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.