Melenas – Bang

Scintillating new psych-pop to kick things off this week, these are Melenas who are a Spanish quartet who I first playlisted in 2020 when the track ‘Primer Tiempo’ caught my ear. They are set to release their third album in September entitled ‘Ahora’ on the Trouble In Mind label and it would seem they are definitively finding their groove. This taster announces their arrival with a thunderous clang as their individualistic merging of the fuzzy garage rock aesthetic with synthesisers locks into an irresistible groove. Oh and as a side note, this brilliant video was apparently shot in a single take…

Joy Oladokun – Taking Things For Granted

This is probably the outstanding track from Joy’s album ‘Proof of Life’ released this year on Amigo Records. It’s her fourth album release and shows an artist evolving out of the folk / acoustic roots that she initially rode in on. But that development is certainly not to be taken for granted for a song like this is the kind of joyous folk-pop that would have been a hit in the eighties in the hands of a Tracy Chapman or a Tanita Tikaram (under-rated pop masters both). Of course, none of that hit stuff really means much anymore but songs as good as this tend to endure all the same, this is quite stunning…

Edgar Jones – Torture

This guy is a musical treasure that seems to sail perpetually below the radar, a fact that in itself is a crime against musical aptitude not to mention good taste. Featured in this film the former front man from equally low key garage legends The Stairs is turning his talents towards some devastatingly authentic Northern soul sounds ahead of new album, ‘Reflections of a Soul Dimension,’ released on Steropar Records; get out on the floor right now record hunters…

Sam Burton – I Don’t Blame You

Put any reflective songwriter playing melancholic music on an acoustic guitar and marry it to an autumnal string arrangement and it is odds on the reviews will make a Nick Drake comparison. The problem with this is Nick is a legend because he was actually rather brilliant at what he did, writing songs of a higher grain than most so there was a good deal more to his legend than orchestrated folksy introspection. Too many artists are landed with that comparison and many, especially those who are wilfully seeking it, live up to the transparent influence. Write good songs first, that would seem to me to be the obvious starting point. I mention all this in the context of Sam Burton not because he is the next Nick Drake but because this song, from his new album ‘Dear Departed’ set to be released next month on Partisan Records, is indeed in that vein and on this rare occasion, it is a gorgeous piece of gently floating, wavy-gravy music worthy of the comparison. Earlier this year he supported Weyes Blood on tour and I can only assume, on this evidence, that he picked up many new followers playing to that kind of crowd; the album should be boiling over with potential…

Sultan Stevenson – Summer Was Our Holy Place

This ridiculously talented Jazz pianist is captured here with band performing a track from his ‘Faithful One’ debut album, released on Whirlwind Recordings. Easily one of the most immediately loveable Jazz records I have played this year, there appears to be little blocking Sultan from a notable future in music if this initial spiritual, almost gospel infused offering is anything to go by. Not only that but he has a self-made hat based signature look to top it all off, catch this young jazz warrior when and where you get the chance…

Bob Dylan – Forever Young

This Fruit Tree Records site loves to wave a flag for the best new music but has no issue if that happens to be from the hand of a music master rather than a relative unknown. No one knows which artists from my own lifetime will still be remembered and listened to in 200 years, but there is a general consensus that The Beatles and Bob Dylan are among the few that indisputably will. This new Dylan ‘Shadow Kingdom’ album is born out of the Covid lockdown period, when artists had to stop touring and many offered paying online gigs as a substitute. This project was Dylan’s own version of an internet concert and he played a typically individualistic hand by working on the arrangements, the setting, the cinematography and the song selection in a way very unrelated to the regular Dylan live experience. Billed as an offering of his ‘early works’ although including a song from as late as 1989, the versions presented were very much informed by the Sinatra era of covers records Bob had released whilst clearly making a connection between the thoughts and words of a young man and an octogenarian performer still finding fresh meaning in his own work. It also thoroughly trashes the largely inaccurate notion that Bob Dylan destroys his own back catalogue with his treatment of it in concert. Of course, as ever with Dylan, nothing is really revealed but ‘Shadow Kingdom’ will surely settle in the mans catalogue as an important late period example of the artist locked in his never-ending quest to find meaning, relevance and solace in his life as a performing musician, this is essential stuff…