Hit The North: Italian Stallion

The most audacious move of the transfer window thus far has undoubtedly been the snapping up of legendary Italian playmaker Gianfranco Zola by our very own Wonder Villains.

If you’ve had a long-term interest in the Derry band, you would, of course, not be in the least bit surprised. It’s not like they’ve ever hidden their admiration for the former Chelsea player – even going so far as naming one of their earliest songs after the man.
And it’s the re-release of 'Zola', as part of the promo campaign for debut album Rocky, that has seen the band somehow coax the object of their affections into making a cameo appearance in the video. It’s a move in keeping with the general high spirits in the WV camp at the moment. Bubbly moods are not a thing normally associated with Robyn G Shiels, but these last few months have given him reason to be cheerful.
The Kilrea songwriter has finally secured the release of his long-completed, but long-delayed, second album, The Blood Of The Innocents - a development that’s welcome on a number of fronts. With all the vision, emotion and imagination that was poured into this collection of songs at its point of conception, it’s only right that we’re finally able to listen to the remarkable results. The lack of traction over the last few years has been a source of much (understandable) frustration for the man himself. But with all that behind him now – and the triumph acknowledged – the scene is set for a confident move into the future. A future, hopefully, full of the death balladry and blackguard morality for which he’s known and loved.
 Wired, the new album from Ed Zealous, is now available on iTunes. When the boys first started, they existed as part of a massive tribe of straight-ahead, big-chorus indie rock bands of the sort that, though no-one knew it at the time, were facing a Jurassic-like apocalypse. Now, years later, their continued existence (in fact, as evinced by Wired, their continued prospering) has a heroic, survivalist feel to it.
 ‘Quiet Part Of Town’ – a welcome taster of Wildflower Way, the new album from The Vals — is similarly unconcerned with the drift of contemporary taste and fashion, and sounds all the happier for it.
Folk act Sons Of Caliber have just put out their first album, Albatross, while Alana Henderson – currently touring and Letterman-ing with Hozier -  has recently released Windfall, a mini-album of traditional northern Irish folk songs.
There’s also some very welcome movement on the Arborist front. New single ‘Border Blood’, is out on July 28 – the range-finder for the much-anticipated (well, by me anyway) debut album, Home Burial.
We’ll go further into this with Mark McCambridge soon, but rest assured, it’s a song to stand tall alongside the great run of singles he’s produced so far.
And maybe call into Dragon, Sick, Head and, of course, Good Vibes if you fancy picking any of these up. The indie record shop community in Belfast has been kind enough to undergo a quiet kind of renaissance over the last year. Maybe it’s time to make some noise about it.