Tag Archives: Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 22nd September 2025

Scott Lavene – Cars

Scott Lavene took some time to find his voice, having busked extensively before retreating to solitude on a boat via stints in bands around France and New York, his breakthrough came around the time he attended a music workshop for recovering addicts. That awakening brought us a singer and writer with one of the most authentic voices on the music scene today, rooted in urban Essex with the poetic flare of an Ian Dury taking on the Sleaford Mods in a lyrical arm wrestle. He is self effacing, warm, witty and incisive in his observational detail, as his music jumps between spoken word narrative and soul boy intonations whilst the subject matter pivots across real life confessions and Scott’s wild imagination. His new album, ‘Cars Buses Bedsits and Shops’, is so named because all of the songs focus on those exact, recurring subjects. Simples.

Foxwarren – Deadhead

This one is accompanied by a video that is both divertingly amusing and a little disturbing at the same time. It feels like they took the songs title as a launch pad and decided to feature some actual dead headed puppets but eerily, still smiling and moving because after all, with its “don’t stop dancing” refrain, this is quite a light and bouncy number on the surface. The effect is wonderfully unsettling as this Canadian indie band, led by Andy Shauf, deliver their second album following their 2018 self titled debut, with a similarly satisfying analogue expansion of the introspection heard in Shauf’s solo work. Especially with those flute licks, this one is infuriatingly addictive and catchy.

Bret McKenzie – Freak Out City

There was always a suggestion when performing as comedy duo Flight Of The Concordes and delivering pitch perfect parodies of retro pop styles and artists, that there was quite an adept musical talent at work here. The trouble with comedy songs is, as a general rule, they are set up for just one listen and only a few are ever re-played. Once you know the joke, it is time to move on. Still, with a burgeoning side hustle composing film music, Bret did set out his serious musician credentials on 2022’s stringently straight ‘Songs Without Jokes’. Now with a new follow up album, of which this is the title track, he appears to have struck the perfect balance; ‘Freak Out City’ is a record driven by melodic tunesmithery without totally abandoning the droll, subtle wit flowing so effortlessly out of McKenzie’s modest, humble disposition.

Brandee Younger – Gadabout Season

Spiritual, ethereal and soulful jazz played with the harp as lead instrument is thriving in 2025. At least, that is how it feels with Brandee Younger releasing sumptuous music such as this, the title track of her new album available on Impulse! Records. It is the harpists third album with the label and feels like the closest she has been thus far to realising and developing the signature sounds in her minds ear. That it was recorded on Alice Coltrane’s harp is an apt connection, for if an exploration into this music’s roots were to be undertaken then those fifty year old heavenly vibes would certainly show up. Still, Brandee is plugged into the modern motions too, as the records collaborators like Shabaka Hutchings, Courtney Bryan, NIIA and Josh Johnson only serve to prove. Justified, stylish and stately.

Carson McHone – Winter Breaking

Carson’s new album ‘Pentimento’ is out now on Merge Records and it is one of the 2025 albums that demands some immersion. All of the songs entered the world as poems but McHone has nurtured and developed each of them into a song cycle that transports the listener through the four seasons. Comparisons are already awash with references to the late 60s/70s Brit-folk-rock sound and names like Shelagh McDonald and Bridget St John are accurately being tossed into the appreciation, but I hear a more contemporary edge seeping through as well. McHone may well find her musical soul drawn connecting with these wonderous vintage echoes but her head is firmly plugged into the present day and that kinship alone makes her first full-length album since 2022’s ‘Still Life’ a repeatedly rewarding experience.

Adrian Sherwood – The Collapse Of Everything

This is the title track from Sherwood’s new record and it somehow is a heading that feels depressingly pertinent in the current climate. Nevertheless, that it should be masterfully vintage sounding dub soundtracking the breaking and broken nature of the world around us at least seems very fitting. The audio landscape is both doomily oppressive and chillingly fatalistic but, in equal measure, soothing and resigned. This is Sherwood’s first solo album in thirteen years and the experimentally inclined dub maestro, so often the background wizard sprinkling his sonic sorcery on the work of others, is allowing himself to be the centre stage focus of attention for once. It is a full length record to set sail with, playing like a film soundtrack as it glides across worldwide musical territories and regions but rarely breaking loose of the dub backbone holding this phonic requiem together as one.

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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 25th August 2025

Eve Adams – Get Your Hopes Up

Growing up alternating between the rural farm idyll of Oklahoma and more urban surroundings in Los Angeles, Eve began writing music at a very young age and was already showing considerable emotional depth in her songs by the age of twelve. Her latest release is called ‘American Dust’ and arrives on the Topic label continuing her narrative fuelled folk-noir style with a maturity that seems to be really hitting the heights now. In a recent interview with Uncut Magazine she described her music, which pulls in strong visual art elements too, as “a nice little ouroborus”.

Curtis Harding – There She Goes

This is psychedelic soul par excellence, featuring a deep production resplendent with strings, funky rhythm chops and a far-out fuzz guitar solo, it is clear Curtis’s music is going places other soul stirrers cannot reach. This is a recently released stand alone single marking the mans first new music since the acclaimed 2021 album ‘If Words Were Flowers’. In terms of theme Harding has described the song as a tribute to “the beauty and duality of the ideal woman” but I say it skates pretty damn close to the beauty and duality of the ideal soul track. There is much to love here, including the Twilight Zone essence of this accompanying music video.

The Black Keys – Man On A Mission

While I am thinking about psychedelic soul it is fair to say there is a huge element of that very thing in this new music from the Black Keys, that and their ever present raw blues cut and thrust. This one is from the bands brand new album ‘No Rain No Flowers’ released this month on Easy Eye Sound/Parlophone Records. They remain dependably brilliant on this LP which sees them at times return to the blues-rock sound of their roots and elsewhere turn to other modes such as post-punk, retro soul and then, pushing even farther out from those roots, a touch of eighties style synth action. Always worth checking out.

Laura-Mary Carter – June Gloom

This is one part a forlorn country-style ballad and another part a Lana Del Rey style haunting melodrama. Laura-Mary is previously known as one half of Brighton alt-rockers Blood Red Shoes but after two decades pounding down those souls she is now stepping out solo with a striking shift in tone. Hers is now an Americana adjacent motion with a vivid echo in the production that calls to mind a Spector wall of sound and a Velvet Underground-like ghostly shimmer. If that sounds like an appealing cocktail, which it certainly does for me, then be sure to dig out the solo debut album ‘Bye Bye Jackie’ when it arrives later on in September.

The Onlies – Going Across The Sea

Pronounced the own’-leez, these young yet old-timey folk and bluegrass whizz kids are about to release a brand new album called ‘You Climb The Mountain’. This lively number from a recent live performance may not feature in the tracklist but the live footage offered up does give you an idea of the fire and energy this combo possess in spades. It therefore ensures, despite its old fashioned reference points, this has a vitality definitively proving they belong in the here and now of modern times. The album features a wide panoramic view of the emotive range in the sound, from the slow swinging reflection heard in ‘Roll On Buddy’, a railroad song learned from Aunt Molly Jackson, to the punchy picking on show in a vibrant interpretation of the English song ‘Matty Groves’, it is clear The Onlies are explosive talents rightfully demanding our attention.

Studio Electrophonique – How Can I Love Anyone Else?

I am closing this edition with some dreamy electronica, a song that sounds simultaneously retro and modern, both primitive and grandiose in its lush production. It is a rather forlorn piece but there is a warmth in there too, this piece has a piercing autumnal feel ready made for the next season that is already starting to show its colours. This is the solo project of singer-songwriter James Leesley, one of the most interesting and original musical outfits to emerge from Sheffield’s current independent scene. He says this song “existed for a while as just this little arpeggiated interlude I’d play in between writing other songs, kind of like a thinking tune, but then one night it just turned into this swirling fairground ride of a sequence. The full thing came all at once, as if it was already there — like I’d found some secret waltzer and had a pocket full of tokens. I just kept going round and round until I’d finished the words”. He will release his eponymous debut album on Paris-based label Valley of Eyes Records on September 26th.

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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 18th August 2025

HONK – Vine-Glo

Well, this weeks first offering takes about three handbrake turns in the first sixty seconds leaving you wondering what the hell is going on here? But in the best possible way. It starts off like a hillbilly cousin of Telstar by the Tornados before launching into space with a disturbed yeouch of a lead vocal only to surf rock over the waves of a chorus that hits all the right targets. They call this unique grain “trashcan country” which does kind of tell you what you need to know about the scuzzy, rootsy and energetic sound HONK purvey. The new ‘Closing Down Sale’ EP is the follow up EP to their debut ‘Grand Opening’ EP and drops this week, released digitally and on cassette via Leeds label Shooting Tzars, HONK also have a run of gigs across the UK this summer

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Annick Michel – Between

Sometimes brilliant new music can be discovered online clouded in mystery and this is one such example, I came across this incredibly soulful, impassioned, intense acoustic song earlier purely by chance, simply by being on the right page at the right time and served suggested content by an impressively on-the-money computer algorithm. My digging has deduced that the artist has released a little music under the name Annick Michel, she is possibly a Montreal based singer-songwriter and this track may have been around on the internet from as far back as 2022. But the mystery is around the identity and back story, for I have found the song presented under the artist name Ama & Jaguar Dream although it is definitely the same person. Whatever, this is an great new song sung and played with a conviction that demands proper attention and incites use of the old cliché, one to watch.

Paul Kelly – Rita Wrote A Letter

If you are inclined towards a knee-jerk resistance or cautious suspicion when an artist is heavily touted as a ‘great songwriter’ then I fully understand, I am of a similar disposition myself. After all, there are people who pile those kind of accolades towards Ed Sheeran or Chris Martin and it rather lowers the bar in terms of being credible, worthy praise. However, if you are of the opinion that a great songwriter will have a flare for chord progression and melody, an acute facility for observing the minutiae of human life and interaction, strong story telling instincts, a sense of the absurd and a self-effacing tendency to recognise the fallibility in themselves, then wrap it all up in a song shaped bundle that will keep you listening and coming back for more, then Paul Kelly is a great songwriter. Furthermore, this Australian tunesmith has got 45 years of experience behind him and the advance single presented here, from November’s forthcoming new album ‘Seventy’, shows there are no signs of his craftsman like quality diminishing any time soon.

Peter Holsapple – Larger Than Life

Releasing his first new solo music in seven years with the album ‘The Face Of 68’, this is a recent live clip of Peter performing ‘Larger Than Life’ from that record. The song itself is a tribute to Carlo Nuccio of the Continental Drifters and features, as does the rest of the LP, Robert Sledge from Ben Folds Five on bass and Rob Ladd of The Connells on drums. As this tune definitively makes plain, the Holsapple of 2025 is firmly in touch with his jangle and power pop roots for there is a more than passing echo of this former dB’s co-founders musical heritage. And that is great news indeed, as this is the sound of a man in touch and plugged in to the pretty damn wonderful music he is making.

Luke Haines & Peter Buck – The Pink Floyd Research Group

Moving on from a former R.E.M. sideman to a former R.E.M. man in acting side man guise, it is always so great to hear Peter Buck bring that trademark jingle-jangle style of his to the table in the name of niche, outsider, eccentric British songwriting. The song itself is a whimsical slice of Summer-of-67 flowery spacedust which, if the Pink Floyd Research Group of the title are to be believed, was written by some kind of artificial AI assisted song bot. At least that is what someone claiming to be the PFRG in the YouTube comments are claiming and if it is really them, what a brilliantly offhand way to have a gentle retaliatory slap back to a song that is not as convincing in its sincerity as it is in its freak flag flying quirkiness.

Richard Thompson – Siggy’s Song

For the recent Radio Two hosted project called ’21st Century Folk’, five current folk artists were introduced each to five people in order to learn their back story and write a new folk song about their lives. In this edition arguably our greatest living folk composer Richard Thompson meets Siggy, who came to London from Barbados in 1962. He began working on the railways and playing cricket as soon as he arrived. At the age of 85, he still works at a train station, and he still plays cricket! Tapping into the folk tradition of participation, Richard’s new song pulls in Siggy’s teammates at the Holtwhites-Trinibis Cricket Club in Enfield for some rousing backing vocals.

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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 11th August 2025

Dodie – Old Devil Moon

This weeks Fresh Juice is like a visit to the Jazz Club with half a dozen new offerings from the cool world of vibes, improvisation and musical excellence. First up is a cover version by Dodie who might just feel like two worlds colliding with her current career trajectory. She gained attention, and continues to, via a prolific release schedule of original songs and interpretations on YouTube but here she is brilliantly contributing to an album available in the traditional vinyl format through the jazz classic Blue Note label (in the US, it is on Decca in the UK). The record in question is ‘Chet Baker Re:imagined’, released to mark the 70th anniversary of ‘Chet Baker Sings’, it features fifteen re-workings by various newer artists in a modern context of Baker classics.

Manon Mullener – Nostalgia

Heard here playing a piece from her new album ‘Stories’, Mullener seems to work the piano with a rare ability to both lead and explore her instrument simultaneously. Her style is melodic and easy to appreciate but it can bare multiple repeated listens and highlight many a nuance in her flourishes with each revisit. Manon is a Swiss player and composer who, with this new album, has released her most cohesively concept driven work to date and it impresses as a record that frequently imagines real life scenarios as breath taking musical presentations.

Brad Mehldau – Better Be Quiet Now

Jazz pianist supreme Brad Mehldau’s appreciation of the late Elliott Smith’s music is nothing new, there is film footage available of him playing with Smith on TV some twenty five years ago. Even then they seemed a good match, Mehldau coming across as an understanding foil for Elliott’s introspective singer-songwriting and his mastery of what Brad describes as the “dark/light admix”. Neither is this new work the first time the piano man has honoured Smith on record but his latest release does represent a proper step towards paying a full, album length, affectionate tribute to the man and his music. And, as you would expect if his previous recordings have ever moved you, Mehldau does a fantastic job on new release ‘Ride Into The Sun’, capturing Elliott’s wondrously potent blend of major / minor ornate compositional elegance. An essential, piano led orchestral jazz work awaits.

Amina Claudine Myers – Solace Of The Mind

The latest album by pianist Amina features this emotional centrepiece song as its title track, it is a record that she describes as a “balm, a mirror, a space to sit with your thoughts”. Released this year on Red Hook Records, it finds the now 83 year old trailblazer exploring music that touches base with jazz, blues and spirituals. Although she did not start recording music until the late 1970’s, Myers is widely recognized and appreciated in jazz circles as one of the masters of improvisation and is highly regarded for her musicianship on Hammand B3 organ and piano, not to mention that resonant, expressive voice. Long may she run.

David White Trio – Close The Door

Playing a simmering electric guitar led tune from their latest album ‘While You Were Sleeping’, this is a sublime live studio rendition from the guitarists combo who have been favourably compared to top jazz guitar names like John Scofield and Pat Metheny. Still, as you can witness here, they are not a group inclined to sit still on structure, showing a perpetual inclination to explore and innovate whilst holding firmly onto the listeners ears. There is much to enjoy on this new record, especially in the groove driven backbone that locks in some of the tunes, add to that the top drawer playing and this is a new jazz album that rewards taking a deep dive towards.

Joshua Redman – A Message To Unsend

This soothing yet seductively mournful piece is taken from Joshua’s latest album ‘Words Fall Short’ released on Blue Note Records and it proves that the label, this far into its history, remains a hallmark of jazz quality. Now in his mid-fifties, Redman has a hard won reputation as one of the finest saxophonists of his time thanks to an intangible mix of intuition and fervor in his playing. This is a record that Joshua reports was largely composed during the pandemic and the reflective mood that permeates certainly enhances that impression. However, the real magic is in the way the recordings come alive with organic warmth, displaying the kind of stunning results that can only come out of a group naturally feeding off each other to bring their music alive in the studio and then, fantastically, on record.

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Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 28th July 2025

Anoushka Shankar – New Dawn

The music of this sitar master has evolved into a thing of vibrant grace, she can simultaneously evoke Indian tradition with a looping hypnotism that references electronica and flashes of western melodics. This is a performance of the closing track on the second in a trilogy of mini-albums Anoushka has released since 2023; the first was serene and introspective, the second a Grammy nominated piece with ambient sonics touching on vulnerability and transformation while this years concluding ‘We Return To Light’ leant towards her Indian classical roots alongside trance passages. Her upcoming performance at the BBC Proms will see Shankar present a world-premiere of music from all three editions of the trio in an orchestral setting, fresh with new arrangements in a single uninterrupted Albert Hall session. It promises the be a career defining moment for one of the richest talents in the music scene today.

Annie & The Caldwells – Wrong

This gospel/soul stomper is the lead track from Annie & The Caldwells 2025 album ‘Can’t Lose My (Soul)’ released on Luaka Bop Records. This may be the first trace I can find of them on vinyl but they are a multi-generational family band from West Point, Mississippi whose powerful lead vocalist Annie Brown Caldwell first sang with the Staples Jr. Singers in the 1970s. Along with her husband Willie she formed this band in the early 2000’s, partly to enable their children to sing in a spiritually grounded setting. It is one of those children, Deborah, who takes the attention grabbing lead vocal on ‘Wrong’ and it heads up an album, recorded in a local church, of instantly likeable songs focusing in on family, faith and resilience.

Mairi Morrison & Alasdair Roberts – Màiri nighean Dòmhnaill

This is a live performance of a track from Mairi and Alasdair’s album ‘Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia’ available from Drag City Records. The broad mission of the pairs collaboration is stated in the album title, an idea that came about after a trip to Canada in 2023 when the Nova Scotian bassist and arranger Pete Johnston invited them to explore traditional songs with Scottish roots. With many of the songs first collected in the 1940s, the Gaelic speaking Morrison and prolific folk collaborator Roberts were drawn to the themes of exile and migration and set about shining some fresh light on this material in a 21st century setting.

Throwing Muses – Summer Of Love

Without losing an ounce of their piercing intensity, 2025 has seen the welcome return of Throwing Muses who released their new album, ‘Moonlight Concessions’ earlier this year on Fire Records. Still fronted by singer and songwriter Kristin Hersh, she recalls that this song began life as a bet with a guy for a dollar that revolved around the idea that the seasons don’t change us. I like the way she resolves each chorus with a concession that she lost the bet, later explaining “he said we aren’t just planted here, stagnant, we’re in flux, responding to love like octopuses moving across the ocean floor. Turns out he was right, and I still owe him a buck.”

Niamh Bury – Geordie

The brilliant GemsOnVHS continue to build a treasure trove online archive of filmed performances with this latest edition, shot in the Dublin home of singer Niamh Bury, as she gave them another essential nugget for their inventory performing this traditional folk tune. In the lyric a lover pleads for the life of the songs main character and Niamh injects raw emotion and feeling into her rendition. She has recently caught the attention of these pages with her 2024 debut album, ‘Yellow Roses’, which was one of the best albums of the year in our opinion, not just for its folk bedrock but also the way it pulled in suggestions of wider, disparate musical influences such as alt-rock and classical. This is a timely check-in for a brief snapshot of her ongoing journey as we wait for future releases.

Paul Weller – Pinball

Paul Weller’s new album ‘Find El Dorado’ is a typically eclectic and revelatory cover versions set well worth digging into. The relatable thing about Weller is he never loses that crate digging, new discovery thrill that all us record collector types permanently live with. And the other thing I can say about him is he generally has impeccable taste. This is a song originally written and recorded by Brian Protheroe in 1974 and it certainly proves what a fertile period that late sixties, early seventies era remains for music hounds. This one was apparently only a recent discovery for a lifelong hunter like Weller and it reminds us that those rare and wonderful finds do not always have to be the high value pieces, the original Chrysalis 45 of this song can be easily picked up on Discogs for the £1/£2 mark, so never give up the search.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!!!

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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.

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