Tag Archives: Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice

10th April 2023

Wednesday – Chosen To Deserve

From North Carolina, Wednesday are an abrasive Americana band comprising Karly Hartzman on vocals, Jake Lenderman on guitar, Xandy Chelmis on lap steel and Alan Miller on drums. They are signed to the Dead Oceans label and forthcoming album ‘Rat Saw God’ is their fifth in as many years but one listen to this taster track, ‘Chosen To Deserve’, I think shows there is something definitely stirring in the Wednesday camp. This is such a great song, one of those ones where you can’t believe someone hasn’t painted this particular picture before; “I’m the one that you have chosen to deserve” hints at multitudes of destructive tendencies within the central relationship of the lyric, which just happen to be built around a thwacking great country-rock tune. Check out these opening lines; “we always started by telling all our best stories first, so now that it’s been a while I’ll get around to telling you all my worst”. This is just such great song writing, a song I was breathless with excitement about when I heard it…

Ron Gallo – I Love Someone Buried Deep Inside Of You

This version of a track from Ron Gallo’s new album ‘Foreground Music’ was recorded live at Tournament Studios in Nashville. The former Toy Soldiers front man is now releasing music on the Kill Rock Stars label and, as heard in this brilliant piece of film, he is channelling the same garage-punk energy that first brought him attention as a solo act nearly ten years ago, without sacrificing any of the sweet melodic instinct he brings to his best music. It is all as good as this, powerful, crunching and sugar sweet, all elements that seem to hit the listener in unison…

Brigid Mae Power – Dream From The Deep Well

This is set to be the title track from Brigid’s new album, released on 30th June on Fire Records. She is a stately singer-songwriter performer whose songs are often hymn-like meditations and by now, with what is about to be her fourth album, there is a track record of dependable excellence starting to build. In fact the previous album, ‘Head Above The Water’, was one of my favourite records in 2020 (one that seemed to really glow with warmth and texture on the vinyl pressing) so this is eagerly anticipated. This song, wherein the lyric seems beaten down by people falling short of the idealised testimonies they bestow upon themselves as Brigid pools her resources to continue aiming high, even as others go low, suggests another must-have LP is on its way…

Ron Sexsmith – Former Glory

The Canadian singer is seen here in a recent live clip performing a song from his latest album, ‘The Vivian Line’, released on Cooking Vinyl. Somehow Ron still feels like one of the exciting fresh talents on the scene despite the fact that he is into his fourth decade as a well-known performer and is now actually 59 years of age. That might have something to do with the fact that with every new album, Sexsmith continues to find some gorgeous low hanging fruit from the great song tree all musicians reach to pick from, causing a situation where every Sexsmith album has at least three or four songs that sound like immediate classics and a supporting cast that hardly let the side down. There is a simplicity to what he does, a craftsman-like ability to carve out exactly what the song needs without any superfluous decoration, he is always a delight…

Meredith Moon – House Full Of Sparrows

A home recording uploaded by the artist Meredith Moon, one of the daughters of Canadian folk legend Gordon Lightfoot, she has a new album out called ‘Constellations’ on True North Records. This is quite a haunting piece, the imagery is dark and a little claustrophobic and the lyric has a nice apocalyptic edge, it is undoubtedly a great little song. What I like about the video clip is that you sense it captures an artist in the early days of their relationship with a song, it is still quite raw as Meredith is feeling her way around the lyrics and the chord progressions, pulling out the nuances and threads, this holds your attention…

Abbie Finn Trio – A Real Job

This County Durham based trio are made up of Abbie Finn leading everything on drums and percussion, Harry Keeble on tenor sax and Paul Grainger on double bass. So much is spoken of the exciting Jazz scene coming out of London these past few years, it should be noted that way up north there are also young folk breaking out with classic Jazz templates and vigorously searching, as the form demands, to unlock new directions for the music to travel in. And as this is a unit that leads from the rhythm section up, there is plenty of punch to the way they take a charge at their own interpretation of the classic Bebop sound…

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Fresh Juice

3rd April 2023

Richard Gavril – Say Nothing At All

Another selection from the #gemsintherough competition on YouTube right now, this is a singer and a song that just stood out a mile. Fantastic writing alongside dexterous guitar playing, beautifully sung, an original number in the style of the classic sixties Tom Paxton or Paul Simon style of personal leaning folk ballad and I mean the comparison as a massive compliment. I dug a little deeper with Richard Gavril and he has good form in this mode, not only that but he is consistent with the hi-vis locker room thing as well, although it is unclear whether he actually does post his music during down time at work or if it’s an image he projects, like Neil Young and his farm hand look. I could go on a little rant about the music industry and how too much talent is hidden below the radar but why tarnish such a lovely song with negativity? With music as good as this, just listen and enjoy…

Temples – Afterlife

Of all the psychedelic bandits to emerge during the last decade, it was always Temples who threatened to orbit the mainstream with their rich sound wrapping songs that are packed in melody adorned by ever changing tones and colours. Temples continue to make this kind of music and surely many more people will board their spaceship this time around, especially as forthcoming album ‘Exotico’ has Sean Ono Lennon in the producers chair. Anyone following his eclectic music career should know by now, he is not one to lend his name to anything less than musically resplendent and so we continue…

Lavinia Blackwall – The Damage We Have Done

Similarly psych infused but wholly of her own grain, this is an exquisite new tune from the former Trembling Bells multi-instrumentalist and vocalist. Soon to appear on her second solo album, it is hard not to think of the climate emergency within the lyrics, singing of our fast passing moment as “kings for a day”, the parasites that we are living off the planet whilst wilfully ignoring how we damage it. It is also all too easy to miss, amongst the vintage acid-folk stylings which seem second nature to Lavinia, that her songs naturally form ear-worms of the most delightful and welcome kind…

Oracle Sisters – Tramp Like You

If the previous song sounded like a crisp spring morning (to my ears at least) then this one is more of a hazy desert sunset, literally as it goes in the accompanying video. The Oracle Sisters are a trio whose seeds can be found in Belgium, then later scattered between New York and Edinburgh. Lewis Lazar and Christopher Willatt had played in rival bands, soon enough the same band thus forming a songwriting partnership. They were later joined in Paris by Julia Johansen, a Finnish songwriter who not only had a voice and style that blended seamlessly with theirs, but she also a handy ability on the drums. Check out their sound, it is free of unwanted clutter, drawing the listeners attention to the melodic piano and guitar frameworks that their alluring songs are built around. ‘Tramp Like You’ is taken from the album ‘Hydranism’, due out on April 7th…

Unloved – I Did It

Formed in 2015, the trio Unloved just released their third album ‘Polychrome’ and, as heard in this grinding groove driven song, have lost none of the dramatic tension that led to TV producers using much of their music on the soundtrack to ‘Killing Eve’. Originally from Los Angeles, the band are made up of Jade Vincent, Keefus Ciancia and the well known DJ, curator and soundtrack producer David Holmes, no wonder they get it so right so often. Like all great mixologists, this song has an echo of Peggy Lee singing ‘Fever’ hanging over it, but if that was in the creative minds of Unloved it matters little for they mould it into a new song, indisputably their own wonderful creation, side-saddling a playful nod to the past…

The Flowers Of Hell – Foray Through Keshakhtaran

If I tell you that this collective were once Lou Reed endorsed, their music was featured on what turned out to be his final radio show, then that should encourage you to check out The Flowers Of Hell in the expectation of bold, expansive music that unfolds its multi-dimensional structures the more you immerse yourself in it. This is the single mix of the trans-Atlantic experimental group’s 2023 album ‘Keshakhtaran’, which is an Urban Dictionary term for, “seeking nirvana through meditation to sound, especially when you’re stoned.” Release date of full album is May 12th…

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Fresh Juice

27th March 2023

The Burning Hell – All I Need

I think I came to The Burning Hell around ten years ago thanks to the recommendation of Paul Heaton (Beautiful South & Housemartins) in a magazine interview. He said he’d been listening to them and another band called Ages And Ages and they turned out to be two of the best heads up a music magazine has given me in recent years. Admittedly the latter band have fallen off my radar a little lately but The Burning Hell, who are the outlet for musical outpourings of Mathias Kom and multi-instrumentalists Ariel Sharratt and Jake Nicoll, regularly embellished by friends and fellow collaborators, have maintained an impressive schedule of record releases and live performance. Within their emphasis towards story telling and playing live, often in locations way off the regular tour schedule pathways, there is something of the folk music persuasion to this unit. That said, the Burning Hell sound is something else altogether; a rhyming and rapping and self-effacing groove monster with an eye and ear for the absurd married to the keenest of everyday detail, a band that are hard to resist…

Dungen – Hostens Farger

These Swedish psychedelic rockers are soon to be celebrating their 25th anniversary which is a noteworthy landmark when you hear how their European take on melodic UK freakbeat and cosmic sounds sewn in the sixties still sounds so vital. This is the suitably trippy video to a track from their most recent album ‘En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog’ released on Mexican Summer, obviously I cannot understand a word of what is being sung here but somehow, when the music is as eloquent an vivid as this, it matters little, you get the picture anyway…

Withered Hand – Waking Up

Back in the Noughties I, from my far away locale of Southern England, could be heard to wax enviously about the Scottish Fence Collective scene of artists up in Scotland. Catching artists like Pictish Trail and King Creosote at folk gigs near me then learning that they were all tied up in some way to this conglomeration of creative energy seemed fascinating. Withered Hand, the artistic identity of Edinburgh songwriter Dan Willson, are plucked from the same well, releasing a debut album back in 2009. This latest piece was filmed live at a Duddingston Kirk session and the song ‘Waking Up’ will be available on the forthcoming Reveal Records album ‘How To Love’…

Cinder Well – Two Heads Grey Mare

Not only does the music on this track stir up a dusk-time darkening of the spirits, but somehow this accompanying video summons up those dimming of the day sensations as well. Of the song, taken from the new album ‘Cadence’, Cinder Well says “this song is about a human spending a night with a selkie-like vision who comes out of the water. The selkie disappears in the morning, and the human is left with an experience that they can’t put their finger on, questioning reality and experiencing a huge sense of loss. I acted as both the human and the selkie in the music video, which to me portrays that we often look for an escape from ourselves, and we search for that in our external reality. In this case, the human finds this briefly and ecstatically, and then loses it again.”…

The Altons – Float

For my money, the fusion between vintage psychedelics and retro soul sounds has not been tapped to the full. When it works, as it does so well on this dreamy number, it really smashes it out of the park. This is a silky song called ‘Float’ but just listen to the spellbinding way it elevates us into the clouds towards the end, an effect that is captured pretty effectively in this video animation too. Released via Penrose Records, although the YouTube video is posted by Daptone, which is as surefire a guarantee of excellence in soul as you could hope to find today…

Kendrick Scott – Threshold

While I am on the subject of dependable record labels, has there ever been one with such a reliable reputation as Blue Note? To this day, here is a brand that appears to uphold the, now almost quaint, ideal that a label should be run by music people who are emotionally invested in everything aspect of an album release, from the recording of the music to the presentation of the sleeve art. Here drummer Kendrick Scott, who on new Blue Note album ‘Corridors’ is presenting his first compositional treatment in a trio context, proves that there is a place where adventurous classy modern Jazz can be found and it is pretty much the same place we could turn to for over eighty years now…

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Fresh Juice

20th March 2023

A half dozen weekly fresh picks of tasty new music…

Pynch – London

From the bands debut album ‘Howling At a Concrete Moon’ which is due out on April 14th 2023, this is a take on melancholic pop music that lands its punches. As seen in this nostalgia tinted video, the song sets the hopes and aspirations associated with a city like London against the stark reality of trying to penetrate its societal brick walls as the debris of failed endeavour disfigure the landscape. As Pynch sing in this song, “have you ever dreamed of owning your own home? That’s just a bourgeois fantasy, better leave that shit alone”. Welcome to the real world, check this lot out now…

St Vincent & The Roots – Glory Box

As much as this magical pairing refrain from altering the structure of this Portishead classic, it is nevertheless a very welcome cover version. Performed with a live string section, Annie squeezes every last drop of drama and passion out of the lyrics whilst also taking full advantage of the understated guitar shredding opportunity the song offers. I never have a problem with respectful cover versions as a general rule, great music should be kept alive and played; this is as strong an argument for that view point as I can offer today…

Esther Rose – Safe To Run

Esther’s 2021 album ‘How Many Times’ was one of my outstanding albums of the year, I wrote more about that one here https://fruit-tree-records.com/2022/05/23/esther-rose-how-many-times/ This is the title track from her forthcoming LP release on New West Records, it shows her music is continuing to show mouth watering hints of future mass recognition (if there’s any justice) and if I need to add any more inducement to listen, this song and video feature an appearance from Hurray For The Riff Raff’s brilliant songwriter Alynda Lee Segarra…

ThirtySeventy – Acceptance

Either written as above or as 30/70, this delectable slice of jazzy soul is the work of a musical collective from Melbourne, Australia. Taken from the newly released Energy Exchange Records album ‘Art Make Love’, this has a truly spiritual, laid back vibe that just seems to reel me in. They describe themselves as a musical family rather than a group and with this, their fifth album, it sounds like their hypnotic communal flight is really beginning to take off, check this out today…

Seth Martin – I Still Love You

In so many ways, folk music remains the true underground music of the people, even in the 21st century. What the people at #gemsonvhs have done, for a few years now, is set themselves up as the modern day version of legendary folk archivist Alan Lomax, collecting field recordings of below-the-radar singer songwriters playing their own original material, building up an online archive of these tunes. They also do a ‘in the rough’ new music contest which is currently running and has received an avalanche of entries. I would suggest you go and lose yourself in a treasure trove of exciting new talent but as a taster, here’s a lovely, rustic selection from Seth Martin, who says of his song that it’s “a ballad about recovery from heartbreak, but maybe more than that it’s a reflection on the idea that nobody’s an island, and how much we need one another even when we don’t know how to ask for help”…

Kokoroko – RAPT

Finally this week, here are Kokoroko with their first-ever official music video, a beautiful short film soundtracked by ‘Ewà Inú,’ ‘Home’, and ‘Age of Ascent’ from the band’s debut album (released August 2022 on Brownswood Recordings). The film is directed by the multi-disciplined filmmaker, writer & video artist, Akinola Davies Jr. It re-imagines the music as a soundtrack to a triptych of interconnected stories set in Makoko (sometimes known as the Venice of Africa), a community originally settled by fishermen, excluded from official census records, and under threat of demotion.

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Fresh Juice

13th March 2023

A half dozen weekly fresh picks of tasty new music…

The Faux Faux – Cold Hearted Woman

The Faux Faux is the new solo project of Faith Vern from Manchester trio PINS and this first exposure certainly teases a tantalising sound with strong dramatic echoes of early Portishead. Of the inspirations for this Faith has said  “I’ve always been intrigued by Cindy Sherman, Sylvia Plath, Gregory Crewdson, Virginia Woolf, Nan Goldin to name a few, these writers, poets, photographers, artists, who have shown us the beauty and the desperation in the mundane”.

Feist – Hiding Out In The Open

The music for Leslie Feist’s new album ‘Multitudes’ had been developed and evolved during live shows from late 2021 and through last year. That these songs gestated in such public view may be a surprise when you hear how personal they often are, more so when you realise they were written with both the birth of her daughter and the death of her father in Leslie’s recent past. The end result is a wonderfully intimate and yet eloquently layered affair as heard on ‘Hiding Out In The Open’, which is accompanied by a video that also illustrates the complexity and thought that Feist subtly brings to her work.

Margo Price feat. Sharon Van Etten – Radio

Another top tune from the album ‘Strays’ released on the Lorna Vista label. The great thing about this stylishly retro clip, in which Sharon Van Etten features on a vintage TV set, is how Margo clearly doesn’t take herself so seriously in these films, she has a laugh with the format. Why not? Her music reaches way beyond the Country pigeonhole and does more than enough talking in itself.

Lael Neale – I Am The River

In reference to the Velvet Underground influence of his track ‘Queen Bitch’, David Bowie wrote about “some white light returned with thanks” on the rear sleeve of the ‘Hunky Dory’ LP. In letting that light break out through the cracks he unleashed a source that filtered into brilliant music for the next fifty years and beyond. It can be heard here too, as there is an irresistible Velvets feel in both look and sound to this brand new Lael Neale track, taken from her forthcoming album ‘Star Eaters Delight’, out April 21, 2023 on Sub Pop Records

Shana Cleveland – Walking Through Morning Dew

Another lush track from the ‘Manzanita’ album which is out now on Hardly Art. Shana is best known as the lead guitarist and vocalist for surf rock band La Luz, she was previously a member of The Curious Mystery but here in 2023, the haunting kaleidoscope of sounds and floating melodies on this solo release make it one that is already bursting with album of the year potential

Lankum – Go Dig My Grave

Lankum seem to have struck a satisfying balance with traditional tunes such as this, whereby they can utilise ancient instruments and songs but invest them with so much real world grit and trauma that they sound nothing at all like museum pieces. As the opening track on their new Rough Trade album ‘False Lankum’ this one packs quite the devastating punch. It is a song that dates back to the 17th century and will be familiar to anyone who has taken a passing interest in folk music as, particularly with the 1960’s generation, it was a mainstay in the repertoire but here, Lankum absolutely syringe every last drop of hurt and pain out of the story before burying you in the most mournful, jarring, unsettling, extended conclusions I have heard in a long time. This is powerful beyond words…

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Fresh Juice

6th March 2023

A half dozen weekly fresh picks of tasty new music…

Theo Croker ft Ego Ella May & D’LEAU – Slowly

The video to this new track, from Theo Croker’s new EP ‘By The Way’ is said to be a ground breaking movement in music and AI. It does have a head spinning effect for sure although at the core is some tasty trumpet playing and sleepy soulful vocals that are, to these ears, cut from a vintage cloth and very fine indeed…

Waco Brothers – In The Dark

This is the first single from The Waco Brothers latest album ‘The Men That God Forgot’ on Plenty Tuff Records. This video features live footage of the song being worked through with a pounding conviction at Kingsize Soundlabs in Chicago where the album was recorded in 2022 with Mike Hagler…

Robert Forster – Always

This is the Brisbane singer-songwriter and Go-Betweens co-founder Robert Forster playing a live acoustic version of the superb ‘Always’, a song from his new and eighth solo album ‘The Candle and The Flame’, at Lightspace in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. The making of the record became a traumatic affair two thirds of the way through when his wife Karin Baumler received a stage four cancer diagnosis. By his own admission she is his most dependable conspirator in the music creative process and so it is so good to hear that, upon completion of the album, the pair are once again playing together, the healing power of music helping Karin navigate the other side of her ordeal…

Big Thief – Vampire Empire

Big Thief continue to spill over with creativity as heard in this clip of them performing a brand new song on the Stephen Colbert Late Show on TV in the US. There is some acid-folk style flute giving this one a delightfully pastoral wave, something which contrasts rather well with the crunchy electric balladry of front woman Adrianne Lenker…

Emiliana Torrini & The Colorist Orchestra – Hilton

Always a treat to get any new music from Emiliana, this is taken from the album “Racing The Storm” set to be released 17th March 2023 via Bella Union…

Gorillaz – Silent Running

Gorillaz are letting their heart wrenchingly beautiful melancholy side come to the fore on this MTV performance of ’Silent Running’ featuring Adeleye Omotayo, from new album ‘Cracker Island’, out now…

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Fresh Juice

27th February 2023

A half dozen weekly fresh picks of tasty new music…

Scott McMicken & THE EVER EXPANDING – What About Now

An irresistible slice of cosmic singer-songwriter fare from McMicken, best known as a founding member of Dr Dog. His solo side projects are generally low key self-releases on cassette or vinyl but for this latest project he has started a band and this mouth watering first taste from the forthcoming ‘Shabang’ album on ANTI suggests an inspired project that may well light up the springtime…

Andrew Bird – Never Fall Apart

Touring this spring, this is a new video offering to accompany another track off of Bird’s ‘Inside Problems’ album, one of our Albums of 2022 and written about here: https://fruit-tree-records.com/2022/12/20/andrew-bird-inside-problems/

Gaidaa – Figures

Soulful songwriter Gaidaa releases her first new music of the year with this infectious tune. Of it she says it is “about the way we as a society can get lost in the sauce of the cyclical and mundane nature of our day-to-day lives. It is a reminder that though we are individuals trying to forge our own path, we will always exist as part of something greater and more meaningful (though we may not realize it)”.

The Arcs – Sunshine

The seeds of The Arcs were first sewn at sessions for what was intended to be a Dan Auerbach solo album sometime in the early 2010’s. By the time Richard Swift was involved they had become an eclectic electric outfit worthy of their own identity to accompany the release of 2015’s acclaimed debut album ‘Yours Dreamily’. Studio work continued whenever schedules from the day-job bands allowed and yet the tragic death of Swift in 2018 threatened to leave this unheard material on the shelf. In 2023 that music has been finished off ready for release on a second album ‘Electrophonic Chronic’ and it certainly shines a light on what a towering talent the music world lost in Richard Swift who, along with the ever inspiring Auerbach, made a full band LP of dizzying variety, a real audio treat far too good to have been left unheard…

Rachel Angel – Baby Can I Come Home To You

Real deal country in action with great song writing at its core, if you like your Americana sounds shot with a dose of Wilco, Neil Young and Bob Dylan by a writer who can also turn her hand to poetry then you would do a lot worse than giving Rachel Angel a listen. The deeper I dive into the musical styles that are typically thought of as traditionally American the more I sense that the US is going through quite a golden period, especially in its roots scenes and yet, you would not always know that if you focus solely on the floaters at the top of the pile, even today it’s underground where the action is…

London Brew – Miles Chases New Voodoo In The Church

Miles Davis’s ‘Bitches Brew’ album has stood the test of time for sure, it still sounds futuristic and ground breaking today which is probably why the cutting edge of the modern London jazz scene see it as ripe for interpretation. Calling themselves London Brew, they are Benji B, Raven Bush, Theon Cross, Nubya Garcia, Tom Herbert, Shabaka Hutchings, Nikolaj Torp Larsen, Dave Okumu, Nick Ramm, Dan See, Tom Skinner and Martin Terefe. This promises to be one of the essential jazz releases of 2023…

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Fresh Juice

20th February 2023

A half dozen weekly fresh picks of tasty new music…

The Courettes – Talking About My Baby

They’re an electrifying garage rocking duo with an irresistible sixties pop sheen and style who head this way in April for a week of dates, buzzing their way down from Glasgow to Portsmouth also crashing in on London, Manchester and Newcastle. Check out this recent single released on Damaged Goods for a taster…

Jeff & Spencer Tweedy – Venus

A day after the sad passing of Television’s Tom Verlaine, Wilco’s main man and son shared this beautifully played cover of the track from the classic 1977 ‘Marquee Moon’ debut album and as Jeff testifies at the end of this clip, Verlaine “changed a lot of the way I look at writing songs and that’s a perfect song”…

Joanne Shaw Taylor – Just No Getting Over You (Dream Cruise)

By now Joanna is established as the real deal in terms of plugged in blues riffing excitement but her late 2022 album ‘Nobody’s Fool’ positively fizzed with the potential to push on to a far wider audience; happily that did not mean sacrificing two key elements, namely great songs and playing them like you mean it. For a glimpse of undiluted conviction watch this…

James Yorkston, Nina Persson & The Secondhand Orchestra – The Harmony

A track from this collective’s recent album ‘The Great White Sea Eagle’ released on Domino; it is not as if James Yorkston needed a lift, his 21st century folk music has been a dependable place to go for at least two decades that I can recall but listening to this musical pairing it does occur that Nina Persson’s voice can elevate absolutely anything she performs…

Marlon Williams – Easy Does It

Not all audience shot live clips posted on the internet are worth bothering with but occasionally you get one like this, captured with a clear picture and passable sound from the front and it gives a nice little taste of a live tour maybe you were unable to catch, in this case Marlon from late 2022 playing a tune off his latest ‘My Boy’ album…

Jonah Yano – Always

Beautiful imagery to match a gorgeous, soul soothing new Jazz tune from Jonah Yano as heard on his new album ‘Portrait Of A Dog’…

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Fresh Juice

13th February 2023

A half dozen weekly fresh picks of tasty new music…

Macho Macho – New Inbetween

Fresh out of New Zealand, this four piece of melodically charged, fuzzy guitar rocking warriors sound like the perfect tonic for a music industry too focused on the carpet crawling, box ticking, soulless middle management wet dream that is the Brit Awards over the past week (good to read about Wet Leg winning though); forget all that poncing and posing, this is the kind of purest attitude that keeps music exciting going forward and who knows, maybe the next wave really is going to rise out of Australasia…

Kevin Morby – Like A Flower

From Morby’s new soundtrack album ‘Music From Montana Story’ is this new video to accompany the release. The film is described as “a neo-western that tells the story of two estranged siblings who return home to the family ranch they once knew and loved, confronting deep and bitter secrets in the process”. Needless to say, new music from this artist never disappoints and Kevin’s writing is predictably superb within a soundtrack context. He has also released new tour dates which include a visit to the UK in June…

Jack White – Icky Thump

2022’s two album releases, ‘Fear Of The Dawn’ and ‘Entering Heaven Alive’, were both stonking, glossy slabs of new music from White (the second of the two was my favourite, it just had a little more of that old time variety that Jack excels in) but still, as this recent live film proves, it remains a thrill whenever he rips into the White Stripes back catalogue…

Sunny War – No Reason

From Nashville and nicknamed Sunny as a child, she removed the final letter of her Ward surname and dived straight into the world of punk and outsider music before arriving at folky/Americana via her capacity for acoustic fingerpicking and a song writing facility harvested from real life, lived experience. Her fifth solo album is called ‘Anarchist Gospel’ and was written after a relationship ended as Sunny was alone in a dark place, marking time until the end of the pairs accommodation lease was expired. If you think that has resulted in a bleak album though you are way off, as heard in this recent live performance, the music composed is both soulful and rich in nuanced writing…

Sophiethehomie – Home Demo

My final pair of selections this week may stretch the term ‘new’ a bit but they fully deserve a share. This track by Florida artist Sophiethehomie has been around for a couple of years, originally available on the ‘Cabin Fever’ EP but it came to my attention last week on a radio show that said it is coming up for a re-release. Either way this is once-heard, forever hooked soul music with some intriguing little production quirks but above all, a pounding funk-drenched heartbeat of a sultry pulse that really grabs you by the ear lobes and holds on tight…

Ezra Collective – Where I’m Meant To Be (LP)

It happens every year, I have a list of my albums of the year then I play a record that I missed during those twelve months and it is instantly apparent that this should also have been in the running. And it is not as if I did not know how brilliant the Ezra Collective are, their jazz based melting pot of grooves and styles has thrilled aplenty in these current glory days of London jazz excitement but there you go, there are only so many hours in the day and this week was the first time I had listened to their most recent album. On this live session for Tiny Desk they played tracks from the record and yes, the rest of it really is as equally wonderous as this mouth watering taster suggests…

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Fresh Juice

23rd January 2023

A half dozen weekly fresh picks of tasty new music…

The WAEVE – Kill Me Again

The WAEVE are Graham Coxon (from Blur) and Rose Elinor Dougall (previously of the Pipettes and various solo guises) together in life and in this, potentially ongoing, musical liaison. They have an eponymous debut album on the way and if this taster is anything to go by, it promises to be a corker…

Dave Rowntree – Devil’s Island

I often think I did well getting into Blur, they are indisputably one of the all time great British bands and since their splintering (although they do reconfigure occasionally, such as for live shows later this year) the solo releases and new projects frequently produce work to match the sounds they made together. And so it is that drummer Dave finally makes his singing debut in 2023 and rather delightfully, he is demonstrating far more than just superb drumming…

Fatoumata Diawara featuring Damon Albarn – Nsera

That this weeks fresh juice can offer a trio of top selections all with Blur connections proves they are still very much forward thinking, creative entities (and you can’t say that about many bands or band members 35 years into their careers). The way Damon Albarn picked up the world music baton this century reminds me of the always ground breaking work my next artist did in the previous one…

Peter Gabriel – Panopticom

It may have taken him twenty years but at least when Gabriel releases an albums worth of new music, which he is due to do in 2023 as well as undertake an arena tour, it is always something worth hearing. There is a value in taking your time although it’s hard to make a strong case for two decades, that’s barely a song a year, but then this is an artist who has always doggedly done things his own way and you have to take your hat off to those individualists, they are a rare breed…

Yazmin Lacey – Late Night People

Yazmin Lacey makes soul music with feeling and a razor sharp, adventurous cutting edge. She has a new album called ‘Voice Notes’ arriving in March and it is one that I have great expectations for, this is an artist that has been producing the goods for a while now and is worth your time and attention…

Lisa O’Neill – Silver Seed

One of the most resonant voices in folk music is releasing a new album called ‘All Of This Is Chance’ in February and it promises to be one of the must hear LP’s of 2023 if the early signs are anything to go by…

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