We've gone a little bit country

Let's take a brief diversion into uncharted territory. Here is some country music, which is deemed suitable for Radio 2's platylist, that just happens to have a very interesting story.

Red Sky July are three people. One of the people is Shelley Poole, who has a habit of writing gigantic pop songs. You will have heard her work on records by people like Massive Attack, Janet Jackson and... er, Daisy Dares You. She was also one half of sibling pop duo Alisha's Attic back in the 1990s. They sounded like this:

Alisha's Attic - I Am, I Feel


We never found out whether Shelley was Alisha or the Attic, but we do know she was the blonde one. We also know she went on to marry Ally McErlaine, who is now one of the other people in Red Sky July. Previously, Ally was best known from strumming along to Sharleen Spiteri's voice, as he was a founding member of album-shifting soft rock combo Texas. Here he is playing the "axe" on a French television programme in the decade that fashion forgot:

Texas - I Don't Want A Lover


If I tell you that the name of the third person in Red Sky July is Charity Hair, you will probably be able to guess which country she comes from. Sadly, there are no prizes if you said "America", or even if you correctly guessed the state of Florida. No-one gets called things like Charity Hair in Baghdad or Yemen, do they?

Charity was also in a band before Red Sky July - but searching for The Ailerons on YouTube just brings up videos of remote controlled aircraft.

So, that's Red Sky July. They've been around for a couple of years but their debut album got delayed by - and this is the nasty bit - Ally suffering a brain aneurysm, which is like an ice cream headache, but a lot, lot worse.

Thankfully he recuperated and the band got snapped up by Big Life management (Snow Patrol) and signed to Gary Barlow's publishing company, San Remo Live. They've got an album coming out later this year, and the first single is called Loving You's Easy.

Now, given that this blog post refers to some of the most middle-of-the-road bands of all time, you shouldn't expect anything too groundbreaking or dubsteppy from the song. It's just very pleasant, in a Sunday-drive-with-your-dad kind of way. But sometimes that's just what the doctor called for (my dad's a doctor).

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