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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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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 22nd June 2026

The Delines – Dilaudid Diane

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

Alex Amen – Diamonds

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

The Limiñanas – One Blood Circle

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

Meredith Moon – Sapphire Blue

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

Widowspeak – No Driver

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

Tomorrow Woman – The Flower

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

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New Release Reviews

Blue Earth Sound – The St. Louis Sessions EP

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

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

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

Danny Neill

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

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Music Mixes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 15th June 2026

Yea-Ming And The Rumours – Sweet Opiate

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

Pokey LaFarge – Rent Money

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

The Killing Floors – Se Fue, Se Fue

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

Coup Dur – Mon Amie

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

Wooden Overcoat – Finally Arrived

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

Knats – Never Gonna Be A Boxer

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

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New Release Reviews

Oral Habit – A Broken Chord

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

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

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

Danny Neill

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

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New Release Reviews

Joan As Police Woman – Real Life Evolution

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

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

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

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

Danny Neill

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

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