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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 13th July 2026

ANYX – Ladybirds Spine

‘Ladybirds Spine’ is a striking first glimpse of ANYX’s forthcoming debut ‘Starlink,’ a song that opens with overwhelming magnitude, wrapping the listener in guitars that surge in great, engulfing waves before the drums lock us into a lurching Velvets-like menace. Into that force steps a voice carrying a command that grabs us by the ears. ANYX (Berlin‑based artist Anna Lucia Nissen) sings from the perspective of feeling dwarfed by the world’s volume, its demands, its insistence on visibility, echoing her own admission that everything had begun to feel “too big, too loud, too much.” The image she chose, perched on a ladybird’s spine, seeing life from a tiny, overmatched vantage point, becomes the song’s emotional fulcrum. It is a powerful opening statement, setting the tone for a debut album that might be hard to ignore come the autumn time. You can pre-order the album here: https://anyx.bandcamp.com/album/starlink

Ty Segall – Black Paint

This is the first single from Ty Segall’s album ‘Chrome,’ out on LP/CD/CS from Drag City on August 28th. Happily, at least as far as I can tell from the information available thus far, this promises to be Ty’s most full on, loud electric full band offering for some time. That fuzz guitar assault and feral energy is certainly all over ‘Black Paint’ and it would appear that the rough edged live feel of the album was realised deliberately, with the band all rehearsing together a full month before actually recording. When they did eventually get it down in the studio, the sessions were done in just six days with the line up of Ben Boye, Evan Burrows, Mikal Cronin, Emmett Kelly who were the same band members for some of Segall’s most ferocious and memorable live shows in the past. Expect good stuff ahead, you can pre-order the album via this link: https://amzn.to/4p93hgu

Oral Habit – Thin Trippin’

This was the moment Oral Habit stopped me in my tracks, summoning the vintage grazing indie‑guitar shimmer with playing that leans into groove as much as it toys with electric‑guitar posturing. The uninhibited way they throw the song across the room, as if mistaking it for a pop tune would be entirely your problem. It carries strong echoes of the early nineties, when UK bands channelled the debris of twentieth‑century cultural life (sixties garage records in family lofts, late‑night cult film reruns, abandoned guitars and vintage organs) into something raw and reactionary. Oral Habit are not revivalists of the revivalists, but ‘Thin Trippin’ plugs straight into those appealing influences while adding their own grunge‑flecked, psych‑tilted, college‑rock abandon. It is the first sign of a band who wrap their whole essence around a hard‑kicking rock melange that emphatically announces they are their own, unique force. You can get a download of the album this way: https://amzn.to/4gqyB8p

Pearl And The Oysters – Mandarin Moon

This track is taken from the new Pearl And The Oysters album ‘Monkey Mind,’ out now on Stones Throw. The critical reception for the release has noted their expansiveness, how they have boldly incorporated many eclectic leaning styles such as sophisti‑pop, bossa, electronica, psych‑pop, alongside lounge‑leaning textures that have resulted in a bright, meticulously arranged whole. Fans and early listeners highlighted its “sharp yet cozy soundscape” and its dense, detail‑rich production. All of which caught my ear too, particularly this lush number that seems to embrace the spooky delirium of an earlier than expected moon arrival casting a spell on those who encounter it. You can get a download of the album via this link: https://amzn.to/4h4moq4

Hollow Hand – Here Are The Tulips

Here is some folk rock with a real satisfying tension and release, it feeds into the major/minor electric jangle that the genre wears in its purest form but it is executed with such panache, the sound feels like a long lost friend returning home. Forthcoming album ‘Wish Road South,’ a newly revitalised effort from Max Kinghorn‑Mills and his Brighton band, arrives on September 4th via Loose Music / Soundl. Led by this breezy first single, it was the moment Kinghorn‑Mills realised he had “found something” in its live, unforced spark. The record captures everyday stories with unfussy warmth, realised with a shift away from bedroom production toward a fully collaborative, live‑tracked trio. Born from bus rides, fresh creative zeal and a renewed sense of purpose, this record marks Hollow Hand’s most open, immediate and instinctive work yet. You can pre-order the album on vinyl via this link: https://amzn.to/44ngUPP

Sera Cahoone – Pulling Up Roots

Sera Cahoone returns this August with ‘I’ve Missed You All These Years,’ her first album in eight years and it is a bright, collaborative work created alongside the long climb back following profound loss. Ahead of its release, she offers a first glimpse with ‘Pulling Up Roots,’ a barroom‑swinging single whose spirit she describes as “getting to the other side and experiencing growth and momentum after a challenging time.” It’s a fitting entry point into a record that looks past the dark winter and toward the moment the light comes back in; it is also a collection of blues‑folk‑country songs fuelled by community, clarity and the hard won triumph of rediscovering yourself. You can get on the pre-order list by following this link: https://amzn.to/4f8h2Yw

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New Release Reviews

Almost Friends – Again, Not Again

I have found such delight in the discovery of this superb debut album by an act I had previously never heard of, that it prompted me to ponder with some frustration the crowded field they are about to occupy. There has to be a space for quieter music, for sounds that do not demand much, or any, amplification to hit their targets. But sometimes it can feel that the convenience of writing and recording for the bedroom artist leads to an introspection overindulgence. There are so many gentle troubadours staring at their feet, strumming a couple of chords at a painfully slow pace, whispering their woes into a recording device that the more cynical listener might enquire, is this really how you feel, or are you just performing like that because it is easy? I do wonder if a stricter critical ear might benefit these artists, injecting them with a motivation to work harder and actually write a tune that people will remember and enjoy listening to. I do not know if the acoustic duo Almost Friends had this kind of production encouragement (and given the main mans history I doubt they needed it anyway) but supposing for the sake of argument they did, it absolutely worked. This is a soft, delicate album of acoustic instrumentals and melodically rich songs that show definitively how it should be done. Furthermore, it is proof that when there is a finer quality to the music, composition that has been harvested from a pure grain, this kind of style resonates with as much power and impact as any rock band.

Almost Friends are an acoustic duo consisting of Aggi Vrettou and Arturo Barretti, and their independently released ‘Again, Not Again’ moves with the tranquil hum of songs written in the margins of ordinary life. Essentially, they are born of Konstantinos Protopapas, who appears as Arturo here but is also known to some as Gus Boggar. He is a Greek multi-project musician and songwriter, a founding member of Effigy who later flexed his psych/kraut muscles in Chickn as well as with Prins Obi. So far so Bevis Frond, so all good with me. This project is built on intimate folk, pop‑folk and sparse singer‑songwriter arrangements, the record lingers on repetition, memory and the strange comfort of returning to the same unresolved feelings. Arturo says of these pieces, they were “written quietly, in between things, in moments that did not seem important at the time.” They carry the hush of late‑night rooms and unsteady voices, tracing distance and closeness at once while drawing on influences from Dan Reeder and Bill Callahan to Josienne Clarke, Myriam Gendron and Elliott Smith. A track has already been selected for an upcoming FATEA compilation, with mastering on the recordings the work of Iraklis Vlachakis.

The album shifts between lead vocals from both Aggi and Arturo with a sprinkling of solo guitar pieces, which ensures the song sequence never sits still. The guitar pieces are especially engaging; the strings being picked with the composure and skill of a classical player. Take ‘Like Everybody Else’ as an example, it moves through distinct progressions in a way that reminded me of the early Genesis piece ‘Horizons,’ only this is better. Aggi’s voice has a softly glowing clarity, it feels almost whispered into the air yet beneath that gentleness you sense a deeper strength she never needs to fully reveal. It is a steady, ringing presence that cuts cleanly through the room, so opening the record with her unaccompanied vocal on ‘Valentine’ is a canny curtain raiser. When the subject matter turns dark, they cleverly counterbalance it with positive energy, like on ‘Lovely To Return After A Fall’ wherein depression is knocking on the singer’s door, but it is faced down with a banjo led stomper that is sprightly and defiant. By contrast, the Arturo vocal on ‘Leave Me Alone’ is a thing of brooding menace until he hits the satisfying release of the chorus. There are lighter numbers too, like ‘Fishing Blues’ that has the breezy air of old-time country blues. It all leads us to closing number ‘To Pray Or Not,’ which is something of an epic, pulling on all the dramatic arrangement structures Arturo gets to refine in his other, more sonically expansive, projects. By ending this musical journey in such dark, gothic splendour Almost Friends underline what a strong piece of work this is. The influences I mention are all valid but ultimately, this is an independently crafted piece that exists in a space of its own and I strongly advise both the connoisseurs and the curious to go and pay this album a visit.

Danny Neill

You can get a download or limited edition CD of the album here: https://gusboggar.bandcamp.com/album/again-not-again

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New Release Reviews

Andrew Sa – American Rough

It might seem like country music has done all its evolving by this point, that the end game has been arrived at with its current mainstream pop sheen success. Where can it go from here other than reach back and try to recapture that western grit and sawdust authenticity that made it such a vital staple of American roots music in the twentieth century? Well, no, it is not quite as simple as that because with this debut album by Andrew Sa, there is an undeniable sense of country music making one further great leap forward. Admittedly it is less to do with the music, which draws on a multitude of vintage styles and influences, but we will come to that, and more to do with the straight edged posturing the original country music establishment prided itself on. Those good ol’ boys did not care much for long hairs, for hippies, for different ethnicities and they certainly had no place for queers. All of which makes the arrival of Andrew Sa quite the bold entrance. His music is informed by the folk and blues storytelling traditions for sure, but the real country DNA to his sound reaches back to the mournful ballads sung by Patsy Cline and Webb Pierce. On top of that Andrew proudly sings with vulnerability, raw emotion and tenderness. He is free to express, to sing of his experiences in the gay community and demand his songs a place in the country canon without inhibition.

The most direct reference to his place in the lineage can be found in lead single ‘Lavender Cowboy.’ It is a purposeful shout out to his late friend Patrick Haggerty, whose early seventies band Lavender Country were a pioneering influence on gay activism in the country community, but were ultimately shut out by an industry hostile to their open sexuality. Of the song Sa says, “I was chasing that elusive happy/sad bop, writing most of the song on my tenor guitar in a hotel room near Seattle, WA following Patrick’s ‘Celebration of Life.’ He inspired countless people and I wanted to capture the essence of that. There’s an old novelty/humor song by the same name that’s rather homophobic, so I also hope to rewrite the narrative on the ‘Lavender Cowboy.’” The song is a thing of yearning, pedal steel enhanced sweeping, elegant beauty. The perfect theme tune that ‘Midnight Cowboy’ never had. It also provides an opportunity for Andrew to flex his vocal range, his voice a mix of the buoyant balladeer and the fragile, cracked up font that is wrestling not to be overcome with his heavy feelings. A similar combination can be heard on ‘You Turned Me On’ although this one leans harder into a southern soul groove, the horns pushing the chorus to an elevation that when it arrives, positively rains down on us with sumptuous glory.   

Andrew Sa’s path to ‘American Rough’ begins in the cab of his father’s ’86 Ford F150, packed in with his siblings and absorbing the emotional charge of Reba, the Eagles, and top‑40 country while his dad occasionally pulled a Gibson Les Paul from under the bed like a secret doorway into a former life. After his mother remarried and launched a karaoke business, Sa was nudged onto stages as a child, already gravitating toward Patsy Cline’s saddest songs, an early sign of the aching balladry that defines this debut. He wandered for a while, falling hard for jazz singers and discovering queer icons like Rufus Wainwright and k.d. lang, whose unapologetic artistry cracked open his sense of what a queer performer could be. Acting stints in the Bay Area and Portland came and went, but a songwriting class at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music rerouted everything, pulling him into a community of queer country misfits and collaborators (Liam Kazar, Sully Davis, Lavender Country, and the gloriously camp Cosmic Country Showcase) where his siren‑like croon became a fixture. By 2021, early sketches with Kazar led him to producer H.C. McEntire, whose raw, country rasp and emotional clarity felt like the missing piece. Together with co‑producer/engineer Missy Thangs and a wide cast of musicians, they built this album in North Carolina and Chicago; a tender, cinematic album meditating on queer longing, Chicago nights, and Sa’s evolving sense of masculinity, held together by the trust and vulnerability made possible under the guidance of two women at the helm. Ultimately this is an album that knocks down doors, not least to unleash an artist whose potential reaches way beyond the confines of a traditional community he is already pushing into a new era.

Danny Neill

You can get the album via this link: https://amzn.to/3QMIClY

Andrew Sa by Alexa Viscius
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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 6th July 2026

Dent May – I Remember

Dent May’s latest release ‘I Remember’ is much like a postcard from the wide‑open creative world he built while making ‘The Big One,’ his seventh LP and the first to fully abandon the bedroom for the communal hum of the Honeymoon Suite, a Los Angeles based studio he runs with producer Paul Cherry. With friends drifting in and out, no rehearsals, no fixed plans, the record grew out of pure improvisation, whatever happened in the room became the music. That spirit is heard clearly in this track, a DIY‑ELO daydream that looks back on past relationships with warmth rather than autopsy, folding May’s Elephant 6 scrappiness and ’70s singer‑songwriter glow into an optimistic ode to the people who moulded him. You can pre-order the album via this link: https://dentmay.bandcamp.com/album/the-big-one

Indigo Sparke – There Is A Light On The Horizon Line

This arrives as a standalone transmission for now, though it has enough muscle and depth of well executed ideas that it could easily anchor a future album. Recorded in Bristol with John Parish and an extraordinary ensemble of Adrian Utley, Seb Rochford, Shahzad Ismaily, and Adam Brisbin, Sparke tracked the song while 33 weeks pregnant, its mantra‑like pulse inspired by a moment of profound personal transition. Circling the line “There is a light on the horizon line,” she finds a power in repetition whilst exploring freedom, identity, and the quiet, tectonic shifts that accompany becoming someone new. You can find the song via this link: https://amzn.to/4eLASK1

The Black Wizards – Loose

The Black Wizards’ new single ‘Loose’ lands as the first jolt of energy from their forthcoming album ‘Force Majeure & The Acts of God,’ out September 4th via Hassle Records. The album is named after the legal term for uncontrollable circumstances, and this is the sound of that very thing. The Porto trio of Joana Brito, José Gomes, and Helena Peixoto have shed the doomy, stoner‑rock fog of their earlier work in favour of a leaner, sharper, and more volatile edge with ‘Loose’ being the clearest sign of that shift. Built on garage‑rock swagger, a bluesy stomp, and the band’s first prominent use of wobbly synth, the track channels Joana’s “groovy wandering on anxiety thoughts and feeling trapped inside your own head,” turning everyday pressures like low pay, rough working conditions and the grind of the modern world into a taut, straight‑to‑the‑point chorus with verses that release just enough tension to keep you moving forward. You can pre-order the album here: https://amzn.to/4fnqGGT

Bity Booker – The Owl Song

‘The Owl Song’ opens Bity Booker’s ‘There’s No Song About A Stone’ LP with the kind of folksy magic that makes her such an unexpected and mesmerising discovery. In a field crowded with acoustic singer‑songwriters, Booker stands apart, her music carrying an air of mystery and other‑realm enchantment that resists explanation. The track plays like a call‑and‑response with its titular owl, a delicate, whimsical piece that recalls Joanna Newsom with its spirited eccentricity. It sets the tone for an album drawing on time, dreams, weather, and the living ambience of the room she recorded in. It is a deeply individual work that glides between natural serenity and subtle strangeness, announcing Booker as an artist who follows her own internal weather and casts a spell entirely her own. You can buy the album and other Bity Booker releases via this link: https://bitybooker.bandcamp.com/music

Perennial – What’s New On The Beat Scene

Perennial’s ‘What’s New On The Beat Scene’ is a whiplash‑quick burst of the New England trio’s signature kinetic chaos, an early flare from their forthcoming album ‘Modernism,’ out 18th September via Safe Suburban Home. Built from the band’s crate‑digging obsessions which lead them to Stax/Volt grooves, 60s mod punch, abstract punk angles, fuzz bass and Townshend‑style feedback chatter, the track distils their “20‑minute marathon” ethos into an explosive pocket symphony. It is a statement‑of‑purpose rave‑up: sharp, sweaty, and over almost before you have registered how many ideas are crammed into its tightly wound frame. Be sure to pre-order the album from this link: https://perennialtheband.bandcamp.com/album/modernism

Dermot Henry – Dead Man’s Dog

Finally for this week, some new singer-songwriter action that immediately feels like the work of a real craftsman and a classicist in the form. Whilst this is a live clip from last year, it finds its way to Fresh Juice qualification firstly because I have only just come across it, but secondly as it is is the fourth track on Dermot’s 2026 EP ‘Aiming Torches At The Sun,’ released only recently on May 15th. It was produced by Dom Monks, with Henry writing the songs alongside Oscar Lang. The recording credits show a small ensemble around him: drums by Niall Henry, strings by Henry Rankin, Charlie Schnurr, and Katt Newlon, bass and percussion by Lomax, and background vocals from Eli Torgersen and Lomax. It is a remarkable heads up to the arrival of a major new talent, reminds me a bit of how Jake Bugg first appeared from seemingly out of nowhere armed with a musical gift hinting at decades of wisdom and proficiency, totally at odds with the young age of the artist. One to watch for sure, you can get your hands on the EP via this link: https://dermothenry.com/

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Monthly Playlists

July 2026 Playlist

This months playlist is accompanied by a photo feature. If you read my review of the latest Tift Merritt album you will have seen my referring to the first time I saw her at a festival about twenty years ago. Well, that was actually the 2006 Cambridge Folk Festival, I was taking photos to go with my review of the event and I have just been up to the loft and uncovered them. Seeing as they are mostly unpublished, now seems as good a time as any to put them up for viewing. In the same files I also found photos I took at the first ever Latitude Festival the same month, so I am sharing them too below:

Tift Merritt at Cambridge Folk Festival 2006
Teddy Thompson at Cambridge Folk Festival 2006
Ezio at Cambridge Folk Festival 2006
Nickel Creek at Cambridge Folk Festival 2006
Nickel Creek at Cambridge Folk Festival 2006
Emmylou Harris at Cambridge Folk Festival 2006
Cerys Matthews at Cambridge Folk Festival 2006
Richard Thompson at Cambridge Folk Festival 2006
Nizlopi at Cambridge Folk Festival 2006
Broken Family Band at Cambridge Folk Festival 2006
Chieftains at Cambridge Folk Festival 2006
Lemonheads at Latitude 2006
Nicky Wire at Latitude 2006
Richard James at Latitude 2006
The Zutons at Latitude 2006
Patti Smith at Latitude 2006
Jose Gonzalez at Latitude 2006
Mercury Rev at Latitude 2006
James Yorkston at Latitude 2006
Lavender Diamond at Latitude 2006
Giant Drag at Latitude 2006
Latitude 2006
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Live Reviews

Richard Thompson – Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, 25th June 2026

I have seen Richard Thompson live more times than I can remember over the past three decades, but this is the first time he has ever considered performing a strip. Not, I should add, because he has hit a fork in the road and is exploring other tactics to bag attention, but rather because we find ourselves in the middle of a record-breaking British heatwave and there is not a single soul in this packed, elegant and acoustically superb theatre who have not got their mind on staying hydrated. For Richard, other than reaching for a towel between every song, this hot tub is bringing the extra challenge of needing to extensively tune his acoustic guitar ahead of each song. Again, I have seen him play a multitude of times (because Richard is always worth catching) and he normally conducts the tuning up in a way that the audience barely notice, simultaneously indulging in that endearingly diffident dialogue of his, but those strings do not like the heat too much and tonight it adds a layer of jeopardy. Richard rarely looks anything other than in absolute control but at one point, when his partner Zara Phillips had joined him onstage for some vocal harmonising, he throws his arms out wide with a look that says, “I’m just going to have to plough on through.” Which indeed he does and ultimately, the performer, situation and audience all come together and connect in a kind of musical defiance that, for a couple of hours at least, has us all forgetting how hot we are. And no, he did not resort to stripping, despite at one time suggesting, “it might have to be the trousers first.”  

Smith & Brewer

The same intensity was also burning down on opening duo, Smith and Brewer. They are a perfect choice to share a bill with Richard Thompson, both can weave some intricate threads out of their guitars, their styles subtly different enough for one to be counterbalancing the other, a most pleasing blend. In terms of style, there are appealing Everly Brothers tones to both the set up and the influences, but they can play a wide range of inspirational roots from americana to folk and indeed, they could almost have stepped out of a Fairport Convention performance school. Even their appearance has an undeniable feel of Britishness, they look like a classic old comedy double act, Smith more pompous and aspirational and Brewer the hapless, clueless enthusiast. They are a serious proposition though (maybe the heat was making my brain a bit wavy too?) and took the opportunity to tout an impressive arsenal of songs to a crowd suitably aligned to their sound. Which is actually exactly the same thing as Richard Thompson is doing on this current tour. Admittedly he did play a couple of new songs from an album scheduled for release in October, but other than that this is a solo acoustic show where Thompson is playing songs from all corners of a near seven decade recording career. I have to say, I love these kinds of tours because, with a back catalogue like this, you are going to hear some wonderful essentials and a generous number of deep cuts.

Tonight, that repertoire was explored extensively and it struck a balance that surely satisfied both the casual and more obsessive fans of his music. The opening trio of ‘I Misunderstood,’ ‘Saving The Good Stuff For You’ and ‘Valerie’ (before which he joked about being responsible for artists using song titles that already exist) set a standard that was impressively maintained. There were the centrepiece classics long time audience members might expect; timeless folk masterpieces like ‘Beeswing’ and ‘1952 Vincent Black Lightning,’ that accomodate a platform to dazzle with his incredible guitar dexterity. Then lesser championed but no less worthy tunes such as ‘If I Could Live My Life Again’ off the lockdown period ‘Bloody Noses’ EP and ‘Walking The Long Miles Home,’ from 1999’s ‘Mock Tudor’ which I still argue is one of his greatest ever albums. Furthermore, I always delight in spotting a Thompson debutant or two in the crowd, observing them bowled over by that guitar playing then recalling my own similar reaction all those years ago. It is something close to awe as you recognise that unaccompanied, he is playing rhythm, a bass line and lead guitar riffs with just two hands and making it all sound so effortless. After taking a request for ‘Al Bowlly’s In Heaven’ Richard feels the urge to apologise for the absence of a band (“I said nine o’clock Heathrow, this can’t continue”) believing it better suited to this kind of arrangement. As fair as that assessment is, it bypasses what a tour-de-force the song is when played, as tonight, solo. The depressed blues of the post war limbo in the lyric, vividly juxtaposed by the flashes of 1940s swing band sparkle of the background setting, all brought to life by the incredible, colourful signatures and brush strokes of Richard’s fretwork. By the time he hits the desperate “I’m in limbo now” crescendo at the finish, the hairs on my arms are standing up. There is a reason Richard Thompson is regarded, with all too little fanfare, as one of Britain’s greatest performers and it is all there to be witnessed and heard within the quality of his work. Tonight has been a true delight, unspoiled by even a heatwave’s attempt to overcook it.

Words: Danny Neill Photos: Sophie Reichert

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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 29th June 2026

Beth Orton – Waiting

Beth Orton’s new album is a stunning left‑turn from an artist who has spent three decades refusing to sit still. ‘The Ground Above’ demonstrates how she has moved beyond folktronica tags and past expectations to create something raw, spacious, and beautifully unguarded. The album is a suite of eight songs that feel more like living, breathing meditations than traditional structures. It is Orton at her most fearless: lucid‑dream songwriting, communal studio energy, and a voice carried by air, memory, and emotional truth. This is a recent live session of one of the records most gloriously uplifting numbers, ‘Waiting,’ and you can get the whole album here: https://amzn.to/4f6RbRE

The Junipers – When She Turns

This is a track from the Junipers scintillating latest album ‘The Solid And The Hollow.’ As ever, they lean into the vintage psych vocabulary without ever sounding like revivalists; this is awash with chiming guitars, drifting harmonies, and that unmistakable Junipers haze that turns a simple tune into something quietly transportive. This live film of ‘When She Turns’ catches the band at full radiance, bending time a little, opening a door to somewhere warmer, stranger, and beautifully their own. You can get the whole album here: https://amzn.to/4xUwlwo

Aaron Lee Tasjan – Science Friction

This is Aaron Lee Tasjan in full neon‑wired, art‑pop mischief mode; a taut, hook‑bright track that crackles with the restless intelligence running through his new era. Built on jittery rhythms and a sly melodic twist, the song feels like Tasjan peering at modern life through a warped magnifying glass. He is buzzing, slightly off‑kilter but as always irresistibly catchy. It is also one of the first signals of where new album ‘Get Over It, Underdog’ is heading. Tasjan has always been a shape‑shifter (glam troubadour, cosmic Americana poet, indie pop experimenter) but ‘Science Friction’ suggests a sharper, more playful futurism. The production is lean and alert, the vocals glide with his trademark wry charm, and the whole thing moves with the confidence of an artist who knows exactly how to bend his quirks into pop gold. You can get the whole album here: https://amzn.to/3SAyHQP

The Forty Fours – Now She’s Gone

This is the first proper glimpse of The Forty Fours, a London‑based trio stepping out on Blow Up Records with a debut single that feels both sharply defined and steeped in classic beat group aura. Cut as part of the label’s Blow Up 45 Series, the track arrives on a limited 7″ backed with a raw take on ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go,’ signalling a band who understand the weight of tradition but are not remotely beholden to it. Recorded at Fish Factory in Willesden and finished at Soundbody Studios, the song captures the band’s tight, live‑wired chemistry; Oliver Harriss’s guitar and vocals out front, Jason Bazeley’s bass locking the pulse, and Andrew Stander’s drums giving everything a lean, propulsive edge. There is a vintage snap to the production from Roman Jugg and mixer Nick Terry, but the energy is direct, unfussy, and built to hit. With sixteen tracks already in the can and a debut album due later in 2026, ‘Now She’s Gone’ is a sharp, confident first strike from a band clearly ready for a bigger stage. You can buy the vinyl single via this link: https://www.blowup.co.uk/records/news/the-forty-fours-now-shes-gone-debut-vinyl-7-available-to-pre-order-now/

Nectar Woode (feat. Elton John) – Wine Into Water

I will admit I checked this one out because of the Elton John involvement, whilst his name cannot be called a guarantee of quality when he collaborates (let us not forget that he once worked with Blue) at least his interest in new music is sincere and his tastes are deep, so you never know. And that ear has served him well here because this is an emotive, soulful ballad that deserves the leg up Elton’s involvement will undoubtedly give it. His contribution is solely at the piano but that lush early seventies playing style of his turns out to be exactly the kind of organic bedrock this track needed. The song is due to appear on a forthcoming Nectar Woode album, ‘Naturally Mixtape,’ and you can find out more here: https://www.nectarwoo.de/

Raffy Bushman – Renaissance

This is the tune on which Raffy Bushman’s debut album really shows its pulse; that deep, unshakeable groove running through jazz from swing to Blue Note to hip‑hop, channelled into something sharp, modern and alive. The track opens with a spring‑loaded bass line before Bushman’s piano pushes it into a rolling rush of ideas, the trio moving with a looseness that still feels impeccably controlled. When the rhythm section drops out, he spins a mesh of looping, almost Bach‑like figures that play with time and tug the ear in multiple directions, before the band snaps back in for an exhilarating climb. It is Bushman at full clarity; complex yet immediate, rooted in tradition but lit up by his own instinct for forward motion. You can purchase the album here: https://amzn.to/4vAwWBI

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New Release Reviews

Beth Orton – The Ground Above

Beth Orton first began to surface around thirty years ago, the charismatically detached voice that had featured a little on electronic dance tracks began to plough her own folktronica field with the release of debut album ‘Trailer Park.’ It was a graceful thing of acoustically decorated beauty, full of agelessly memorable songs instantly marking Beth out as an artist capable of pushing folk into bold new 21st century territories. I caught her live for the first time around then playing the Cambridge Folk Festival and it was immediately clear, observing the largely cross-legged crowd with the question “is it a folk thing?” that she did not belong in anyone’s club. As the subsequent albums and passing years have proved definitively, Orton is not in deference to a style aesthetic or servicing any musical eras and attitudes, she solely fuelling her art and the process of creativity. This, of course, has made Beth impossible to pigeonhole, it is a rare occurrence that a new album comes out from this writer that meets the pre-conceptions attached to it. If she were to ever produce a record worthy of the folktronica tag again, you can be certain it would arrive at the moment it was least expected. But the key detail to all the musical surfing Beth is free to explore is this, whenever she puts out new music it is always something worth digging into. Her peers and inspirations are not merely introspective singer-songwriters, instead she has the art project cache of a Tom Waits or David Byrne, forever tuned in and alert to the real-life stimulations and feelings that feed into her music, no matter what mode or texture the end product possesses.

That said, ‘The Ground Above’ dramatically stands out as a Beth Orton album like no other. If you are looking for that fanfare worthy lead track like ‘Stolen Car’ it is not here. Keeping an ear out for an americana inflected pot-boiler like ‘Concrete Sky’ will see you coming up short. For starters, the suite of eight songs is more like an ensemble creation than anything this artist has in her back catalogue. These pieces, especially at the front end of the record, are closer to meditations or celestial hymns than songs with locked in frameworks. That is not to say that they lack melody or even a rhythmical back bone, but there is a looseness to the vibes captured from these sessions that implies a group of musicians feeling and reacting as they recorded. A circle of trusted conspirators succeeded in turning the studio into a living organism, like a kind of communal breathing. Multi‑instrumentalists Shahzad Ismaily and Sam Beste (Vernon Spring) sketching out shifting emotional weather, drummers Chris Vatalaro and Tom Skinner pushing and pulling the momentum like tides, bassist Tom Herbert anchoring the undertow. Guitars from Dave Okumu, Grey McMurry, and Adrian Utley flicker in and out of frame, while Paul Butler’s presence lends a subtly glowing architecture. Within this constellation, Orton rises as producer, songwriter, singer, and bandleader with a clarity of intent. The music feels taller, more spacious even as Beth has learned to trust the air around and allow it to carry her voice towards a raw, open, vulnerable but honest place.

One of the most revealing insights Orton has offered ahead of this release is that all the songs “are looking through the prism of the years from many directions at once, I’m working with the unconscious, something like lucid dreaming.” This is overwhelmingly evoked during the eight minute plus title track, a piece in which Beth’s voice sounds absolutely choked amidst the stimuli and flashes of memory that engulf her. “Love is the only certainty there is” she sings, and in so doing she hits the mainline of lifeblood that is pulling her through. This music celebrates the kind of love that hits so hard it knocks us off course into new pastures, whilst never kidding itself that these lightning bolts are not closely accompanied by equal amounts of grief, hurt, and pain. As such it is the currency of universal truth Beth is dealing in here, “ecstatic as a mothers love, tearing through the sky to the ground above,” and these sonic landscapes absolutely burn thanks to the natural root ingredients. If it were not for the stuttering, trippy beats and waves of electronic ambience that bookend the piece, it could almost be described as free jazz and even though it is not that, there are enough sonic reference points throughout the album to make the connection. Each song progresses so satisfyingly that they surely were sequenced this way intentionally, a shining example of an album that needs playing in the correct running order. Without this, the joyous release felt on closer ‘Otherside’ would be lost, the sense of journey and passage nailed down as Beth sings of finally weeping while birdsong ushers in a new dawn. The sense of survival and desire to squeeze all the good out of life that we can lay our hands on is tangible here, on the other side of a night filled with the unsettling merging of thoughts and memories both lived and inexplicably inherited. It spins itself into a rousing finale that has our singer projecting out to the sky too, the crack in her voice now the product of strength rather than the punctures heard at the outset. After multiple plays, I am already recalibrating my Beth Orton chronology in readiness to acknowledge this as her greatest album. It clearly argues that she makes her best music not when shackled by the idea of recording a hit, but actually when free to paint the truest picture possible, from an unlimited musical palate, of the life and energy rotating all around her.

Danny Neill

You can buy the album on CD here: https://amzn.to/4vtQTds

Beth Orton by Kasia Wozniak
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Music Mixes

New Mix: Fruit Tree Records – Fresh Juice 2026 Vol. 9

Welcome to Volume Nine in our series of new music, latest release and soon-to-land gems, collectively known as our Fresh Juice offerings. Well, it is the middle of a record breaking heatwave in the UK right now so maybe this is just what we all need, but temperature thoughts aside, we should always find a space for the best of what’s happening among the masses of creative musical wizards still serving us up plenty of the good stuff in 2026. Yes, we like plenty of old music here at Fruit Tree Records, but we will never turn our noses up at new sounds made with the same conviction and craftsmanship as our old favourites and there is definitely plenty of the good stuff about! Just dig in to this stunning set that launches from a place of moddish freakbeat energy then surf rides across newly minted zingers in heavy psych, garage rock, indie-alternative rock, americana, folk, jazz and beyond so, as always, dig in and dig out!

Tracks – Fruit Tree Records – Fresh Juice 2026 Vol. 9

What’s New On The Beat Scene – Perennial https://perennialtheband.bandcamp.com/album/modernism

Loose – The Black Wizards https://amzn.to/4eEGswD

Face Card – abracadabra https://abracadabraoakland.bandcamp.com/album/peel-away

Save Me – Joan As Police Woman ft. Iggy Pop https://amzn.to/4w88TtW

Aero – Wills Van Doorn https://amzn.to/4gxxQKz

Bildgewater – The Huntress And The Holder Of Hands https://thehuntressmusic.bandcamp.com/album/babylon

Lavender Cowboy – Andrew Sa https://amzn.to/4g0wWX0

No One Else’s Pen – Luluc https://amzn.to/4ahEjpf

Cocoon – Sweeping Promises https://amzn.to/4eFjYeS

Mystery Gash – Oral Habit https://amzn.to/43Qgi52

Let The Love-In Begin – The Mourning After https://roguerecords.bandcamp.com/album/let-the-love-in-begin

Down On Love – Sam & Louise Sullivan https://amzn.to/3SqYLhc

Japanese Green – Blue Earth Sound https://amzn.to/4agCclD

Mothersong – Leah Senior https://amzn.to/4oQcs5C

All Wounds – Fruit Bats https://amzn.to/4aiRcPU

Last Call – Pharis & Jason Romero https://amzn.to/4aQ4Mub

Meet Me Half Way – Lemoncello https://amzn.to/3SVWfQ9

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New Release Reviews

Tift Merritt – Sugar

Country music is having a big moment these days, if anything it can plausibly be claimed this is the biggest era since the 1950s where the genre has become a major presence in the mainstream. And I am all for it, even though the real big hitters of our time seem to have a pop sheen so pronounced and polished that the actual country element of the music is reduced to some tassels, cowboy boots, and a brief push on the fiddle. But things getting watered down to suit mass consumption tastes are nothing new in the music world and I always rationalise, at least it opens the door a bit for the real talent to get heard; and when it comes to the real deal, Tift Merritt is exactly that. I first encountered her at a festival around 2005, by which time she was already a couple of albums into what became a distinguished recording career. She burst onto the stage, a fireball of energy and smiles, grabbing the audience by the ears and dousing them with her original country songs that immediately proved this most long running and storied of American music styles had a lot of mileage left in it yet. Tift rocked the festival crowd that day with the simple trick of just being very, very good at performing instantly loveable songs. And yes, Merritt was obviously serious about her art. I began collecting her music that day and these records remain some of the regular go to titles in my collection. If your life is hitting the heights so ecstatically you want to shake it like a tambourine, Tift can step up with the goods just as, at the other end of the scale, should you want to spend some time travelling alone, this songwriter has the writing depth to help us get by.  

Despite all this though, even with the most naturally gifted artists there are still periods where real life takes over and creative conditions shift into another realm, and so this new release ‘Sugar’ is actually a return to recording after a near ten-year gap. Merritt has continued to write in her radiant country‑soul vernacular, but she has also been living the wider life of becoming a mother, serving as a Practitioner‑in‑Residence at Duke University, helping reimagine The Gables as a collaborative arts space in Raleigh, advocating fiercely for musicians’ rights through the Artists Rights Alliance, and simply doing the slow, essential work of being a human being guided by her own instincts. Those years have opened new dimensions in her storytelling, refining her sense of what songs can hold and what they can offer. “Before I made this record, I was looking at the world and thinking, ‘I don’t know what to do except try to put some love out there.’ And for me, singing is the most honest, immediate way to offer love,” Merritt says. “My work has always been about trying to understand what it means to be human at that point in time. But that response has to make room for the personal and the joyful too, we can’t face everything with doom and gloom alone.”

That is a statement which cuts to the core of what makes Tift Merritt’s music so essential, she is honest in her reflections and reactions to real life but never loses sight of her natural desire to lift the spirits through music too. Take as a good example this new album’s ‘Someone To Watch The Band With Me,’ a rousing track in which Tift rages against the easy attainability of everything apart from basic human connection; as she strips all the modern ephemera and gets direct to the point, that basic desire scorches the surface as the chorus hits. Recording ‘Sugar’ in Nashville’s Gold Pacific Studios and putting the emphasis on capturing in the moment verve was exactly the right approach for music that thrives on feeling. ‘Look What Love Just Did’ is another stand out, soulful horns and a heavy sunset key steering the singer’s determination not to lose her wonder at the magic love can summon in a flash. There is a sense of urgency in these beliefs too, something that spills over in bright opener ‘Finest Feelings’ although the flipside of new love is addressed too, devastatingly so as Tift turns her insides out trying to release the hurt felt in ‘Generous.’ The confusion of the modern world appears in songs like ‘Mad Mad World’ and ‘Last Ditch Ultimatum’ (in which Jesus shuts heaven’s doors in frustration at the human race) but by the time we close on ‘Philosopher’s Song’ Tift is searching, with hope and purpose, for “any kindness I can find” again. Should there be any music fans out there unfamiliar with the magic of Merritt, ripe for a discovery that they can believe in today, then this woman’s work is a wonderful place to settle. Tift Merritt returning with songs as alive and vital as this is the kind of sugar we should all delight in.

Danny Neill

You can order a copy of the album here: https://amzn.to/3SrXeHJ

Tift Merritt by Ebru Yildiz
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