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.
Now this might seem at odds with the name of this site and the record collecting missions I have attempted to set readers off on, but I have a confession to make; I have rekindled my love affair with the Compact Disc. I still hold the vinyl LP and the 7 inch 45 as the design classics they are, but in a certain kind of mood and with another charity shop sourced 99p extended remastered deluxe edition set in my hand, I can easily form an argument for the CD being the best format to experience music. Not only for its superior sound quality but also for its durability, the range of possibilities it has for re-issues, for offering satisfying collectable packages and its suitability for building home libraries of music. It is also free from the trendy vinyl records hype and is enjoying a moment when great titles can be found for affordable prices.
I have been collecting music for around forty years and will hold my hands up and admit, I fell out of love with CDs for quite a few years. Long enough to upload my thousand plus CD collection into an mp3 library and sell the original items, telling myself I would never miss them and, for a while, I was right.
But then, after a time, some house moves and a few computer replacements, I started to notice holes appearing in what I believed was an indelibly saved library. Albums or tracks that I knew I owned just disappeared. It seems the cloud, whatever that might be, is not as watertight as we are led to believe. Or maybe I should take responsibility, after all when you re-locate, checking that all your mp3 files are neatly packed away is not something you think of, so maybe I cannot blame other technology for my diminishing music collection. But another thing that had begun to frustrate me is the endless re-organising of tracks you have to tackle, seemingly every time you open a computer library of music. Songs appear on albums out of sequence, or certain tracks are separated and appear on another version of that album, minus the other tunes, elsewhere in the library. Cover art is changed seemingly at random. Maybe all this confusion had instilled paranoia for I felt sometimes like the unreachable air bubble our music collections exist in can swap songs on albums, replace them with an inferior live version of the same track or an earlier non-remastered version. Either way regardless of who is to blame, it is a ball of confusion that I have fallen out of love with.
For a while my solution was to go back to vinyl, after all that was where I began in the 1980’s. We like to conveniently overlook that when nearly everyone switched to CD from record, everyone, musicians especially, were excited by this format. Not only was the sound clearer and yes, better than anything ever experienced before, but it was also a more durable format, could hold a lot more music and took up far less space on the shelves, thus enabling collectors to amass bigger libraries.
But somehow, despite fast becoming extinct in the eyes of the majority, the vinyl record began to revive due to a number of factors. Firstly, when internet selling became the main global marketplace there were a lot of record dealers waxing lyrical about the magic of vinyl, the joy of the physical product, the clone like nature of CDs compared to the individual charm of a record (pressing faults and all) and above all the superior sound quality. I bought into all these ideas without inhibition but there are issues that do not, for obvious reasons, get talked about very much.
The one thing about LPs I cannot dispute is they are a better format for cover art. You can get a far greater appreciation of an artistic or conceptual album cover if it is viewed on a twelve-inch piece of card or even better, a fold out gatefold sleeve. But CD covers are hardly the inferior relative they are made out to be, a fold-out booklet has a charm of its own as does a digipak or a nice slipcase. In fact, there are many variants of the CD package and some are superb and furthermore, they look uniformly satisfying when viewed from their spines on a shelf.
But another thing I was personally frustrated with when collecting brand new records (other than the crazily high prices) was the sound quality. The major selling point of a vinyl album, their providing the best possible audio clarity and range, is simply not always true. Where the claim does have some punch is on original, first pressings of albums released from the late fifties through the seventies. If you have a top-quality condition, Mint or Near Mint, copy of an album released in this period the chances are, if played on good equipment, that you will get the best listening experience possible and the sound will come alive in ways you had not imagined. But this statement, I would now argue, only applies to original albums released over that time period and as any collector should be aware, being able to source copies of the most sought-after albums from this period in the best condition is a very expensive hobby. A good investment for sure, but if hearing music is your motivation, you will not be served so well unless you are a lottery winner.
Where more recent albums are concerned, and certainly with anything produced after CDs became the main format, I have never been able to spot any noticeable difference in the sound quality on a record to the CD version. In fact, sometimes the difference is all about the loss of audio quality on an LP or 45. Let them gather dust and the background noise will always be intrusive, still the big issue I have with new records these past thirty years is that many do not appear to have been manufactured with the expectation of being played much, or at all. I have bought some terrible, brand-new pressings that simply do not play properly. I have encountered heavy bass parts that always skip, blemishes in the playing surface invisible to the naked eye and some albums that do not even appear to have been centred correctly, meaning as they rotate the music plays with a totally unlistenable warped wobbling, key bending effect. And part of this I guess is the fault of the consumer, because a lot of people do buy records purely to own the artefact, often never actually playing it, the original purpose of manufacturing these works of art reduced to an afterthought. For fairness’s sake I will add that I did also buy some very good pressings, but never anything that I noticed improved audio over a CD or even a streamed edition.
Records are easily damaged too, one clumsy drop on a turntable or snatch grabbing of an album sleeve with the opening edge facing down, causing the record to drop out, and the chances are that disc will never play right again. There are perils to the preservation of a record everywhere, not merely the hands of a careless user. Leave them too near a radiator or other heat source and they warp, stack them the wrong way for too long and some might dish, any form of manhandling or abuse could cause them to snap; I know marketing on the indestructible nature of CDs was a bit over-the-top and ultimately untrue, but there is actually a lot to be said for owning a physical product that does not get broken so easily. And alongside this tough reality bite on the skin of my vinyl love, I have become positively dewy eyed over the humble compact disc.
The sound is routinely impeccable, the best audio of any recording you could hope to find. They rarely have any wear and tear that prevents them from playing and even if you do encounter the occasional blemish, just taking them out of the player and giving them a wipe with a non-abrasive cloth will fix the issue most of the time. CD re-issues are an absolute collector’s delight, the space on a re-mastered or bonus track laced deluxe edition for additional archive or live material is truly mouth-watering. Fold out digipaks, extensively annotated booklets and near double, triple or even multi disc box set editions have given the world of music aficionados and connoisseurs a format that can cater to their needs, and it continues to function like that today. Re-issue labels often press a vinyl edition for the purists but they cannot eliminate the all important CD version, knowing full well that there is still a marketplace of listeners who love nothing better than to stick a compact disc in their player, kick back for an hour or more and lose themselves in the albums relevant booklet sleevenotes, recording information and deep dive reading materials. I do not think that experience is ever going away either. While the music industry still expresses delight and disbelief at the vinyl revival, why not take advantage of this moment where the CD resurrection is still under the radar and offering a wealth of affordable bargains? I cannot understate my delight at visiting charity shops again with the realistic expectation of finding something brilliant for my (CD) collection. So, will Fruit Tree Records be re-branded towards CDs? No, the vinyl record and initially the shellac 78rpm is still where it all began, nothing can take that away and the back catalogue stuff featured on this site remains as relevant as new releases. But equally, the thought that in a few years’ time I will have a similarly sized CD collection to the one I had twenty years ago, is pretty damn exciting.
Mugshot picture from eighteen years ago with evidence of former CD collection in background
It is always a welcome return when The Coral announce new music and their latest album ‘388’ was officially released last week, following a low‑key, physical‑only rollout through independent record shops across the UK. It is the band’s thirteenth studio album, led by this single ‘Let The Music Play.’ The record draws heavily on the sound and spirit of vintage reggae and dub cassette tapes, while still carrying the group’s familiar blend of psychedelic rock, melody, and wistful escapism. Frontman James Skelly describes the single as an ode to the battered Wailers and Lee “Scratch” Perry tapes they used to pick up in second‑hand shops, music that made sense when the world did not. You can buy the album via this link: https://amzn.to/4wY12jF
Trashcan Sinatras (featuring Tracyanne Campbell) – Bad Husband
This bittersweet ballad brilliantly pairs the vocal of Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne with Francis Reader’s tender phrasing on a lead single from the band’s first album in a decade entitled ‘Ever The Optimist,’ due on the 31st July. The song finds Trashcan Sinatras in wry, melodic form illuminating a relationship wobbling between regret and reluctant hope. Their voices intertwine with a lightness that belies the song’s catalogue of missteps, turning self‑reproach into something unexpectedly buoyant. As bright guitars and primary‑coloured pop flourishes lift the mood, the track reveals its true charm: a heavy hearted duet that treats emotional weather systems with humour and grace, not to mention a defiant sense of joy. You can order yourself a copy of the album here: https://amzn.to/4u7yZfh
Lime Garden – All Bad Parts
This is a live clip from last year but the song has very much been making its mark this year, especially with strong radio airplay, especially on 6Music. It was a standout track on the bands second album ‘Maybe Not Tonight’ and found them distilling a turbulent stretch of life into a sharp, hook‑bright pop song that masks its bruises beneath a restless bounce. The track moves with the jittery energy of someone trying to outrun their own worst impulses, its melodies tugging between exhilaration and unease. As the band lean into the tension between surface gloss and inner turmoil, the song becomes a portrait of coping through motion; dancing through the mess, even when every step threatens to give something away. You can order the album via this link: https://amzn.to/4wRjc6F
Mclusky – As A Dad
Mclusky released the mini‑album ‘I Sure Am Getting Sick Of This Bowling Alley’ digitally on the 20th March via Ipecac Recordings, with vinyl editions arriving this month. This song barrels forward with the kind of crooked swagger only Mclusky can muster, turning domestic absurdity into something loud but also oddly triumphant. The track lurches between sardonic self‑assessment and full‑throttle riffing, as if trying to make sense of the roles we inherit and the ones we blunder into. Beneath the noise and the grin, there is a flicker of recognition, an acknowledgement that growing older does not necessarily mean growing wiser, but it does give you better material to shout about. The physical (or digital) version of this release is available to buy here: https://amzn.to/4uz69oZ
Lambrini Girls – Cult Of Celebrity
More high energy and crunching guitar work is to be found in this next track, which the Lambrini Girls recently released as a stand alone, download only release. It finds them sharpening their already feral punk instincts into something even more caustic and theatrical. ‘Cult Of Celebrity’ tears into the grotesque spectacle of fame with the band’s trademark mix of humour, fury, and razor‑edged social commentary. Its two‑minute blast of noise‑punk feels like a pressure valve snapping or an attack on the hollow rituals of modern notoriety delivered with the Brighton trio’s unfiltered bite. There is a sense that they are pushing their sound into even bolder, more confrontational territory. You can get the download right now via this link: https://amzn.to/4xeTQ35
Chloé Antoniotti – Mangata
We close with a sharp change of pace and turn to some pastoral, melodic beauty in the shape of this ice cool instrumental serenity. Antoniotti is a French composer and pianist who released the EP ‘Mana’ on Cinq 7 / Wagram Music earlier this year. The piano lines in this piece seem to shimmer and recede like moonlit water. Antoniotti’s compositional clarity is front and centre: she favours restraint over flourish, letting harmonic shifts and subtle textural details carry the emotional weight. The result is a work that contains both intimacy and expansiveness, a small, self‑contained world shaped with precision and a painter’s sense of light. You can download the EP via this link: https://amzn.to/4a3vjnp
The more head scratching you do when first exposed to some albums, the better they turn out in the long run. That is definitely the case with the work of Visible Cloaks, a forward thinking duo who have just released their first full length album in nine years. They obviously come from other planets, I am not even going to attempt to question that, and their calling card has the word ‘experimental’ splashed across it in bold, large lettering. And yes, they have solar systems of ambience in their sonic kit bag, if you want to predict what music beamed in from outer space is going to sound like, I put my money on it being something like this. The forms and structures we associate with songs or indeed most pieces of music are nowhere to be found, these audio offerings are not bound by anything so restrictive as time signatures, beginnings, middles or closing passages. It is hard to define just what they are doing, the whole 14-track suite flies past our hearing senses in less than 45 minutes and you are surprised that amount of time has passed, in much the same way as we cannot see our planet spin, so too the music of Visible Cloaks comes and goes without any tangible hint of motion whatsoever.
But I come back to those words ‘experimental’ and ‘ambient,’ for the beauty in this record is less with these aspects, instead the beating heart is the multitude of moments that feel warm and familiar. I might even lean into the word nostalgic, for there are times here that the early days of electronica, when the plugged in vibrations were still audibly having their dials turned by human hands, are vividly recalled. And as the stars begin to explode into glorious meteor showers, so too the music suddenly enters the realms of the familiar. The track ‘Slippage’ for example, is about halfway through when the sound of something metallic rattling around an empty tin bucket falls away to reveal firstly, an ever-widening expanse of deep space but then secondly, some rousing melody played on electric keys with more than a sideways hint of the bagpipes to them. Later on, the track ‘Shapes’ introduces some delicate acoustic piano notes to the mix alongside distant horn sounds evoking memories of early twentieth century, northern industrial England. Quite unexpected for sure, but still one of the many elements that hold your attention as our journey into the stars becomes ever more probable by the day.
The path to ‘Paradessence’ traces back through a decade of sonic world‑making by Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile, whose work as Visible Cloaks has always hovered at the intersection of digital craft and imagined ecologies. From the prismatic surfaces of ‘Reassemblage’ to the luminous collaboration with Yoshio Ojima and Satsuki Shibano (who also appear here), the duo has treated electronic composition as a form of speculative architecture. Doran’s curatorial and soundtrack projects expanded that vision outward, revealing a deepening interest in how music can hold memory, landscape, and futurity at once. On ‘Paradessence,’ those threads converge into pieces that seem to breathe and reorganise themselves, as if the album were modelling its own evolving habitat. This sensation hits a pitch by the time we reach ‘Intarsia’ (featuring Ioana Selaru), wherein the scraping violin textures and sudden bursts of simultaneously familiar and alien voice sounds all merge to suggest that something is banging on the walls of another dimension. And maybe that is exactly what happened? Closing track ‘System’ may have the soothing presence of familiar sounding keys and wind instruments, but it also suggests that we need to explore new ways of playing them from this point on. I could not find any dictionary definition of the word ‘paradessence’ but just like the music this album contains, it still somehow makes sense. So, just as unfamiliarity must not be mistaken for confliction, so too must we have faith in the evidence placed in front of us today, that the Visible Cloaks are opening us up to a quite wonderous place.
My journey into collecting and loving ’60s garage rock began more than thirty years ago, long before I fully understood what the term meant. By then I was already a devoted fan of sixties music in general (The Beatles, Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, The Velvet Underground) and as I branched out to bands like The Pretty Things and The Kinks, I realised their most thrilling records carried a rawness that had been polished out of pop by the 1980s. I’d seen “garage rock” used in the music press, I remember a weekly paper applying it to the Velvets when they reformed in 1993, but I took it almost literally: music with the grit and ground‑level authenticity of a band rehearsing in an actual garage. In truth, my early‑twenties self was still navigating music through the big rock historians, following my instincts but completely unaware of garage rock as a distinct sub‑genre. When I did stumble across it, like Jane Wiedlin covering ‘I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night’ on TV, I knew I liked it, but I had no idea what it was.
When the door to garage rock finally swung open for me, it happened through an act of generosity I still think about decades later. I spent most weekends in the ’90s trawling Record Fairs, and while some dealers later took pleasure in reminding me that my CD compilations were nothing compared to their impossible‑to‑find original 45s, this encounter has stayed with me. At a fair in Southend, a seller kept spinning a vintage‑sounding rocker I did not recognise. By the fourth or fifth play, its savage electric‑keyboard motif had lodged itself firmly in my head, so I wandered over and asked what it was. “‘Thirteen Women’ by the Renegades,” he said, delighted that someone else had noticed it and continuing “it used to be a Bill Haley b-side, but this is version is so much better, it’s that keyboard riff, isn’t it?” He did not have a copy to sell, but he remembered which fair I’d be at next, turning up with a homemade cassette filled with that track and two sides of similar mid‑to‑late‑sixties gems. I loved almost all of them. That tape changed my musical life, and the sad truth is I cannot remember his name and never saw him again to thank him.
So, I spent the next few weeks driving around with that cassette a fixture in my pick-up trucks tape deck (an open backed truck not ideal for buying vinyl collections in certain weather conditions, but I mostly made it work) and let the fuzzy sounds wash over me. The band names included people like Destiny’s Children, Michel & The French Canadians and the Rockin’ Ramrods, I had not heard of any of them, but the music itself began to burn into my DNA. Foolishly I believed that there would be easily acquirable compilation albums enabling me to source better sound quality on these tunes, little did I know that such collections were scarce underground artefacts themselves and many that were available had a question mark over their legality. These were not albums re-mastered from the original studio tapes, often an old vinyl 45 would be the best source available meaning that, in quite a few cases, I already had the best fidelity audio available on my cassette. Finally, the handwritten track list on the tape cover was misleading because my mysterious friendly compiler had called it ‘The Gathered Grunge,’ which did not help. Maybe it was another curator attempting to connect the original garage scene with the current US grunge movement? Or was it the record dealer himself attempting to hook the younger generation (as I was back then)?
Initially I failed to find what I was looking for. The closest I came was a collection on the See For Miles label called ‘The Great British Psychedelic Trip’ which at least was in the right ballpark but, as I would later find out, UK Psychedelia from the same era is a whole other wormhole, for all the compatible cross pollination between bands across the Atlantic. Eventually I did hit my target and gain an entry level understanding that I was pursuing ‘garage rock’ from its original golden age, when browsing a compilation at a fair called ‘Pebbles.’ On this volume a track by The Nervous Breakdowns called ‘I Dig Your Mind’ leapt out at me because finally, I had found evidence that one of the tracks on my cassette actually existed in the debris of musical back catalogues, my tape was not some inexplicable glitch in record collecting consisting of songs that no one else could find or prove existed. Here it was, a route in, a long running series of albums absolutely rammed with similar buried treasures fuelled by the same uninhibited, primitive energy. And because it was the music that was important to me far more than rarity value, I dived head long into the ‘Pebbles’ series and never looked back. From there I moved to ‘Nuggets’ and the ‘English Freakbeat’ series on a road that still has no end. And the greatest thing about this underground movement is that, for me, there is always a thrilling new discovery waiting around the corner. Three decades later and it inspires the crate digger in me still.
What is it about sixties garage rock that hits me so hard? There are countless reasons, but the first is its sheer sense of life. In an age of clinical, airbrushed audio, these records breathe; you can feel the human touch in every dusty groove, and that rawness gives them a potency modern perfection can’t match. Then there is the creativity born from limitation. Most garage bands had no budget, no studio tricks, no string sections on call; if a song needed yearning or atmosphere, they simply sang the oohs and aahs themselves, proving that nothing is more emotive than the human voice. And crucially, these groups worshipped The Beatles, The Kinks and Dylan; songwriting mattered. That’s why tracks like The Brogues’ ‘I Ain’t No Miracle Worker’ or The Squires’ ‘Going All the Way’ still sound like pop classics waiting for their moment in the sun. This scene is full of gold: brilliant, unvarnished music built on timeless foundations, burning bright long after the moment of creation. For this mix show I have included as many of the tracks from that original cassette as I have been able to find over the past thirty years. Regrettably, the cassette itself seemed to vanish from my life about thirteen years ago amidst the upheaval of divorce. The only good thing about this is that I still, very occasionally, experience the adrenaline rush of sheer delight when chancing upon a long-lost track that I recognise from that tape. Kind of makes me hope that I never find all of them.
Danny Neill
Tracks – Fruit Tree Records – Sixties Garage Vol. 2
The Collectors – Destiny’s Children
Give Me Your Love – Beau Allen
I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes – The Blues Project
Bad Way To Go – The Bruthers
Bright Lit Blue Skies – The Rockin’ Ramrods
Never Thought You’d Leave Me – The Pleasure Seekers
Thirteen Women – The Renegades
Always Blue – 4th Ammendment
I Dig Your Mind – The Nervous Breakdowns
I’ll Keep Searching – The Ides Of March
‘Cause I Believe – Michel & The French Canadians
I Ain’t No Miracle Worker – The Brogues
Hey Conductor – Sonny Flaherty
I’m Five Years Ahead Of My Time – The Third Bardot
Wewantsounds’ ongoing excavation of Meiko Kaji’s early‑’70s catalogue continues to reveal just how much more there is to her legacy than the cult‑cinema mythology. Best known internationally for Lady Snowblood and the Stray Cat Rock films, Kaji was also a striking vocalist, capable of turning pop melodrama and noir‑shaded groove into something that was easily identifiable as her own. ‘Otoko Onna Kokoro No Aika,’ originally released in 1974, captures her at a moment when Japanese pop, enka, and cinematic orchestration were colliding in vivid, stylish ways. This is evident right from the outset with ‘Akashia No Ame Ga Yamu Toki‘ boasting a string arrangement straight out of the mid-twentieth century widescreen, panoramic manual as well as a lead vocal that soars above the backdrop with grace, tension, and satisfying release. It is in every way a scene setter for the musically rich journey that follows.
It is revelatory how much the western production tropes of the period had bled into the music of the east. On ‘Meiko No Yume Wa Yoru Hiraku’ there is a keyboard part laced with a harpsichord texture and a gypsy violin part, not to mention a general sense that the music is primed to leap in any direction, echoing the anything goes attitude of the sixties psychedelic era. It is not a throwback in any sense though, ‘Ginza No Cho’ has the muddier soundboard more familiar to funk soundtracks which would have been ultra contemporary at the time although, once again, there is a little bit of fuzz guitar decorating the instrumental breaks. That said, it is the sensitive, yearning ballad ‘Onno Kokoro No Uta’ that is an early highlight. This is one where the vocal is a tour de force in sweet melodic serenity. This makes sense after I have just done a quick translation into English of the song title, also riffed on with the lamenting album name, it reads as “songs of a woman’s heart.” This vulnerability and tenderness is emphasised on further tracks featuring lush strings, flute, and mournful trumpet accompaniments, all of which add to the satisfying listening experience to these English ears denied the benefit of language comprehension. The music is so vivid and explicit though, it almost does not matter.
‘Tokyo Nagare Mono,’ the theme from Suzuki’s ‘Tokyo Drifter,’ features sharp edged fuzz guitar but it quickly sidesteps, via arresting harmonica, into a unique kind of spaghetti western melange, this music is pretty wild in its own way. It is not all about getting hip with the sonics though, there are some pretty fine, very well composed arrangements here which grab the attention not with dynamism but inviting, deceptively complex, melodic pathways. And for all the interest that awaits in the threads of the music, it is that Meiko Kaji vocal performance that remains the star of the show. Ultimately, far more than a tie‑in to her film work, this album plays like a self‑contained suite of Showa‑era torch songs and atmospheric funk, delivered with the same controlled intensity she brought to the screen. Kaji approaches each track as a performance, blending her instincts as a singer with the detail and engagement of a storyteller, moving from the smoky sway of the funkier sections to some sleek seventies reimagining of older material. The result is a record that strikes a perfect balance between tradition and forward thinking, a reminder that Kaji’s artistic range extended far beyond the roles that made her famous.
On her new album, ‘Who’s Keeping Time?’ which was written in the quiet daytime hours of her 1892 Victorian attic, Alela Diane carries the unhurried clarity that arrived when domestic life finally softened around her. Reconnecting with Portland’s creative community, trading guitar lessons with Peter Lalish, sharing tea with Anna Tivel, she found herself easing back into music with a renewed sense of intuition and belonging. That spirit of stillness and rediscovery runs through ‘Dusty Roses,’ just as the accompanying video leans into the family relations that have shaped Alela’s life and progression towards the creation of this wonderful latest record. You can read the Fruit Tree Records full length review here: https://fruit-tree-records.com/2026/05/21/alela-diane-whos-keeping-time/ The album is available to purchase here: https://amzn.to/49NjIc0
Teddy Thompson – Come Back
For Teddy Thompson, songwriting is a kind of magic, the truth in a line either resonates or it does not, and on his new album he writes with a candour that leaves little doubt about its source. These songs have a conviction, as if pulled straight from lived experience, heartbreak sketched in real time as he tries to stay afloat in shifting emotional tides. Opener ‘Come Back’ sets the scene with stark immediacy: a folk‑rock plea from a man reckoning with absence, its lonely verses breaking open into a burst of conflicted longing that captures love’s contradictions with disarming clarity. You can read the Fruit Tree Records full length review of the album here: https://fruit-tree-records.com/2026/05/14/teddy-thompson-never-be-the-same/ You can buy the album here: https://amzn.to/4wOAMIy
Aja Monet – Working Class Musicians
There are a multitude of overlapping tones and templates enveloping the music of Aja Monet, who has just released a wonderful new album called ‘The Color Of Rain.’ She has the pizazz of a street poet lyrically navigating a sound that flies between avant-garde jazz to bluesy soul without ever truly settling in one place, Aja’s style is free in the most literal musical sense of the word. She emerged from New York’s Lower East Side spoken‑word scene as a prodigious talent, later becoming a Grammy‑nominated poet and a genre‑defying artist capable of incorporating improvisation, and political imagination. Now, with years of global performance, acclaimed writing, and community‑rooted activism feeding her muse we encounter ‘Working Class Musician,’ another testament to her commitment to resistance, collective memory, and the lived realities that inform her art. You can buy the album here: https://amzn.to/4dYQlWF
Kelley Stoltz – Not Gone
Kelley Stoltz has long carved his own lane in American underground pop, a DIY lifer whose refusal to play the industry game only adds to the mans appeal. His nineteenth album, ‘If You Don’t Know Me, Buy Now,’ leans into that maverick streak, hook‑laden and witty in a way that is unmistakably Kelley’s. ‘Not Gone’ channels the muscular pulse of his Echo & the Bunnymen years, its pounding drive a reminder of how deftly he reshapes his influences into something singular. This is Stoltz at full voltage: sharp‑edged, melodic, and proof that his creative spark remains alive and kicking. You can read the full Fruit Tree Records review at: https://fruit-tree-records.com/2026/05/15/kelley-stoltz-if-you-dont-know-me-buy-now/ The album will be purchasable, when it gets a full release, from this link: https://amzn.to/4nMYAsd
Jasmine Myra – Likeness And Shadow
Jasmine Myra’s music on new album ‘Where Light Settles’ is built on duality; precision and fluidity, complexity and immediacy, pain and growth. It is her third album and finds the artist fully stepping into her own orbit, expanding her ensemble language into something more cinematic and deeply attuned to life’s bruises and revelations. ‘Likeness and Shadow’ captures that balance beautifully: a piece that blooms from propulsive bass into sun‑dappled movement, its sax and piano lines gliding like light through trees. It is Myra displaying assuredness, translating emotional weather into sound with grace, clarity, and a radiant sense of hope. You can read the full Fruit Tree Records album review here: https://fruit-tree-records.com/2026/05/19/jasmine-myra-where-light-settles/ You can buy the album via this link: https://amzn.to/4dJzHsK
The Waterboys – Don’t Even Have To Say His Name
This is a brilliant new stand alone single from The Waterboys, released on Chrysalis Records, finding Mike Scott in fiercely political form. Written as a direct response to the current U.S. climate, Scott calls it a stand against bullying and a contribution to the wider struggle for decency and democracy. Produced by Puck Fingers and Famous James, the track pairs Scott’s targeted vocal assault with piano, organ, bass, and drums, building a sharp, urgent critique without needing to name its all too obvious target. Arriving ahead of the archival ‘Atlantic Rain’ set and a major arena tour, it is the sound of The Waterboys still burning in 2026. Find the new track here: https://amzn.to/4a5MvZm
I have always thought of Barrie Cadogan as a Jeff Beck or Ronnie Wood kind of figure in the modern music world. Appearing to be more comfortable as the engine room of the electric guitar rather than the front stage focus, he nevertheless has a facility for conjuring blues and psych inflected magic from his instrument whenever on the stage. Barrie’s is the magnetic demeanour of a magician on hot coals delicately casting spells through his axe, so your attention is naturally drawn to him regardless. That is definitely something that can be said of those two comparisons at the top, but it does not end there, because Barrie is in similarly high demand to his iconic peers of earlier generations. So much so that it has pushed back the release of a latest effort from this three-piece configuration under his own name, a set up long favoured because it allows a settling into the machinations of a band rather than be the sole focus. But the air traffic first had to clear itself of stints with The The, Liam Gallagher, Liam Gallagher & John Squire, The Black Keys, and that is without even look at his studio commitments, before the return of Little Barrie had clearance to land.
Little Barrie’s ‘Gravity Freeze’ marks the band’s first album under their own name since the loss of drummer Virgil Howe, whose death in 2017 left Barrie Cadogan and Lewis Wharton unsure whether the project could continue. I remember seeing them when Virgil was still around and he was a big presence, often doing the lion’s share of onstage announcement a-la a front man while Barrie tuned up. After regrouping through therapeutic collaborations with longtime friend Malcolm Catto, yielding two joint albums, the pair began shaping new Little Barrie material that carried forward their earlier momentum while opening up fresh territory. True to the DIY ethos they had honed with Howe, the songs took shape in a makeshift Dalston rehearsal space before being fully realised at Rat Salad Studios with engineer and co‑producer Rupert Lyddon, a trusted creative ally from past projects. Drummer Tony Coote, whose jazz‑inflected feel and natural swing aligned perfectly with the band’s fuzz‑driven groove, completed the lineup, helping bring ‘Gravity Freeze’ to life with a renewed sense of purpose and continuity.
So, it has been a while but sometimes an enforced brake leads to an eventual return fizzing with punch and solid intent, fuelled by the frustrations of the time that is running away from us. That is certainly where we begin, the propulsive descending bassline on ‘More Bad Miles Of Road’ signalling the arrival of an album that has no inhibitions about leaning into the strengths of the musicians. It even gives a warm nod to the classic psych-rock power trio with a deliberate Jimi Hendrix sonic reference as the number fades. Wearing your influences so proudly can submerge some acts but it is what you do with these affections that counts; Barrie moulds them into his own evolving sound with style, in tandem with an increasing originality over the years. A love of fuzz penetrates ‘It Isn’t Soul’ before ‘December’ hits us with a groove that most definitely is. ‘Luggin’ Hurt’ is a seven-minute freak out in the under-ploughed field The Stone Roses explored on their second album. Side two moves through a palette of smouldering blues, loose shuffles, and driving, in‑the‑room grooves, all threaded with the band’s renewed focus on rhythm and live energy. Cadogan leans into the blues roots that have always shaped his playing, while the groovier cuts tap into a post‑Can sense of percussive momentum. As he puts it, rhythm has always inspired him as much as guitar work, and one of the key grooves here began as a messy loop he wanted to turn into something hypnotic, almost dance‑leaning, yet still swampy and simmering. Best of all, you finish with a sense that Barrie Cadogan has so much more to come with this project, all it needs is for the multitude of other acts who love to eat from his table to give him the time.
In my daily musical listening activities I do come across a lot of new singer-songwriters of an acoustic, introspective flavour. So much so that you could make an argument for this coffee store style of quiet balladry enjoying as much of a trend setting age now as in the early seventies when Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Paul Simon and Cat Stevens coloured the airwaves. But it is not quite the same today, primarily because a circumstantial cause of this movement is the comparative ease of recording music from the bedroom, where a quiet acoustic intimacy is far more attainable than the space required to record a band. And the direct route to online distribution means the old barriers to exposure no longer apply, so we feel an avalanche of guitar and voice melancholia raining down on us every day. Furthermore, when touting their wears these acts know the value of a vintage sound, the emphasis is always on a natural organic creativity, cosy situations more homely than a studio environment and the value of real instruments over electronics. On the downside however, we listeners can feel they would sometimes benefit from a stricter critical ear; three guitar chords strummed slowly and emoted over might feel very sincere when sat on a bed pouring your heart out, but that alone does not guarantee a riveting listening experience. Unless that is, you are playing one of the major natural talents in this field for well over a decade, an artist like Alela Diane for example.
Even though the aforementioned regulation boxes of a 2026 retro-leaning songwriter album were ticked for this album, the musical quality lifts it high above the pack. Alela had built a daily routine of working up the material in the attic of her 1892 Victorian home, from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon, and when the time came to record, she wanted to use the same location. This was partially born from a desire to connect with other local musicians and feel the spark of collaboration in the album’s grooves. She enlisted her pal Peter Lalish, of the band Lucius, to give her guitar lessons and invited Anna Tivel for tea. “It felt imperative to connect with artists I respected and get reacquainted with my own town” she recalled. And so, Alela Diane’s seventh album, ‘Who’s Keeping Time?’ has the feel of a creative project that rose up naturally once life finally quieted around her. You can hear that shift in perspective in the way these songs move; unhurried, attentive, tuned to the small revelations that surface when the noise drops away. She talks about “coming to the end of a season,” a moment when her daughters were older, the sleepless nights had eased, and a rare stillness settled over the house. In that space, she found her thoughts drifting back toward music, circling melodies and half‑formed ideas until they began to gather shape. The record carries that sense of intuition and community, the feeling of someone rediscovering their own internal rhythm and following it wherever it leads.
This is an album that has a sombre awareness of the passage of time, it is rarely low in mood though, more determined to be exhilarated by the wonders of existence and celebrate them. That is an element to Alela’s sound that has hooked me right from the start, how even when pensive and reflective, the overriding characteristics of her voice are magnificently soothing and uplifting. It is an element that remains undimmed by the passage of time and tragedy, a quality we hear on one of the records most poignant of songs. ‘Spring Is A Fine Time’ was written in reaction to the passing, at the age of 83, of fellow Portland outsider musical heavyweight, Michael Hurley. It postulates that spring is the best time to die, with all the natural world around bursting into new life. The track becomes a bright little tribute to her friend, all playful whistles and sly wit, the sort of thing he himself might have delighted in. That same magical blend of mournful grace and mystical awe burns in ‘Endless Waltz,’ a love letter to Alela’s grandparents as they waltz into the unknown, the perpetual motion of time felt in every note.
Across these eleven tracks we journey from the feverish, popping thought bubbles of Alela’s mind on the swirling ‘Galloping’ (written whilst in bed with a fever and you can hear that) to the more pointed political edge of ‘Piss, Coffee, Blood Or Wine,’ a song that builds in momentum the more Diane sinks her teeth into the lyrics. It is a title offered as a visual for the social state of affairs in her homeland today, depicting a slumped figure on the sidewalk with a puddle of uncertain origin forming around its beaten frame. ‘In My Own Time’ holds aloft the albums central theme, it is an ode to pausing and resisting the pull of life’s relentlessly ticking clock. It harks back to the laid-back classicism inherent in this artists work right from the start, the kind of song that feels as natural as water and belonging as if it has been in the world for decades. Which brings me back to why Alela Diane stands tall in such an overpopulated musical field; it is because there is something so pure in her work that just feels right, it always seems like it had a place reserved in the musical architecture that was merely waiting to be occupied. It heralds a new phase in her journey, shaped by the natural shifts in home life and answered with a deeper, ever‑attentive musical maturity.
Danny Neill
You can buy the new Alela Diane ‘Who’s Keeping Time?’ via this link: https://amzn.to/4v79ZWl
Volume seven of our 2026 new music releases series ‘Fresh Juice’ opens with some timely new, modern day protest folk-rock from the ever wonderful Waterboys before embarking on a journey incorporating new sounds in Psych Pop, Garage Rock, Electro Pop, Folk, Americana, Soul and Singer-Songwriter before ending in some seriously far out instrumental experimentation and ending in the realms of esoteric, improvisational jazz. Far out! 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. 7
Fruit Tree Records 