This is an absolute corker of a tune from the Camden singer-songwriter probably best known as part of the vintage family trio Kitty Daisy & Lewis. When they first got deserved attention on the music scene there was perhaps too much focus on how young they were, just as later the talk would often focus on their clothes and fifties style when really we should all have just been delighting in what incredible songs they were coming up with. We can assume from her solo work that Kitty was central to this creativity, because her own tunes are similarly fuelled by a classic R&B sensibility and an ear for a irresistible melodic hook…
Lavinia Blackwall – Morning To Remember
There’s an altogether different kind of retro vibe on this bouncy new gem but it’s equally as charming and delightful. Lavinia makes a unique brand of folk-pop that appears at first to be structured in a conventional manner and yet her senses are spinning with colours and smells and her surrounding environment which has a splendidly dizzying effect on the music. Perhaps that is best illustrated in this video by some of the dancing, which looks simultaneously all over the place but also exactly in tune with the overall spirited approach…
The Zutons – Creeping On The Dancefloor
Twenty years after these groovy cosmic scousers first shook our trees, what a thrill to have them shimmying back into the spotlight like this, reminding us all what a winning way they had with a killer pop tune. There always was a sense of unfinished business with The Zutons, especially after they vanished from view after their third album release in 2009, which is why it is so great not merely to have them back again but proving right from the off that they really are one of the all time Liverpool greats la…
The Black Keys – Beautiful People (Stay High)
Now this from another great band who began causing a stir over two decades ago and are clearly, if this recent live clip is anything to go by, still cooking today. They have a new album called ‘Ohio Players’ out in April and as always with this dynamic duo, that is cause for eager anticipation…
Katherine Priddy – First House On The Left
Katherine’s new album, ‘The Pendulum Swing’, is a lush and cohesive meditation on the loves, memories, losses and overwhelming melange of feelings that are evoked when returning to an old family or childhood home. This song specifically addresses that very thing but the album as a whole is wonderfully connected in its explorations on these themes, playing with a neatly rounded start and finish point which enriches the whole experience similar to a great book or movie…
Mitski – I’m Your Man
Last years Mitski album ‘This Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We’ was undoubtedly one of the records of the year and this haunting live video performance of one of the stand out tracks really manages to stretch every last fibre of tension out of the song. This film, complete with a wonderful element of hammer horror drama at the end, also proves that you do not always need to crank up the volume to punch hard, sometimes the silence can be just as loud…
This is the third single release from the new Sarah Jarosz album ‘Polaroid Lovers’ on Rounder Records and it is yet another delight from the Jarosz strings headed straight for the Country radio stations in the US. Even though she is no longer a new face, it has to be said that ever since Sarah worked on the I’m With Her project alongside Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan a few years ago her own solo work has really took off. She writes with the melodic ear of a vintage Country classicist and at this point her music is of a consistently high standard as can be heard definitively right here…
Muireann Bradley – Candyman
On her debut album release ‘I Kept These Old Blues’ Muireann sounds like she has been plucked straight out of time from the previous century, somewhere between 1929 and 1959. Her sound and style favourably echo the acoustic blues greats like Mississippi John Hurt and Elizabeth Cotton and most remarkable of all she is only on the first rung of the ladder, in fact she is still in school. Nevertheless, as this prime TV exposure from the new years eve Jools Holland show proves, there is nothing forced about her sound, it flows as natural as the Mississippi river and is as pure as water…
Sleater-Kinney – Say It Like You Mean It
On what sounds to these ears like their strongest set of songs since the departure of drummer Janet Weiss, Sleater-Kinney are falling back on the sweet spot angular guitar riffage they built their reputation on not to mention some of Corin Tucker’s most upfront and impassioned vocals in years. There is a horrible tragedy lurking in the background to new album ‘Little Rope’, Carrie Brownstein’s mother died after a car crash, which perhaps explains how they sound like a band working through something in this music. Unfortunately, the best art generally does rise up out of suffering and hardship…
Sukie Smith – Into The Light
Just a straight ahead Indie-Pop tune with a great hook, a lot of energy and a steam train groove that just keeps building the momentum. The track is from Sukies’ debut solo album out on 8th March 2024 ‘The Glass Dress And A Ringing Bell’ on ShillingBoy Records via Bandcamp. It turns out she is probably better known as an actress, most visibly in the long-running UK soap opera ‘Eastenders’, but this gear change re-focusing on her music should put paid to that if this song is anything to go by…
Project Gemini – Colours & Light
This is the performing name of Paul Osborne and one listen to this entrancing track is enough to explain why he has already moved on to a sophomore album release whilst catching the ears of the more eclectically inclined DJ’s on stations like 6Music. He plants his seeds in that UK psych sweet spot located somewhere between 1968-1972 but has coppiced away any unnecessary retro excess, instead basking in the self-propelled light of a classic breakbeat groove and a hazy sense that his gaze is to the future, not the past. Get on board…
Billy Joel – Turn The Lights Back On
Yes I know, I can hardly claim to be foraging in the cutting edges of new music if I am going to put a Billy Joel song up as a new music recommendation. But I would argue down anyone who tries to suggest he is not one of the great songwriters of our time and furthermore I have always had respect for the way he spotted his own endpoint as a creative pop songwriter, simply knocking that part of his work on the head as far back as 1993. So a brand new song is indeed a rarity and even with this there is a sense that Billy’s resisting a full scale return to the ring. It would appear that his collaborators on this have got his agreement to complete unfinished music from his back catalogue and I do have to say, the touchstones of his greatest music are all present here; that voice, the easy grasp of memorable melody and the classically infused piano playing. The pop world has always been a better place with Billy Joel in it…
I seem to have spent the month of January in the most stimulating song exchange with a close friend which has had the knock on effect of keeping me away from listening to anything new. Instead I have been delving back into my extensive lists of archived playlists and music libraries trying to pick out whatever appropriate response song I can lay my hands on. Putting together the monthly playlist today the temptation was to just compile a 75 track summary of the back and forth of tunes we have been sparring with but the majority of them have appeared in previous monthly playlists and so, as my rule is a song only gets included once, I have had to do a speedy late sweep of new music missed in 2024 so far alongside other older tunes that were languishing in the in-tray.
Considering this state of affairs, it is actually quite pleasing to end up with another five hour list that is as fresh sounding and far reaching as this. It helps that some of my enduring, ever dependable favourites are dropping new music in plentiful amounts; names like Sleater-Kinney, The Black Keys, Hurray For The Riff Raff and Nadine Shah are back with superb renewed perspectives and there is even a brand new song by Billy Joel. In tandem with that, my recent obsessions with Cleo Sol and Blossom Dearie show no sign of abating whilst alongside all this I am about to reignite an old alliance with a close vinyl dealing friend and potentially get involved with clearing a house of some three thousand records. Keep an eye on the Fruit Tree Records store on Discogs to see if that all comes to pass. For now, watch out for the return of my Fresh Juice posts for the one thing my end of the month hoovering up of missed tunes has proved is this, there is a lot of exciting new music to be getting excited about as 2024 revs up…
As readers of my accompanying piece for the December playlist are aware, I have no shortage of available archive / vintage music to explore in my daily life and often a new obsession can lead to months of ongoing discovery and musical joy. Many people my age seem to have suspended their listening habits around their teenage years and much beyond their twenties they do not keep up with (not a statement that applies to my close music listening friends I should add). I even know a few serious record collectors who are perfectly happy just sticking to a past genre like Northern Soul or Acid Jazz or Seventies Prog and letting that journey uncover their thrills. I occasionally ponder whether I would be capable of going through a new release dry spell, all too aware that there is now more than enough already recorded music that I am going to love waiting for me to hear.
The problem with that would be that I do not appreciate just one or two styles of music. I would still be riding the genre waves, not anchored to one specific stream. And that being the case, I would invariably come across new present-day music. And as this latest playlist reveals in clarity, I am going to hear music that I will love and need to find out more about. I cannot imagine hearing any of the tracks on this playlist and turning a deaf ear to them because I am not interested in contemporary music. It is unthinkable. That means I would not be alert and alive to the sensational Cleo Sol, that alone is a circumstance that I cannot give any consideration to. Not only that but to deny myself recent music would be to also miss out on the live experience. As much as that remains an outlet rife with its own annoyances (over loud gig chatter, people not in the moment as they pointlessly capture mobile phone footage) in the average year there will be more than enough soul stirring performances to easily outweigh the negatives. Every once in a while, you catch something life changing.
So, I do not see a time when I will ever be indifferent to new music. Every January for a while now I have used the first monthly playlist of the year to round up my top tracks from the previous twelve months that escaped inclusion. And every year I end up pleasantly surprised at how easy the selection process is, I am simply overwhelmed by the sheer volume of contenders to pick from. If there ever comes a year when there are a lack of choices or getting up to seventy-five tracks is like arduous work, then maybe that will be the right moment to step back from the fresh juice. But I do not see that happening. I do not regard my tastes as representing anything remotely mainstream however, if my favourites were so ridiculously niche then there would not be so much of this stuff around. It is good to cast your net wide and it can be rewarding when you uncover something that is outside the popular consciousness. Just as much though, it is vital to have no rules and be ready to be excited by the unexpected. That is why you see an Olivia Rodrigo song in this list, that red alert explosion when you hear something for the first time and shout “bloody hell that’s brilliant” is so important.
Without that penetrative moment, I doubt any of us music obsessives would exist, we would all be satisfied with sticking on a supermarket CD at Christmas and partying annually like it’s 1994 (or whatever your peak younger year might be). For me I could never lock music away in a cupboard like that. It is not a background to other activities; it is not something I only need at parties and neither is it my nostalgia shelf. It is my primary artform, a vessel that lights up my life every single day. It is more important than movies, more accessible than books, more of a life crutch than my favourite football and cricket teams. Simply, it is the only thing that makes me feel happy, sad, blue, ecstatic, nostalgic, thrilled, amused and delighted; that moves me both emotively and physically; that can simultaneously induce tears of sadness and delight; the art form than can bring the past vividly back into the present moment or paint a clearer vision of the future. It is everything and the way it works its powers on the human emotions are mystical, it has a power that is almost magical. It is hard to imagine this ride ever losing momentum while I breathe. Let 2024 commence…
A fine and captivating slice of cosmic Americana with added splashes of fuzz and crazy horse indebted wonder…
19) Joanna Sternberg – I’ve Got Me
Singer-songwriter fare with a style and range that harks back to the glorious seventies eloquence from the likes of Dory Previn and Gilbert O’Sullivan; there’s an almost musical theatre flourish built into their songwriting…
18) Quasi – Breaking The Balls Of History
A welcome return from this fuzz rockin’ duo on a set without any dips; just to hear Janet Weiss trashing her drum kit again in this exuberant way was a timely reminder of exactly what her former band Sleater-Kinney are missing in their most recent work…
17) Sunny War – Anarchist Gospel
This was a brilliant realisation of the punk/folk grain Sunny has been refining over the past five years. An assured album with a band that included David Rawlings and Alison Russell, highlights include a punchy and pounding ‘No Reason’ and a Ween cover in ‘Baby Bitch’…
16) Margo Price – Strays
Not the only Margo Price release of the year but the one that teared down the walls between the Alternative rebel rousers and the Country mainstream establishment, a place that should be proud to have an artist as naturally gifted as Margo among its numbers…
15) The Murlocs – Calm Ya Farm
This merry band of Aussie Psych-heads have impressed in the past, especially with their authentic garage rock rough edges but there was a pleasing adventurousness to this album, taking in country rock inflections and many a Brit leaning instrumental embellishment…
14) Oracle Sisters – Hydranism
An example of a band getting the basics right; they played a fantastic set at End Of The Road festival and I kept coming back to this album thanks to the many earworm melodies built within that were like sweet audio honey to these ears…
13) Zoe Rahman – Colour Of Sound
In a decade that is shaping up to be one in which Jazz as an artform is firmly re-establishing itself back into the mainstream, artists like multi-award winning pianist Zoe Rahman are enjoying a reciprocal canvas on which they can develop their sounds and ideas. The best of those, as heard here, are recording music that demands repeated listens and is surely built to last…
12) The Nude Party – Rides On
Not just an album highlight of the year for me but a live one too. I saw these psychedelic rodeos back at the Red Rooster festival and they brought the summer sun to the skies in every sense. I recall one audience member saying the singer was “just the right side of Jim Morrison” which made me wonder what the wrong side would be? Maybe just being Jim Morrison perhaps?…
11) Nick Waterhouse – The Fooler
Nick is an artist known for his authentic channelling of fifties and sixties production values, producing music with a delightful analogue warmth that would be easily passed over as retro were it not so classily executed. He brings these sounds into the modern vernacular alongside the many ghosts and fading memories of a bygone San Francisco that stitch these songs together so cohesively…
10) Aja Monet – When The Poems Do What They Do
As debut albums go this is one of the most eclectic, it belongs in a box entirely its own. The Brooklyn based poet and activist incorporates elements of jazz and experimental freeform brushes into sound and these are far from conventional poetry structures. They are a tumbling torrent of words, thoughts and emotions because, as Aja has said herself, “who’s got time for poems when the world is on fire”…
9) Esther Rose – Safe To Run
Here’s another artist building a reputation for dependably great album releases. This one is perhaps the boldest in her catalogue, there is evidence of more grit and dirt in this alt-country sound not to mention a heavy dose of climate crisis anxiety hanging in the air…
8) Lisa O’Neill – All Of This Is Chance
Whilst it was her fellow Irelanders Lankum who deservedly topped a lot of folk lists in 2023, for me it was this mesmerising album that demonstrated just why folk music appears to be in such a healthy place right now. Lisa is just so tuned in to the natural and spiritual worlds, her work is like a polemic for the way the human race has disconnected from the things that really matter with all this technology surrounding us. Some people just seem to exist in a better place…
7) Shana Cleveland – Manzanita
In which the La Luz lady cuts some solo rug and delivers a dream-like suite of hazy, wavy-gravy songs apparently direct from the twilight zone of her mind. It is hypnotic from start to finish and charming the whole way too. Somehow Shana has captured that brief moment of consciousness between our waking hours and sleep in a cloudburst of audio finery…
6) Lael Neale – Star Eaters Delight
It is no surprise that this one rated highly among the alternative-sixties type of crowd. It pushes all the right period buttons, not just in its Warhol factory freakbeat style but also in the girl-group look Lael pushed to the forefront in her music videos (all Quant minis and multi coloured umbrellas) and artwork. I am no fan of retro indulgences just for the sake of it but if the artist is creating great pop music and writing superb songs as the back bone, as is the case here, then I might just find the work as hard to resist as this is…
5) Say She She – Silver
It seems so obvious now, just marry the pop hooks of the Sugababes to the chic style of seventies Pointer Sisters, throw in some deliberately arch disco referencing production and dance shapes that look like they were worked up for a laugh in the back of a club and put it all together in a shockingly loveable album. This is class…
4) Peter Gabriel – i/o
Back in the eighties Peter Gabriel said in an interview he didn’t like easy listening, he preferred “difficult listening”, music that only reveals itself depth after a few plays. As these tracks arrived with every 2023 new moon, I would give them a listen and, to be honest, be a little underwhelmed. However, with the arrival of the full album at the years end and with the opportunity to experience the whole work on repeat in detail the fact became clear; this is a top drawer collection and Gabriel has retained the integrity present throughout his career…
3) Cleo Sol – Heaven
Everything Cleo Sol does is absolutely overflowing with quality. I have nothing but admiration for the way she has retained an air of mystery around herself, refusing to play the regular media game and never saturating her exposure in the usual way an artist would when promoting a new album as strong as this. This approach has the appropriate effect of making everything about the music which is crucial because this is soul music that harks back to the classic values of the sixties and seventies but sings in a language and wears a relevance entirely belonging in the modern day…
2) Cleo Sol – Gold
So the same artist occupies two of the top three spots in my list of the year but I cannot place it any other way. Cleo just happened to release two sensational albums in the space of a month and they both had ‘soul classics of the future’ written all over them. I am listening to Cleo’s two new albums almost every day at the moment and it has been that way for a month or more. When you listen to a lot of different music both new and old, I cannot exaggerate how rarely this actually happens. But there is an argument that says Cleo Sol is the best thing around at the moment, if quality of music were measured by sales and status she deserves the level of a Taylor Swift, although she appears to have too much integrity to ever let that kind of cultural monopolising ever tarnish the thing that matters to Cleo the most, the music…
1) Jaimie Branch – Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War))
If only I didn’t have to write that this is now a posthumous album, in all likelihood a final release. That Jaimie Branch passed in 2022 at the age of 39 is devastating, her music had been one of the most alive things in Jazz for a few years by then, infused with a punk attitude and a take-no-prisoners strength of character it seemed on a perpetual upward trajectory. We will never know how many doors she could have kicked open, how much life enhancing music has been lost but at least her family and collaborators were able to put together this final penetrating artistic statement, the third in a trilogy of thematically linked records that put the boot in on the state of America today whilst never losing sight of the desire to make things better aspect of the human spirit. “Don’t forget to fight…”
I first came across Blossom Dearie around fifteen years ago thanks to my dealings in the world of second hand vinyl. I had purchased a collection that heavily featured top drawer female vocalists, primarily from the sixties and seventies era. It is possible that I had noticed the name Blossom Dearie before that time, just as it is equally probable that I dismissed her as someone of no particular interest to me, especially if a routine glance at her place within the twentieth century canon identified a middle-of-the-road jazzer in the easy listening realm. My relationship with all forms of jazz has evolved over the past fifteen years to the extent that today I would not turn away without investigation any style the music offers as I am a far more enlightened jazz fan, fully aware of the music’s potential to elevate, surprise and delight. But I digress, back then a name like Blossom Dearie would have sparked my interest no more than a name like Roger Whittaker.
But there was an album by Blossom in that collection from 1970 on the Fontana label called ‘That’s Just The Way I Want To Be’ that I learned, as I priced the collection ready for sale, was worth in the £100+ region. This obviously did catch my attention because, knowing what I do about the reason certain albums from this golden era in recorded music rise to three figures in value, the chances are the music in those grooves was going to be worth a listen. That absolutely proved to be the case, it was immediately clear from the opening title track (which also opens this months playlist) that here was music displaying a folksy, psych-tinged majesty several planes removed from any predictable trad-jazz leanings I may have expected. Yes there are tracks that lean more towards the balladeer grain Dearie was known for, but the whole album flowed with a diversity and inventiveness, not to mention a singular style, all its own. It even ended with a funky little number called ‘I Like London In The Rain’ I later found is hotly sought after as a break beat sample source. As is always the case with rare records whose status is built around the genuine quality of the music, my original copy sold within hours of my listing it online although it did get added to my list of records I needed in my own collection at some future point.
That day has finally arrived this past month when I acquired the newly released Blossom Dearie box set ‘Discover Who I Am – The Fontana Years 1966-1970’ which includes as part of its six discs that same, complete 1970 album. But I have to say, my appreciation of Blossom has, thanks to this incredible set, now hit full bloom and landed as an out-and-out obsession. I love it when this happens, as I listened all the way through the hours of music feeling like it is not my usual kind of thing but becoming acutely aware that something in those recordings was absolutely hitting the spot. Blossom was going through an evolution herself during this period, launching upwards from a polished interpreter of song and a stunning pianist into an expressive artist nurturing a subtle songwriting talent of her own. That voice of hers was an often light, pure and childlike instrument in which she began to untap a unique understated power within her own compositions. However, her gifts for interpretation shine bright here too. For example her version of ‘Trains And Boats And Planes’ is, for my money, the definitive recording. Where the familiar Dionne Warwick hit version has an almost jaunty bounce to the production, Blossom devastatingly unlocks the pain in the song, the longing and the heartache at the departure of a loved one. You can feel the hurt, but gorgeously so, it is nothing short of a master class of performance, nuance and class; qualities that Blossom Dearie had in abundance. I do not believe these will be the last words I write about her.
My relationship with Phil Collins and his music is a contradictory one. His voice and his sound are part of the pop fabric of my earliest music memories, I would have been nine years old when my memory of him gurning in the video of ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ was sewn and as a fan of The Police at the time, one of my first album purchases was a ‘Secret Policeman’s Other Ball’ record because it featured Sting; Phil was there as well doing a live version of ‘In The Air Tonight’, which I also remember liking. But as the eighties unfolded and Phil became ubiquitous, I did not become a Collins fan as I did other artists and bands I got into in my early teens. By the later end of that decade, I had crossed the barricades to the growing masses of Collins detractors. Something in the way he was impossible to escape, in tandem with my parents rating him highly and the nagging sense around the time of ‘Groovy Kind Of Love’ that he was churning music out on auto-pilot and getting a disproportionate amount of praise for it in the mainstream media (not the music press) established him as scorn worthy by a then music obsessed seventeen year old. That he received press attention in the nineties with accusations of being a tory loving tax exile and sending his ex-wife a fax to notify her of their divorce only served to reinforce my anti-Phil feelings.
Maybe I would never have moved on from this position if not for the fact that in the summer of 1987 I attended, with school friends, my first concert, Peter Gabriel at Earls Court in London. Gabriel is a performer who grabs an audience’s attention with visuals, dynamic energy, and wonderful, often challenging music. Here was an artist I was sure to be a fan of and the subsequent months saw a process of back catalogue digging which returned me to the early seventies and those superb, flowery, and crazy prog rock albums when he was the singer in Genesis. Those albums remain among my favorites to this day and of course who was the Genesis drummer for most of them? None other than old Buster Collins. And rather brilliant behind the drum kit he was too. Not only that but Phil was also an audible presence with his voice long before he took over as lead singer, he is the main backing vocalists and even then, got a couple of leads. So despite my negative position towards the man in general, my whole hearted agreement with Billy Bragg when he said in the music press that if Phil Collins is singing about the homeless (on ‘Another Day In Paradise’) but not engaging with the problem he is to some degree using the situation to his own benefit, I still had to give him the kudos for being an important member of one of my favorite bands. “I love Genesis” I used to say, “but only when Peter Gabriel was the singer, they lost their magic when Phil Collins took over.”
That position has slowly changed over the last couple of decades. For starters I came to appreciate just how important the Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford writing was to the band and how that flare remained after Gabriel’s departure. In fact, for the next ten years Genesis continued to make music with much to dig in and enjoy, it just so happened that by then it sat alongside hit singles. Tracks like ‘Turn It On Again,’ ‘Mama’ and ‘That’s All’ are rock/pop classics of the era for sure, favorites of mine in fact, something which I have taken it all too far in my denial of. My suspicion about Phil was, I believe, not entirely inaccurate. Having recently listened to the audiobook of his ‘Not Dead Yet’ autobiography, it is obvious his problem by the mid-eighties was that he put himself about too much, said ‘yes’ too often and the quality of both his solo and Genesis output did suffer. But the book also suggests this was less his naked capitalist ambition and more a modest humility at his core, a sense that he could not possibly decline the opportunities flying his way because they might never happen again. Producing heroes like Eric Clapton, working with Motown legends on the ‘Buster’ soundtrack, accepting Robert Plant’s offer to “do something together” at Live Aid. Phil got caught in a never-ending cycle of “what an opportunity, how can I not do that?”
It is plausible that if Phil Collins had just gone underground in the mid-eighties, disappeared out of view for a decade or so, by the end of the nineties he would have been hailed as a musical genius. I am inclined to believe him when he says he did not want to be such an ever-present irritant, looking so smug riding the scree on all that success. He made himself an easy target which served to diminish the relevance of all the superb music created up to that point. If only he had held firm against the pressure to be the voice of the ‘Buster’ soundtrack, just nurtured his creative instincts in the background. If only he had refused to do the Atlantic crossing at Live Aid when it became apparent it was just him travelling, not Duran Duran and others as he had been led to believe. Alone it just looked like a massive, literal ego trip. If only he had stepped back from the Led Zeppelin reunion that same day when it was obvious they could not rehearse with him. Instead, they just let Phil take the flack for this massive shit show blot on their reputation. Look at the footage, Jimmy Page was a dribbling, stumbling wreck that day and Phil did his best under impossible circumstances. The way they acted with the MTV interviewer afterwards was embarrassing, no wonder Phil stepped in with a few helpful answers. You see his eternal problem in those moments, say nothing and you are just being a dick like the rest of the band, speak up and people will say you are muscling in on something that has nothing to do with you.
Having finished the book, I felt the urge to try out some solo Phil so went to a first stop essentials collection on Apple Music. I have to say there are some gems in there although equally there is bland stuff that I will probably never get past. But how many artists can I honestly say I unconditionally like all their output? Not many for sure. If you get a chance to read ‘Not Dead Yet’ I would strongly recommend it to music fans, regardless of their overall position on Phil and his music. It is awash with fantastic anecdotes featuring the biggest names of the era; the George Harrison story around the recording of ‘All Things Must Pass’ is a fascinating time capsule to those 1970 sessions with a hilarious punchline years later to boot. The stories about his relationships and marriages are as gloriously honest as they are messy and complicated, whilst the Collins years of atypical rock star excess and flirting with death come in the period you would least expect. Overall, it is hard not to come away from this life story with a warm feeling towards the man, even if I never wholly lose touch with the things that once pushed me away. Nevertheless, against all odds, I am a bit of a Phil Collins fan these days (there I’ve said it!)
Quantic is the creative and performance identity of musician and producer Will Holland who has an incredible back catalogue with his unique melting pot of Latin, Disco, Soul, Jazz and Electro hybrid sounds which are invariably a delight to the audio senses. He first caught my attention over ten years ago on an album with Alice Russell called ‘Look Around The Corner’ which sounded for all the world like a lost Motown classic with disorientating echoes of the future. Incredible stuff and that is merely the tip of the iceberg yet still today it is more than apparent that his ear for an authentic soul voice and indelible groove remains intact thanks to this stunning tune made with Andreya Triana. Andreya herself is an artist I have kept an ear out for since her equally impressive debut from 2010 ‘Lost Where I Belong’ and today she remains one of the outstanding, authentic vocal talents in the soul world; all in all, a musical marriage that works for everyone…
Joanna Sternberg – People Are Toys To You
As we hit October I am starting to think about the albums that will make up the list of my top twenty records of the year and it is already beyond doubt that Joanna’s ‘I’ve Got Me’ LP will have a high place in the run down. They are a US singer-songwriter and visual artist who seem to have such a natural flair with the craft of melodic music composition. There is a quirkiness to Joanna’s sound which may regrettably push them to the ‘outsider’ fringes of the music scene which is wholly unjust because there is a classicists eloquence to the work way beyond the reach of most pop balladeers and two-chord strumming acoustic coffee shop poseurs. I flipping love Joanna’s album and sincerely hope it is heard and picked up by the large volumes of people it deserves, if Taylor Swift could make a record this good the critical establishment would be queueing up to call it a masterpiece…
Teleman – String Theory
In recent years Teleman have always been a dependable band for superior sounds in the indie-rock world. They released new music on the ‘Good Time / Hard Time’ album earlier this year but found there was still a lot of top-drawer material left in the tank and so a new deluxe-edition of the album is on its way. Tom from the band explains “we were aware of these extra songs that were knocking around; songs that should have/ could have made the cut but for one reason or another got left off. As well as that there was the usual big pile of demos and alternative versions that we always have when we come round to making an album. So we thought that a Deluxe version of the album was in order- all the bells and whistles- and to top it all off, we went back into the studio and recorded a brand new track called ‘String Theory’ which came out really well”. It certainly did, here it is…
Romy – Loveher
Romy Madley Croft is perhaps better known for her music as part of The XX who have won widespread acclaim and success over the past 13-14 years with their bass heavy, quite dubby variant of indie/electro pop. Here Romy is branching out on her own, albeit with XX bandmate Jamie XX listed as part of the production team, revealing a side to her work heavy influenced by the dancefloor. Far from being a blatant shot at mainstream solo riches however, this classy track has the soulful injection you would expect from a classic house 12″ and consequently is rather wonderful indeed, dig in to this one immediately…
The Coral – That’s Where She Belongs
I have been writing new music recommendations on this site for a few years now and it is possible that The Coral are my most frequently suggested band. They have just released a wonderful new album ‘Sea Of Mirrors’ from which this is taken, one of two new LPs they are spoiling us with in 2023. It is not that I have a bias towards them, I really don’t, I haven’t even seen them live since 2002 but the reason they deserve such regular shout outs is simply the quality of their work. They seem to exist in a sweet spot where they have had a deserved amount of success, but nowhere near enough for it to spoil their creativity. The Coral clearly still live and breathe through their music and as much as I’d imagine that’s a rewarding place for the band members to exist, the real winners are us, the listeners. They simply keep on giving us the most wonderfully written and recorded albums to enjoy and obsess over, please never stop…
Hania Rani ft. Duncan Bellamy – Don’t Break My Heart
I have only recently written about Hania Rani and her glacial splendour as a creator of deep, expansive and immersive instrumental mediations on the piano. Her work comes from other planets and as such you need to receive it and give it the attention it demands in order for the vibrations to work their magic. However, it seems she is increasingly moving towards songwriting with lyrics too, as heard on this new release, which given the superior quality of the work can only be a good and welcome development; do not miss out on this one…
I went to a Record Fair this past month with a couple of friends both of whom are approximately twenty years younger than me. Other than the obvious cultural difference of trying to convince them that they are not called “vinyl’s,” it did occur to me that the major change in their visiting a fair as a punter to my record hunting two decades ago is that they are searching for things they have already heard. My mission was almost always based on the desire to find things unavailable for me to listen to, the discovery of exciting fresh sounds both newly released and from previous decades. Tracks that do not get played on the radio, or those that were given a spin once by the more eclectic late-night DJs only to vanish from your life, destined to be added to an expanding list of holy grail finds you are on the look out for. All of that has gone now in an age where pretty much everything is available to listen to, even tracks unavailable on download facilities or streaming services can at least be found and listened to if you plough the internet deep enough. Personally, I do not even have a list anymore, Record Fairs are a place I search for things that I am already familiar with but would like to own a decent quality vinyl pressing of.
Obviously, there are still things I never found back in the twentieth century and now appear so obscure even the internet has not logged thus far, but as time passes and people increasingly upload old video tapes and cassettes to YouTube the more these dark corners of music’s back pages are uncovered. I had this proved to me a few moments ago, as I started this paragraph, I recalled a song Mark Radcliffe played on his late-night Radio One show around 1995-96 called ‘Expecting Joe’ by The McTells. I wrote it down at the time and have kept half an eye out for it for nearly thirty years. Even when Discogs and eBay appeared I would occasionally type it into a search and come up blank. But I have just heard it for the first time since that radio play, it is sitting there on YouTube with a grainy old video clip to add to the time capsule. Turns out it was released on a cassette in 1987 which might explain why my looking for it on vinyl came up short. It does prove that my taste for lo-fi pop and scuzzy garage-rock sounds has been present for a good three decades, it would appear that the McTells were loosely associated with the C86 movement but were a little too rough around the edges to be fully embraced even by that scene.
The sad thing is I do not really feel like I am looking for it anymore, I sort of feel like I found it, but the payoff is not so sweet when there is no physical artefact to show for the conclusion of the hunt. So maybe I am still looking? I dare say if I find a copy of that particular cassette I would buy it, if it was cheap enough as I do not really collect tapes, but the heart and soul of the mission was to hear that music again, which is a desire that has now been satisfied. I do not mean to appear lukewarm about record collecting, those moments when you find a clean original pressing of music that you love, take it home and play it being sure to really listen to those sonic details can be magical. This month’s cover star is Sandy Denny in the late sixties fronting Fairport Convention and I recently enjoyed such an experience listening to their ‘Unhalfbricking’ on an original 1969 Island Records pressing. They really were one of the all-time great Rock-era bands around 1968-1969, a period in which they released a mind blowing three classic albums whilst struggling to overcome the turmoil of a motorway van crash with fatalities. No wonder this combination of their line-up splintered before the seventies for, on top of the tragedy and in addition to the wandering sprit of Richard Thompson’s genius, they also had a singer in Sandy Denny who threw all her raw emotions into her art and music. That is what I love about the above photo, she looks wound up and annoyed which, if true, was sure to have fed into the music Fairport Convention were playing that night. One of their most rousing pot-boilers from 1969 opens this month’s playlist, a selection which represents the range of music, both new and old, I would love to source on vinyl pressings when looking around a Record Fair…
It matters little whether you regard Aja’s lyrical vocalising as a rap or poetry recital set to music, her words are what count and you cannot help but be entranced by the conviction in this delivery. Her music has a close association with Jazz and this track in particular carries a hefty dose of jazzin’ credibility when you hear the trumpet part by Christian Scott, but Monet’s ear for cultural mix and matching when added to her focus makes this a journey entirely in a field of its own. Her new album ‘When The Poems Do What They Do’ is as powerful a statement in dynamic, driven and inspirational protest music as you will find in 2023, presenting an artist who cares about the society and landscape around her and one who is ready to give all she can to solicit positive change, awareness and improvement
Semisonic – The Rope
As with any band worth making a fuss over, the music should be the thing that matters above all other attention grabbing criteria. That is absolutely the case with Semisonic, a US band who I could be sat opposite on a train and still fail to recognise. Their music on the other hand did leave an indelible impression, especially a brace of songs from around 25 years ago, ‘Secret Smile’ and ‘Closing Time’, which sounded then and remain today like a couple of late period Britpop classics being far more sonically connected to that fading UK scene than anything coming out of the US at the time. For the last few years Semisonic have dipped their toes in reunion lakes around album anniversaries and it is now a delight to report new music arriving too, especially when it is as good as this, losing none of their early deftness around a guitar pop tune…
Das Koolies – Pain Down The Drain
Back in 1973 the sound of Glam Rock probably felt like the future even though within three years it would perpetually be linked to the music of a very precise period in the past. So how is it that Das Koolies have lifted that glitter stomping effect from fifty years ago, filled up its tank with four-star fuel and continued to recycle it in a way that seems ostensibly of the future? This is the kind of rollicking, timeless mayhem the Super Furry Animals used to dazzle us with at the back end of the nineties, which is funny because it turns out Das Koolies comprise four former members of that classic band recalibrating for fresh adventures in sound. Their debut album ‘DK.01’ has just arrived…
Olivia Dean – Carmen
Wanted to give this one an entry in the Fresh Juice section mainly because it only just came to my attention via this performance on the night of the Mercury Music Prize. For me the prize on the night landed, for once, in the most deserving hands and what a delight it was to feel the joy of Ezra Collective as they celebrated their success. But the other thing that shot through the pointless flannel of the occasion is how vital the Jazz and Jazz-Soul scenes are proving to be this decade. It really is the area bringing the most consistent thrills, ideas-heavy compositions and innovations in recent times as is demonstrated by the emergence of Olivia Dean, a voice with a vintage earthly vibe singing songs she is clearly feeling with her heart, this is the way it should be done…
Spencer Cullum – Betwixt And Between
A lovely serene song from the latest Spencer Cullum album ‘Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 2’ and this one features a delightful vocal contribution from Erin Rae. The video is simple and the natural analogue effect it offers suits the song rather well. I looked down the YouTube comments and noticed someone had posted “see kids this is real music” which is the kind of attitude that could put me off this track (it doesn’t, but it could). As great an era as it was, a piece of music does not have to sound like it is from 1972 to be classed as ‘real’ and neither does it have to be made on conventional instruments. None of that is Spencer Cullum’s fault however, I bet he wears his vintage clothing and collects his twentieth century ephemera like a man high on the simple pleasures of life which is a fine thing indeed. Why don’t you go and put the kettle on before enjoying our penultimate two tunes for the week…
Chip Wickham – Slow Down Look Around
No visual accompaniment to speak of on this one but when the music gently elevates you like this I see no need for anything other than glorious audio. Taken from the new ‘Love & Life’ EP, considering Chip’s background in the early 21st century Jazz scene and Trip-Hop influences this might sound a very conventional piece of music, leaning back into soft spiritual tones and playing with an expressiveness that requires a real lightness of touch. But oh boy what an impression this music leaves on you, enhancing the message of the title ten-fold. We should all ease up the pace from time to time, put down the digital distractions, the screens with their endless scrolling (you’re at the end of this weeks new music recommendations now so you’re good to go) and just breathe in the natural world around. Music this fine needs to be experienced with 100% involvement, it really is worth your time…
Fruit Tree Records 