Category Archives: Fresh Juice

Old Fruit

Old Fruit 25th July 2025

Jo Rose – I’m Yr Kamera

For this weeks dive into some selections and recommendations from the past I thought I would go back and see what Fruit Tree Records were causing a stir exactly ten years ago this month. Jo Rose had come to my attention at the time, a crazily gifted singer-songwriter from the Manchester area, with this song which instantly proves ten years later that quality is timeless. I do not know what brought him under my radar, maybe it was his association with First Aid Kit who he was not only supporting in concert but was also in a relationship with the duo’s Klara Söderberg. Whatever, his work had a musical finesse that is hard to find but as is so often the story with artists at this pubs and clubs level, they can disappear from view or just quietly drop out of music altogether. And so it is with great sadness that I have just found, after searching the internet for news on his current whereabouts, that he tragically died last year at the age of 36 following a head injury connected to an epileptic seizure. I had not intended for this post to be a tribute to someone special who has gone too soon, I was merely hoping to throw some appreciative retro light on wonderful music, but now I am doing both. Please listen to Jo Rose.

Wolf Alice – Turn To Dust

The good thing about having this sites monthly playlists stretching back a lot of years (roughly fourteen) is that I can occasionally find that I was actually slightly ahead of the curve on a band or singer. This tune from Wolf Alice’s newly released debut album ‘My Love Is Cool’ featured in the July 2015 monthly playlist and I do recall going on to feel they were a thoroughly deserving recipient of the Mercury Music Prize in 2018 following the release of their second album ‘Visions Of A Life’. This was a record that took the bare bones of the ghostly sound they are perfecting here, in a quality audience live clip from the following year, into new fields of celestial majesty with a sprinkling of indie-pop hooks for good measure. They have a fourth studio album called ‘The Clearing’ set to be released next month.

Flo Morrissey – Show Me

Here we revisit a singer with an eerily spiritual and acid-folk laced voice. Flo Morrissey, a former pupil at the Brit School who expressed regret that she did not meet as many like minded people there as she would if she had attended a normal university, had at the time just released her debut album on Glassnote Records. In 2017 her record of covers with Matthew E. White was equally loved in these parts thanks to its focus on eclectic late sixties, early seventies pop, baroque pop, folk and psych material but the Flo detail I have only just caught up on is that she is married to the equally eccentrically gifted Benjamin Clementine and that they have released music together as The Clementines. She can now be found performing as Florence Clementine and remains a creative artist ripe for discovery.

Bop English – Struck Matches

By 2015 the band White Denim were a long term favourite psych rock band from Austin, Texas who had built a deserved reputation as practitioners of wild, free, looping, jamming and essentially wonderous boundary defying rock. Many a time I had heard them playing radio sessions that would end in what the DJs could only advertise as a live wig-out. So I believe it could only be the White Denim connection that led me to front man James Petralli’s other musical outlet, Bop English, essentially a solo project. They were an altogether more structured, song based concern although that wild energy is still there for all to hear on their album ‘Constant Bop’, from which this track is taken.

Richard Thompson – Beatnik Walking

Returning to old playlists blows the dust off numerous acts and songs that did not stay in the forefront of my musical mind but nevertheless are a delight to revive and re-experience. That is not the case with Richard Thompson, much like a Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell or Tom Waits he is an ever present whose song compositional work and masterful guitar playing ensure he is always very close to the surface. This was a tune from his ‘Still’ album released early in 2015, a record which gained slightly more attention than some of his releases thanks to it’s being produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

Max Jury – Home

Re-listening to this tune ten years later it surprises me to read that it was Max’s debut single. This sounds like the work of an artist whose work has matured over many years but here he was, ten years ago aged only 23, sounding for all the world like the next Rufus Wainwright. That may not have quite come to pass yet but in 2025 he is three albums in, growing as a musician and still very much producing recordings with tasteful echoes of the seventies, now with a clear move towards disco and pop production flourishes. The pop world needs natural creativity from single minded musicians with a vision and voice, Max could still be moving into that space. That said, even if he does not take that path, it does nothing to detract from the beauty of a song like this.

Standard
Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 21st July 2025

Kathryn Williams – Personal Paradise

This remarkable new work from a songwriter who potentially has yet to reach her peak, such is the ongoing maturity and evolution of her music, is taken from forthcoming album ‘Mystery Park’. This is a song arriving as if, like the title suggests, it is going to be a soothing wave of serenity but it takes us somewhere far more unsettling and darker. The accompanying video enhances this considerably, Kathryn looking for all the world like someone dazed having just escaped a traumatic situation as the lyrics begin to imply. Whether she has left a damaging place of anguish to build a safe haven for recovery or she finds herself cut loose from domestic comfort trying to find a way back in remains unclear. The way the music erupts with real abrasiveness in the sonics does indicate that this is not a picture of tranquillity at all. As always with Kathryn, there are many layers of intrigue inviting proper engagement with this brilliant music.

Joe Armon-Jones feat. Yazmin Lacey – One Way Traffic

Seen only last month at Glastonbury in one of his many alternative guises as the keyboard wonderkid in London Jazz heroes Ezra Collective, this undeniable gear change towards the soulful and chilled is taken from Joe’s new double LP ‘All The Quiet (Parts I & II)’. This one features the vocal talents of Nottingham based soul singer Yazmin Lacey who is beginning to prove her credentials, building on the promise those who encountered her early have known about for years; something which really demanded our attention after 2023’s ‘Voice Notes’ album. Here she takes the dubby, mellow bedrock of Joe’s playing and pulls us down a one way street of sunny sonic bliss.

Lola Kirke – Hungover Thinkin’

This is a gorgeous live solo acoustic version of a track that is a centrepiece of Lola Kirke’s latest album ‘Trailblazer’. It is a modern country album that successfully fuses the introspective singer-songwriter leanings of Lola’s music career thus far alongside the eighties pop style that she ushered in on 2022’s ‘Lady For Sale’. Maybe best known to some for her previous acting work in things like ‘Mozart In The Jungle’ and ‘Gone Girl’, Lola has nevertheless, for nearly ten years now, been focusing primarily on music with authentic story songs such as this fully justifying that shift in emphasis.

Kashus Culpepper – After Me?

While I am out breathing the country music air I will briefly play catch up with a tune that is new to me but was actually released in 2024. Kashus, from Alabama, is justifiably touted as one of the truly credible and gifted rising talents in country music and this song in particular has won him notable praise and attention, including from Samuel L. Jackson, resulting in his signing a recording deal with Big Loud Records. As with Lola on the previous track, he is tapping into the genres rich tradition of story telling in song although it may prove to be the rough edged, real-deal grit in Culpepper’s voice that sees him embraced by a much wider musical community as one of the well-founded recipients of ‘next big thing’ type praise and predictions.

Nels Cline – The 23

Probably best known to rock fans as the technically adept guitarist in the band Wilco, Nels Cline has built himself a platform to really stretch out his exploratory playing and experience that weightlessness he admits to seeking in live performance. His jazz quartet have released the album ‘Consentrik Quartet’ on the famous Blue Note Records label and the finished work shows Cline enjoying a free range of a canvas to pursue his love of free and avant-garde jazz. The way this live session clip opens says it all; they enter with a massive crescendo of collapsing noise, as if in order to begin they first must to destroy all that was built in the space previously and reduce it to rubble, before finding a groove on which they can build a red hot new found land.

Anna Lapwood – Interstellar

The Proms Season has opened at the Royal Albert Hall this week and for the final clip we have one of the solo instrumental performers set to appear later in the series of concerts. Anna is an esteemed organist and conductor who will be curating and performing one of the more unique and unusual concerts the Proms has ever produced. ‘From Dark Till Dawn’ will be an all-nighter fuelled by plenty of coffee in which Lapwood will play organ works on the famous Albert Hall instrument as part of an immersive, intimate experience that will also feature classical, choral and folk traditions in a nocturnal setting. Here she is performing a suite from Hans Zimmer’s score for ‘Interstellar’ alongside the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Gabriele, on the very instrument she has such a personal connection to having previously shared social media videos, viewed by millions, of her practising on the organ late at night.

Standard
Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 14th July 2025

Madeline Kenney – Semitones

We kick off with some emotive and sonic intensity this week as Madeline Kenney makes unflinching eye contact with the viewer through the camera lens leaving you in no doubt as to the conviction in her song. ‘Semitones’ addresses, in Madeline’s words, the moment when you “start to dread someone instead of love them”. This is so much more than a looking through you moment though, Madeline is in equal parts playful, mocking and savage in her assessments and absolutely revelling in the sonic palettes she uses to paint her vivid audio pictures with. This is taken from her fifth album, ‘Kiss From The Balcony’ set to be released on July 18th on her long-time label home Carpark Records but for now, get a taste for the main course with the intense ‘Semitones’.

Tombstones In Their Eyes – I Am Cold

Atop that crunching psych-rock bedrock, the insistent pounding rhythm and the slow smoky rise of the layered vocals there is something actually quite gorgeous going on here. There is a yearning to this song, an ache in the turbulence of the lyric that resolves with the chilling statement of the song title. As much as all psych influenced music can be traced back to the sixties, I am equally reminded of echoes from twenty-five years ago and a song like ‘Winterlight’ by Clearlake, something in the icy melodicism and sense of air and weightlessness leads me there. Either way, this is a quietly wonderous tune from these LA psychedelicists that is available now on Kitten Robot Records

Cochemea – Ancestros Futuros

Were Sun Ra still around today he would probably be making music that sounded something like this. This is both futuristic jazz and traditional in its respect of melodic patterns and tropicalia rhythms but whatever references one might be inclined to pin to this music, it is absolutely essential. It moves, it shifts, it rises, it falls, it bangs! This is sensational (I’m writing as I listen by the way, that’s probably obvious). Cochemea is a multi-instrumentalist and composer and this is the third and final part of a trilogy to be released in September on Daptone Records. It has been recorded with an octet of NYC percussionists along with Daptone alumni and is anchored in the cultural fabric that has nurtured him from the beginning through his Yaqui ancestry.

Allo Darlin’ – My Love Will Bring You Home

Here we have a cool recent live rendition of a rather Springsteen-like rocking ballad from Allo Darlin’s newly released album ‘Bright Nights’. This is a welcome return from Allo Darlin’ being the first new music released since 2014 after which they went on a decade long hiatus. Originally a London based outfit evolving out of a solo project built around the songs of singer Elizabeth Morris, their full band sound became a delightful amalgamation of lo-fi indie aesthetics and warm tune heavy guitar-pop writing. Happily, it is this that they appear to be tapping back into upon their return.

Big Thief – Incomprehensible

And here is another old favourite making a return, although on this occasion it is a band who have been rather prolific over the past ten years. Now listed as a three piece consisting of Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek & James Krivchenia, Big Thief are set to release a new album called ‘Double Infinity’ on 5th September, via 4AD and if this teaser is anything to go by, their hot streak is showing no sign of letting up yet.

Lael Neale – All Good Things Will Come To Pass

I will finish this week with a live performance of a track from one of the best albums of the year so far, Lael Neale’s ‘Altogether Stranger’. At the time of release I wrote of this track specifically that it enters with some steam train chugging guitar as the repeatedly sung title line makes for a pure fairground delight of a chorus hook. The juxtaposition of celebration and loss is central to the magic at play in Lael Neale’s music and those elements of light and shade are set to the foreground here to stunning effect. If you are not onto this album yet, or the music of Lael in general then I would suggest that these oversights are rectified at your earliest convenience, why you could even start now with this.

Standard
Old Fruit

Old Fruit 11th July 2025

The Magpie Arc – Autumn Leaves

In anticipation of this weekends Ely Folk Festival, which will be reviewed next week on this site, here are a few anticipated highlights from the line-up over the coming three days. The Magpie Arc are a cross-border folk supergroup featuring Nancy Kerr, Findlay Napier, Tom. A Wright, Alex Hunter and one of the folk movements all time legendary guitarists Martin Simpson (and how great is it to find him playing electric guitar in a group environment?). All I will say is that a band with such pedigree in its line-up winning favourable comparisons to Fairport Conventions ‘Liege & Lief’, after their ‘Glamour In The Grey’ debut album, has got to be worth some time and attention; I shall be watching and listening with interest.

Danny & The Champions Of The World – Sooner Or Later

Heading up an evening of Americana will be this wonderful collective, formed in 2007 after the break up of the band Grand Drive. They are based in London and led by singer-songwriter Danny George Wilson who presides over performances and writing that sail pleasingly close to the soulful and rousing spirits of Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison. Not only that but their live sets are pretty damn life affirming and committed too so this promises to be a great one.

Fred’s House – Gaslight

One of the standouts among the many interesting local Cambridge acts performing this weekend are Fred’s House. They were formed in 2010 and their numerous releases have seen a gradual shift away from folk-rock origins towards a more pop-friendly sound leading to favourable comparisons to the likes of Fleetwood Mac and Crosby Stills & Nash. As this clip proves, these are likenesses that the band are more than capable of meeting head on, grabbing by the ears and shaking down into an enticing, groove friendly, melodic, song driven cocktail entirely of their own making.

Elly Tree – The Minotaur

Generously sprinkled among the more attention grabbing, rhythm and electricity pumping acts are plenty of traditional acoustic guitar and voice purveyors such as Elly Tree. It is important too that this side of a folk festival is not lost, this is where the roots of it all are found and, personally, I love those summer afternoons when an event such as Ely Folk Festival provides you with a tasty real ale whilst a tuneful troubadour entertains us with folksy story songs as heard here. Elly (real name Helen Woodbridge) is a singer-songwriter based in Ipswich, Suffolk.

Ezio – The Same Mistake

One of the real underground national treasures of the Cambridge scene for more than thirty years now is indisputably Ezio Lunedei, accompanied, as he has been all along, by the guitar shredder extraordinaire Booga. Weirdly, I think his name may have always held him back, you just do not expect such west referencing singer-songwriter mastery to be coming from someone whose name implies their music will be Spanish holiday disco music (or something). Put simply, if a song like ‘The Same Mistake’ were written by a Neil Young or a Mike Scott it would be regarded as a classic piece of melancholic, country-tinged, song writing genius for that is exactly what this is. Furthermore, Ezio has an armoury of similarly fine songs spread across his whole back catalogue.

The Cain Pit – Devil’s Side

Finally for this half dozen festival taster selection I am flagging up some thrilling punky bluegrass action that will be gate crashing the festival proceedings on Saturday night. Heading down from the mean streets of Norwich, the band were formed during the pandemic by cousins Daryl and Scott Blyth before expanding to a five piece. Their distorted blend of frantic banjo picking, double bass thwacking and raw pounding drum beating energy has seen them described as ‘punkgrass’, an appropriately original description for a sound with a thoroughly enticing approach. If you have never got a tattoo, that might change after you see The Cain Pit!

Standard
Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 7th July 2025

Lois Levin – Sugar

Taken from her new EP ‘Motions’ released on the Baltic Jazz label, this is a lovely soulful ballad to kick off the new music selections this week. Lois has been slow building a catalogue of jazz inflected songs via single and EP releases for a couple of years that started to catch the attention of 6music and Jazz FM radio DJs and deservedly so. She first came to more widespread attention with a version of The Clash’s ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’ on the Baltic Jazz ‘Re:Visioned’ album but it is her own evolving, genre-blending music that is most likely to lead to the answer ‘yes’, this is an artist who should definitely stay!

Dutch Interior – Sandcastle Molds

“My sandcastle molds all came without shovels”. Well we’ve all been there haven’t we? This one slipped past me earlier in the year but maybe I needed the summer months for the words to resonate? That is nonsense of course, unlike this song, a rattling, unsettling, shuffle that mixed inside the buoyancy and horn-burst fanfare of the sound is an uncertain melancholy asking the unanswerable questions. For a band that have been labelled “freak Americana” maybe that is the least that you would expect but let there be no doubt, this Los Angeles based collaborative writing collective are coming up with the goods right now.

Ryan Sambol – Friend Of The Show

This one has an unvarnished folksy singer-songwriter feel thanks to the way the harmonica is used as a lead instrument with the acoustic guitars and piano chords being thumped out all around amidst some gripping building of tension. There is a simplistic raw energy to this one, a primitive purity to an instrumental number that would make perfect talk-over intro or outro music for a radio show (I should make a note of that) but is worth a play in its own right anyway. Ryan released this album of the same name back in February, a record that has old-time blues sensibilities, a departure from the garage rock sounds he produced as front man of Texas cult heroes The Strange Boys in the early 2000’s

Stereolab – Aerial Troubles

The return of Stereolab this year has been a most welcome futurist-retro resurrection. As can be heard on this, the first offering from new 13 track album ‘Instant Holograms On Metal Film’ released on Duophonic UHF Disks and Warp Records, their signature groove driven electro adventurism remains switched on to full power. Founder members Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier have imprinted their creative vision all over this new work which has led to another instalment of an impressive back catalogue with a real clarity of vision and purpose but above all, brilliant bittersweet music that still somehow sounds like no other.

The Flying Hats – Night Bus

It is brand new retro sounds of an altogether different stripe with this one as we enjoy a live studio version of this Flying Hats debut single. With these chilled soulful reggae and Caribbean vibes this has to be an ideal sound for the hot summer weather. It is taken from the bands album ‘The Return Of The Flying Hats’ released on the ATA Records label. The UK based band were formed by drummer Sam Hobbs and bassist Neil Innes, a cooking rhythm section who both have musical history as collaborators in the rootsy Afro-American dance scene.

Kendra Morris – Dear Buddy

So we retain the easy vintage soul textures on this weeks final selection, a jazzier offering and a ballad that carries some proper emotional weight. New York based Kendra has been ploughing this vintage pathway for a good fifteen years or more now, known for a songwriting style that has the grit and bite of real life mainlined into its veins, leading to favourable comparisons to the likes of Amy Winehouse and Sharon Jones. Like these late-greats, she too has an ear for the modern music world to match her old-school leanings, past collaborators include hip-hop collective Czarface but still it seems to be the straight ahead classicist compositions in her catalogue, as felt right here with ‘Dear Buddy’ (a tune from her latest three-song single ‘If I Called You’), that pack the firmest punch.

Standard
Old Fruit

Old Fruit 27th June 2025

The Waterboys – When Ye Go Away

As it is Glastonbury weekend I thought it topical to share a few of the Fruit Tree Records Glastonbury favourites from over the years for this weeks vintage selection. The Waterboys are an act whose free flowing, boundary tumbling, questing romantic spirit have summed up the essence of Glastonbury over the decades and they are knitted into the fabric of the festivals history as well as my own back pages with the event. For it was in 1994 (my debut year as a Glastonbury attendee) that Mike Scott roamed the site, his Waterboys band not booked to play as the man himself was about to embark on a solo project gear change, but he made his presence felt all the same by popping up unannounced on at least two occasions playing old Waterboys classics, as here when he played with ex-Waterboy Sharon Shannon on a timeless masterpiece from the ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ album.

Johnny Cash – Folsom Prison Blues

Another 1994 memory, this was probably the seed of the Sunday lunchtime main stage line-up position that would later be branded the ‘legends slot’. I remember clearly dozing with my friends in the Sunday afternoon sun wondering whether to bother sticking around for Johnny Cash then being absolutely floored by the mans sheer stage presence and star aura. I knew little of the man and his music before he came onstage, my musical education was about to get a serious injection.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Red Right Hand

If bands were to follow a guideline for guaranteed Glastonbury success it might say on page one play a hits set, this is not the place to audience test the new record that has not been released yet. Back in 1998 the current Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds release was a ‘best of’ compilation and so their festival set reflected this, although the legendary status of the performance might also be down to the band being at the very peak of their powers at this time. This would have been the occasion Nick Cave has spoken about where he met Bob Dylan backstage, receiving warm praise from the elder statesman for his musical output. There is no BBC film footage of the Dylan set, the nineties being a time when bigger names could opt out of television coverage.

R.E.M. – It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

R.E.M. came on the mainstage as headliners in 1999 with a point to prove. Their most recent album ‘Up’ had not performed as well as expected and so the initial statement that there would not be a tour around the album was revised and 1999 saw them return to the stage with punch and purpose. I do not have many memories of being down the front at gigs, my height normally sees me settling for a further back position, but this was one occasion where I felt the moment and was drawn closer to the source. R.E.M. are one of my top three all time favourite bands and this was one Glastonbury headline slot with everything I had hoped for, a legendary band seizing the moment and delivering the goods.

David Bowie – Rebel Rebel

If you were a TV viewer of the festival in the first ten years of TV coverage you were at the mercy of the broadcaster’s choice of stages and acts to cover. The iPlayer control that enables us all to explore and select as we would if attending was some way off and this was never more frustratingly felt, for me, than in 2000 when all us viewers were aware that David Bowie was playing a mouth watering headline slot on the main stage as we tuned in, but the BBC only offered us short excerpts from his set, no direct live broadcast as you would have reasonably expected. Instead they kept cutting to Bassment Jaxx on the other stage, an alternative selection that did not, could not, meet with the viewers expectations. The dance based duo looked like they knew this as well, appearing to be a little too crouched behind their mixing desk as their dancers took care of stage craft and the Jaxxees (as they would later be known thanks to Primal Scream) pepper sprayed us with generic bland dance toss. In the subsequent years Bowie’s set attained a near legendary status, if only the TV audience could have shared in that euphoria live in real time too.

The White Stripes – Hotel Yorba

The excitement that was exploding around the White Stripes at this time is, I think, tangibly captured in this Glastonbury performance of 2002. At a time when indie was starting to head for the landfill and dance was repetitively beating itself into a stupor, it took a stripped back duo playing the electric blues to ignite the scene with something fresh and vital. This TV exposure could have been the first time many in the UK caught a glimpse of Jack and Meg but they were ready to take you down by this stage, no questions asked

Standard
Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 23rd June 2025

Bruce Springsteen – Repo Man

If there is anyone doubtful that Bruce Springsteen deserves to be mentioned alongside the great writers of the Rock ‘n’ Roll era then this coming week might just press a few of the doubters into submission. He is about to release seven completed albums of previously unreleased, mostly unheard, material at the end of this week and if nothing else, they go a long way to re-writing what now looks like the misconception that Bruce ever really went off the boil or had a quiet patch. His 1990s alone are about to be plunged into a wholesale revision as from what I have heard and judging by the initial reactions he was as inspired and creatively engaged then as at any point in his fifty+ year career. The unreleased albums cover electronic ambience, film soundtrack work as well as out-and-out rockers but the selection I offer up here is upbeat killer country from the record entitled ‘Somewhere North Of Nashville’. I cannot wait for this latest Bruce deep dive on the horizon.

Margo Price – Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down

I will keep it country with the exciting news that Margo Price, one of the most authentic voices on the US scene these days, has a new album ‘Hard Headed Woman’ out on August 29th. Of this top new tune Margo says “with all that’s going on in the world, I hope this song will be a battle cry for the downtrodden and create unity and action for those facing oppression and hardship”.

James McMurtry – The Black Dog And The Wandering Boy

This is the stand out title track from the new James McMurty album ‘The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy’, which is out now on New West Records. James is widely considered, by those in the know, to be one of the most under-rated songwriters playing in the country-rock scene and that is an opinion that his quietly floating around since the 1980s. Well if he is new to you or this new music prompts a return, this is a fine album to get into so check it out but meantime, the clip featured here is a recent (lo-fi audio quality) live outing.

Kristina Murray – Watchin’ The World Pass Me By

This new laid back, care free and real world baiting cracker is a proper country lament taken from Kristina’s latest album ‘Little Blue’ out now on Normaltown Records. The video leans into some cheesy literal interpretation and is all the better for it, showing an artist not taking herself too seriously whilst delivering a song that under that lush veneer packs a bit of a punch, reflecting as it does on the tough reality of those creatives who have to fight to reach their potential in an industry that can kick down on those less fortunate unable to buy their way in with looks, wealth and the right contacts. Luckily for us, there are still a wealth of artists, like Kristina, who do it for the love of music and creative expression.

Wednesday – Elderberry Wine

The alternative pockets of US country are also alive with promise and talent in 2025. This is especially true of North Carolina rockers Wednesday, led by Karly Hartzman with guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Ethan Baechtold, drummer Alan Miller, and pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis, who I was raving about on these pages a couple of years ago after they released the still superb ‘Chosen To Deserve’. Here they are recently making their national television debut in the US and their first airing of new 2025 music.

Ringo Starr – Time On My Hands

And in the end… the best new country album of 2025 might still have been made by Ringo!!!

Standard
Old Fruit

Old Fruit 20th June 2025

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong – Summertime

For this week’s half dozen vintage music selections I just had to opt for a summer theme what with the heatwave that is currently bathing the UK in a hot, bright, sticky, perspiring glow. My opening jump back is a jazz standard taken from the Porgy & Bess musical as performed here by a pair of the genres 20th century masters and OK, the video may not sync with the recording but sometimes, as is the case here, the song cannot be omitted simply because I cannot find a bit of film archive.

The Surfaris – Wipe Out

For me the optimum sound of summer, in the same way that the ultimate sound of Christmas will always be heard in the production of Phil Spector’s Christmas album, is surf music. This instrumental from 1963 is one of the best, that wave riding electric guitar twang just does not ring quite the same in the winter months, this is the kind of sizzling hot playing that could send even the non-swimmers out there diving for the rolling waves atop a surf board.

Bedazzled – Summer Song

Back in the 1990s ‘Landfill Indie’ (the necessary catch all term coined by the music press in the 2010’s to lump together all the uninspired guitar posing bands yelping their generic uninspired toss into a bucket) was not a thing, in fact many lower league indie bands were churning out little bittersweet guitar pop nuggets such as this summer-themed gem, from the soon to be forgotten and barely even registering at the time but no less worthy and ripe for rediscovery, Bedazzled.

The Duckworth Lewis Method – The Age Of Revolution

I grew up with the increasingly outdated idea that football was the winter sport and cricket the summer. Now that football has crept into the summer months too these seasonal dividing lines are all but obsolete but cricket remains, in the UK and a few other (but not enough) countries, synonymous with the warmer months. How wonderful was it that a band specifically dedicating their entire musical output in honour of the sport should arrive? Especially as the creative figureheads were supreme songsmiths from other guises, namely the Divine Comedy and the criminally under-rated Pugwash. This is a full and direct inswinger that definitively hits the stumps.

Ben Folds Five – Where’s Summer B?

This one is presented as a lo-fi filmed clip but if you are unfamiliar with the original version on the Ben Folds Five debut album I urge you to check out this aching, Billy Joel style, peach of a song. Sometimes, the juxtaposition of a yearning lyric with a warm summery sound can hit the senses hard, this great summer song is one such example.

Bruce Springsteen – Girls In Their Summer Clothes

It is not as if I was previously unaware but I have to admit, over the past month I have been taking a real deep dive into the masterful songwriting of Bruce Springsteen. I know he is a massive mainstream artist but I do believe he remains a little under-rated, at least in terms of how great a writer and performer he as always been. This summer song is a case in point, rarely listed as one of his classics but how often do pop/rock songs convey in lyric and tone exactly what they want to say as devastating and potently as this? Not often enough, this is one of genuinely hundreds of prefect songs that has risen from the hand of Bruce Springsteen.

Standard
Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 16th June 2025

Ron Sexsmith – Don’t Lose Sight

Canadian songwriter Ron continues to evolve and refine his craft with another new album called ‘Hangover Terrace’ set for release in August. His music can be as laid back and sleepy sounding as that weary expression he seems to perpetually wear on his face but that should not obscure the fact that his stock is song composition of the highest order. Ron can command the channels interlinking the major and minor keys with a melodic stitching that is deceptively advanced and the end result is frequently a song, such as that heard here, that was waiting for the right artist with enough range and dexterity to pull it into existence; don’t lose sight of the great songsmith’s still in our midst.

BC Camplight – Where You Taking My Baby?

BC Camplight is the performing identity of songwriter Brian Christinzio and he has used this platform to heart-wrenching effect in recent times to produce a piano-led style of confessional indie-rock that seems to delve deep into the mental, emotional and psychological core of his very being. That journey is clearly still unfolding on the new, soon to be released on Bella Union, ‘A Sober Conversation’ album in which, as heard here, among other concerns Brian deals with the trauma of re-connecting to loved ones following therapy brought on by fall outs, lost contacts, misunderstanding and hurt. If all this sounds heavy going though do not turn away, for his flare on the piano and ear for a tune in general make the music of BC Camplight a reliably deep, entertaining and ultimately rewarding experience.

Girl Group – Yay! Saturday

This is taken from Girl Group’s debut EP ‘Think They’re Looking, Let’s Perform’ and is buzzing with the same kind of feminist, hook driven pop energy previously heard from Wet Leg or Lily Allen. They are a relatively new five piece who, on this evidence, are alive with ideas and capable of painting vivid audio pictures that present animated versions of the lives they and their peer groups experience, in this case a long night out that gets messy. It is worth noting too that they are all singers and each member contributes to the writing too, so potentially the ideas will never be in short supply with a well of creative energy like this, there is a lot of promise here.

Night Beats – Behind The Green Door

And the beat goes on with another fine release from an ever dependable name in psych-inflected bluesy rock, Danny Lee Blackwell’s rollin’ and tumblin’ electric circus that is the Night Beats. ‘Behind The Green Door’ is the bands latest single and is out digitally now and on limited 7″ vinyl. Even though the backbone of Night Beats music is always retained, the primitive beats and the ubiquitous green fuzz of the guitar, there is always something different to delight in as well, on this occasion a decidedly Lynch-like panorama and a widescreen cinematic sound that could place this in the soundtrack to some obscure sixties b-movie, if not for the fact that it belongs firmly in the here and now as well.

Kathleen Edwards – 6 O’Clock News

The news that Kathleen Edwards is releasing a new album called ‘Billionaire’ on August 22nd produced by Jason Isbell and Gena Johnson, is very welcome indeed. It is described as harking back to her very first album, ‘Failer,’ with razor sharp lyrical observations and relatable real life tales. Two new songs, ‘Save Your Soul’ and ‘Say Goodbye, Tell No One’ are ready to hear online already and I will get to them soon enough but for now, let’s enjoy this recent live performance of the opening track from that aforementioned brilliant 2003 debut release.

Edith Frost – That’s What It’s Like To Be Lonesome

And to finish things off this week, here is another highly rated artist who has made a return in 2025, but this time it is someone who has ushered herself back into the ring with very little fanfare or hullabaloo. Edith Frost was one of the essential American Singer-songwriters around the start of the 2000’s earning herself deserved comparisons to singers like Elliott Smith but her new album ‘In Space’, which I am going to be checking out for the first time this coming week having only just come across it way below the surface, is her first in nineteen years. Here she is posting on her own YouTube channel a cover version of an old Jean Shepard song and it is as lush and moving as I always recalled Edith to be a couple of decades ago, it feels good to come across her once more.

Standard
Old Fruit

Old Fruit 13th June 2025

Brian Wilson – I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times

How could this weeks vintage selection of tunes be anything other than a toast to those who are gone in 2025 following a handful of days when the world has lost the genius of Brian Wilson and Sly Stone? Brian may have shone brightest in the sixties when he was still in full command of his natural, musically articulate, talent and imagination but that has long since proven to be a light that will never go out, such was the indelible impact of the sounds he created. There were few contemporaries that The Beatles acknowledged a competitive, respectful empathy towards but, alongside Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson was undoubtedly a prime source of peer group inspiration and his loss to the world of music will only begin to be appreciated now the book is finally closed on his life’s work.

Sly & The Family Stone – Dance To The Music

Lost to the world the same week, another iconic performer and visionary whose period at the top of his game was frustratingly brief. However, the fusion of soul and R&B that kicked the doors of funk down to the ground, not to mention the ahead-of-the-game multi-cultural ethos pounded relentlessly by the Sly Stone led Family Stone surely paved the way for everything soul and electro became over the ensuing fifty years; that funky train cannot be stopped and will never be silenced.

Marianne Faithfull – Vagabond Ways

Most of the obituaries for Marianne focused on her orthodoxy shaking breakthrough in the sixties and her not always so clean-cut connections to the Rolling Stones, it is worth remembering however that she never let go of music as a creative, expressive outlet. Indeed on cuts like this one from 1999, she did a lot to reinforce her perceived public image with songs of this ilk that only served to add to the legend.

Max Romeo – Wet Dream

Arguably the greatest thing about Max Romeo’s classic ‘Wet Dream’ from 1969 was Max’s attempts to explain the clean, innocent meaning of the song years later. You see, according to Max the song had nothing to do with sex and the chorus line “lie down girl let me push it up, push it up” were merely an instruction to his female companion to take cover while he pushed his finger to the ceiling to repair a leaking roof. I’m in full agreement with Max, the song could have been about no other scenario.

Roberta Flack – Compared To What

Her two massive hits ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ and ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ quite rightly dominated the reverential chat and legacy surrounding Roberta but there was a lot more to admire in this piano pounding, gospel infused, soul powerhouse as this clip of her tearing into the opening track on her debut album surely attests.

Bill Fay – The Never Ending Happening

Bill received a welcome and deserved late career resurrection in which his mellow, richly detailed songwriting enjoyed a 21st century renaissance, a second coming that is all to rare in the music industry. That said, he remains one of the big names among the record collecting community thanks to the scarcity and £100+ rated value of his 1967 Deram label b-side ‘Screams In The Ears’ which has enough timelessness to indelibly stand as one of the essential slices of freakbeat period British psychedelia.

Standard