Tag Archives: Bity Booker

Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 6th July 2026

Dent May – I Remember

Dent May’s latest release ‘I Remember’ is much like a postcard from the wide‑open creative world he built while making ‘The Big One,’ his seventh LP and the first to fully abandon the bedroom for the communal hum of the Honeymoon Suite, a Los Angeles based studio he runs with producer Paul Cherry. With friends drifting in and out, no rehearsals, no fixed plans, the record grew out of pure improvisation, whatever happened in the room became the music. That spirit is heard clearly in this track, a DIY‑ELO daydream that looks back on past relationships with warmth rather than autopsy, folding May’s Elephant 6 scrappiness and ’70s singer‑songwriter glow into an optimistic ode to the people who moulded him. You can pre-order the album via this link: https://dentmay.bandcamp.com/album/the-big-one

Indigo Sparke – There Is A Light On The Horizon Line

This arrives as a standalone transmission for now, though it has enough muscle and depth of well executed ideas that it could easily anchor a future album. Recorded in Bristol with John Parish and an extraordinary ensemble of Adrian Utley, Seb Rochford, Shahzad Ismaily, and Adam Brisbin, Sparke tracked the song while 33 weeks pregnant, its mantra‑like pulse inspired by a moment of profound personal transition. Circling the line “There is a light on the horizon line,” she finds a power in repetition whilst exploring freedom, identity, and the quiet, tectonic shifts that accompany becoming someone new. You can find the song via this link: https://amzn.to/4eLASK1

The Black Wizards – Loose

The Black Wizards’ new single ‘Loose’ lands as the first jolt of energy from their forthcoming album ‘Force Majeure & The Acts of God,’ out September 4th via Hassle Records. The album is named after the legal term for uncontrollable circumstances, and this is the sound of that very thing. The Porto trio of Joana Brito, José Gomes, and Helena Peixoto have shed the doomy, stoner‑rock fog of their earlier work in favour of a leaner, sharper, and more volatile edge with ‘Loose’ being the clearest sign of that shift. Built on garage‑rock swagger, a bluesy stomp, and the band’s first prominent use of wobbly synth, the track channels Joana’s “groovy wandering on anxiety thoughts and feeling trapped inside your own head,” turning everyday pressures like low pay, rough working conditions and the grind of the modern world into a taut, straight‑to‑the‑point chorus with verses that release just enough tension to keep you moving forward. You can pre-order the album here: https://amzn.to/4fnqGGT

Bity Booker – The Owl Song

‘The Owl Song’ opens Bity Booker’s ‘There’s No Song About A Stone’ LP with the kind of folksy magic that makes her such an unexpected and mesmerising discovery. In a field crowded with acoustic singer‑songwriters, Booker stands apart, her music carrying an air of mystery and other‑realm enchantment that resists explanation. The track plays like a call‑and‑response with its titular owl, a delicate, whimsical piece that recalls Joanna Newsom with its spirited eccentricity. It sets the tone for an album drawing on time, dreams, weather, and the living ambience of the room she recorded in. It is a deeply individual work that glides between natural serenity and subtle strangeness, announcing Booker as an artist who follows her own internal weather and casts a spell entirely her own. You can buy the album and other Bity Booker releases via this link: https://bitybooker.bandcamp.com/music

Perennial – What’s New On The Beat Scene

Perennial’s ‘What’s New On The Beat Scene’ is a whiplash‑quick burst of the New England trio’s signature kinetic chaos, an early flare from their forthcoming album ‘Modernism,’ out 18th September via Safe Suburban Home. Built from the band’s crate‑digging obsessions which lead them to Stax/Volt grooves, 60s mod punch, abstract punk angles, fuzz bass and Townshend‑style feedback chatter, the track distils their “20‑minute marathon” ethos into an explosive pocket symphony. It is a statement‑of‑purpose rave‑up: sharp, sweaty, and over almost before you have registered how many ideas are crammed into its tightly wound frame. Be sure to pre-order the album from this link: https://perennialtheband.bandcamp.com/album/modernism

Dermot Henry – Dead Man’s Dog

Finally for this week, some new singer-songwriter action that immediately feels like the work of a real craftsman and a classicist in the form. Whilst this is a live clip from last year, it finds its way to Fresh Juice qualification firstly because I have only just come across it, but secondly as it is is the fourth track on Dermot’s 2026 EP ‘Aiming Torches At The Sun,’ released only recently on May 15th. It was produced by Dom Monks, with Henry writing the songs alongside Oscar Lang. The recording credits show a small ensemble around him: drums by Niall Henry, strings by Henry Rankin, Charlie Schnurr, and Katt Newlon, bass and percussion by Lomax, and background vocals from Eli Torgersen and Lomax. It is a remarkable heads up to the arrival of a major new talent, reminds me a bit of how Jake Bugg first appeared from seemingly out of nowhere armed with a musical gift hinting at decades of wisdom and proficiency, totally at odds with the young age of the artist. One to watch for sure, you can get your hands on the EP via this link: https://dermothenry.com/

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New Release Reviews

Bity Booker – There’s No Song About A Stone

It is always a delight in the business of music discovery, record hunting and general audio thrill seeking, to come across an artist who you assume will be of a familiar type only for them to far exceed your presumptions. Not only that, but also equally beguiling is when there is something quite mysterious about them. They do not conform in the way so many of their peers do, despite using the exact same tools and even occupying the same space, there is still that essence of the unknown. Bity Booker in 2026 has been, for me, one of those unexpected encounters. Yes, Bity (pronounced Bee-Tee) is an acoustic guitar playing singer who writes and plays her own material, a very well populated field of expression you must agree, but she stands apart because there is an element of magic to her work that is quite hard to pin down. So, right there is the wonderful thing, because so many times the greatest music casts a spell and often it is not a mixture you can dissect down to the ingredients that make it work. And thanks to the positive impact, there is no need to do that anyway, that is where the wonderment lies. The music of Bity Booker is the sound of another realm and from the moment you cross over there are no explanations necessary, you are simply mesmerized.

We begin with ‘The Owl Song’ which sets the scene for the individualist approach that dominates throughout. It is something of a call and response duet with the feathered friend in the title, offering the kind of delicate, whimsical beauty deployed by Joanna Newsom, which is as close to a comparison I can make although fundamentally, Bity plays wholly her own style. This strange brew is there on ‘A Tear,’ a song that immediately places the tunefully picked acoustic guitar and a sprightly, subtly chilling, voice in line with the natural world, moulding the environment to human connections, drawing the lines between how we feel joy and pain in tandem with our planet. Those same teardrops are also falling on ‘Dewdrops,’ echoing into a vast valley as if tumbling through open air and landing in widening circles of space, but this is not a sorrowful experience, more like a natural serenity. There is an elegantly gliding quality to the whole work and a connection to flying animals is present throughout, songs are based on the crow and parrots (with a neat reference to them originally escaping from Jimi Hendrix’s cage) although the standout for me has to be the graceful ‘Love Is Like A Swallow In The Spring.’ It all adds up to a mightily mature work on what Bity herself calls “my first ‘non-debut album.’ I call it a ‘non-debut album’ because I have long been making music in different forms, from death metal to alternative folk, so it feels strange calling it a ‘debut album’. It is the product of years of songwriting and performing solo.” 

‘There’s No Song About A Stone’ arrives as an independent release, issued in a run of just 250 blue‑marbled LPs alongside CD and digital formats, but its cottage industry design feels entirely in keeping with the way Booker moves through her craft. She admits to taking her time with music in a way that makes her happy, working outside commercial rhythms, outside expectations, letting songs form at their own pace. She thinks of her creations as things shaped by time, dreams, thoughts, rain, wind and you can hear that philosophy in the recordings themselves. These tapes feel alive; birds flicker at the edges, people pass by, London hums in the background, all of it part of the room she recorded in, all of it folded into the spell. So here is a gathering of some of Bity’s favourite songs, a mix of pieces road‑tested at gigs and others never aired before, but what binds them is the sense of an artist following her own internal weather. It stands apart from the regular singer‑songwriter crowd thanks to its ethereal detachment, its deep connection to the natural world, its refusal to sand down the oddities that make it breathe. Booker is flying her freak flag with pride, and the result is a record that will stand out wherever it is heard; this is the sound of someone fully unleashing their creative essence into the world and trusting it to find its way. Should the stars align favourably, this singer and these songs will do just that.

Danny Neill

You can get yourself a physical or downloaded edition of the album here: https://bitybooker.bandcamp.com/album/there-s-no-song-about-a-stone

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