Maen, a member of the rap collective Sa’aleek, was working one night in their small makeshift studio in the Qalandia refugee camp near Ramallah. He dozed off, only to find the studio door had been concreted over and he was trapped. It took fellow band members 36 hours to dig him out, but Maen didn't seem that worse for wear. As studio disaster anecdotes go, that takes some beating... 

Blossoms are the latest inheritors of the massive-in-Manchester mantle that has, so often in the past, translated into massive-almost-everywhere ubiquity. That their eponymous 2016 debut album was a chart-topper shows they’re on the way, although they’ve not yet mustered a single that’s thrown them to the next level. The surprise when they first appeared was that, although they look indie and have fans such as Ian Brown of The Stone Roses, their sound was a blend of polished yacht-rock and electro-pop, more The Killers than New Order. With Cool Like You, the rock aspect is almost gone. This is a synth-pop album, and in places a juicy one.

As the album starts, “There’s A Reason Why (I Never Returned Your Calls)” brings to mind Future Islands’ emotionally calibrated quirkiness, albeit without Samuel T Herring’s unique vocal stylings. Instead, and throughout, Tom Ogden’s voice is an ebullient, quivering fusion of Brandon Flowers, Paul Heaton (once of The Beautiful South) and, of course, his own native Stockport writ large. It’s a lead instrument that sets these songs apart: we’re not used to hearing this sort of voice with such synth-pop sounds.

There are catchy stompers, gig-slaying hi-NRG Euro-disco such as “Unfaithful” which absolutely bangs along in the manner of Moby’s Void Pacific Choir albums, or “Lying Again” which builds and shimmers in a way that makes the listener want to power-grab the sky. The synths on both are redolent of Pet Shop Boys at their most gigantic and stadium-friendly.

Elsewhere they chuck in a few slowies, “Stranger Still” and the Yazoo-alike “Love Talk”, and there’s almost a modern prog feel to the rhythmic changes and heaviness of “Giving Up the Ghost” (think Porcupine Tree at their most accessible). Overall, though, this is electro-pop, owing a debt to the past but with its eyes very much on slaying crowds during 2018’s summer festival season.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for "I Can't Stand It" by Blossoms

Record Store Day 2018 – Saturday April 21 – is upon us. It should really be Record Shop Day 2018 as this is the UK but let’s not quibble. Instead, put aside cynicism about major labels cashing in, wander down to the nearest record shop – and, happily, new record shops are starting to pop up a lot lately – then rifle through the racks. Below are the releases that reached theartsdesk on Vinyl, quite a few of them rare as hens’ teeth.

There’s a crisis in popular musical vocals. They’ve reached a very naff stasis. After a decade-and-a-half of Cowell hegemony and stars that have risen during the same period, a generation thinks there are only two ways to express emotion. One is melismatic singing (for women – wandering wildly about the higher registers on every syllable, a la Mariah Carey/Whitney Houston), the other is voice-breaking (for men - cracking into a vulnerable falsetto a la Jeff Buckley/Coldplay). It’s all very boring. There are so, so many other ways to express emotion. Just ask Louis Armstrong, Ian Dury, Courtney Barnett and thousands of others, including Greg McDonald.

McDonald, once of indie band The Dawn Parade, then a solo artist, now fronts folk outfit Glymjack (Victorian slang for lantern-bearing street-child guide). He has a voice that quavers in a way that, when the song is up to muster, is wrenching. A comparative reference might be the late Nikki Sudden, but McDonald has his very own style. A decade ago he released a fantastic, underheard singer-songwriter album Stranger at the Door, which he’s struggled to match since, but on Light the Evening Fire he occasionally hits its heights, albeit in a different medium.

For fans of proper folk-rock, in the Fairport/Bellowhead vein, there’s plenty to get their teeth into, with McDonald backed energetically by fiddler Gemma Gayner on songs such as “Bows of London” and “The Sweet Trinity” which have part-song harmonies and a rich, catchy archaic feel. For me, though, McDonald’s poetic, literate, raw, unadorned songwriting is what hits best on the slow-building doomed darkness of “Night Vision”, the socially conscious storytelling of “Hope Point”, and the soulful outsider statement of “Bright Sparks”.

Glymjack sees McDonald back out there working the circuit, his unique singing style and songwriting skill both on fine form. Maybe Glymjack will finally be the making of him and his accomplices. That would be a welcome development.

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Overleaf: watch a trailer for Glymjack's album Light the Evening Fire

The Stones do it. U2 too. It takes immense and lordly clout for a touring band to breeze into town and each night summon a major recording artist to step onstage for some party fun. For Arcade Fire’s first night at Wembley Arena it was Chrissie Hynde. For the second, Jarvis Cocker lolloped up in a cream twin-breast linen suit to deliver that radio-friendly anthem, “Cunts Are Still Running the World”.

The National Jazz Trio of Scotland are not really that at all. With a name designed to sound like a stiffly formal unit they are, in fact, an entity based around Bill Wells, a Scottish institution, albeit an alternative one. He’s been around the block many times since the Eighties when he first started making waves with his very personally curated and individual perspective on jazz. Since those days, he’s worked with all sorts, ranging from Isobel Campbell to Aidan Moffat to Future Pilot AKA. His fourth National Jazz Trio of Scotland outing is a likeable, laid back odd-pop curiosity.

Vol. IV is intended to be the first in a series of albums featuring one singer each. The voice fronting this one belongs to Kate Sugden whose sweet, unaffected tones match the disarmingly simple arrangements. The sound accompanying her borders on easy listening but undermined by a twinkling, plinky-plonky ambient aspect. Sometimes this is foregrounded, as on “Move”, a light and poised meditation on depression, or the revolving bass patterns of “Summer’s Edge”, redolent of modern classical sounds. On other occasions, Wells and his crew create a fuller sound.

The songs that blossom into grander affairs include the brief but catchy “Tinnitus Lullaby”, a strangely effective Spartan sea shanty about the medical condition of the title, the filmic organ-fuelled opener “Quick to Judge (Don’t Be So)”, and most strident of all, “A Quiet Life”, which explodes midway through into a New Orleans brass stomp, before retreating, by degrees, to cool funk and free jazz squawking. The latter is the album’s most fascinating piece, although possibly not its most accessible.

The National Jazz Trio of Scotland are unlikely to become a mainstream phenomenon but the furrow they’re currently ploughing is, in its own unique way, poppy and welcoming.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for "Tinnitus Lullaby" by National Jazz Trio of Scotland