Volume 5 of our shelf rifling dive into the deep Fruit Tree Records collection is a genre surfing run through some of the tracks that have excited and delighted over the past couple of weeks. These include tasty dives into Blues Rock, Americana, Jazz, Indie, Soul and Folk opening with an especially grooving Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers track, written by Wayne Shorter in a line up that also featured Lee Morgan from the 1960 album ‘The Big Beat.’ From that hot start, an avalanche of equally splendid tunes quickly follow. The full track listing with purchase information is below.
Tracks – Fruit Tree Records – The Fruit Cellar Vol. 5
This track is one of the new ‘Residue!’ albums quietest gut‑punches, a song that distils Yea‑Ming Chen’s gift for turning heartbreak into something soft‑glowing and strangely companionable. Where the album leans into late‑night melancholy and sun‑bleached solitude, this track feels like the ache sharpening into clarity, a confession whispered to no one in particular, carried by her feather‑light delivery and the Rumours’ gentle, unhurried sway. This is the kind of song that lingers long after it ends, proof that Chen’s ability to make sorrow feel luminous remains entirely her own. You can get the album here:https://amzn.to/3QdaYFF
Pokey LaFarge – Rent Money
The title track of Pokey LaFarge’s forthcoming album lands with the swagger of someone who’s seen the bottom of the barrel and learned to dance on it anyway. Out September 11th 2026 on Boxer Boy Records, the song distils his gift for turning hard luck into high style: a loose hipped groove, a grin behind the grit, and that unmistakable mix of street corner charm and spiritual reckoning he’s been honing for years. This might just be LaFarge holding a mirror to the scramble of everyday survival but doing it with enough warmth and wit to make the struggle feel strangely buoyant. It is a sharp, soulful teaser for a record which can be downloaded via this link: https://amzn.to/4vc6s9E
The Killing Floors – Se Fue, Se Fue
Well, there is no getting away from the fact that I am a sucker for authentic garage rock sounds and they do not get much more straight down the line, pure and honest as this. Everything is right about the delivery right down to the vintage TV appearance style setting for the video. But something I have said many times with acts that lean into this style, I could not care less for the dressing up box attention to detail if the music is nothing more than pastiche, but when a band gets it right with conviction as the Killing Floors do here, that garage band sound is a thing of ageless beauty. It is from the new album of the same name which can be purchased via this link: https://amzn.to/4fEvs4o
Coup Dur – Mon Amie
This ear-worm tune opens Coup Dur’s debut EP with a jolt of immediacy; the kind of first track that makes clear this new project arrives dressed for success. Released on 62 Records and Precious Recordings of London, the song lays out the duo’s aesthetic in sharp relief, a lean, melodic, and charged sense of intimacy that has the effect of being both inviting and slightly off kilter. It is an arresting introduction, the sound of a band stepping into the light with purpose and this stylised video serves their aesthetic well. You can get the five-song album featured in the video via this link: https://amzn.to/4e81VPl
Wooden Overcoat – Finally Arrived
This track gives the first real glimpse of Wooden Overcoat’s dream drenched interior world, a slow motion swirl of gooey guitars and deliberate, heartbeat heavy drums that pull the listener into a trance. Francesca Bonci’s accompanying video deepens the spell, her distinctive visual language amplifying the song’s mix of personal mourning, romantic tension and a wry side eye at the myths of stardom. It is a modestly gripping moment of intimate disorientation, steeped in the fragile beauty of human connection. The bands debut ‘Hello Sunbeam’ EP is available through this link: https://wooden-overcoat.bandcamp.com/album/hello-sunbeam
Knats – Never Gonna Be A Boxer
This track shines on the ‘A Great Day In Newcastle’ albumwith the kind of kinetic confidence that has made Knats one of the UK’s most talked‑about new jazz outfits. Led by bassist Stan Woodward and drummer King David‑Ike Elechi, the track channels the band’s live‑wire energy into a sharp, swaggering statement of intent. This is rhythmically restless, melodically sly, and presents with a sound that is entirely their own. This is a standout moment from a group already earning serious acclaim, and a reminder of why their rise has felt so rapid and so deserved. You can get your hands on the CD via this link: https://amzn.to/446iW6F
Isn’t it the truth that sometimes you do not know you are missing something until it comes right back staring you in the face? And so it was with this band, specifically my chance encounter with their song ‘Thin Trippin.’ It instantly summoned sonic senses that were once stimulated on a daily basis, the only thing is those days were over three decades ago. That grazing indie guitar sound, the playing that leans into groove as much as it plays for electric guitar posturing and the uninhibited way they are putting the song across thinking if folks were to mistake it for a pop tune, they could not care less. It has such strong echoes of the early nineties, of a time when UK bands in particular had a purity of intent, they were channelling the debris of the twentieth century cultural life lying around them, those sixties garage records shoved away in family lofts, late night TV cult film re-runs, the abandoned guitars and vintage organs which synthesised electro pop had tried, and failed ultimately, to make redundant, then building a reactionary sound of their own. Which is not to say that Oral Habit are revivalists of the original revivalists, but they are plugging right into those very appealing influences, all slowly abandoned as Britpop shifted the emphasis once again, and even better, they now have a far greater palate to work from. So Oral Habit are a band that also reference grunge, they trip out on psych, they push too hard with feverish college rock abandon, and they wrap their whole essence around a hard kicking rock melange of original songs that emphatically shout they are their own, unique force.
Oral Habit themselves come from a place that makes perfect sense of that unruly spark. The core trio of Charlie Hales alongside his brother Felix and bassist Tippi Lewis, operate with the kind of restless, sleeves‑rolled‑up determination that has always powered the best DIY scenes. Their sound seems born out of pushing whatever battered gear is within reach until it either sings or collapses, the sort of setup where overheated valves, misbehaving pedals and half‑broken amps become part of the aesthetic rather than obstacles to be tidied away. Charlie had been sketching out ideas alone long before the band officially coalesced in 2023, but once the three of them locked in, they quickly found themselves orbiting a wider network of like‑minded psych‑garage outfits scattered across the country; the kind of bands who have had their brains rewired by years of Osees and King Gizzard tours. They have already forged tight bonds with London’s Hot Face and caught the ear of Manchester’s Sour Grapes collective, whose catalogue of fuzz‑leaning misfits places Oral Habit firmly among their own. Most intriguingly, they have connected with the Krautpop! label now settled in Falmouth, a home for the more lysergic corners of the UK underground and a natural landing place for a group whose instincts lean towards the wild, the wired and the wonderfully unrefined.
Above all this is a debut album that sets out as many ideas as it can pack into eleven songs lasting just thirty minutes. Do not let the quickfire nature fool you into spotting a drought on ideas, if anything it is the exact opposite. Oral Habit are flying off on so many tangents they almost keep tripping themselves up as they go crash landing into the next song. It is restless, the opening title track setting out its A-B-C positioning, an avalanche of noise hammering the nail of their ethos into our heads before we explode into the ‘Surface Breaker’ riffage, two minutes of speed shifting, crunching gear changes that challenge the listener to keep up. No one is going to hold them still long enough to pin a label on them either, just as you catch yourself thinking that ‘Faux Fidelity’ has darker gothic shades you are fired into a spin of flanging fuzz guitars. Then we are parachuted into the kind of swampy grunge thrashing that Steve Albini would surely have been happy to put his name to. But they can do hooks as well, in fact the album is overflowing with them, it is just that they never settle in the same place for long. The psych pop connections are pretty real too, there is even a flash during ‘Chekhov’ that recalls Status Quo before they got comfortable in denim, but here again the track ends in a far different realm, heavy rock riffing in its purest mode, like all the unnecessary bits have been taken out. ‘Mystery Gash’ pulls a tantalising facility for tasty major/minor melodic writing out of the bag, hidden depths that are also uncovered on the becalmed organ led closer ‘Crooner & Moon.’ So, for all the whiplash turns and stylistic pile‑ups, there is a real craft at work here, a sense that Oral Habit already understand the value of instinct, immediacy and leaving the edges jagged. This is a debut bursting with potential, announcing a group with the nerve, imagination, and sheer appetite to make their own corner of the guitar‑rock universe feel alive again.
It was the summer of 2006 when I chanced upon Joan Wasser for the first time, performing in her Joan As Police Woman guise, at a venue called the Spitz near central London’s Spitalfields Market. I had no idea who she was, I had not attended the intimate club size room to see her, I think I was there on a press duty covering the support act but stuck around to see the main event. If my memory is correct Joan was playing a weekly residency there for a month. That name was a curiosity obviously, maybe this was going to be a stand-up comedy routine? But as she hit the stage with her trio, playing mostly from the piano stool although occasionally strapping on a guitar, it very quickly dawned on me that I was in the presence of an artist playing a set that I would be, and now actually am, talking about decades later. She had a real command on stage that night, an undeniable authority even extending to breaking a song off midway through to invite people talking at the bar to leave. In a music environment that suddenly seemed to be producing acres of fey introspective singer-songwriter types, over indulgently turning their dreary diary entries into equally dreary ballads, here was someone with a direct line to the core of the human experience, turning that connection into impossibly well-crafted songs that plugged straight into our emotive senses. That night Joan was performing songs from her debut album ‘Real Life,’ a record that sounded like an instant classic to these ears at the time and has not diminished in the slightest over the past twenty years, its quality remains true.
As well as being impressed by the material that night I was equally mesmerized by the musician herself. She clearly had a dexterity beyond your average troubadour; the piano work especially had the touch of a classical performer whereas the guitar songs shone a light on Joan’s harder edges. The same kind of contrasts were apparent in her voice as well, it could be as tender, pure of tone and heartfelt as a Karen Carpenter recital but again, you sensed a more streetwise cutting edge pulsing just below the surface. Joan was obviously a performer of a higher stripe, the kind who gets inside the music she is performing and equally, not the type who would find any artistic merit in dialling in a photocopy performance. Which brings me onto the motivation and welcome rewards that come from this new release, a full ten track re-recording and vivid re-imagining of the songs from ‘Real Life.’ Whilst this is technically an anniversary, there is nothing nostalgic about this project. Joan is reviving the material in this way because she wants to stay connected to it, like Dylan has been doing for decades, she wants to keep her best music alive and free from stagnation to both her audience as well as herself by breathing fresh air and exposing new light to the original templates. Add to that the inevitable changes an artist goes through having lived through another twenty summers, the wisdom and maturity realised, and instantly this work becomes as valid and worthy of immersion as anything in her impressive catalogue.
It sounds like the songs were felt their way towards depending on Joan’s personal attachments to them in 2026. Nothing is radically re-worked for the sake of it, in fact there are certain tracks that stick respectfully close to their original form, although others feel like they were totally destroyed before being rebuilt from scratch. It is an approach Joan has discussed ahead of this release, stating that if she ever felt bored with older material she would “reinvent them until the joy came back, not as an act of revision, but of rediscovery. Songs live beyond their creators. Like us, they settle into themselves over time, finding their own equilibrium. That spirit is the pulse of this new album.” There is a totally fresh cast of collaborators for this project too, Iggy Pop being one of the headline names who infuses ‘Save Me’ with his own identifiable signature so effectively it now plays like a lurching, dirty rock beast. Then there is Krystal Warren who helps transform ‘Save Me’ into the slinkiest of soft-soul grooves, a radical departure from the original Anhoni collaboration. Also ‘We Don’t Own It,’ which I recall Joan saying back in 2006 was written in memory of Elliott Smith, now moves away from the hushed guitar ballad of before into a breezy slow reggae realm built on understated electronica.
Joan has taken care to highlight the pedigree of the other key participants too. She credits “from my current touring trio, Will Graefebrings his emotionally masterful guitar work and Jeremy Gustinhis remarkable rhythmic sensibility. Parker Kindred’s inventive drum creations were the spark behind other [tracks]. Thomas Bartlett unlocked a new dimension of the title track and added Rhodes bass throughout. This album gave me the chance to reunite, decades on, with upright bassist Tony Scherr, guitarist Oren Bloedow, and funk bassist Danny Blume, musicians whose artistry has only deepened with time.” That title track, along with the gloriously open and vulnerable ‘Anyone,’ formed the strongest pillars of the original album and so they remain today. Indicative of how close to perfection Joan arrived first time around, these are the two songs that bare the closest resemblances to their originals. I hold the 2006 version of ‘Real Life’ in such high regard that I was actually a little nervous as it approached here, newly repositioned as the closing number. I did not need to worry, it is a little more lived in now but by the time we get to the line about never including a name in a song before, the goosebumps still rise up vigorously. And why does that happen? Because this is real life and so am I. And because ‘Real Life’ was, and remains in its modern rendition, an incredible album.
Volume eight of our 2026 new music releases series ‘Fresh Juice’ opens with some essential new soul sounds from Konyikeh with an undeniable retro punchiness before embarking on a journey incorporating new sounds in Psych Pop, Garage Rock, Indie, Folk, Americana, Country, Singer-Songwriter and Jazz before ending in outer space with Visible Cloaks as our tour guide. So, why not join us as we continue our mission to prove that there are still plenty of freshly minted, visceral audio thrills to be found going forward.
Tracks – Fruit Tree Records – Fresh Juice 2026 Vol. 8
Jazz’s critics often overlook the simple truth that when the wide ranging, often maligned, genre locks into a groove, it can be as rhythmically charged and dance‑inducing as anything on a club system. That pulse has been there from the earliest swing bands through the breakbeat gold of Blue Note and the fusion era, right up to today’s easy dialogue between jazz and hip‑hop. Raffy Bushman’s solo debut taps directly into that lineage. Across its seven tracks, moments of introspection sit inside an undeniable forward drive, the whole record coated in an infectious rhythmic sheen. The centrepiece, ‘Renaissance,’ is the clearest example. A springy double‑bass line sets the foundation before Bushman’s piano is at first coordinated with the bass riff but quickly pushes the tune into a rolling surge of ideas. When the trio suddenly drops away, he unspools a lattice of interlocking keyboard figures which are almost Bach like in their intricate, looping patterns that toy with time and tug the ear in multiple directions at once. The band then snaps back together for a final, exhilarating climb. This is music that balances complexity with immediacy, full of heat and precision, and delivered with the confidence of a trio who can play it structured and yet still sound loose, in the moment and totally responsive to each other.
Raffy Bushman’s path to his first solo album reads like a long, looping circuit finally hitting the home straight. He emerged in the UK jazz underground as a pianist with a sharp ear for the places where jazz and hip‑hop meet, building early projects around that rhythmic dialogue. As his ambitions widened, so did his ensembles: string‑laden classical‑jazz hybrids, chamber‑sized experiments, and collaborations that pushed him deeper into arranging and orchestration. Those years broadened his palette without ever pulling him away from the instinct that drives all his work, namely taking familiar forms and bending them into something newly alive. Today he is back at the piano trio format that first defined him, carrying the weight and clarity of everything learned since. With Matt Davies and Alec Hewes anchoring the rhythm section, he folds his arranging experience into a leaner setting, creating seven pieces that move fluidly between tender audio lyricism, tight, bouncing grooves and bursts of harmonic colour. The album plays through like a summing‑up of the journey so far; a musician whose roots in hip‑hop, jazz, classical and gospel have fused into a voice that is indisputably his own, and a trio sound buffed and polished by years spent exploring every corner of his musical identity.
The album’s lead single,‘The Leopard,’ arrives late in the running order but acts as one of its clearest statements of intent. Built on a deceptively simple three‑note riffing piano figure, it grows into a full‑bodied groove that lifts off with real force. Bushman tips his hat to the film that inspired the song title, echoing its themes of clinging to tradition, yet he twists that idea by blending bebop phrasing with a lightly Latin, swung backbeat. As he explains, “the foundation of the composition is the left-hand repeated figure, which I had on a loop in my head for about a year before starting to add the other elements. I like how this figure blends with the very slow legato melody – this piece is all about textures.” That interplay between repetition and colour gives the track its charge as we hear a simple motif transforming into something vivid and propulsive. The album is bookended by ‘Two Peopleʼ and ‘New Life,ʼ both of which offer serenity and a reflectiveness to the conversation, which are highly understandable when learning of the new relationship developments and impending fatherhood anticipation that was inspiring Raffy while this album came together. “’Two People’ was written for my partner,” he explains, “who encouraged me to record my solo pieces, whilst ‘New Life’ gave me the opportunity to step out of the strict stylistic aesthetic I normally work within, and just express myself, and how I feel about becoming a father.” Considering all these real life, circumstantial, musical and background elements that hit a timely synchronicity for the birth of this album, we can safely say that it instantly stands as one of the pivotal moments in a serious jazz artists career. Furthermore, ‘New Life’ has a timelessness and classicism about it that will ensure it endures far beyond the year of its creation.
It is always a delight in the business of music discovery, record hunting and general audio thrill seeking, to come across an artist who you assume will be of a familiar type only for them to far exceed your presumptions. Not only that, but also equally beguiling is when there is something quite mysterious about them. They do not conform in the way so many of their peers do, despite using the exact same tools and even occupying the same space, there is still that essence of the unknown. Bity Booker in 2026 has been, for me, one of those unexpected encounters. Yes, Bity (pronounced Bee-Tee) is an acoustic guitar playing singer who writes and plays her own material, a very well populated field of expression you must agree, but she stands apart because there is an element of magic to her work that is quite hard to pin down. So, right there is the wonderful thing, because so many times the greatest music casts a spell and often it is not a mixture you can dissect down to the ingredients that make it work. And thanks to the positive impact, there is no need to do that anyway, that is where the wonderment lies. The music of Bity Booker is the sound of another realm and from the moment you cross over there are no explanations necessary, you are simply mesmerized.
We begin with ‘The Owl Song’ which sets the scene for the individualist approach that dominates throughout. It is something of a call and response duet with the feathered friend in the title, offering the kind of delicate, whimsical beauty deployed by Joanna Newsom, which is as close to a comparison I can make although fundamentally, Bity plays wholly her own style. This strange brew is there on ‘A Tear,’ a song that immediately places the tunefully picked acoustic guitar and a sprightly, subtly chilling, voice in line with the natural world, moulding the environment to human connections, drawing the lines between how we feel joy and pain in tandem with our planet. Those same teardrops are also falling on ‘Dewdrops,’ echoing into a vast valley as if tumbling through open air and landing in widening circles of space, but this is not a sorrowful experience, more like a natural serenity. There is an elegantly gliding quality to the whole work and a connection to flying animals is present throughout, songs are based on the crow and parrots (with a neat reference to them originally escaping from Jimi Hendrix’s cage) although the standout for me has to be the graceful ‘Love Is Like A Swallow In The Spring.’ It all adds up to a mightily mature work on what Bity herself calls “my first ‘non-debut album.’ I call it a ‘non-debut album’ because I have long been making music in different forms, from death metal to alternative folk, so it feels strange calling it a ‘debut album’. It is the product of years of songwriting and performing solo.”
‘There’s No Song About A Stone’ arrives as an independent release, issued in a run of just 250 blue‑marbled LPs alongside CD and digital formats, but its cottage industry design feels entirely in keeping with the way Booker moves through her craft. She admits to taking her time with music in a way that makes her happy, working outside commercial rhythms, outside expectations, letting songs form at their own pace. She thinks of her creations as things shaped by time, dreams, thoughts, rain, wind and you can hear that philosophy in the recordings themselves. These tapes feel alive; birds flicker at the edges, people pass by, London hums in the background, all of it part of the room she recorded in, all of it folded into the spell. So here is a gathering of some of Bity’s favourite songs, a mix of pieces road‑tested at gigs and others never aired before, but what binds them is the sense of an artist following her own internal weather. It stands apart from the regular singer‑songwriter crowd thanks to its ethereal detachment, its deep connection to the natural world, its refusal to sand down the oddities that make it breathe. Booker is flying her freak flag with pride, and the result is a record that will stand out wherever it is heard; this is the sound of someone fully unleashing their creative essence into the world and trusting it to find its way. Should the stars align favourably, this singer and these songs will do just that.
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
Fruit Tree Records 