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Fruit Tree Records Of The Year, Records of 2021

Aaron Lee Tasjan – Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!

As album titles go, ‘Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!’ certainly signposts the listener to what is going on within these grooves. This is the record in which Aaron Lee Tasjan lets his name ring aloud, showing the world what he can do without inhibition. You do not need gently easing in, no sales pitch, no preparation or finding the right time of day. This album is instant, it is Pop music pure and simple. Yes, it is cut with a retro sheen but so what? At this point labelling things this way is becoming redundant because music that sounds this good simply identifies as a classic pop sound. But above and beyond the dressing is the man at the center and for sure, this is the album on which Aaron Lee Tasjan rubber stamps his credentials, showing a singular songwriting talent with an ear for both the left field and the mainstream.

You will first see Aaron’s name show up on a Fruit Tree Records playlist around five years ago when the epic cowboy psych of ‘Little Movies’ caught my ear. That song in particular stood out so firmly that he simply had to remain on my watchlist, it was obvious someone with a rare gift was at work and I needed to be there when a talent like that fully blooms. Well, in 2021 the moment arrived beyond doubt although the only regret was that it happened at a time of worldwide pandemic and lockdowns. This sadly limited the exposure Aaron has enjoyed and surely held back the impact his record could have made last year, for with so many instantly loveable, hit-sounding songs to play he could so easily have grabbed the festival scene by both ears and made a far more ubiquitous presence of himself. That is what this kind of album deserved, the tunes are immediate, you can singalong to them first time if you want but they have subtle layers of depth and playful patterns of mystery sewn in too.

As an artist Aaron Lee Tasjan is multifaceted for sure. His instrumental facility is considerable, a former student of the jazz guitar who has gone on record as stating his favorite all time guitarist is Freddie Green of the Count Basie Orchestra. In his own career he has put these skills to work not only in his capacity as a performer but also production and composition work. At a certain point it seems that Aaron just decided songs were where it was at and so he poured all his creativity into that side of his music. At this stage, his ability to write a great three-minute song is established but as a live performer Aaron also shines. He has flashes of the Elton John about him, see it in those moments of camp flamboyance unleashing a fuzzy guitar solo, there is a sense of the absurd peeking through. In fact, on ‘Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!’ that classic rock star androgyny is played into quite deliberately with lyrics like “broke up with my boyfriend to go out with my girlfriend, cause love is like that.”

In terms of sound, the classic Pop I have referred to is not so much Elton John (although that is in there) but leans towards the jingle-jangle guitar sound pioneered by the Byrds as a starting point. However, that is nothing more than a launchpad. The guitar pop trajectory flies across four or five decades and lands most firmly in the Travelling Wilbury’s and Tom Petty arena. This is accentuated too by the laid back, Laurel Canyon timbre in the Aaron Lee Tasjan voice. His studio craft is evident, the sound is as clean and wide open as those aforementioned acts in the eighties and leaves plenty of space for modern sounding electronic brush strokes to complete the picture, it is a cleverly crafted soundscape.

Underpinning everything, the key to the strength of this album, is the tunes. Aaron is unpretentious in his subject matter; he can tackle a topic with straightforward delivery and find humour in there too. Is ‘Feminine Walk’ a hymn to the difficulties in androgyny and not adopting conventional sexual stereotypes or does Aaron just want to strut around like Jagger and play it for laughs? It is hard to tell, but he delivers the chorus hook of the song with all the seriousness of the Bangles singing about their Egyptian walk. He nonchalantly drops any pretense of analysis on ‘Up All Night,’ shrugging off the rationale of staying up all night with “it could be good, or it could be bad for you” and then settling on “it’s gonna be alright.” On the other hand, ‘Computer Love’ is more a straight ahead put down of living life on the internet; “my little avatar, I’ll never know who you really are.”  

Opener ‘Sunday Women’ is a great example of how Aaron can let the music tell most of the story, simply by catching the right feel. The lyrics really only peek from behind the curtain at what is going on, wondering where these Sunday Women are and regretting the lost opportunity to build dreams with one as the singer sits alone with the Monday blues. It is the music that conveys the forlorn sense of longing and dreams unfulfilled. You get the sense that Aaron has really gone all in with this record. He has pulled every lesson learned, all the licks and vibes absorbed and fine tuned within his music with a Blues tilt, a Country inclination and cooked it all up into this fantastic musical melting pot. ‘Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!’ deserved greater recognition for sure but hey, it got made and those that did hear it invariably loved it. Given time, more and more people are going to be shouting the name Aaron Lee Tasjan Tasjan Tasjan!

Search for a vinyl pressing of ‘Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!’ here:

https://www.discogs.com/release/16782057-Aaron-Lee-Tasjan-Tasjan-Tasjan-Tasjan-

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Fruit Tree Records Of The Year, Records of 2021

Spellling – The Turning Wheel

Trying to keep your finger on the pulse of music, if your interests and tastes align to the Fruit Tree Records approach, involves casting your net far and wide. I am engaging daily with radio shows, internet mixes, magazine reviews, online reviews and navigating my way through many streaming platforms; in addition to all that I remain what I have been all my life, a vinyl record collector and crate digger. You would think that all these avenues merge into a well-oiled music finding system but oh no, really there is no such formular and it is the randomness that keeps this journey exciting. What I can tell you is this: stay open minded, do not limit your interests to one genre or era and I guarantee wonderful surprises will come into your life every single day. It really is mind numbing, impossible to comprehend, just how much amazing music is being created every year and even more awe inspiring is just how much made over the past century remains under appreciated. Of course, the opposite holds true as well, but if there were not so much attention seeking dross muscling its way into peoples ears all the time, there would be no thrill or reward in uncovering the good stuff. ‘The Turning Wheel’ by Spellling is one such hidden gem from 2021.

I genuinely cannot recall how I came across Spellling in 2021, I suspect I made a note after hearing something on a radio show or a DJ mix, something like that, which resulted in the album sitting in my ‘things to listen to’ pile earlier in the year. What I can recall exactly, is my incredibly positive reaction to hearing the album. Beyond positive, I was bowled over, left aghast, or high even on the discovery of something so wonderful. An album that seemed to tick so many of the boxes and styles of music I regard as important to me. These were great songs, incredibly strong on melody, heavy on impact and full of earworms that linger on and on. But it was showy too, not so much power ballads but theatrical concept pieces…on ice! I joke of course, but the music was a dizzying melting pot of ideas. Jazzy but not jazz; progressive but not prog, bluesy without a twelve-bar template in sight and there were even hints of the show tune to some of the emoting, but without the teeth and the jazz hands. Impossible to put in a box and yet undeniably fantastic. How could something as brilliant as this fly so far under the radar I wondered? Well, look around and it is not such a rare tale, the business end of the music world rarely values craftsmanship over easily marketable, immediately profitable product. Sometimes it feels like the only winners are us collectors, free to discover these wonders then share them out. But Spellling is hopefully aware that, if nothing else, these are the albums that endure over time. Those unaware of Spellling today that will surely not say the same tomorrow, for the good stuff does tend to rise to the surface eventually.

Spellling is the performing identity of Chrystia Cabral, she released this third album under the name in 2021. Entitled ‘The Turning Wheel,’ it is a mesmerizing song cycle packed with theatricality and magical pop wonder. A double LP well worth investigating on vinyl, the first record is the dreamier and more positive of the two, it has the collective title of ‘Above’ while the more somber, darker tones of the second disc are titled ‘Below.’ The fact that this is an expansive as well as expressive song suite, executing orchestral brush strokes and dynamic punctuation points leads to me recalling Kate Bush. And while this is an entirely worthy comparison, Spellling is an entity with its own unique grain. Cabral’s early influences were not contemporary, she has spoken in the past of how she soaked up the 70s and 80s sounds sourced from family record collections. One primary influence she has acknowledged is Minnie Riperton and there, amongst lush orchestral passages and wide-eyed sense of wonder, is a line towards Riperton’s own ‘Come To My Garden’ LP detectable. It is clearly a psychedelic reference point inside the Spellling mold, but the influences do not dominate at all.

Cabral has not arrived at this third album new to ambitious composition ideas but previously her tools were limited to electronics and synths. This time, with over thirty orchestral musicians at her disposal as well as a little extra lockdown time to develop ideas further, she has fine-tuned her vision into something incredible. It feels to me like there was a certain point in her career when she realized you do not need to follow a previously walked path, just being open to her own ideas and seeing where they lead would be enough. ‘The Turning Wheel’ seems like both a culmination and a definitive justification for following that instinct. It is a stunning achievement that I hope attracts the large audience it deserves. The albums stands as an elegant concept piece concerning life, life cycles, death, our hopes for the future, our fears and the constantly evolving nature of reality. A song like ‘Emperor With An Egg’ pulls at all those tensions while ‘Magic Act,’ a centerpiece on the darker second disc, simmers like a heavy thunderstorm forming in the distance.

Despite my having begun to pick out song highlights at this stage of the review, I must state that this is one of those records that must be sampled as a whole. That is how it has been constructed even though the songs are all melodically rich enough to stand alone as individual tracks. And while many of the lyrical themes like love and true friendship, as sung about on the title track, are touched upon abstractly, Cabral can flick the switch and sting the listener with something direct and forthright. ‘Boys At School’ is one example of this, with an unfiltered lyric dramatically singing about adolescent trauma. Overall, though, the shimmering lyrical twists and the boundless musical turns must be experienced firsthand. Which is exactly why I am flagging ‘The Turning Wheel’ as one of the outstanding albums of 2021. This is one for people who really love to lock in, listen and engage; the rewards inside these grooves are many.

Find a vinyl copy of ‘The Turning Wheel’ here: https://www.discogs.com/release/19310530-Spellling-The-Turning-Wheel

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Fruit Tree Records Of The Year, Records of 2021

Yola – Stand For Myself

Whether as a featured vocalist for Massive Attack or front woman to the Americana outfit Phantom Limb, Yola Carter has been a low-key presence on the music scene for a couple of decades now. The impression you get now that she has fully burst onto the scene is that in those years, she quietly readied herself for the spotlight and always held a little something back for the day it arrived. How else do you explain a full force gale like this? She does not come across like a singer who naturally sits in the background, this is a woman with a commanding authority when she grabs the microphone and a hard-to-dent conviction in the words she imparts. She shouts without bawling, it is a no bullshit approach, the kind that only comes from a true voice with a vision singing from the heart. And even though this is in fact her second solo LP release, I find myself comparing it to something like the first George Harrison solo album. It is that magical moment when an artist who has previously jostled to find their space, finally finds a footing, turns on the tap and watches the music come flooding on down.

I stop short of calling ‘Stand For Myself’ one of the outstanding Soul albums of 2021 because, musically, it is so much more than that. Yola has explained in interviews how she simply grew up loving music; music that she heard on the radio, music she found in her mother’s record collection, whatever spoke to her emotionally she soaked it all up. It has resulted in this, an album that is a mesmerizing mixture of all her influences but not exactly like any of them. In doing so she has created that rare thing that not all artists can effectively realize; her own sound, this record introduces to the world the Yola sound. Impossible to pigeonhole and undeniably belonging to nobody else.

Her solo work truly began in 2019 with the Dan Auerbach produced ‘Walk Through Fire’. I did pay a little bit of attention to that album, mainly because something in the way it was marketed and in Yola’s image caught my attention, it looked like the kind of rootsy soul record I would be into. And it was indeed a good piece, but it did not register in the album of the year stakes or anything like that, maybe it lacked the unique identity so prevalent on this follow up? The Black Keys Auerbach has produced once more, but this time Yola’s own personality is a lot more visible. The creative period of lockdown facilitated this a little, affording the artist time to work out what she really wanted to do with her music. The array of collaborators and writing partners have also opened the possibilities. In addition to the producer there is also Natalie Hemby from the Highwomen, Ruby Amanfu who has performed in the backing singer department for Jack White as well as the quietly brilliant pop master Aaron Lee Tasjan.

The tune Tasjan contributed to, ‘Diamond Studded Shoes,’ is an early album stand out. As a rousing song it is shot with a rare realism. It is very much a call to arms in sound and style yet in anticipating if things would turn out right it emphatically answers, “we know it isn’t, we know it isn’t.” That alone typifies an underlying motivation throughout, in that Yola has viewed this album as a chance to get real, a chance to unleash the soul power at the heart of what she does while simultaneously refraining from presenting things in a one-dimensional way. Musically this leaves the door open for a multitude of influences to reveal themselves. Among the tracks there is everything from Brill Building pop craft, Sister Rosetta Tharpe style electric gospel, Black Keys riffage, Philadelphia soul lushness and even a hint of Freedom Singers folk protest poking through. Lyrically, what has poured onto the page is social, political, personal, lived and learned street wisdom. She is not just going to blindly say everything is going to be OK when she knows better but do not deny her right to hope for improvements and to stand up and fight for her beliefs.

Any album where claims for ‘best of the year’ status are made should, as a baseline requirement, be without any weak tracks or filler. ‘Stand For Myself’ definitively fits those criteria, from start to finish the songwriting standard is high and the range of emotional textures visited upon are dizzying. ‘Dancing Away In Tears’ is arguable the records smoothest soul moment, it has late night pop classic written all over it. By contrast to that tunes widescreen production, ‘If I Had To Do It All Again’ leaves sonic space for the catchy melody to breathe. The rhythm stutters, the bassline punches while the guitar executes savage knife slices, the effect is both dramatic and cool. ‘Whatever You Want’ has one of those low-hanging-fruit kind of melodies that sounds like it has been around forever. That fact alone invests the song with a self-assured strut. Finally, title track ‘Stand For Myself’ has undeniable sunrise chord progressions. It makes for music that incredibly evokes light overwhelming the darkness as Yola testifies “I used to feel nothing like you, now I’m alive, I’m alive!” For real!

Find a vinyl copy of ‘Stand For Myself’ here: https://www.discogs.com/release/19686967-Yola-Stand-For-Myself

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Fruit Tree Records Of The Year, Records of 2021

Declan O’Rourke – Arrivals

As Declan O’Rourke released ‘Arrivals’ in the early part of 2021 the talk was all about how this would finally be his moment. After two decades of being the songwriter’s songwriter, this well-kept secret would finally start to enjoy the recognition he so richly deserved. Ah, predictions very rarely pan out in such a straightforward fashion, in fact as we enter 2022 the side to Declan’s creative output that is enjoying newfound time in the spotlight is his prose writing. He had spent a prolonged period of the lockdown completing his first ever novel, a fact-based fiction called ‘The Pawn Brokers Record.’ Set in a six-month period during the 1845-1848 Irish Famine, O’Rourke had disciplined himself to writing at his desk for six-hour sessions, seven days a week. And in terms of success and exposure, the end product saw his book appear at number four in the best sellers lists on the first week of publication.

Those bold predictions of success and recognition for the album were largely based on the name of the producer, Paul Weller. It always did look a bit fanciful to suggest that fact alone would see the waves of appreciation arrive at Declan’s door. If there is one thing Weller has always done consistently throughout his career, it is respecting the soul of any music with which he is involved. He is not going to muscle in with his own voice and sound trying to make this sound like a Weller record, he has too much class for that kind of stunt. But he did do a fantastic job on production; if the producer’s role is to tap into the essence of an artist and facilitate the realization of that performers sound on vinyl, then he did exactly what was required. Yes, Weller is there on the back cover, regularly cropping up in the song credits on either guitar, piano and harmonium and he also brings in a collaborator of his own in Hannah Peel on gorgeous string arrangements. But the stars of this show are O’Rourke, his weather battered Irish voice, his dexterous guitar playing and those wonderful character driven songs.

Weller’s own connection with O’Rourke began way back with his appreciation of the man’s earlier work, especially the song ‘Galileo’ which the senior Mod went on record describing as the only song he wished he had written in the last thirty years. The story goes that the producer wanted to hear the songs before committing to proceed but you have to say, it would be a shock if he had declined on compositions like these. ‘Arrivals’ is a collection of songs that sees Declan often looking inward, examining his relationship with his craft and his place in a creative industry. He appears to be explicitly addressing this on opener ‘In Painter’s Light’ and yet, as often happens on this LP, the song expands into a broader meditation on the purity of dreams, how the things you hold close to your heart can be so easily crushed when life does not always line up with your inner plans.

Wider topics are written about with equal aplomb, take ‘Convict Ways’ and it’s definite depiction of transport ships moving convicts over to Australia. The song does not merely settle on dry description, it states that progress has not moved far enough away from the days of “being slaves without the name of slaves.” And ‘Have You Not Heard The War Is Over’ may just be one of the finest anti-war folk songs ever written. Not simply because of the way Declan precisely deconstructs the many shady positions that justified past conflicts in the first place, nor for the undeniable way he puts humanitarianism at the forefront of his position. No, it is also because this song has a damn fine folk chorus that can be sung along with instantly and stays in the musical part of your brain long after the album is over.

‘Andy Sells Coke’ begins as a critical, advisory take down of a delusional character dealing to fund his own drug habit. Again though, the song turns inward to focus on the singer himself passed out in a chair when he should have long since grown out of that kind of behavior. “I’m too old in the tooth to be round this shit” the number concludes. O’Rourke often arrives at the core of a song in the moment when his lyric writing turns in on himself. ‘The Harbour’ might seem like a straight-ahead tale of an old gardener and an introspective tiler and the life lessons they have acquired along the way. Still once more, the writer looms into view, recognizing in himself a hunger and desperation to uncork the inner heart and soul of all he encounters to feed into his own creativity. Imagining himself in turbulent waters, where “every wind has a tail,” the singer longs for the relative sanctuary of the harbour. Well, with ‘Arrivals,’ every song really does have a tale and they are all performed by an honest craftsman taking his work seriously and investing with all the passion and feeling it demands. This is a fine piece of folk, singer-songwriter work that could not have been better executed and easily one of the finest we heard in this form during 2021.

Find a vinyl copy of ‘Arrivals’ here: https://www.discogs.com/release/18204775-Declan-ORourke-Arrivals

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Fruit Tree Records Of The Year, Records of 2021

The Coral – Coral Island

In 2022 the plan is for The Coral to be celebrating the 20th anniversary of their classic self titled debut album. If you were following back in 2002, you will recall that an exciting new wave of sixties style garage rock and flowery UK psychedelia had arrived. The White Stripes headed the charge in the US with similarly rough edged yet tuneful ripples washing in from acts like The Von Bondies and Sweden’s The Hives among many others. Meanwhile in the UK, from out of nowhere, a group of freakbeat inspired scousers called, perfectly, The Coral came crashing in with full force gale impact. A hit single helped announce the arrival, ‘Dreaming Of You’ was a worthy occupant of the hit parade (despite its relevance fast fading by then) but that album was a genuine surprise. To this day ‘The Coral’ remains a vital explosion of classic Liverpudlian songwriting spilling over with riffs, hooks, sea-shanties, Barrett-esque whimsy and a spirit of anything goes freedom. I remember well in 2002 veteran psych-heads urging me to find them a vinyl copy to sit on their shelves alongside their original ‘S.F. Sorrow’, ‘Village Green’ and ‘Ogden’s’ albums. A fair shout too, this is the lineage in which the Coral belonged.

Jump forward to 2021 and ‘Coral Island’ finds the band still very much existing in this same space. But do not let that imply they have not moved forward, the very nature of this music is open minded and explorative, the idea that a group could still be doing this so well and simultaneously be low on ideas does not add up. To be this exceptional at the style is no small achievement. If you want to hear a modern band enthralled by the sounds of sixties psychedelia and garage rock, there are no shortage. Just go and read one of the specialist publications available and pick from the many four star, afraid to offend, reviews you find there and fill your sandals. The problem is just mastering the production and the sound is not enough without the songs and original ideas; for me there are too many I hear nailing their perfect 1967 mellotron photocopies without bothering to write anything worth listening to. That is where The Coral are a class above with double LP ‘Coral Island’ being, when stripped back, a lesson in modern Merseybeat songwriting. Beneath that style lies a lot of substance.

James Skelly remains at the centre of the band’s compositional hub, although the credits also pull in valuable contributions from Nick Power, Paul Duffy, Richard Turvey, Ian Skelly and Paul Molloy. James cannot deny his natural ear for a juicy melodic tune, and he has shown few signs of losing touch with this for two decades now. It should not be underestimated what a rarity it is for a band to be still producing music that nestles easily among their best work after twenty years. Few last that long anyway but of those that do, I am struggling to think of too many. I do not believe any revisionist attempts to suggest the Rolling Stones made anything close to their best work in the early 1980s, I could make an argument on behalf of R.E.M. in 2001 and a little beyond but it is rare achievement in long running groups. Twenty years is a big ask for any band to continue functioning creatively, let alone make a record like this.

‘Coral Island’ is structured in two thematic parts, firstly ‘Welcome to Coral Island’ and then ‘The Ghost Of Coral Island.’ The first presents the island as a helter-skelter, timeless, seaside arena with a dizzying cast of 20th century characters. The second half dives headlong into the lives of those occupants, peering into the kaleidoscope of their mind’s eyes. There is between song narration courtesy of James and Ian Skelly’s grandad Ian Murray. This does give the whole record a feel of the classic late sixties concept album, which was clearly intentional but there is another truth about those post ‘Sgt Pepper’ records, including ‘Pepper’ itself, that must not be lost; the concept is merely a framework on which to hang a collection of songs.

Tasteful homages to the sonic echoes of mid-century pop music frequently jump forth. Catch that twangy guitar break on ‘My Best Friend,’ the oh-so achingly gorgeous mellotron sound of ‘Autumn Has Come’ or even the tacky pub piano featured on ‘The Calico Girl.’ Still, I always come back to admiring the roots, those classy songs and that James Skelly knack of making every tune so instantly listenable. And look beyond the Coral Island idea to see that these are still just timeless human heartbeat tracks at their core. The longing that you feel in ‘Change Your Mind’ is universal, as is the warmth expressed on ‘My Best Friend.’ In fact, there are at least eight songs here that legitimately rank amongst The Coral’s greatest work, while the remainder are in no way filler or lesser constructs. To put it in the plainest terms possible, there is not a weak link on this entire double album. I will put my cards on the table and admit that sixties flavored psych-pop and rock is something of a sweet spot for me, but you hear so many copyists doing it badly these days. Too many pay more attention to perfecting their authentic sounding flange effects and sourcing the correct type of floral kipper ties than they do writing decent songs and music. When a band like The Coral pay the form the respect it deserves, the seriousness of approach pays out with the end product. In the case of ‘Coral Island,’ the band have created a double LP that is swirling with wild, timeless, colourful, audio magic from beginning to end.

Search for a vinyl pressing of ‘Coral Island’ here:

https://www.discogs.com/release/18541153-The-Coral-Coral-Island

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Monthly Playlists

January 2022 Playlist

I began compiling the Fruit Tree Records monthly playlists in June 2014 under some extremely challenging circumstances. In fact, it’s probably fair to say that the playlist compiling and the excuse to organize my monthly listening adventures into something regular, coherent and into a project that would span years and decades was something of a welcome distraction at the time from other life events and dramas that had, to put it mildly, left me with a fight on my hands. But music can give you a lot (not all) of the support you need to get you through times like that and so it did. It was only seven years later, in June 2021, when I began to share and write about these playlists because, by then, the project had started to form something like the grander, far-reaching project I had first envisioned. Over time I will post and write about the events and times surrounding all these monthly playlists going right back to the start, if nothing else there is a lot of compiling and curating work been put into these lists and there is indeed an overall style emerging.

I mention this as part of the introduction to the January 2022 list because one trend to evolve, which was not there immediately, is that the first collection of the year serves up a grand sweep of the pile of tracks un-playlisted from the year just ended. As such, it also is a first entry into the Fruit Tree Records review of the year. None of these pieces would have been excluded before due to any lack in quality or excitement, it is simply that this is not a project based solely on contemporary music, the source pool covers the entire history of recorded music and things do take time to listen to and appreciate. On that subject, I had previously stated an intention to write about the Fruit Tree Records of 2021 during December, but I have held that back until January. My reasoning is, why rush to settle on my final twenty or so absolute stand outs from the year. People do not exactly have a shortage of end of year run downs to check out in December and there is only one of me, so inevitably the various magazines and sites I check out have a habit of alerting me to something incredible that I previously missed.

So, I saw the new year in last night with the Hootenanny on TV. It has never been something I have particularly been bothered about missing, as good as Jools is there is invariably someone on who I would rather not be seeing a new year in with. But since five of the six people I live with have Covid, myself included, then Jools it ended up being. There is nothing to be gained by me knocking Ed Sheeran but whatever it is that he does that appeals to people goes right over my head, as it does everyone else in the house I have to say. Now I come to think of it, I do not think I know anybody who openly admits to liking this man’s music, how is he so popular? The same can be said for Rag N’ Bone Man, whose Human I had initially liked a few years ago but if ever a song died a death for me through repeated exposure it was this. His Hootenanny performance showed he does indeed have a bit of a soulful punch to his singing, but has he ever found the answer to what he does next after the success of Human? The lad looks a bit lost to me.

Talking about vocals with soulful impact, Yola was certainly my stand-out highlight of the evening. Her album does feature as one of the Fruit Tree Records of 2021 and she also appears in this playlist, so in no way a new discovery but a revelation all the same in how she took this TV show by the collar and gave it a thorough shakedown. Later in the show Yola took a run at Cream’s ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ and absolutely catapulted it into the new year stars. Look back at Yola’s considerable music back story and it is clear she has waited too long for her time in the spotlight; sometimes there is nothing more satisfying than watching someone whose talent wholly deserves the attention finally getting some. The other saving grace was Joy Crookes, also featured in this playlist, who has returned to my radar some five years after I was impressed by her Winehouse-esque vocals and trip-hop style genre-mashing at a sparsely attended London pub supporting Benedict Benjamin. I predicted good things for her at the time and it is nice to occasionally see that my ear can still spot potential. Last night she even, apparently spontaneously, did a song with Ed Sheeran and made him seem momentarily less irritating. Mind you, it was extremely late by then and I was very fatigued from Covid. Happy new year.

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Monthly Playlists

December 2021 Playlist

December is typically the month where the music you hear coming out of shops, cars, radios or most public gatherings suddenly becomes a lot more familiar to the Fruit Tree Records ethos. That is to say, the air is filled with classic Christmas tracks that are pulled from an eclectic range of eras and styles. From pure nineties pop, to sixties wall of sound, crackly crooners from the 1940s, glam rock, indie-dance crossover sounds, electro eighties soul, warm fireside folk, feel good fifties rock n roll and even Bob Dylan, it all gets an equal billing in the soundtrack to the festive season.

I’ll admit to a gnawing sense of over familiarity to a lot of the ubiquitous Christmas songs we’re showered with but that’s not really the fault of the songs themselves. Only a deliberate contrarian would argue against the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl (like one of those buffoons who try and argue that the Beatles weren’t any good, cross them off the christmas card list) and even a murder conviction hasn’t shaken the essential status of the Phil Spector Christmas Album too far from the summit. But love them as I have, they are way too familiar now and even the sound of John Lennon asking “so this is Christmas and what have you done?” fails to lift in quite the same way as it used to. Of course, even the greatest of albums can diminish with over exposure, so don’t let me pour cold water over your enjoyment of the greatest festive recordings.

The one thing I can’t ignore is that the wide open, anything counts approach that the curators and listeners apply to music in December is exactly the same as my own philosophy with Fruit Tree Records all year round. That limitless ploughing through the recorded music of the last 100 years is a voyage that I’ve been on all my life and rewards me with audio surprise and delight every single day. Like everyone, my tastes have plenty of sweet spots and blind spots but overall, I’d say that genre and age are not limiting factors, essentially if something grabs me then I’m on it whether it was put out in the 1920s or last week, be it something deep and rootsy or groundbreaking and futuristic.

To quote Lou Reed, the posibilities are endless. So come on people, don’t just dive into the deep well of recorded music during the Christmas period, bathe in this endless river all year round, I guarantee you won’t regret it. Oh and just to be clear, the December playlist is not a Christmas selection in any way, just more superb sounds from across the ages to entertain and inspire! Happy Christmas.

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Monthly Playlists

November 2021 Playlist

Cover star is Hannah Peel, whose music closes this months set

Anyone with the impulse to write about music, DJ or collect will essentially deal in the currency of “if you like that wait until you hear this”. If not that then maybe “if you think that tracks groundbreaking wait until I show you where they got the idea from”. We collectors spend our time, every day, wading through the acres of recorded music from the past hundred or so years and when we uncover something wonderful we want to share it around. Because music is such a personal experience, there is a tendency for us to appear dismissive of tunes that are being trumpeted elsewhere, especially in the mainstream. This is in no way down to an elitism, simply an awareness that while a small percentage of music with major label marketing budget hoovers up all the media attention, a multitude of equally worthy releases old and new are drifting along in the margins. This is nothing new, in 2004 John Peel told me that even though The Zutons were a great band, there was no point in him playing them on the radio when everyone else was doing it. Just like the rest of us, he wanted to show that thrills are found far beyond the limited selections held up as representative of current sounds.

Thirty years ago Dire Straits were about to release their ‘On Every Street’ album. It was the bands first release in six years, following the period when their last record, ‘Brothers In Arms’, had been superglued inside every CD player worldwide. There followed an inevitable backlash from everyone sick of having this middle-of-the-road mainstream rock shoved down their throats. The new album was slowly drip-fed to the world with all the usual marketing tricks that accompanied an “important” release; exclusive first plays on Radio One tickled up days in advance, blanket press coverage, that sort of thing. My recollection is that one of the weekly music newspapers concluded its review with words like “this is the most important album release of the year and it’s alright”.

For all the cattiness in that remark, it should be noted that it was fairly accurate. 1991’s ‘On Every Street’ didn’t offend the ears and neither did it hit the heights of the bands earlier work. It sounded like an album that had to be made to fulfil a contractual obligation, a release contriving to ensure it contained enough sonic reference points to leave the listener in no doubt that this was new Dire Straits. Listen closely and you can hear the sound of a band dutifully clocking on. You can forgive the music press their sniffiness; hardcore fans of a mainstream act on the rough end of the press will often dismiss this attitude as music snobbery yet it is anything but that. 1991 had already seen the arrival of classics like R.E.M.’s ‘Out Of Time’, Primal Scream’s ‘Screamadelica’ and soon ‘Nevermind’ by Nirvana. Creations by artists who were on the rise and bursting at the seams with inspiration. Two of this trio would one future day hit a similar state of creative dire straits (Nirvana tragically didn’t get the chance) but in 1991 they were making the music that would endure, music that you feel certain they’d have written recording contract or no.

In the six years since their crowning commercial release, Dire Straits had watched the arrival of the CD format and with it a huge proportion of their audience lock their vinyl collections into a cupboard and embrace the digital age with a purchase of one or two compact discs a year. The landscape changed beyond recognition in the late 80s and early 90s with many a Dire Straits fan vocally supporting the ‘keep music live’ campaign, spawned in reaction to Dance and Raps sampling culture. You can’t choose your fans obviously, but all of this would have firmly placed the band on the wrong side of the fence for the early nineties music press. I was firmly on the anti-Straits side of the argument too, I loved a Mark E Smith joke at the time asking “what do you get if you cross Dire Straits with Chris Rea? Diarrhea”. New music was far from a spent force as far as I was concerned, the eighties seemed instantly condemned the worst decade for music and I was pleased to see the back of it, the new developments all rather exciting. Nevertheless, if the journalists had trashed Dire Straits I would have felt it an undue kicking for the sake of it (something I never liked to read), but instead they seemed to call it right. This album was OK.

I have been thinking about all this because in the past month new music from Adele has arrived. It’s her first new music in about six years and it has been slowly filtered out to the public in stages. The first clip I heard was just a piano intro that lasted about 13 seconds. Within a couple of weeks you could not escape it, everyone seemed to be talking about this amazing return from Adele and how it was already nailed on to be one of, if not the, most significant releases of 2021. And for those brothers in arms who maybe only buy or stream one or two new albums a year, this is indeed going to be big music news. The trouble starts with people like me who have been listening to and discovering sensational new music all year long (and will round it all up in depth on these pages in December), we know that there is an awful lot of other music in 2021 equally deserving of these accolades. Yet when you voice these opinions you stand accused of music snobbery, an elitism that wants to dismiss something that everyone else is enjoying just for the sake of being different. And it’s not that at all. I have now heard the new Adele in full, it is indeed a very Adele sounding piano ballad beautifully sung. I haven’t included it in my monthly playlist but yes, you know, what can I say about the new Adele? Well, (shrugs shoulders), you know….it’s alright!

What I have done is front load the November playlist with a series of Pop jewels and ballads featuring the piano or electric keyboards as the lead instrument. After all I love a bit of piano and keyboard based music, especially a really well written song; it’s simply that, apparently unlike all the people currently celebrating the return of a sonic saviour, I’ve been going to that place with or without Adele for years, that’s all.  

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Monthly Playlists

October 2021 Playlist

The Beatles story is arguably the most enduring in music history and it always seems to keep on giving. At the centre of it all was the creative partnership between Lennon and McCartney which was pretty much completely over by 1969. Following their bust up and subsequent 1971 song attacks on each other a truce was fairly swiftly arrived at and a civility prevailed whenever they spoke about each other in interviews henceforth. But, other than McCartney’s 1994 Anthology contribution to Lennon demos, there would be no more Lennon / McCartney collaborations. And yet… (I am fully aware there are thousands of Beatle heads who already know this) I became aware this month that there was in fact one more event that had escaped me. On ’Let Me Roll It’ McCartney had admitted he’d made a track very much in Johns style. What I did not know was, maybe being made aware of this, Lennon for his next album had wholesale lifted the central guitar lick from McCartney’s song and inserted it into his own ’Beef Jerky’. Does this make it the final Lennon and McCartney composition of Lennon’s lifetime?

Blatant thieving is a slight hidden theme of this months playlist. I also learned this month how, following the Staples Singers unmistakable borrowing of an Upsetters intro for ’I’ll Take You There’, Lee Scratch Perry had vengefully placed a totally out of context Staples sample at the beginning of ‘Cow Thief Skank’.

Just as I was putting the finishing touches to the tracklisting, I finally ended my enforced 18 month gig drought with three in the space of six days. All three were pretty fantastic too, firstly a seated show to witness Martha Wainwright open her life up like a book singing mostly tracks from her new LP written after her divorce. The support band, Bernice, were pretty special too playing a kind of folk-club electronica. Two nights later John Grant once again mixed stunning, melodic electronics with aggressively honest singer-songwriter soul baring. Then I took a recommendation on The Lathums who played a winning mixture of Housemartins, Smiths and Arctic Monkeys style guitar pop. Catching a band whose debut album had just gone to number one was not something I necessarily expected to see at this stage of my gig going life but it was delightfully uplifting, one of the best gigs I’ve seen in fact. If a rowdy crowd singing ”UKs number one number one” to the tune of KC & The Sunshine Bands ’Give It Up’ for a band who are getting attention for no other reason than they are writing great songs doesn’t lift you….well just give it up.

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Fresh Juice

Josienne Clarke

I’ll give you the bare bones of the low down on Josienne Clarke and invite you to dig deeper. She’s a singer songwriter who has risen to a respectable and acclaimed status, award winning even, as part of a traditional folk duo in which the relationship between herself and her partner turned dramatically sour and lead to an irreversible on stage parting of the ways. Her new solo album picks apart the debris of that relationship in, at times, unforgivingly graphic detail. It’s the sound of an artist finding their true voice, letting off steam, working through some challenging emotional baggage and audibly growing in confidence as we listen. The album, ‘A Small Unknowable Thing’, released on Corduroy Punk Records, is an intense and rewarding listen from the same lineage that bought us Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’, Marvin Gaye’s ‘Here My Dear’ and John Grants ‘Queen Of Denmark’. The above film for the track ‘The Collector’ says it all visually for me, in the way that it portrays the artist looking at times fragile and diffident but resolutely determined in her preparation to fly. There doesn’t seem to be a vinyl edition available yet but this one’s going to rise to the top of the 2021 album pile all the same, I’m certain of that.

https://www.discogs.com/Josienne-Clarke-A-Small-Unknowable-Thing/release/19946713

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