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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 22nd June 2026

The Delines – Dilaudid Diane

This features on one of the most quietly enduring albums I have heard this year, The Delines latest ‘The Set Up.’ This is the kind of slow‑burn storytelling only they can pull off, a late‑night vignette steeped in motel‑lamp melancholy and the ache of someone trying to outrun their own history. Amy Boone sings it like she is reading a note left on a bedside table, her voice worn but unwavering, while the band moves with that trademark Delines hush, stripped back to an old pub piano here and ensemble backing singing. It is a character study delivered in half‑shadows, for the full cinematic experience you can get the album here: https://amzn.to/4w64jMP

Alex Amen – Diamonds

This laid back dose of sun drenched, hazy day country is from Alex Amen’s debut album ‘Sun of Amen’ which was released earlier this month. This is built on warm, unhurried production and a vocal delivery that feels both intimate and resolute, as if he is sifting through the pieces of a life that he is finally ready to name. The song moves with a reflective pulse, very tender, clear‑eyed, and edged with just enough grit, marking Amen as a songwriter to keep an ear out for going forwards. You can buy the album via this link: https://amzn.to/4eD4GqQ

The Limiñanas – One Blood Circle

This one is taken from the bands first live album, recorded at the Centre Pompidou during Because Beaubourg (October 24th, 2025) and was released at the end of last week. The Limiñanas have spent the past decade carving out their own corner of the psych‑garage universe, theirs is a world of motorik grooves, noirish melodies, and sun‑bleached French cool. This latest release captures their live atmosphere in full, unfiltered form. Long known for the cinematic sweep of their studio work, their full onstage incarnation feels rawer and more propulsive, all fuzz‑bass swagger and hypnotic repetition. A physical copy of the album can be purchased via this link: https://amzn.to/4vo92Jx

Meredith Moon – Sapphire Blue

This is one of many wonderful tracks available on the latest Meredith Moon album, released earlier this year, ‘From Here To The Sea.’ The songwriter leans into her gift for intimate, unhurried storytelling here, tracing a mood rather than a narrative; the kind of reflective, salt tinged folk that seems to gather its power from open water and long memory. Her voice moves with a gentle resolve, carried by fingerpicked patterns that shimmer like light on the surface, making ‘Sapphire Blue’ one of the record’s most arresting moments. The album can be purchased via this link: https://amzn.to/3QCSe2v

Widowspeak – No Driver

This is a track that sits on ‘Roses,’ Widowspeak’s new album release for Captured Tracks, like a slow exhale. This is a song that drifts in on dusky guitars and that familiar, half‑lit sense of longing they can do better than almost anyone. Molly Hamilton sings with a kind of weightless clarity, tracing the feeling of moving through life on instinct rather than direction, while the arrangement blooms in subtle, shimmering layers. This is one of those Widowspeak tracks where the atmosphere does as much storytelling as the lyrics, all soft edges, open roads, and an aching that lingers. The new album is available through this link: https://amzn.to/4vmXh65

Tomorrow Woman – The Flower

To close this week we have a scorching offering of electro pop taken from the new Tomorrow Woman EP ‘Plays Machines.’ Tomorrow Woman is the project of Betsy Roszko, a California‑born, Paris‑based artist whose work blends electronic introspection with a strong DIY ethos. The project marks her return to releasing music after a seven‑year hiatus, following earlier work with the punk band Gomme. With Tomorrow Woman, Roszko shifts into a more electronic, dance‑oriented palette while carrying over punk’s instinct for disruption and emotional directness. You can get a copy of the EP via this link: https://tomorrowwoman.bandcamp.com/

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New Release Reviews

Blue Earth Sound – The St. Louis Sessions EP

The EP remains an important format, that half-way house between an LP and a single, enabling recording musicians to get spontaneously realised cuts into the ears of listeners speedily, rather than waiting on the grander ambitions of an album project. That is exactly the scenario we are presented with here, the end result of some informal sessions that yielded potent produce. It is front loaded with a brace of heavy hitters, firstly ‘Chartreuse’ which is a stunning melange of influence, texture, tone and ideas. The slow shuffle beat brings a trip-hop foundation to the atmosphere, accompanying a deep bass backbone that not only holds the threads together but tantalises with the possibilities that this caught in-the-moment piece offers. With the addition of horns and understated keys, it transforms into a thing of late-night beauty in tandem with a sense of darkening and post-storm humidity. This is identifiably a jazz sound but one that has its dial tuned in to the vibrations of the modern city landscape. Next up ‘Japanese Green’ builds on a meaty groove thrashed out with firmly hit keyboard chords, all of which provide a landscape for some fine brass lines moving into watery keys that send wild explosions of oxygen straight to the surface.

This brand new Blue Earth Sound release was born from a period of momentum and widening horizons for James Weir, who launched the project in 2025 with ‘Cicero Nights.’ That was a debut coloured by late‑night Chicago wanderings, a renewed relationship with the piano, and a circle of collaborators who helped him pivot from his earlier post‑punk and synth‑leaning work into a more atmospheric and reflective mode. That record emerged from basement writing sessions in Humboldt Park and took on its character through sessions with players like drummer Patch Romanowski, trumpeter Will Miller, and engineer Dave Vettraino, establishing Weir’s blend of cinematic jazz, soul inflections, and gently psychedelic textures. As the album gained support from the big-name broadcasters Weir found himself travelling more, and a visit to St. Louis became the catalyst for the next chapter. A casual stopover with drummer and long‑time collaborator Austin LeMoine initially, it turned into a run of informal, living‑room sessions in LeMoine’s newly built home studio, where Weir arrived with loose demos and an openness to letting the music take shape in real time. Local horn players Jawaad Spaan and Josiah Burton joined the fold, and the group landed on a balance of improvisation and later sculpted production, capturing the spark of those spontaneous gatherings.

‘The St. Louis Sessions’ is a document of that loosely evolved creative moment, it actually plays like a natural extension of the world ‘Cicero Nights’ opened but now in new rooms, with new players and the sense of possibility that comes from stepping outside one’s home turf. It is a five-track release that makes its point convincingly in a short space of time and leaves the listener hungry for a directors cut. That said though, there is plenty for us to dig into, especially those aforementioned licks on the second track, there are break sections in here that a hip-hop producer could really make hay with. ‘Danny Boy Voicemail’ does exactly what the title tells us, although who Danny is exactly, I cannot say, before ‘Fresh Air’ equally makes good on its given name. This one is built around a bass line that nearly occupies the space of lead instrument, the ambience of the brass and electronic layers around it rise in the way that morning light breathes across a rain-washed street. Finally, ‘Missouri Midnight’ sets a natural piano figure in motion, giving the ensemble room to answer with a spacious, reflective grace. As extensions of jazz-based excursions go, this does a fine job of building on past foundations and pointing the way to paths yet walked. Keep an ear out for future dispatches.

Danny Neill

Get yourself a copy of the EP via this link: https://amzn.to/4fTjjZB

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Music Mixes

New Mix: Fruit Tree Records – The Fruit Cellar Vol. 5

Volume 5 of our shelf rifling dive into the deep Fruit Tree Records collection is a genre surfing run through some of the tracks that have excited and delighted over the past couple of weeks. These include tasty dives into Blues Rock, Americana, Jazz, Indie, Soul and Folk opening with an especially grooving Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers track, written by Wayne Shorter in a line up that also featured Lee Morgan from the 1960 album ‘The Big Beat.’ From that hot start, an avalanche of equally splendid tunes quickly follow. The full track listing with purchase information is below.

Tracks – Fruit Tree Records – The Fruit Cellar Vol. 5

Politely – Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers https://amzn.to/3Q84FmR

I Turn My Camera On – Spoon https://amzn.to/43FoIvW

Flying Without You – Laura Mvula https://amzn.to/4vVOLep

School Of Hard Knocks – Van Morrison https://amzn.to/4eg6tTR

Rocks Off – Rolling Stones https://amzn.to/4euRapq

Joggie Boogie – Memphis Slim & Willie Dixon https://amzn.to/4uCLEqN

Worryin’ Mind – Smokey Hogg https://amzn.to/4uLaxAu

Limbo – Eliza Carthy https://amzn.to/4fRlXyS

Hard Day On The Planet – Loudon Wainwright III https://amzn.to/3SdB7Vn

Cubano Chant – Climax Blues Band https://amzn.to/4xEltmg

Circles – Camper Van Beethoven https://amzn.to/4vPbOHG

Woman Of The Ghetto – Marlena Shaw https://amzn.to/4fRe9NI

Tower Of Song – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds https://amzn.to/3Q6tvDB

Saeta – Miles Davis https://amzn.to/4xEldnm

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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 15th June 2026

Yea-Ming And The Rumours – Sweet Opiate

This track is one of the new ‘Residue!’ albums quietest gut‑punches, a song that distils Yea‑Ming Chen’s gift for turning heartbreak into something soft‑glowing and strangely companionable. Where the album leans into late‑night melancholy and sun‑bleached solitude, this track feels like the ache sharpening into clarity, a confession whispered to no one in particular, carried by her feather‑light delivery and the Rumours’ gentle, unhurried sway. This is the kind of song that lingers long after it ends, proof that Chen’s ability to make sorrow feel luminous remains entirely her own. You can get the album here:https://amzn.to/3QdaYFF

Pokey LaFarge – Rent Money

The title track of Pokey LaFarge’s forthcoming album lands with the swagger of someone who’s seen the bottom of the barrel and learned to dance on it anyway. Out September 11th 2026 on Boxer Boy Records, the song distils his gift for turning hard luck into high style: a loose hipped groove, a grin behind the grit, and that unmistakable mix of street corner charm and spiritual reckoning he’s been honing for years. This might just be LaFarge holding a mirror to the scramble of everyday survival but doing it with enough warmth and wit to make the struggle feel strangely buoyant. It is a sharp, soulful teaser for a record which can be downloaded via this link: https://amzn.to/4vc6s9E

The Killing Floors – Se Fue, Se Fue

Well, there is no getting away from the fact that I am a sucker for authentic garage rock sounds and they do not get much more straight down the line, pure and honest as this. Everything is right about the delivery right down to the vintage TV appearance style setting for the video. But something I have said many times with acts that lean into this style, I could not care less for the dressing up box attention to detail if the music is nothing more than pastiche, but when a band gets it right with conviction as the Killing Floors do here, that garage band sound is a thing of ageless beauty. It is from the new album of the same name which can be purchased via this link: https://amzn.to/4fEvs4o

Coup Dur – Mon Amie

This ear-worm tune opens Coup Dur’s debut EP with a jolt of immediacy; the kind of first track that makes clear this new project arrives dressed for success. Released on 62 Records and Precious Recordings of London, the song lays out the duo’s aesthetic in sharp relief, a lean, melodic, and charged sense of intimacy that has the effect of being both inviting and slightly off kilter. It is an arresting introduction, the sound of a band stepping into the light with purpose and this stylised video serves their aesthetic well. You can get the five-song album featured in the video via this link: https://amzn.to/4e81VPl

Wooden Overcoat – Finally Arrived

This track gives the first real glimpse of Wooden Overcoat’s dream drenched interior world, a slow motion swirl of gooey guitars and deliberate, heartbeat heavy drums that pull the listener into a trance. Francesca Bonci’s accompanying video deepens the spell, her distinctive visual language amplifying the song’s mix of personal mourning, romantic tension and a wry side eye at the myths of stardom. It is a modestly gripping moment of intimate disorientation, steeped in the fragile beauty of human connection. The bands debut ‘Hello Sunbeam’ EP is available through this link: https://wooden-overcoat.bandcamp.com/album/hello-sunbeam

Knats – Never Gonna Be A Boxer

This track shines on the ‘A Great Day In Newcastle’ album with the kind of kinetic confidence that has made Knats one of the UK’s most talked‑about new jazz outfits. Led by bassist Stan Woodward and drummer King David‑Ike Elechi, the track channels the band’s live‑wire energy into a sharp, swaggering statement of intent. This is rhythmically restless, melodically sly, and presents with a sound that is entirely their own. This is a standout moment from a group already earning serious acclaim, and a reminder of why their rise has felt so rapid and so deserved. You can get your hands on the CD via this link: https://amzn.to/446iW6F

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New Release Reviews

Oral Habit – A Broken Chord

Isn’t it the truth that sometimes you do not know you are missing something until it comes right back staring you in the face? And so it was with this band, specifically my chance encounter with their song ‘Thin Trippin.’ It instantly summoned sonic senses that were once stimulated on a daily basis, the only thing is those days were over three decades ago. That grazing indie guitar sound, the playing that leans into groove as much as it plays for electric guitar posturing and the uninhibited way they are putting the song across thinking if folks were to mistake it for a pop tune, they could not care less. It has such strong echoes of the early nineties, of a time when UK bands in particular had a purity of intent, they were channelling the debris of the twentieth century cultural life lying around them, those sixties garage records shoved away in family lofts, late night TV cult film re-runs, the abandoned guitars and vintage organs which synthesised electro pop had tried, and failed ultimately, to make redundant, then building a reactionary sound of their own. Which is not to say that Oral Habit are revivalists of the original revivalists, but they are plugging right into those very appealing influences, all slowly abandoned as Britpop shifted the emphasis once again, and even better, they now have a far greater palate to work from. So Oral Habit are a band that also reference grunge, they trip out on psych, they push too hard with feverish college rock abandon, and they wrap their whole essence around a hard kicking rock melange of original songs that emphatically shout they are their own, unique force.

Oral Habit themselves come from a place that makes perfect sense of that unruly spark. The core trio of Charlie Hales alongside his brother Felix and bassist Tippi Lewis, operate with the kind of restless, sleeves‑rolled‑up determination that has always powered the best DIY scenes. Their sound seems born out of pushing whatever battered gear is within reach until it either sings or collapses, the sort of setup where overheated valves, misbehaving pedals and half‑broken amps become part of the aesthetic rather than obstacles to be tidied away. Charlie had been sketching out ideas alone long before the band officially coalesced in 2023, but once the three of them locked in, they quickly found themselves orbiting a wider network of like‑minded psych‑garage outfits scattered across the country; the kind of bands who have had their brains rewired by years of Osees and King Gizzard tours. They have already forged tight bonds with London’s Hot Face and caught the ear of Manchester’s Sour Grapes collective, whose catalogue of fuzz‑leaning misfits places Oral Habit firmly among their own. Most intriguingly, they have connected with the Krautpop! label now settled in Falmouth, a home for the more lysergic corners of the UK underground and a natural landing place for a group whose instincts lean towards the wild, the wired and the wonderfully unrefined.

Above all this is a debut album that sets out as many ideas as it can pack into eleven songs lasting just thirty minutes. Do not let the quickfire nature fool you into spotting a drought on ideas, if anything it is the exact opposite. Oral Habit are flying off on so many tangents they almost keep tripping themselves up as they go crash landing into the next song. It is restless, the opening title track setting out its A-B-C positioning, an avalanche of noise hammering the nail of their ethos into our heads before we explode into the ‘Surface Breaker’ riffage, two minutes of speed shifting, crunching gear changes that challenge the listener to keep up. No one is going to hold them still long enough to pin a label on them either, just as you catch yourself thinking that ‘Faux Fidelity’ has darker gothic shades you are fired into a spin of flanging fuzz guitars. Then we are parachuted into the kind of swampy grunge thrashing that Steve Albini would surely have been happy to put his name to. But they can do hooks as well, in fact the album is overflowing with them, it is just that they never settle in the same place for long. The psych pop connections are pretty real too, there is even a flash during ‘Chekhov’ that recalls Status Quo before they got comfortable in denim, but here again the track ends in a far different realm, heavy rock riffing in its purest mode, like all the unnecessary bits have been taken out. ‘Mystery Gash’ pulls a tantalising facility for tasty major/minor melodic writing out of the bag, hidden depths that are also uncovered on the becalmed organ led closer ‘Crooner & Moon.’ So, for all the whiplash turns and stylistic pile‑ups, there is a real craft at work here, a sense that Oral Habit already understand the value of instinct, immediacy and leaving the edges jagged. This is a debut bursting with potential, announcing a group with the nerve, imagination, and sheer appetite to make their own corner of the guitar‑rock universe feel alive again.

Danny Neill

You can download the album via this link: https://amzn.to/3Q0qip7

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New Release Reviews

Joan As Police Woman – Real Life Evolution

It was the summer of 2006 when I chanced upon Joan Wasser for the first time, performing in her Joan As Police Woman guise, at a venue called the Spitz near central London’s Spitalfields Market. I had no idea who she was, I had not attended the intimate club size room to see her, I think I was there on a press duty covering the support act but stuck around to see the main event. If my memory is correct Joan was playing a weekly residency there for a month. That name was a curiosity obviously, maybe this was going to be a stand-up comedy routine? But as she hit the stage with her trio, playing mostly from the piano stool although occasionally strapping on a guitar, it very quickly dawned on me that I was in the presence of an artist playing a set that I would be, and now actually am, talking about decades later. She had a real command on stage that night, an undeniable authority even extending to breaking a song off midway through to invite people talking at the bar to leave. In a music environment that suddenly seemed to be producing acres of fey introspective singer-songwriter types, over indulgently turning their dreary diary entries into equally dreary ballads, here was someone with a direct line to the core of the human experience, turning that connection into impossibly well-crafted songs that plugged straight into our emotive senses. That night Joan was performing songs from her debut album ‘Real Life,’ a record that sounded like an instant classic to these ears at the time and has not diminished in the slightest over the past twenty years, its quality remains true.

As well as being impressed by the material that night I was equally mesmerized by the musician herself. She clearly had a dexterity beyond your average troubadour; the piano work especially had the touch of a classical performer whereas the guitar songs shone a light on Joan’s harder edges. The same kind of contrasts were apparent in her voice as well, it could be as tender, pure of tone and heartfelt as a Karen Carpenter recital but again, you sensed a more streetwise cutting edge pulsing just below the surface. Joan was obviously a performer of a higher stripe, the kind who gets inside the music she is performing and equally, not the type who would find any artistic merit in dialling in a photocopy performance. Which brings me onto the motivation and welcome rewards that come from this new release, a full ten track re-recording and vivid re-imagining of the songs from ‘Real Life.’ Whilst this is technically an anniversary, there is nothing nostalgic about this project. Joan is reviving the material in this way because she wants to stay connected to it, like Dylan has been doing for decades, she wants to keep her best music alive and free from stagnation to both her audience as well as herself by breathing fresh air and exposing new light to the original templates. Add to that the inevitable changes an artist goes through having lived through another twenty summers, the wisdom and maturity realised, and instantly this work becomes as valid and worthy of immersion as anything in her impressive catalogue.  

It sounds like the songs were felt their way towards depending on Joan’s personal attachments to them in 2026. Nothing is radically re-worked for the sake of it, in fact there are certain tracks that stick respectfully close to their original form, although others feel like they were totally destroyed before being rebuilt from scratch. It is an approach Joan has discussed ahead of this release, stating that if she ever felt bored with older material she would “reinvent them until the joy came back, not as an act of revision, but of rediscovery. Songs live beyond their creators. Like us, they settle into themselves over time, finding their own equilibrium. That spirit is the pulse of this new album.” There is a totally fresh cast of collaborators for this project too, Iggy Pop being one of the headline names who infuses ‘Save Me’ with his own identifiable signature so effectively it now plays like a lurching, dirty rock beast. Then there is Krystal Warren who helps transform ‘Save Me’ into the slinkiest of soft-soul grooves, a radical departure from the original Anhoni collaboration. Also ‘We Don’t Own It,’ which I recall Joan saying back in 2006 was written in memory of Elliott Smith, now moves away from the hushed guitar ballad of before into a breezy slow reggae realm built on understated electronica.

Joan has taken care to highlight the pedigree of the other key participants too. She credits “from my current touring trio, Will Graefe brings his emotionally masterful guitar work and Jeremy Gustin his remarkable rhythmic sensibility. Parker Kindred’s inventive drum creations were the spark behind other [tracks]. Thomas Bartlett unlocked a new dimension of the title track and added Rhodes bass throughout. This album gave me the chance to reunite, decades on, with upright bassist Tony Scherr, guitarist Oren Bloedow, and funk bassist Danny Blume, musicians whose artistry has only deepened with time.” That title track, along with the gloriously open and vulnerable ‘Anyone,’ formed the strongest pillars of the original album and so they remain today. Indicative of how close to perfection Joan arrived first time around, these are the two songs that bare the closest resemblances to their originals. I hold the 2006 version of ‘Real Life’ in such high regard that I was actually a little nervous as it approached here, newly repositioned as the closing number. I did not need to worry, it is a little more lived in now but by the time we get to the line about never including a name in a song before, the goosebumps still rise up vigorously. And why does that happen? Because this is real life and so am I. And because ‘Real Life’ was, and remains in its modern rendition, an incredible album.

Danny Neill

You can buy a physical copy of the album here: https://amzn.to/4eCx2mh

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Music Mixes

New Mix: Fruit Tree Records – Fresh Juice 2026 Vol. 8

Volume eight of our 2026 new music releases series ‘Fresh Juice’ opens with some essential new soul sounds from Konyikeh with an undeniable retro punchiness before embarking on a journey incorporating new sounds in Psych Pop, Garage Rock, Indie, Folk, Americana, Country, Singer-Songwriter and Jazz before ending in outer space with Visible Cloaks as our tour guide. So, why not join us as we continue our mission to prove that there are still plenty of freshly minted, visceral audio thrills to be found going forward.

Tracks – Fruit Tree Records – Fresh Juice 2026 Vol. 8

Jealous – Konyikeh https://amzn.to/4xhQaNT

Fishes – The Junipers https://thejunipers.bandcamp.com/

Quints Cantina – GALVEZTON https://www.galvezton.com/

Thin Trippin – Oral Habit https://oralhabit.bandcamp.com/album/a-broken-chord

Eyelid – Deer Tick https://amzn.to/4oeOY9L

Ana Inssan – Souad Massi https://amzn.to/4xk93j0

Rent Money – Pokey LaFarge https://amzn.to/4fvf1ax

Someone To Watch The Band With Me – Tift Merritt https://amzn.to/4aCkrwW

Sometimes The Sea – Julia Greenberg https://juliagreenberg.bandcamp.com/album/born-sentimental

The Owl Song – Bity Booker https://bitybooker.bandcamp.com/music

I’m A Man – Datura4 https://roguerecords.bandcamp.com/album/im-a-man

The Big One – Dent May https://amzn.to/4upwPrm

Long Way To Fall – Bedouine https://amzn.to/4e17nUk

Ladybirds Spine – ANYX https://amzn.to/4g9izzl

Spring Is A Fine Time – Alela Diane https://amzn.to/3S1pAbC

Renaissance – Raffy Bushman https://amzn.to/4ut3axE

Shapes – Visible Cloaks https://amzn.to/4nCstLE

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New Release Reviews

Raffy Bushman – New Life

Jazz’s critics often overlook the simple truth that when the wide ranging, often maligned, genre locks into a groove, it can be as rhythmically charged and dance‑inducing as anything on a club system. That pulse has been there from the earliest swing bands through the breakbeat gold of Blue Note and the fusion era, right up to today’s easy dialogue between jazz and hip‑hop. Raffy Bushman’s solo debut taps directly into that lineage. Across its seven tracks, moments of introspection sit inside an undeniable forward drive, the whole record coated in an infectious rhythmic sheen. The centrepiece, ‘Renaissance,’ is the clearest example. A springy double‑bass line sets the foundation before Bushman’s piano is at first coordinated with the bass riff but quickly pushes the tune into a rolling surge of ideas. When the trio suddenly drops away, he unspools a lattice of interlocking keyboard figures which are almost Bach like in their intricate, looping patterns that toy with time and tug the ear in multiple directions at once. The band then snaps back together for a final, exhilarating climb. This is music that balances complexity with immediacy, full of heat and precision, and delivered with the confidence of a trio who can play it structured and yet still sound loose, in the moment and totally responsive to each other.

Raffy Bushman’s path to his first solo album reads like a long, looping circuit finally hitting the home straight. He emerged in the UK jazz underground as a pianist with a sharp ear for the places where jazz and hip‑hop meet, building early projects around that rhythmic dialogue. As his ambitions widened, so did his ensembles: string‑laden classical‑jazz hybrids, chamber‑sized experiments, and collaborations that pushed him deeper into arranging and orchestration. Those years broadened his palette without ever pulling him away from the instinct that drives all his work, namely taking familiar forms and bending them into something newly alive. Today he is back at the piano trio format that first defined him, carrying the weight and clarity of everything learned since. With Matt Davies and Alec Hewes anchoring the rhythm section, he folds his arranging experience into a leaner setting, creating seven pieces that move fluidly between tender audio lyricism, tight, bouncing grooves and bursts of harmonic colour. The album plays through like a summing‑up of the journey so far; a musician whose roots in hip‑hop, jazz, classical and gospel have fused into a voice that is indisputably his own, and a trio sound buffed and polished by years spent exploring every corner of his musical identity.

The album’s lead single,‘The Leopard,’ arrives late in the running order but acts as one of its clearest statements of intent. Built on a deceptively simple three‑note riffing piano figure, it grows into a full‑bodied groove that lifts off with real force. Bushman tips his hat to the film that inspired the song title, echoing its themes of clinging to tradition, yet he twists that idea by blending bebop phrasing with a lightly Latin, swung backbeat. As he explains, “the foundation of the composition is the left-hand repeated figure, which I had on a loop in my head for about a year before starting to add the other elements. I like how this figure blends with the very slow legato melody – this piece is all about textures.” That interplay between repetition and colour gives the track its charge as we hear a simple motif transforming into something vivid and propulsive. The album is bookended by ‘Two Peopleʼ and ‘New Life,ʼ both of which offer serenity and a reflectiveness to the conversation, which are highly understandable when learning of the new relationship developments and impending fatherhood anticipation that was inspiring Raffy while this album came together. “’Two People’ was written for my partner,” he explains, “who encouraged me to record my solo pieces, whilst ‘New Life’ gave me the opportunity to step out of the strict stylistic aesthetic I normally work within, and just express myself, and how I feel about becoming a father.” Considering all these real life, circumstantial, musical and background elements that hit a timely synchronicity for the birth of this album, we can safely say that it instantly stands as one of the pivotal moments in a serious jazz artists career. Furthermore, ‘New Life’ has a timelessness and classicism about it that will ensure it endures far beyond the year of its creation.

Danny Neill

The album is available via this link: https://amzn.to/4vyHbGm

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New Release Reviews

Bity Booker – There’s No Song About A Stone

It is always a delight in the business of music discovery, record hunting and general audio thrill seeking, to come across an artist who you assume will be of a familiar type only for them to far exceed your presumptions. Not only that, but also equally beguiling is when there is something quite mysterious about them. They do not conform in the way so many of their peers do, despite using the exact same tools and even occupying the same space, there is still that essence of the unknown. Bity Booker in 2026 has been, for me, one of those unexpected encounters. Yes, Bity (pronounced Bee-Tee) is an acoustic guitar playing singer who writes and plays her own material, a very well populated field of expression you must agree, but she stands apart because there is an element of magic to her work that is quite hard to pin down. So, right there is the wonderful thing, because so many times the greatest music casts a spell and often it is not a mixture you can dissect down to the ingredients that make it work. And thanks to the positive impact, there is no need to do that anyway, that is where the wonderment lies. The music of Bity Booker is the sound of another realm and from the moment you cross over there are no explanations necessary, you are simply mesmerized.

We begin with ‘The Owl Song’ which sets the scene for the individualist approach that dominates throughout. It is something of a call and response duet with the feathered friend in the title, offering the kind of delicate, whimsical beauty deployed by Joanna Newsom, which is as close to a comparison I can make although fundamentally, Bity plays wholly her own style. This strange brew is there on ‘A Tear,’ a song that immediately places the tunefully picked acoustic guitar and a sprightly, subtly chilling, voice in line with the natural world, moulding the environment to human connections, drawing the lines between how we feel joy and pain in tandem with our planet. Those same teardrops are also falling on ‘Dewdrops,’ echoing into a vast valley as if tumbling through open air and landing in widening circles of space, but this is not a sorrowful experience, more like a natural serenity. There is an elegantly gliding quality to the whole work and a connection to flying animals is present throughout, songs are based on the crow and parrots (with a neat reference to them originally escaping from Jimi Hendrix’s cage) although the standout for me has to be the graceful ‘Love Is Like A Swallow In The Spring.’ It all adds up to a mightily mature work on what Bity herself calls “my first ‘non-debut album.’ I call it a ‘non-debut album’ because I have long been making music in different forms, from death metal to alternative folk, so it feels strange calling it a ‘debut album’. It is the product of years of songwriting and performing solo.” 

‘There’s No Song About A Stone’ arrives as an independent release, issued in a run of just 250 blue‑marbled LPs alongside CD and digital formats, but its cottage industry design feels entirely in keeping with the way Booker moves through her craft. She admits to taking her time with music in a way that makes her happy, working outside commercial rhythms, outside expectations, letting songs form at their own pace. She thinks of her creations as things shaped by time, dreams, thoughts, rain, wind and you can hear that philosophy in the recordings themselves. These tapes feel alive; birds flicker at the edges, people pass by, London hums in the background, all of it part of the room she recorded in, all of it folded into the spell. So here is a gathering of some of Bity’s favourite songs, a mix of pieces road‑tested at gigs and others never aired before, but what binds them is the sense of an artist following her own internal weather. It stands apart from the regular singer‑songwriter crowd thanks to its ethereal detachment, its deep connection to the natural world, its refusal to sand down the oddities that make it breathe. Booker is flying her freak flag with pride, and the result is a record that will stand out wherever it is heard; this is the sound of someone fully unleashing their creative essence into the world and trusting it to find its way. Should the stars align favourably, this singer and these songs will do just that.

Danny Neill

You can get yourself a physical or downloaded edition of the album here: https://bitybooker.bandcamp.com/album/there-s-no-song-about-a-stone

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Music Mixes

New Mix: Fruit Tree Records – Folkelectric Vol. 2

This is the second chapter in our series exploring the moment folk and singer‑songwriter traditions were wired straight into the mains. This one picks up the voltage enhanced thrills where the first one left off as titans like Richard Thompson, Neil Young and Fotheringay spark against modern torch‑bearers from The Weather Station to Frazey Ford, with cult heroes Fred Neil and Terry Callier adding their own crackle to the mix. As Dylan might’ve put it, get f*&%in’ loud.

Tracks – Fruit Tree Records – Folkelectric Vol. 2

Sibella – Richard Thompson

Gallows Pole – Led Zeppelin

Oh Susannah – Neil Young And Crazy Horse

I Loved Her So Long – Unicorn

Your Thoughts And Mine – Tarnation

Storm – The Way We Live

Swan Swan H. – R.E.M.

Tell Me Death – Sharron Kraus

Late November (Alternate Version) – Fotheringay

Three More Days – Ray Lamontagne

Window – Weather Station

Head Home – Midlake

Firecracker – Frazey Ford

Promenade In Green – Terry Callier

Faretheewell – Fred Neil

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