Harvest of Highlights

  • The Kinks – Dead End Street

    It might have something to do with their ban from playing in America that led The Kinks to focus on such British sounding and referencing music in the mid sixties, but it equally could be this attention to detail and characters of his native land was the natural writing mode for Ray Davies. Either way… Read more

  • Fresh Juice 5th May 2025

    Jeffrey Lewis – Sometimes Life Hits You Here is some welcome new music, accompanied by a UK tour I should add, from a US cult songwriter whose superb DIY aesthetic, whose biting satirical lyrics and observational dexterity, not to mention his effortless facility to grab an earworm melody or hook, has seen his catalogue grow… Read more

  • Super Furry Animals – The Man Don’t Give A F%$k

    Released in 1996 as a limited edition single, one that had not appeared on the Super Furry Animals debut album from earlier that year but a song that, for years thereafter, would instigate mass singing and hysteria at their gigs. The main sample in the track is taken from Steely Dan’s ‘Show Biz Kids’ and… Read more

  • Old Fruit 2nd May 2025

    Genesis – The Musical Box As a new feature for this website and as a companion piece for the half a dozen Fresh Juice offerings of new music, Old Fruit is a selection of half a dozen older music clips presented here because they either have some current relevance, they are newly discovered archive material… Read more

  • May 2025 Playlist

    Are tribute bands somehow still beyond the pale? Are they still something of a guilty pleasure, that is if you pay any attention to them at all? Still an area of the live music scene that appears to not attract any critical word space or analysis and is maybe even a bit of a joke… Read more

  • Dory Previn – One A.M. Phonecalls

    By the time Dory Previn emerged as a devastatingly raw and emotive singer-songwriter of a singular grain in the seventies she was already in her mid-forties with a trunk load of life trauma spinning in her head. She had cut her musical teeth in the sixties alongside then husband Andre Previn writing lyrics on motion… Read more