Jeffrey Lewis – Sometimes Life Hits You

Here is some welcome new music, accompanied by a UK tour I should add, from a US cult songwriter whose superb DIY aesthetic, whose biting satirical lyrics and observational dexterity, not to mention his effortless facility to grab an earworm melody or hook, has seen his catalogue grow to near iconic status. He is pitched somewhere between the English whimsy of a Robyn Hitchcock or the charming outsider wackiness of a Jonathan Richman without being too much like either. He comes packed with visual stimuli as well thanks to a prolific dedication to creating comic book art. Jeffrey is a one off basically, criminally under-rated to this day but to paraphrase the mans own ‘Cult Boyfriend’, even if he never fully makes it out of the club gig circuit you can guarantee there will always be some people in the know who are really going to love his work. I count myself among them…

Oracle Sisters – Riverside

I was previously writing about this trio on this site in 2023 when their debut record caught my attention thanks to its subtle reliance on quiet melodicism and gentle contours of lift and abandon to grab the listener, rather than more blunt attention grabbing techniques. Later that year I would catch them at the End Of The Road festival and was rather blown away with how their delicate charms could still command the attention of a sizeable crowd and convincingly occupy a large main stage. They are back in 2025 with a new album called ‘Divinations’ and continue to display their deceptively modest musical loveliness here, down on the riverside…

Joy Crookes – I Know You’d Kill

I first encountered Joy Crookes by accident back in 2016 when she was supporting Benedict Benjamin in a small London club venue aged just seventeen. I remember writing back then about how much promise she showed as well as noting an impressively eclectic blend of influences from soul to jazz to hip-hop, all collected up in a joyous melting pot all of her own making. Today Joy continues tapping into a retro soul groove and summoning the vocal style, a little of the attitude too, of Amy Winehouse which is wonderful to hear nine years down the line. How great, not to mention important, it is that there is still space and time for an artist like this to grow and find their own voice. Joy Crookes is really starting to deliver now…

Lael Neale – Tell Me How To Be Here

I have written about the new Lael Neale album over at KLOF Mag a couple of days ago and correctly, I believe, identified it as the must-hear new release of the week. On the record, ‘Altogether Stranger’, this track works as the emotional centrepiece in a dizzying and yet refreshingly concise collection of songs that meditate on various states of belonging and isolation. As before with Lael, the sound is a heady mix of Velvets drone and minimalism with a definite retro pop sheen and an all encompassing shimmer. See exactly what I mean with this…

Blake, Butler & Grant – Bring An End

This new trio of old hands are Bernard Butler, a celebrated guitarist with numerous credits to his name but most notably Suede and McCalmont & Butler in the nineties; Scottish songwriter James Butler, best known for fronting the band Love & Money in the mid-eighties to the nineties and Norman Blake who is, of course, best known as the ever-present front man of Teenage Fanclub. I caught the trio last summer when playing an ear catching set at the Cambridge Folk Festival and noted then how well their newly composed material sat alongside well known hits and covers. This track demonstrates exactly what I was talking about and can be heard on the new self titled album, already released on 355 Recordings…

Alabaster DePlume – Invincibility

Taken from the new ‘A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole’ album and as a complete work it is quite a different beast to what one might expect from a jazz saxophonist. It is far more geared towards the poetic composer and even activism strain of DePlume’s work as the entire album plays like something of a healing mechanism for the troubled modern times we live in. Not quite a protest album, certainly not a political statement but a meditation on the feeling of, well, everything not being quite right with the world and as the title itself ponders, if something is not whole it cannot fulfil its intended purpose. Oh and I probably should warn you, as wonderful as the video below is, it is definitely a bit of a heartbreaker so tread carefully…