For April, I have found it extremely difficult to choose Album of the Month – and this is often the real challenge with just picking one album a month to review.

Imagine Joe Cocker, Dire Straits, Van Morrison, Toto and Chris Rea all having an impromptu late-night jam – the result might sound a bit like the new studio album from Ellis Mano Band – out on 24th February.

This new album is a powerhouse – the definition of hard rock for a modern age, with a brooding darkness, raw menace and tension that fits the troubled times we live in. 

Authenticity over invention, truth over hype – we start 2023 with a studio album that takes us right back to the roots of rock n roll and blues; a performance album where the honesty and the skill of great playing reminds us what the heart and soul of guitar music is all about.

This is an album I enjoyed on vinyl, and I wrote some thoughts as the music was playing, attempting to capture how the music made me feel.

To mark their 12-month run as Band of the Year, Amongst Liars release a new limited edition CD album, which celebrates their evolution through lockdown to the present day.

Rebecca Downes' album offers an oasis of soul, reassuring warmth and musical colour to counter some of the dark days ahead.

A new outlook for a new era, Marco Mendoza is set to release one of autumn's feel-good rock n roll albums - with light to offset the darkness of recent times, hope and positivity over division and despair.

A wellbeing tonic for troubled times, Marshall Potts delivers an album of musical sunshine that will brighten your day.

Third time lucky, I guess. The 2015 Colour of Noise album I still play to this day and class it as one of the top 10 albums of this new rock revival - although, for some reason, I never reviewed it.

Sometimes it has to be about the songs, not the marketing. We live in a time when bands or managers with the biggest Facebook groups can win accolades for bands - be it a best song here or a best album there - and where devoted fans can buy multiple copies of an album to give their beloved band a fleeting moment in the charts.

Gravity defying. The self-managed band from the sleepy south coast town that is re-writing the rock'n'roll play book for a new age.

Imagine Joe Cocker, Santana, Prince, Stevie Wonder and The Beatles having an impromptu late-night jam. The result might sound like the music on 'The Soul Food Store' - the emphatic and super self-confident second album from Matt Pearce & The Mutiny.