I seem to have spent the month of January in the most stimulating song exchange with a close friend which has had the knock on effect of keeping me away from listening to anything new. Instead I have been delving back into my extensive lists of archived playlists and music libraries trying to pick out whatever appropriate response song I can lay my hands on. Putting together the monthly playlist today the temptation was to just compile a 75 track summary of the back and forth of tunes we have been sparring with but the majority of them have appeared in previous monthly playlists and so, as my rule is a song only gets included once, I have had to do a speedy late sweep of new music missed in 2024 so far alongside other older tunes that were languishing in the in-tray.

Considering this state of affairs, it is actually quite pleasing to end up with another five hour list that is as fresh sounding and far reaching as this. It helps that some of my enduring, ever dependable favourites are dropping new music in plentiful amounts; names like Sleater-Kinney, The Black Keys, Hurray For The Riff Raff and Nadine Shah are back with superb renewed perspectives and there is even a brand new song by Billy Joel. In tandem with that, my recent obsessions with Cleo Sol and Blossom Dearie show no sign of abating whilst alongside all this I am about to reignite an old alliance with a close vinyl dealing friend and potentially get involved with clearing a house of some three thousand records. Keep an eye on the Fruit Tree Records store on Discogs to see if that all comes to pass. For now, watch out for the return of my Fresh Juice posts for the one thing my end of the month hoovering up of missed tunes has proved is this, there is a lot of exciting new music to be getting excited about as 2024 revs up…