette releases as largely an act of vanity will regard this release from Gerry Loves Records - which is essentially a cassette re-release of an already out-of-print tape. Is it the ultimate in vanity releases, or is it perhaps just the right way to treat this unusual music?

Wounded Knee is Drew Wright - a Leith-based singer of strange, disembodied shanties and oddly soulful folk tunes - and this cassette, clocking in at around an hour and a total of 21 compositions, is an expansive and sometimes confusing ramble through his world. The project hinges on Drew's voice, which delivers sonorous, melodic incantations over the most minimal of instrumentation. Occasionally there is some electronic percussion, perhaps a dusting of droning keyboards, and a range of background atmospherics - but rarely are these intrusive and they almost never stray into the foreground. For the most part in fact, they are mixed low and almost hidden while Drew's voice is left to carve out the melody. That said, there are a couple of curious and playful instrumentals scattered throughout - such as the kazoo powered "Scotsport" which provides a reasonable approximation of an already pretty strange 1970s STV theme tune. But it's important not to mistake low-tech for low quality - and while there is little in the way of polish or production here, there is nothing throwaway about the songs Drew has selected. His lyrics, particularly mark out a strange tension between simple lilting delivery, traditional song constructions, and more complex lyrical preoccupations. Wright's songs owe more to the spirit of the rural Highlands than the cityscapes of the Central Belt, and on "Muckle Sang" he takes us rambling into the hills in search of spiritual enlightenment with the landscape becoming "the temple/where we contemplate the infinite" before concluding that perhaps it's nature he's been worshipping all along. "Lowland Lullaby" explores similar territory, alongside a simple and beautifully direct melody picked out on a cheap keyboard. Whilst the songs are timeless, they are precisely located in a geography which seems to seep into their bones.

Another advantage of homegrown cassette recordings was always their ability to allow artists to respond quickly to life around them without storing up songs for the next expensive recording session. Thus, some of the songs on "House Music" reflect an overtly political response to events which is barbed and acutely observed, but never overtly vitriolic. "Coffee Ballad" uses the beverage of choice around these parts to explore allegorical relationships between 'strong' and 'rich' versus 'poor' and 'bitter'. Wounded Knee's political stance is however far more directly expounded in "Anti-Facist Reel", where a twanging, warbling, almost comic background lifted directly from Rolf Harris's back catalogue sees Drew ask the very reasonable question "Why would anyone vote BNP? It's a fucking disgrace". It's a refreshingly honest take on these issues, and perhaps surprisingly it doesn't jar with the more pastoral material here at all. Wright's lyrical pallette is rich enough to encompass both the broadly political and the more personal, as amply demonstrated on "Burnett" which sets an oblique, partly-revealed domestic tale in a post-industrial edgeland landscape with "sent home on full pay/insubordination" sitting alongside "wild garlic in the air along the old railways". It is, in fact, hard to single out individual songs because every listen to this collection yields new couplets and lines which strike a chord as Drew's deep, searching voice delivers them with gravity and often perhaps, a hint of regret.

Recognising one of the points raised by our erstwhile anti-cassette blogger which perhaps has some merit, there is a question about how accessible this music is? Originally a cassette only release on Wright's own Krapp Tapes imprint - with a concious nod to Beckett of course - this re-release does at least offer a digital download to those no longer possessing - or perhaps never having seen - a working tape deck. The music too requires some effort - and for me Wounded Knee only really began to make sense once I'd immersed myself totally, headphones on, Drew's voice echoing and booming around me. It's absolutely worth the effort. These songs are subtle and poignant, often funny, but always wonderfully detailed word paintings. The lack of traditional musical backing and the curious selection of sound-effects and background noises is perhaps a little uncomfortable at first, but it works to push the voice and the words into the foreground where they belong. This tape isn't going to deliver some sort of whirling, stomping Radio 2 pleasing Mumford-like folk pastiche, but it's packed full of the hymns to the land, acutely observed stories and political statements which folk song has delivered for hundreds of years. On that basis alone it's absolutely essential listening.

Wounded Knee's "House Music" is available now from Gerry Loves Records on cassette with immediate digital download for just a fiver. You can also purchase it together with the recent 10" EP also featuring Fox Gut Daata, The Japanese War Effort and Miaoux Miaoux for a bargain price.

Wounded Knee - Muckle Sang

Yet again, this tour had already generated pages of internet debate before a wheel had turned - but for me, with a bit of a grind of a working week to deal with, I'd almost not given it a thought until yesterday when I began my wander up to Preston. But, after a comfortable night in the new Premier Inn, even the beginnings of a cold couldn't dampen the excitement. Class 50s on the mainline, into Scotland - something I'd not really expected to see with the recent history of the preserved examples of this class which is synonymous with my home area. Slogged down to the station at around 4:30am, with the sound of the engines already floating up to Fishergate as I headed over the bridge. The stock was, for the standard class folks, not the right way around - but being in the middle I wasn't too worried. Took a few quick snaps of the locos before heading for my seat. Ideally positioned beside the kitchen car for an early breakfast too, which set me up for the 700 or so miles ahead...

Just like previous winter tours which have done this route, the fog closed in somewhere around Huddersfield, just as some familiar faces joined the train. However somewhere north of York, the mists cleared and the sun came out. So, strangely, after some fast running we arrived at Edinburgh Waverley in bright winter sun to a gallery of photographers. Having focused on the 50s, I hadn't considered 57001 on the rear - now in West Coast Railways purple and fresh from an overhaul, this was a winning loco for me. As we set off in the direction we'd arrived from, a cloud of white exhaust filled the station. It seems 57001 is a surprisingly interesting example of it's class!

The timings for the minitour part of the day had been troublesome for a while, and here they began to become wearisome. Around forty minutes allowed for a traversal of the Suburban Lines left us waiting for ages to head for the Forth Bridge and into Fife. It was hot and sleepy on the train, and after chatting for a bit around the circle, I soon dozed off. My second visit to Fife of the year was a little less eventful than the first then. Returning to the capital for a break, we once again slogged slowly around the sub waiting for a platform in the station.

I didn't stray far, since I was feeling worse by now and the thought of a trudge into town wasn't too appealing. So shopped a bit, had a coffee and chatted to fellow passengers before assembling with the growing crowd for our train. In true Waverley style, the stock was late in, with an errant Newcraighall unit blocking the platform until after it's due time. However, once we'd struggled past the obstructive construction works on the station and onto the train, we were soon heading south into the darkness. It was a long old run back, but the locos peformed flawlessly throughout.

Winter tours can sometimes be a bit gloomy, but this was a sociable affair with some cracking locos and some fine running. It was also very probably my last trip with Spitfire of the year - it's been an interesting and unpredictable one, but again there have been some cracking trips. Here's to next year...