Tag Archives: Lael Neale

Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 17th November 2025

The Wave Pictures – Alice

As ever the news of a forthcoming Wave Pictures album is gladly received here at Fruit Tree Records. This newly available song is teasing us ahead of a Bella Union album due for release in late February 2026 called ‘Gained / Lost’. It is a classic sounding rocker with that sixties garage energy that almost feels like the bands default setting at this point, shot with the melodious hooks and riffing that David Tattersall can effortlessly deliver in a heartbeat. The music world is surely a better place with a band like The Wave Pictures still putting out exciting new records.

Lael Neale – Some Bright Morning

And talking of sixties flavoured sounds, this new song recently released by Lael Neale is a very welcome burst of vintage pop loveliness shot through with a laid back Velvets like cool. It is full of retro thrills and hazy instrumentation, especially with that omnichord drone, the primitive simplicity of the drums and an occasional burst of backwards guitar soloing, but is also a grooving little banger of a song. As such, it is understandable why the decision was taken not to include it on this years ‘Altogether Stranger’ album, despite being recorded around the same time, but rather hold it back for this pumping stand alone single (another sixties music releasing trend). Check out her tour dates for she is playing live in Europe and the UK at the end of November then early December.

Anna Tivel – Animal Poem

Here is another songwriter on top of her game, this time more in the acoustic troubadour mode but equally injected with the qualities, standards and human touch that lights this style of music up bright. This is the title track from Anna’s latest album released on Fluff And Gravy Records and of the tune she says it is “a meditation on the stories we tell ourselves and each other”. This is her seventh studio LP in a catalogue that is gradually building to showcase Tivel as one of the leading expressionists on the folk, singer-songwriter scene today. Her tunes are just so welcoming in their tone and patterns but stand up to deep engagement thanks to their carefully crafted lyrics and ideas. Anna Tivel is one of the best around today with a guitar and a song.

The Lemonheads – In The Margin

Evan Dando might only return to his Lemonheads music vehicle when he feels like it but at least when they do return it is with songs and a committed approach that makes the wait worthwhile. This remains the rough, warm sound of grunge that took the genre into the charts over thirty years ago but in the hands of a dude proving it is still a style worth revisiting; especially in comparison to some of the reductive metallic tangents rock has taken over the same period, the sound of The Lemonheads retains some soul. The new album is called ‘Love Chant’ and is their first album of original songs since 2006. The grunge essence is undoubtedly enhanced by collaborative legends credited on the LP, such as J Mascis, Juliana Hatfield, Adam Green and Nick Saloman.

Fitzsimon & Brogan – Flowers At Her Door

Every bit as crunching and melodically tasty are this London based power-pop duo, who have released this single through French label Booster Music. Neil Fitzsimon and vocalist Bee Brogan were once a part of the band Pretty Blue Gun but have since gone into partnership with their composing and producing. This is a track that has one foot pounding a glam rock stomp and another wearing laced up DMs kicking out with new wave energy and attitude. It is no surprise therefore to learn that their latest album ‘This Wicked Pantomime’ features contributions from Pete Thomas (Elvis Costello’s Attractions) and Woody Woodmansey (David Bowie’s Spiders From Mars). If you like a bit of grit and thrust with your infectious rock/pop hooks then look no further.

The Wood – Cold Fire

This is one heck of an essential soulful sound, fused with gospel depth, emerging from what feels like a vibrant music scene in Liverpool these days. The Wood are Alex Evans and Steve Powell (who also runs Ark Recording Studios on the city) and the lead vocal well and truly taking you there on this number is performed by guest vocalist Brooke Combe. The song is from a newly issued EP of the same name released on Riverdream Records. Fast becoming highly rated for their stylish blending of soul, jazz and folk influences, this sounds like one of those EPs that, should it not break big like it deserves to, will be a sought after nugget for record (or in this case CD) crate diggers and collectors of the future.

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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 5th May 2025

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…

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Fresh Juice

15th May 2023

Lael Neale – Must Be Tears

From the album ‘Star Eaters Delight’ which is out now on Sub Pop Records. A few of this weeks half dozen recommendations have had tracks featured on earlier Monday editions of ‘Fresh Juice’ this year and Lael Neale is one such repeat name; but I am picking tunes on merit here, so if an artist is constantly dropping great songs that catch the Fruit Tree Records ear, then in they go and this is another winner in my opinion…

CMAT – Whatever’s Inconvenient

Been exposed to Eurovision and fearing for the state of new music? Fear not, there are plenty out there who can present with flair, style, humour and zest whilst remembering the importance of wrapping it around a well written song, as the wonderful CMAT proves once more with this new offering…

Juan Wauters (Ft. Frankie Cosmos) – Modus Operandi

Pushing up the anticipation for a new album from Juan Wauters is this achingly lovely piece of weightlessly elegant acoustic melancholia accompanied here by appropriately disorientating city scenes in the video. This is short but sweet and definitely leaves us wanting more…

Wednesday – Quarry

Already featured once this year with the incredible ‘Chosen To Deserve’, here another stand out track from the album ‘Rat Saw God’, released on Dead Oceans, proves that the abrasive Wednesday sound is absolutely on an upward trajectory with some essential songs punching their way through the fuzz…

Nighttime – Curtain Is Closing

The album ‘Keeper Is The Heart’ was released on Ba Da Bing in January of this year; here this fantastically tranquil tune with an undercurrent of impending doom is accompanied by a suitably gothic film which has been shot with a very effective hazy, vintage shimmer, lovely stuff…

Norah Jones & Anoushka Shankar – Traces Of You

The original studio version of this can be heard on Anoushka’s 2013 album of the same name and it is actually quite a rare treat to see and hear the sisters playing it together. Their individual careers are radically different in style but equally essential in their own right; somehow this collaboration captures the essence of both, this is really lovely indeed…

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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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