This months playlist is headed up by The Zutons, a band that I am more than a little excited to find are returning after being mostly inactive for the past fifteen years. It just so happened that my record shop took in a rare original vinyl copy of their 2004 debut album these past couple of weeks, ‘Who Killed The Zutons’, which was online for less than a day before someone had snapped it up. Luckily, before the sale and largely because there were a few surface scuff marks on the record, I had to play test it before listing it for sale. It played great and just reminded me what a stonking debut album that was twenty years ago. Hence the inclusion of a classic from that album to get this playlist started.

The new material the band are returning with sounds pretty special too if what I have heard already is anything to go by. I do recall how exciting it was when they first appeared, seemingly another classic band from Liverpool (and this was only a short while after The Coral first surfaced) already developed and producing brilliant music. I knew John Peel at the time and can remember him holding their debut album in his hands saying how fantastic the band were and complaining that record companies such as theirs no longer sent him releases like that for free so he had to go out and buy his own copy. To be fair, he probably wasn’t being sent them because they knew he would be unlikely to play it. The Zutons were a Radio One daytime playlist band from the word go and Peel was always reluctant to play much music that was already getting exposure elsewhere. Still, it is worth noting that he rated The Zutons, especially given his high opinion of other Liverpool greats and of course, he was right.

Within a couple of years The Zutons world changed indelibly when Amy Winehouse covered their ‘Valerie’ making it, almost instantly, one of the most popular and familiar songs of the decade. It is hard to not believe that this must have had a demotivating effect on the band, especially with all the financial security that singer Dave McCabe, by his own recent admission, still enjoys to this day. It could indeed be the reason that, as of today, there are only a frustratingly paltry three Zutons albums to look out for. But, that is about to change, maybe this time they can stick around for the long run…