Tag Archives: Kelley Stoltz

Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 25th May 2026

Alela Diane – Dusty Roses

On her new album, ‘Who’s Keeping Time?’ which was written in the quiet daytime hours of her 1892 Victorian attic, Alela Diane carries the unhurried clarity that arrived when domestic life finally softened around her. Reconnecting with Portland’s creative community, trading guitar lessons with Peter Lalish, sharing tea with Anna Tivel, she found herself easing back into music with a renewed sense of intuition and belonging. That spirit of stillness and rediscovery runs through ‘Dusty Roses,’ just as the accompanying video leans into the family relations that have shaped Alela’s life and progression towards the creation of this wonderful latest record. You can read the Fruit Tree Records full length review here: https://fruit-tree-records.com/2026/05/21/alela-diane-whos-keeping-time/ The album is available to purchase here: https://amzn.to/49NjIc0

Teddy Thompson – Come Back

For Teddy Thompson, songwriting is a kind of magic, the truth in a line either resonates or it does not, and on his new album he writes with a candour that leaves little doubt about its source. These songs have a conviction, as if pulled straight from lived experience, heartbreak sketched in real time as he tries to stay afloat in shifting emotional tides. Opener ‘Come Back’ sets the scene with stark immediacy: a folk‑rock plea from a man reckoning with absence, its lonely verses breaking open into a burst of conflicted longing that captures love’s contradictions with disarming clarity. You can read the Fruit Tree Records full length review of the album here: https://fruit-tree-records.com/2026/05/14/teddy-thompson-never-be-the-same/ You can buy the album here: https://amzn.to/4wOAMIy

Aja Monet – Working Class Musicians

There are a multitude of overlapping tones and templates enveloping the music of Aja Monet, who has just released a wonderful new album called ‘The Color Of Rain.’ She has the pizazz of a street poet lyrically navigating a sound that flies between avant-garde jazz to bluesy soul without ever truly settling in one place, Aja’s style is free in the most literal musical sense of the word. She emerged from New York’s Lower East Side spoken‑word scene as a prodigious talent, later becoming a Grammy‑nominated poet and a genre‑defying artist capable of incorporating improvisation, and political imagination. Now, with years of global performance, acclaimed writing, and community‑rooted activism feeding her muse we encounter ‘Working Class Musician,’ another testament to her commitment to resistance, collective memory, and the lived realities that inform her art. You can buy the album here: https://amzn.to/4dYQlWF

Kelley Stoltz – Not Gone

Kelley Stoltz has long carved his own lane in American underground pop, a DIY lifer whose refusal to play the industry game only adds to the mans appeal. His nineteenth album, ‘If You Don’t Know Me, Buy Now,’ leans into that maverick streak, hook‑laden and witty in a way that is unmistakably Kelley’s. ‘Not Gone’ channels the muscular pulse of his Echo & the Bunnymen years, its pounding drive a reminder of how deftly he reshapes his influences into something singular. This is Stoltz at full voltage: sharp‑edged, melodic, and proof that his creative spark remains alive and kicking. You can read the full Fruit Tree Records review at: https://fruit-tree-records.com/2026/05/15/kelley-stoltz-if-you-dont-know-me-buy-now/ The album will be purchasable, when it gets a full release, from this link: https://amzn.to/4nMYAsd

Jasmine Myra – Likeness And Shadow

Jasmine Myra’s music on new album ‘Where Light Settles’ is built on duality; precision and fluidity, complexity and immediacy, pain and growth. It is her third album and finds the artist fully stepping into her own orbit, expanding her ensemble language into something more cinematic and deeply attuned to life’s bruises and revelations. ‘Likeness and Shadow’ captures that balance beautifully: a piece that blooms from propulsive bass into sun‑dappled movement, its sax and piano lines gliding like light through trees. It is Myra displaying assuredness, translating emotional weather into sound with grace, clarity, and a radiant sense of hope. You can read the full Fruit Tree Records album review here: https://fruit-tree-records.com/2026/05/19/jasmine-myra-where-light-settles/ You can buy the album via this link: https://amzn.to/4dJzHsK

The Waterboys – Don’t Even Have To Say His Name

This is a brilliant new stand alone single from The Waterboys, released on Chrysalis Records, finding Mike Scott in fiercely political form. Written as a direct response to the current U.S. climate, Scott calls it a stand against bullying and a contribution to the wider struggle for decency and democracy. Produced by Puck Fingers and Famous James, the track pairs Scott’s targeted vocal assault with piano, organ, bass, and drums, building a sharp, urgent critique without needing to name its all too obvious target. Arriving ahead of the archival ‘Atlantic Rain’ set and a major arena tour, it is the sound of The Waterboys still burning in 2026. Find the new track here: https://amzn.to/4a5MvZm

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New Release Reviews

Kelley Stoltz – If You Don’t Know Me, Buy Now

I dare say there are many artists who claim disinterest in the mechanics of the music business, but few walk it like they talk it as much as Kelley Stoltz. The irony, of course, is that his refusal to play the game only makes him more compelling. If the pun‑heavy album title did not tip you off, the lead track and first single, ‘Competitive Bastard,’ certainly does; this is a groovy shrug from a musician who has long since stopped chasing exposure and instead makes records for his own delight and fulfilment. Walking this line feels like child’s play these days and he carries himself like a man who knows it, producing work with the maverick flare and caustic wit of a true individualist outsider, albeit one that would surely occupy a mainstream habitat were all fair and just in the checks and balances of the music world. ‘Turn The Earth’ is another one that carves a space between pop exuberance (it has a crazy descending ping-pong-ping-pong hook that could be straight out of children’s TV) and something far heavier. So much so that when you hear lines like “should we live in terror? Should we live in peace? Should we live for something that we can’t even see?” it all feels a little like gallows humour.

Kelley Stoltz has spent nearly three decades carving out one of the most idiosyncratic paths in American underground pop. Born in New York in 1971 and raised in Michigan, he emerged in late‑’90s San Francisco with a home‑recorded blend of psych shimmer, garage‑rock grit, and melodic classicism that instantly marked him as a true DIY outlier. Across a deep run of releases for Sub Pop, Third Man, and Castle Face, he has become known for playing almost everything himself, folding the tuneful precision of ’60s pop architects into the off‑kilter charm of cult ’80s power‑pop and new wave. After his eighteenth album, 2024’s ‘La Fleur,’ Stoltz returns with this nineteenth LP that extends a long‑running fascination with hooks, texture, and late‑night introspection. Guests include Brigid Dawson, Karina Denike, Pete Straus, Allyson Baker and others add vocal colour, but the vision remains singular. A favourite of Brooklyn Vegan and John Dwyer, Stoltz has also logged time as Echo & the Bunnymen’s rhythm guitarist (a connection that can be heard clearly on the pounding ‘Not Gone’), serves as Robyn Hitchcock’s West Coast drummer, and currently hosts KEXP’s Bay Area spotlight show ‘Vinelands.’

This is definitely a record that leans heavily into Kelley’s wry humour and vulnerable undercurrent while reaffirming his reputation as a pop chameleon, forever reshuffling his influences into something unmistakably his own. That is especially apparent on ‘Watts Moon Starr’ which manages to fuse college rock, early indie, electro pop vocal mechanics and retain its rustic garage rock edge all rolled up into a mass that is unmistakeably Stoltz like. Chart hits of the eighties do actually bleed into Stoltz’ sound increasingly these days (maybe there is enough time between the pop world of his teenage years that it no longer is something to react against?) which can be heard in the Numanoid tension of both ‘Seventeen Lines’ and ‘Look Again.’ The latter of these two is one of the standout pop moments on the whole album. ‘Daughter Of The Golden West’ has Britpop energy and a rather Jarvis Cocker-like lilt in Kelley’s voice appears, a similarity that once you spot it seems to crop up repeatedly, which is no bad thing, Kelley having a similarly engaging delivery that leaves room for extravagant flourishes. There is no let-up in pace or drop in sonic thrills as we progress, ‘Radio Station’ is wispy like the airwaves it sings of while ‘Queen Of Diamonds’ brilliantly fuses a glam-rock stomp to vintage sixties psych vibes. Closing on ‘The Aches & Pains Of Middle Age’ Kelley sounds acerbic with lines like “I played on a famous stage to nobody,” but it all merely reinforces how much brilliance gets overlooked; but for those tuned in, this smaller corner of the musical world feels like the richer one anyway.

Danny Neill

You can get yourself a physical copy or download of the new Kelley Stoltz album here and it will not be available to stream until September, so don’t wait that long, let’s give the artist and label the taste of the action they deserve and purchase it this way: https://dandyboyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/if-you-dont-know-me-buy-now

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