The best new rock songs you need to hear right now

If failure is the mother of success – as the title of the recent single by The Wildhearts proclaimed – then success is surely the mother of further success. For The Wildhearts triumphed in our most recent Tracks Of The Week fandango, which augers well for their upcoming album Satanic Rites Of The Wildhearts, which will be out next year.

Second place went to The Damn Truth’s single The Willow, while Spiders completed the podium with the excellently titled What’s Your Game (Miss Insane). But hey, the week belonged to Ginger & Co. So here, once again, is Failure Is The Mother Of Success.

Here are our latest eight candidates. Please vote for the one you’d like to invite over for Christmas dinner.

The Darkness – I Hate Myself 

If you thought that title would signal a solemn work of inward-looking anguish…erm, it really doesn’t – it’s way more fun than that. Part fizzling Status Quo boogie, part sax-parping glam rocker with Christmas-friendly whiffs of Slade and Wizzard, I Hate Myself is the happiest song about self-loathing you’re ever likely to hear. “I think without regrets we stand to learn less from our experiences,” says Justin Hawkins, “to deny them and compartmentalise them is to deny ourselves an opportunity to grow. So, it’s time for us to sing this uplifting ode to remorse in the hope that we don’t make the same mistakes again and history does not repeat itself.”

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The Hellacopters – (I Don’t Wanna Be) Just A Memory 

Swedish troublemakers The Hellacopters have a new single that couldn’t be any more Cheap Trick if it was played on a five-neck guitar, and there’s nothing wrong with that. (I Don’t Wanna Be) Just A Memory is prime power pop, with a chorus so bouncy it may have been written on an actual trampoline. New album Overdriver will arrive on January 31 via Nuclear Blast Records.

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Toby And The Whole Truth – Alone With You

Now for a big old boot-stomper with which to fill your…well, your boots with as the festive hibernation period approaches, courtesy of Toby Jepson and chums. Built on a real chest-thumper of a riff – heartier and more bullshit-free than a boxful of jacked up early AC/DC riffs set to ‘party’ mode – Alone With You is so chunky on the surface that its gentler, subtler streaks come as a pleasant surprise (think pretty backing vocal textures, thoughtful melody twists and penetrative sense of yearning… plus a juicy little guitar moment that sounds a bit like Alice Cooper’s School’s Out).

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Carol Hodge – Small Crumbs

Fresh off tour with Ginger Wildheart’s band, singer/songwriter/’seven-fingered pianist’ (she was born with cleft type symbrachydactyly, so she only has two fingers on her left hand) Carol Hodge combines fat, fuzzy guitar grooves with splashes of synths and a bright-eyed melody that shapeshifts through proggy turns, clever pop rock bursts and almost Alice In Chains-y shadows in the verses. It’s eccentric and unpredictable, in a way that feels totally natural. Her new album EffortLess Insecurity, from which this is taken, promises to be her heaviest and darkest yet. Check it out on January 31.

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Black Eyed Sons – Don’t Throw Me In The Corner

With Spike and his Quireboys enjoying a post-split renaissance with Thunder’s Luke Morley, the other QBs cohort/breakaways now present their own brand of Stones-y, piano-pounding rock’n’roll merriment. “This song covers a range of situations from growing up in the avenues of Blyth to break ups and may just reference certain people in a cryptic fashion!” guitarist Paul Guerin says. “When it came to the music, I’ve always wanted to write something where I modulate the chords a semitone both up and down without anyone noticing, haha! I think I pulled it off. At the end of the day, it’s a rock’n’roll song.”

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Those Damn Crows – Still

Frontman Shane Greenhall draws from the depths of his own experience on Still – a delicate, quietly rousing soundtrack to coming back from the brink, steadily built up with strings. “Still is an exact time and place where in my mind the thought of ‘the end’ was more comforting than actually being here,” Greenhall explains. “I don’t reflect with any negativity at all, in fact quite the opposite. Thankfully… through music I’m constantly reminded that all thoughts pass, and all forms are temporary, reinforced when I visit my ‘go to’ place on the coast of Southerndown, where I had those thoughts and wrote this song.”

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Caleb Johnson – Blind ft. Joe Bonamassa

Caleb Johnson was most recently spotted fronting the Trans Siberian Orchestra, and last year he led Meat Loaf’s old band on the terrific Paradise Found: Bat Out Of Hell Reignited, a cover of the whole Bat Out Of Hell album. Now he’s back with the extremely tender solo single Blind, which will help raise money for Hurricane Helene relief in Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. It’s a perfect showcase for the American Idol winner’s extraordinary voice and features some equally soulful guitar from Joe Bonamassa. Available now via the excellently named Big Johnson Records.

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The Dollheads – Teenage Runaway 

The Dollheads are a sibling pop-punk band outta Las Vegas, comprised of Angela (Guitar/Vocals), Samantha (Bass/Backing Vocals) and Austin (Drums), and we’re much too old to guess their ages accurately. We do know, however, that they’ve been going for around eight years, and they formed when Austin was five, so you do the math. While you’re doing that you can listen to Teenage Runaway, a tribute to Joan Jett that’s so well formed it sounds like an instant classic, with lyrics like “With a bad reputation as a label / And no label that would have her back / She told the music industry to fuck off / And went directly to the pressing plant” telling the story of Jett’s career. NOFX’s Fat Mike cameos in the video.

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Polly is deputy editor at Classic Rock magazine, where she writes and commissions regular pieces and longer reads (including new band coverage), and has interviewed rock’s biggest and newest names. She also contributes to Louder, Prog and Metal Hammer and talks about songs on the 20 Minute Club podcast. Elsewhere she’s had work published in The Musician, delicious. magazine and others, and written biographies for various album campaigns. In a previous life as a women’s magazine junior she interviewed Tracey Emin and Lily James – and wangled Rival Sons into the arts pages. In her spare time she writes fiction and cooks.