As has become my habit I am sharing two sets of tunes with you for the New Year. Rather than attempt any wheel reinvention I am going with songs I have played before – I liked them then, and still do, so why not? Apologies to anyone who feels short-changed by the repetition, but they are all good so you have that as consolation! This is the first set, falling conveniently for me on a Tuesday, and I’ll follow up with more tomorrow.

I’ve played this first one several times before: it is by a band of which you probably haven’t heard unless you remember them from here, but one to which I feel a connection. I was part of the crowdfunding effort which became The Rescues’ 2013 album Blah Blah Love And War, from which this song comes, and band member Kyler England still follows me on X-Twitter (probably due to inertia more than anything else, as she hasn’t X-tweeted anything since July 2021!). This is one of those ‘hoping for better’ songs, and the video is hilarious:

That is just so good! As far as I know, the band has never had any kind of chart success anywhere: I think that’s a real shame, as they write some superb songs. A mention too, for Chet Dixon, who is brilliant in that video. He is listed on the IMDB as an actor, including an appearance in Cold Mountain, a long way down the list of credits. On this evidence I think he deserves better, although he does seem to have had a couple of more major roles in recent years and has made several appearances in episodes of tv series.

This next one is very much a regular for me. Counting Crows have been a favourite band of mine since their first album, August And Everything After, back in 1993, and this is the perfect looking back/looking ahead song:

I think that video goes so well with the song. It comes from their second album, Recovering The Satellites, released in October 1996. The album was a US #1 and made #4 here in the UK. As a single, this one peaked at #6 on the US chart and #62 in the UK. The video includes what I think is probably Courtney Cox’s best acting performance ever (even better than when she danced with Bruce Springsteen).

I’ve long felt that Gretchen Peters is one of the best singer-songwriters around. She has made some wonderful albums of her own, and is a great live performer, but if her name is known to you it is probably as the writer of songs which have been single hits or album tracks for others, and she has also written and performed several with Bryan Adams. This is another of hers which is better known as a cover, in this case by the country band Alabama, and it has also been recorded by the country singer, Barbara Mandrell. Gretchen sang harmony vocals on Alabama’s version, which was only ever a B-side and an album track and, as far as I know, she has never recorded the song – New Year’s Eve 1999 – herself. I was going to include the Alabama version when quite by chance a couple of years ago I came across another one, by a band who were totally unknown to me: Prescott-Brown. Apparently they were a Canadian country band who released two albums, in 1992 and 1994, and in various incarnations are still performing as the Family Brown. Their version of the song is on Already Restless, the second of the Prescott-Brown albums, which made #10 in the Canadian country albums chart. I much prefer it to the Alabama effort, as Tracey Brown has an amazingly warm voice. I got a ‘like’ on Twitter from Gretchen when I first posted this one a couple of years ago, so I guess she enjoyed it too! I’m rather glad that I found it:

You may well know this next one, as the band are better known. I love the way this song looks back at what seem to have been bad times and attacks them with a positive attitude:

Semisonic were one of those bands who never got the success I felt they deserved. Their March 1998 album Feeling Strangely Fine was a little gem, and produced three hit singles in the UK: this wasn’t one of them, hence the audio only clip. In chart terms the album did better here than in the US: #16 as against #43. But given the relative sizes of the countries the sales figures are a little different: they are certified at over 350,000 here, but over 1m in the US. Not bad for a band who I once saw described in a derisive review as ‘making music for college kids.’ What’s wrong with that anyway?

This next one is from another of my favourites. She only appeared in my Advent Countdown once this year, but I’ve played this several times before for New Year, as it is so very lovely:

This is from Kate Rusby’s first (of six) albums of Christmas and seasonal songs, Sweet Bells, but is not an original of hers. There are several attributions, but the generally accepted story is that the song was written in 1891 by Will Godwin and Leo Dryden. Dryden sang it in music hall performances and recorded it in 1898. It was also recorded by Peter Dawson (‘Australia’s first man of song’ in case you didn’t know – so not the kiddy-fiddler, then). Dawson’s version is taken a little faster, which I find totally unsuited to what is actually a heart-breaking song from the perspective of a young man looking back at year end, and dreaming of home and family. I think Kate does it far more justice – this is beautiful.