Tag Archives: Andrew Sa

Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 20th July 2026

Rhiannon Giddens – Carolina Rain

‘Carolina Rain’ bursts forth as a vivid first glimpse of ‘Hope Is The Thing With Feathers,’ Rhiannon Giddens’ seventh studio album arriving 18th September on Nonesuch Records. Tracked live at The Cypress House in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, complete with foot-stomps, room noise and the easy chatter of musicians who’ve shared decades together, the song finds Giddens soaring over plucked banjo and nimble fiddle in a sharp, clear-eyed tale of love and money. Surrounded by her cross-continental ensemble of longtime collaborators and family, this song distills the album’s spirit of community, lineage and unvarnished creation, announcing a new chapter rooted in the places and people that made Rhiannon the wonderful artist she is today. You can pre-order the album via this link: https://amzn.to/4whMtqG

Andrew Sa – Lavender Cowboy

As previously flagged up in my review of the superb ‘American Rough’ album, this stand out track folds queer lineage, aching balladry and vintage Americana into a work that is assuredly forward-looking. Rooted in the storytelling traditions of Patsy Cline and Webb Pierce yet unafraid to confront the genre’s long history of exclusion, Sa turns his tribute to Patrick Haggerty and Lavender Country into a sweeping, pedal‑steel‑lit anthem of yearning and reclamation. His buoyant‑yet‑fragile vocal delivery, informed by a lifetime of influences from Reba to Rufus Wainwright, makes the song feel like both a love letter and a challenge. This is a cinematic, emotionally charged introduction to an artist pushing country into a more honest, inclusive era. You can order a copy of the album here: https://amzn.to/4vEkcJw

Pharis And Jason Romero – Last Call

This glorious track is one of the most stirring moments on Pharis and Jason Romero’s seventh album, a swamp‑thick, mud‑warm banjo groove that feels as if it’s rising straight out of the Horsefly earth beneath their riverside barn. Driven by that irresistible bass‑and‑fiddle momentum, the song tumbles forward with a kind of emotional gravity, grasping for something slipping just out of reach. Pharis delivers a masterclass in exuberance and longing as she leans into the refrain “last call for old times, last call for you, last call for company I know you feel it too,” her voice riding the song’s downhill rush with both ache and abandon. The song stands as a snapshot of the Romeros’ lived‑in sound: warm, rooted, and brimming with the small revelations that define their world. You can order a copy of the album via this link: https://amzn.to/4wPI1iu

Ed O’Brien – Teachers

This track was a clear entry point into the wider context of Ed O’Brien’s 2026 album ‘Blue Morpho,’ a project marking a decisive shift in how the longtime Radiohead guitarist presents his work. Released via Transgressive and credited directly to O’Brien rather than the former EOB moniker, the album reflects several years of personal reassessment, extended improvisational sessions in Wales and London, and a conscious move toward authorship without the protective distance of a pseudonym. Made around themes of reflection, recovery and creative renewal, this sits within a record defined by meditative structures, collaborative breadth and a deliberate departure from the sonic expectations attached to Radiohead. Its release forms part of a broader repositioning, situating O’Brien’s solo catalogue as a distinct, process‑driven body of work emerging from a period of transition and redefinition. You can order the album via this link: https://amzn.to/4wS7qbu

Luluc – No One Else’s Pen

This warm analogue sounding track is one of the key singles from Luluc’s new 2026 album ‘Sweet Thief,’ a record that finds the Australian duo expanding their understated folk palette while holding fast to the calm, contemplative tone readily associated with their work. Recorded between New York and Melbourne and released via Community Music, the album focuses on themes of modern pressure, resistance and the search for personal equilibrium. ‘No One Else’s Pen’ stands out not only for its gently meditative framing but also for the presence of J Mascis, whose drumming adds a subtle weight beneath Zoe Randell and Steve Hassett’s characteristically restrained delivery. The track helps sketch the album’s broader picture of collaboration, soft-focus intensity and Luluc’s ongoing commitment to finding clarity in the margins. The album is available via this link: https://amzn.to/3R5Wo3f

The Mourning After – Let The Love-In Begin

And so we end this week with some deliciously hazy garage rock sounds courtesy of The Mourning After on Rogue Records. This marks a lively return for Sheffield garage‑punk stalwarts with roots in UK fuzz culture stretching back to the early ’90s and whose recent work has helped fuel a broader revival of raw, organ‑driven garage sounds. The song resurrects one of the group’s earliest compositions and dresses it in full technicolour of Hammond heat, Farfisa swirl, marimba shake and a distinctly late‑’60s psychedelic stomp that nods toward the wilder corners of San Francisco’s underground. Paired with the flip side ‘Take Love Then She’s Gone,’ a more familiar blast of fuzz guitar, chiming 12‑string and spectral sitar, the release positions The Mourning After as both archivists and agitators, tapping their long history while keeping the garage‑psych flame burning with undimmed enthusiasm. You can get the limited edition seven inch via this link: https://roguerecords.bandcamp.com/album/let-the-love-in-begin

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New Release Reviews

Andrew Sa – American Rough

It might seem like country music has done all its evolving by this point, that the end game has been arrived at with its current mainstream pop sheen success. Where can it go from here other than reach back and try to recapture that western grit and sawdust authenticity that made it such a vital staple of American roots music in the twentieth century? Well, no, it is not quite as simple as that because with this debut album by Andrew Sa, there is an undeniable sense of country music making one further great leap forward. Admittedly it is less to do with the music, which draws on a multitude of vintage styles and influences, but we will come to that, and more to do with the straight edged posturing the original country music establishment prided itself on. Those good ol’ boys did not care much for long hairs, for hippies, for different ethnicities and they certainly had no place for queers. All of which makes the arrival of Andrew Sa quite the bold entrance. His music is informed by the folk and blues storytelling traditions for sure, but the real country DNA to his sound reaches back to the mournful ballads sung by Patsy Cline and Webb Pierce. On top of that Andrew proudly sings with vulnerability, raw emotion and tenderness. He is free to express, to sing of his experiences in the gay community and demand his songs a place in the country canon without inhibition.

The most direct reference to his place in the lineage can be found in lead single ‘Lavender Cowboy.’ It is a purposeful shout out to his late friend Patrick Haggerty, whose early seventies band Lavender Country were a pioneering influence on gay activism in the country community, but were ultimately shut out by an industry hostile to their open sexuality. Of the song Sa says, “I was chasing that elusive happy/sad bop, writing most of the song on my tenor guitar in a hotel room near Seattle, WA following Patrick’s ‘Celebration of Life.’ He inspired countless people and I wanted to capture the essence of that. There’s an old novelty/humor song by the same name that’s rather homophobic, so I also hope to rewrite the narrative on the ‘Lavender Cowboy.’” The song is a thing of yearning, pedal steel enhanced sweeping, elegant beauty. The perfect theme tune that ‘Midnight Cowboy’ never had. It also provides an opportunity for Andrew to flex his vocal range, his voice a mix of the buoyant balladeer and the fragile, cracked up font that is wrestling not to be overcome with his heavy feelings. A similar combination can be heard on ‘You Turned Me On’ although this one leans harder into a southern soul groove, the horns pushing the chorus to an elevation that when it arrives, positively rains down on us with sumptuous glory.   

Andrew Sa’s path to ‘American Rough’ begins in the cab of his father’s ’86 Ford F150, packed in with his siblings and absorbing the emotional charge of Reba, the Eagles, and top‑40 country while his dad occasionally pulled a Gibson Les Paul from under the bed like a secret doorway into a former life. After his mother remarried and launched a karaoke business, Sa was nudged onto stages as a child, already gravitating toward Patsy Cline’s saddest songs, an early sign of the aching balladry that defines this debut. He wandered for a while, falling hard for jazz singers and discovering queer icons like Rufus Wainwright and k.d. lang, whose unapologetic artistry cracked open his sense of what a queer performer could be. Acting stints in the Bay Area and Portland came and went, but a songwriting class at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music rerouted everything, pulling him into a community of queer country misfits and collaborators (Liam Kazar, Sully Davis, Lavender Country, and the gloriously camp Cosmic Country Showcase) where his siren‑like croon became a fixture. By 2021, early sketches with Kazar led him to producer H.C. McEntire, whose raw, country rasp and emotional clarity felt like the missing piece. Together with co‑producer/engineer Missy Thangs and a wide cast of musicians, they built this album in North Carolina and Chicago; a tender, cinematic album meditating on queer longing, Chicago nights, and Sa’s evolving sense of masculinity, held together by the trust and vulnerability made possible under the guidance of two women at the helm. Ultimately this is an album that knocks down doors, not least to unleash an artist whose potential reaches way beyond the confines of a traditional community he is already pushing into a new era.

Danny Neill

You can get the album via this link: https://amzn.to/3QMIClY

Andrew Sa by Alexa Viscius
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