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Live Reviews

Tanita Tikaram – Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, 16th November 2025

It is a lush concert hall location that tonight presents the Southeast of England instalment of Tanita Tikaram’s tour in support of her new album ‘LIAR (Love Isn’t A Right).’ This is a theatre setting that combines the grandeur of a concert hall recital, wherein the sublime acoustics are especially delightful, yet with a capacity of 740 seats retains an ability to encourage some intimacy between audience and artist. Whilst the overall impression of the venue is one of traditional design and construction there is an enveloping modern sheen too which, rather aptly, is also something that can be said of Tanita Tikaram’s music in 2025. These days she is some 37 years advanced from the diffidently bopping folksy songwriter that really did storm the UK pop charts all those years ago. Today Tanita is a wonderfully matured individualistic songwriter and singer whose sound demands the kind of attention and presentation this type of venue invites.

Tonight’s concert is a masterclass in baroque chamber pop, a fine grain of distinctly English music that can be heard in the most acclaimed art pop ever made (think ‘Eleanor Rigby’) and is also a key element in the celebrated high water marks of the 20th century singer-songwriter boom (think Nick Drake). That Tanita is tuned in to her musical vital ingredients extends to some fine song choices by other artists placing her in the realms of a connoisseur. In fact, it is a song by Nick Drake’s mother Molly that supplies the new albums title track and a sufficiently weighty melancholy as to appear handwritten for her latest set of songs. That same motivation to put the music first extends to this evenings live performance during which the star attraction is happy to occasionally disappear as a quarter component in a four-piece ensemble. Her first encore number is an exquisite cover of John Martyn’s ‘May You Never’ during which Tanita hands a substantial portion of the lead vocal over to cellist Zosia Jagodzinska. She is also proud to highlight her longtime violinist Helen O’Hara on a poised duo rendition of oldie ‘Valentine Heart’ (a song which the writer confesses was written about romantic love before she had any personal experience of such a thing). She also gives compositional kudos to drummer Marc Pell on the new ‘Sweet Feather And The Storm’, describing it as being born out of a jam between herself and the percussion maestro.

For me, one major positive take away from tonight’s concert was that the vast majority of those in attendance wanted to hear the music from the new album as much as the oldies. In fact, a spontaneous cheer erupted when the singer announced that this latest album would be the main focus. I highlight this because I have long been of the opinion that Tanita’s work has developed and grown into something quite wonderful over the years. I would particularly emphasise that her most recent albums are her best, so the necessity she feels to include a lot of material from that 1988 debut ‘Ancient Heart’ feels a little less essential to me. A curious thing seemed to happen back then, we saw a whole crop of talented female folk leaning singers emerge and enjoy significant chart success; this included people like Tracy Chapman, Michelle Shocked and Eddi Reader’s Fairground Attraction who all had their biggest mainstream success that year, despite carrying on to enjoy lengthy careers making increasingly wonderful music. Tanita has arguably suffered the most from an association with one specific era, but quite why this should be the case for any of the above is hard to pinpoint. Maybe the giant musical sea changes that swept aside the 1980s, the arrivals of dance, grunge, Britpop and the like, caused an avalanche of fresh excitement relegating the class of ’88 to the margins? If so, we are fortunate today that Tanita Tikaram still found a pathway to nurturing her writing and evolving to the sweet spot we find her in today.

So, in Saffron Walden we are treated to primarily music from 1988’s ‘Ancient Heart’ album and 2025’s ‘LIAR’. That acoustic guitar strumming nearly-dancer of yore is still in there, pleasing the one person rising to their feet to groove along with ‘Good Tradition’ every bit as much as I was spellbound by the cold punch and empty ache of ‘Lover Don’t Come Around.’ Some of her youthful offerings have aged extremely well, ‘World Outside Your Window’ nowadays has the elegance of a folk-pop standard while ‘Twist In My Sobriety’, with a trembly faster tempo, remains a darkly enigmatic song of which the singer herself admits “I have no idea what it’s about, and I wrote it”. To my eyes and ears though, she appears far more at home when seated at the piano facing her bandmates, wearing an inviting expression to get lost in this music. It is met with interest too, as Tanita picks the beautiful piano melody on ‘This Perfect Friend,’ the strings and percussion first smoulder then erupt into a whirlwind of bittersweet elegance. Equally a cover of ‘Wild Is The Wind’ (also performed on the album), which she acknowledges is inspired by the Nina Simone version, is absolutely mesmerising. Tanita closes the night at the piano too, lifting ‘I See A Morning’ from ‘LIAR’ and re-contextualising it as a soulful, gospel adjacent hymn to the hope ushered in at the dawning of a new day. It brings an end to a thoroughly immersive evening of music and underlines the point that, even if Tanita Tikaram hit a commercial peak four decades back, this has not impeded her pathway to an artistic peak in the present day. I believe she has realised just that and if you have not done so already, urge you to rediscover her work.

Words Danny Neill  Photos Sophie Reichert

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Live Reviews

Tiger Lillies – Wilton’s Music Hall, London 1st November 2025

Just as the extremities of freezing cold can feel like burning, so too when a musical act plummets the depths of death, drugs, doom and despair so thoroughly they uncover light, irony, absurdity and humour, albeit of the gallows variety. The Tiger Lillies delight in the underbellies of life, they dig a pathway to empathy for the downtrodden and tap into the shattered beauty of the broken. Playing songs from their new ‘Serenade From The Sewer’ album, alongside a smattering of older catalogue classics, the pictures they paint of London pavement dwellers are vividly brought to life. Singer Martyn wrote these latest songs whilst reflecting about the pre-yuppie city life he saw from his window after first moving to Soho in the 1980s. He says the drug dealers, prostitutes, addicts and gangsters recall “a happy time for me. But it was tragic for many of the people I knew and watched from my window.” And so it is that a song about suicide, complete with sonic imagery embellishments like a theremin volt of electrocution, ends tonight with audience laughter. At the songs close our narrator reflects on his age and the decision not to end it all by his own hand with the deadpan words, “I remembered I will die soon anyway.”

The Tiger Lillies have absolutely landed in the right space for the launch of their new LP, performing a long run of shows at East London’s oldest surviving Victorian music hall. With its exposed brickworks and timber galleries, this unique location is alive with ghosts of the past, its decadence evoking the spirit of the late 19th century era when the music hall and cabaret was enjoying its imperial boomtime. And much like the Tiger Lillies themselves, the place is reheating the flavour of an era long consigned to the history books. In fact, Wilton’s, named in 1859 after John Wilton took ownership of the site and transformed it into an entertainment venue, had spent the second half of the twentieth century in disrepair, coming close to demolition. And yet the turn of this century saw a restoration leading to revival and with their tombstone cabaret lurching forward onstage from the shadows, the Tiger Lillies presence feels like a perfect marriage of performer and situation. They take to the stage with this Saturday night audience hungry for musical stimuli presented with a unique theatricality, they are met head on by a band who appear to have absorbed every last drop of learned performance experience from the departed souls who stepped these boards in decades past.

They are a three-piece consisting of central leader and composer Martyn Jacques, these days a judicial presence in the eye of the storm, performing mostly perched on a stall with accordion or hunched over his upright piano kneading mournful serenades. His writing has a canorous classicism to it, something which spectacularly enhances the cabaret element of his band. Then there is Adrian Stout on double bass, theremin and musical saw (for me one of the saddest sounding of all hand tools). He is simultaneously dapper and as menacing as an apparition emerging your wardrobe. His playing is both a low-end back bone for the ensemble and a veritable buffet of spookily, textural frills and adornments. Adrian’s presence is authoritative, which is in stark contrast to drummer Budi Butenop, who is the living embodiment of the joke about people who hang around with musicians. His stage presence is that of a man who needs to prove himself and is suffering for his art, to the extent that he can look panic stricken by and increase in tempo and fearful of a lull. In reality his playing is a masterclass in rhythmic performance art, to the extent that towards the end of a superb crash bang wallop of a drum solo, a silently observing Martyn and Adrian are almost purring with looks of approval.

Even though this trio’s style is macabre and surreal, they impossibly manage to mine disparate influences such as opera and the outsider art of cutting edge of punk. This is not to say they are aggressive, but the chilling white face paint they all adorn does give them an unsettling presence. It is a shield that makes The Tiger Lillies rather impenetrable, so they are free to express themselves within their dark ballads, waltzes and shanties of morbidity and doom. The intensity of Jacques is offset by the menacing falsetto of his singing voice, which is a tricky mannerism to maintain but he pulls in his classical training as a countertenor to execute a pitch that can slice a crowd in two with its conviction. These are songs that delight in the grotesque, they swim in a sea of morbid alienation and irrationality. The effect on an audience of desperate narratives rising up from the stench of the sewers, delivered by a senior man imitating the exaggerated voice of a Victorian child, can raise your hairs just as it sends shivers.

In tandem with the nightmarish horrors is a counterbalance of comedy too. Drummer Budi is something of a court jester, especially with the variety of clownish expressions he pulls. Tonight, a mobile phone goes off in an unfortunately quieter moment and he does not miss a beat in reacting with a look of sudden bemusement. Then when standing in front of his kit with a washboard around his neck, the body language is hilariously exaggerated naughty-step misery. Adrian too is an expert in the art of smiling insincerity and when both he and Budi join in forced falsetto backing vocals, repeating the refrain “stupid,” it is like we have entered the surrealist realms of a Hammer Horror musical on ice. Of course, amongst the older tunes played tonight the band play arguably their most notorious song ‘Heroin.’ With its “if you want to win, take heroin” centre piece lyric, it is a grand example of both irony and pathos being rolled into a gloriously infectious musical singalong. Later however, seated at the piano, Martyn Joseph lays bare all the human empathy and yearning for light at the heart of his writing with ‘Birds Are Singing In Ukraine.’ This 2023 hymn to the beauty of nature, overwhelmed by destruction from invaders, shows unwavering defiance amidst devastation. It does not deny the horrors but clings to hope, in so doing revealing the one facet of the Tiger Lillies music that is mostly submerged but is key to their vitality and clout; a sensitive character guides this band with heart and soul. Martyn does not need to end the song with a four letter send off to Putin, but he does so because he has a feel for theatre. He can sense that the Tiger Lillies have played this room like the modern-day vaudeville master’s they undoubtedly are, small wonder this crowd tonight demanded two standing ovation encores.

Words: Danny Neill Pictures: Sophie Reichert

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Live Reviews

Kathryn Williams – Cambridge Junction 6th October 2025

Kathryn Williams is touring her latest album ‘Mystery Park’ right now and it is a record lyrically woven with family and relations. Responding to the intimate ambience of her stage tonight, she is relaxed enough to share some details of the subject matters and the ideas that sparked many of the numbers into life. It has long been a chestnut for singer-songwriters to let confessions and real-life tales inform their music but thus far, in her quarter century plus career, Williams has shown a good deal more versatility than mere life ruminations. She has put out music inspired by Sylvia Plath for example, or an entire record of fictional hits from the perspective of a character in a Laura Barnett novel, so there is a strong writer’s mentality at play here. But, for the moment at least, feelings about ageing relatives and reflections on her past two decades as a parent seem to be the focus and I can sense there is a lot of empathy amongst her audience. I especially found one story about her teenage son exploring his own music tastes and sharing discoveries particularly relatable. I am certain I have taken the gloss off of my own children’s past selections simply by revealing that I am aware of the act in question and enjoy their music. Kathryn had a similar moment when her son’s excitement about finding Adrianne Lenker was dampened by his mother’s admission to loving her band Big Thief. Aside from the delightful story though, it also gave Williams an excuse tonight to play a gorgeous cover of that bands lilting ‘Change.’

‘Mystery Park’ features music that encourages William’s use of responsive studio arrangement and dramatic sonics. However, this is definitely a tour with a bare bones, stripped back aesthetic. The Junction’s seated room is a perfect situation for appreciating music of delicacy and reflection. Kathryn is accompanied only by guitarist Matt Deighton whose six string embellishments are subtle but vital too, he has a modest assuredness in his deep playing. Matt also happens to be the support act, his own music career stretching back even further than Kathryn’s to the Acid Jazz days of the early nineties. In fact, he has been an enigma over the years, the excellence of his music at odds with an apparent aversion to anything resembling self-promotion. He stumbles onstage tonight as if the idea that he might play some songs to this audience using the guitar he happens to be carrying had only just occurred. A few numbers later he ambles back offstage like a man realising he was only looking for the toilets before. Nevertheless, what happened in between mesmerized the audience despite efforts to throw us off with comments like “does anyone know these songs? I don’t.” They are acoustic ballads in name but, thanks to Matt’s background in soul and jazz alongside an all too obvious crate diggers passion for blending genre, they are fuelled with a warm natural energy. He caresses chord progressions that defy predictable resolutions and sings in a croaky upper register exhaling a soulful grit. In one restrained burst of ad-hoc playing Matt Deighton proves the reputation he acquired over the years has risen from a rare gift. It almost feels like had he ever pushed himself too proactively it would have been too much talent for the music industry to cope with, maybe all that modest self-effacement is a necessary defence mechanism?

Of course, the same could be said of Kathryn Williams. She is revealing a lot of personal matter, especially in these new songs. Introducing ‘Tender’ she wonders if there is anyone in the crowd who feels this way too, sounding like she would have a pitying understanding for individuals who are feeling too much, overwhelmed by the heightened responses their own senses inflict upon their emotions. Sharing stories about her father’s dementia and the dizzying effect parenthood can inflict upon your perception of time, it is reasonable to assume in different hands these subjects might become heavy going. But Kathryn has, from her earliest years, been a writer with a great ear for a melody and a reliable sense of the stirring touch a song requires to be both listenable and relatable. The angelic elevation in the chorus line of ‘Sea Of Shadows’ is a great example of this facility, it is a beautiful work that begins with recollections of her young child’s dressing up but then that refrain is ethereal, most writers cannot construct a beautiful lift in song like that. And the other thing Kathryn possesses is a deceptively powerful voice, do not be fooled by that gentle whispery front, this is a vocalist who can hold a room. Tonight, the material is almost entirely built around the new ‘Mystery Park’ album. Sometimes crowds hope for more older selections but with an artist like this, forming a live relationship with new material that also happens to be amongst her best, these are the shows that leave a special memory. They close on ‘Personal Paradise,’ a new song painting a picture of a domestic trauma that reaches for some abrasion in the arrangement. The singers mellotron is judiciously hypnotic whilst Matt detonates some violent electric fuzz to slice the serenity, but the previous ninety minutes of Kathryn Williams songcraft had already supplied more than enough fireworks to send us home wholly satisfied.

Words: Danny Neill Photos: Sophie Reichert

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Old Fruit

Old Fruit 27th June 2025

The Waterboys – When Ye Go Away

As it is Glastonbury weekend I thought it topical to share a few of the Fruit Tree Records Glastonbury favourites from over the years for this weeks vintage selection. The Waterboys are an act whose free flowing, boundary tumbling, questing romantic spirit have summed up the essence of Glastonbury over the decades and they are knitted into the fabric of the festivals history as well as my own back pages with the event. For it was in 1994 (my debut year as a Glastonbury attendee) that Mike Scott roamed the site, his Waterboys band not booked to play as the man himself was about to embark on a solo project gear change, but he made his presence felt all the same by popping up unannounced on at least two occasions playing old Waterboys classics, as here when he played with ex-Waterboy Sharon Shannon on a timeless masterpiece from the ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ album.

Johnny Cash – Folsom Prison Blues

Another 1994 memory, this was probably the seed of the Sunday lunchtime main stage line-up position that would later be branded the ‘legends slot’. I remember clearly dozing with my friends in the Sunday afternoon sun wondering whether to bother sticking around for Johnny Cash then being absolutely floored by the mans sheer stage presence and star aura. I knew little of the man and his music before he came onstage, my musical education was about to get a serious injection.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Red Right Hand

If bands were to follow a guideline for guaranteed Glastonbury success it might say on page one play a hits set, this is not the place to audience test the new record that has not been released yet. Back in 1998 the current Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds release was a ‘best of’ compilation and so their festival set reflected this, although the legendary status of the performance might also be down to the band being at the very peak of their powers at this time. This would have been the occasion Nick Cave has spoken about where he met Bob Dylan backstage, receiving warm praise from the elder statesman for his musical output. There is no BBC film footage of the Dylan set, the nineties being a time when bigger names could opt out of television coverage.

R.E.M. – It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

R.E.M. came on the mainstage as headliners in 1999 with a point to prove. Their most recent album ‘Up’ had not performed as well as expected and so the initial statement that there would not be a tour around the album was revised and 1999 saw them return to the stage with punch and purpose. I do not have many memories of being down the front at gigs, my height normally sees me settling for a further back position, but this was one occasion where I felt the moment and was drawn closer to the source. R.E.M. are one of my top three all time favourite bands and this was one Glastonbury headline slot with everything I had hoped for, a legendary band seizing the moment and delivering the goods.

David Bowie – Rebel Rebel

If you were a TV viewer of the festival in the first ten years of TV coverage you were at the mercy of the broadcaster’s choice of stages and acts to cover. The iPlayer control that enables us all to explore and select as we would if attending was some way off and this was never more frustratingly felt, for me, than in 2000 when all us viewers were aware that David Bowie was playing a mouth watering headline slot on the main stage as we tuned in, but the BBC only offered us short excerpts from his set, no direct live broadcast as you would have reasonably expected. Instead they kept cutting to Bassment Jaxx on the other stage, an alternative selection that did not, could not, meet with the viewers expectations. The dance based duo looked like they knew this as well, appearing to be a little too crouched behind their mixing desk as their dancers took care of stage craft and the Jaxxees (as they would later be known thanks to Primal Scream) pepper sprayed us with generic bland dance toss. In the subsequent years Bowie’s set attained a near legendary status, if only the TV audience could have shared in that euphoria live in real time too.

The White Stripes – Hotel Yorba

The excitement that was exploding around the White Stripes at this time is, I think, tangibly captured in this Glastonbury performance of 2002. At a time when indie was starting to head for the landfill and dance was repetitively beating itself into a stupor, it took a stripped back duo playing the electric blues to ignite the scene with something fresh and vital. This TV exposure could have been the first time many in the UK caught a glimpse of Jack and Meg but they were ready to take you down by this stage, no questions asked

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Old Fruit

Old Fruit 20th June 2025

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong – Summertime

For this week’s half dozen vintage music selections I just had to opt for a summer theme what with the heatwave that is currently bathing the UK in a hot, bright, sticky, perspiring glow. My opening jump back is a jazz standard taken from the Porgy & Bess musical as performed here by a pair of the genres 20th century masters and OK, the video may not sync with the recording but sometimes, as is the case here, the song cannot be omitted simply because I cannot find a bit of film archive.

The Surfaris – Wipe Out

For me the optimum sound of summer, in the same way that the ultimate sound of Christmas will always be heard in the production of Phil Spector’s Christmas album, is surf music. This instrumental from 1963 is one of the best, that wave riding electric guitar twang just does not ring quite the same in the winter months, this is the kind of sizzling hot playing that could send even the non-swimmers out there diving for the rolling waves atop a surf board.

Bedazzled – Summer Song

Back in the 1990s ‘Landfill Indie’ (the necessary catch all term coined by the music press in the 2010’s to lump together all the uninspired guitar posing bands yelping their generic uninspired toss into a bucket) was not a thing, in fact many lower league indie bands were churning out little bittersweet guitar pop nuggets such as this summer-themed gem, from the soon to be forgotten and barely even registering at the time but no less worthy and ripe for rediscovery, Bedazzled.

The Duckworth Lewis Method – The Age Of Revolution

I grew up with the increasingly outdated idea that football was the winter sport and cricket the summer. Now that football has crept into the summer months too these seasonal dividing lines are all but obsolete but cricket remains, in the UK and a few other (but not enough) countries, synonymous with the warmer months. How wonderful was it that a band specifically dedicating their entire musical output in honour of the sport should arrive? Especially as the creative figureheads were supreme songsmiths from other guises, namely the Divine Comedy and the criminally under-rated Pugwash. This is a full and direct inswinger that definitively hits the stumps.

Ben Folds Five – Where’s Summer B?

This one is presented as a lo-fi filmed clip but if you are unfamiliar with the original version on the Ben Folds Five debut album I urge you to check out this aching, Billy Joel style, peach of a song. Sometimes, the juxtaposition of a yearning lyric with a warm summery sound can hit the senses hard, this great summer song is one such example.

Bruce Springsteen – Girls In Their Summer Clothes

It is not as if I was previously unaware but I have to admit, over the past month I have been taking a real deep dive into the masterful songwriting of Bruce Springsteen. I know he is a massive mainstream artist but I do believe he remains a little under-rated, at least in terms of how great a writer and performer he as always been. This summer song is a case in point, rarely listed as one of his classics but how often do pop/rock songs convey in lyric and tone exactly what they want to say as devastating and potently as this? Not often enough, this is one of genuinely hundreds of prefect songs that has risen from the hand of Bruce Springsteen.

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Old Fruit

Old Fruit 13th June 2025

Brian Wilson – I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times

How could this weeks vintage selection of tunes be anything other than a toast to those who are gone in 2025 following a handful of days when the world has lost the genius of Brian Wilson and Sly Stone? Brian may have shone brightest in the sixties when he was still in full command of his natural, musically articulate, talent and imagination but that has long since proven to be a light that will never go out, such was the indelible impact of the sounds he created. There were few contemporaries that The Beatles acknowledged a competitive, respectful empathy towards but, alongside Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson was undoubtedly a prime source of peer group inspiration and his loss to the world of music will only begin to be appreciated now the book is finally closed on his life’s work.

Sly & The Family Stone – Dance To The Music

Lost to the world the same week, another iconic performer and visionary whose period at the top of his game was frustratingly brief. However, the fusion of soul and R&B that kicked the doors of funk down to the ground, not to mention the ahead-of-the-game multi-cultural ethos pounded relentlessly by the Sly Stone led Family Stone surely paved the way for everything soul and electro became over the ensuing fifty years; that funky train cannot be stopped and will never be silenced.

Marianne Faithfull – Vagabond Ways

Most of the obituaries for Marianne focused on her orthodoxy shaking breakthrough in the sixties and her not always so clean-cut connections to the Rolling Stones, it is worth remembering however that she never let go of music as a creative, expressive outlet. Indeed on cuts like this one from 1999, she did a lot to reinforce her perceived public image with songs of this ilk that only served to add to the legend.

Max Romeo – Wet Dream

Arguably the greatest thing about Max Romeo’s classic ‘Wet Dream’ from 1969 was Max’s attempts to explain the clean, innocent meaning of the song years later. You see, according to Max the song had nothing to do with sex and the chorus line “lie down girl let me push it up, push it up” were merely an instruction to his female companion to take cover while he pushed his finger to the ceiling to repair a leaking roof. I’m in full agreement with Max, the song could have been about no other scenario.

Roberta Flack – Compared To What

Her two massive hits ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ and ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ quite rightly dominated the reverential chat and legacy surrounding Roberta but there was a lot more to admire in this piano pounding, gospel infused, soul powerhouse as this clip of her tearing into the opening track on her debut album surely attests.

Bill Fay – The Never Ending Happening

Bill received a welcome and deserved late career resurrection in which his mellow, richly detailed songwriting enjoyed a 21st century renaissance, a second coming that is all to rare in the music industry. That said, he remains one of the big names among the record collecting community thanks to the scarcity and £100+ rated value of his 1967 Deram label b-side ‘Screams In The Ears’ which has enough timelessness to indelibly stand as one of the essential slices of freakbeat period British psychedelia.

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Old Fruit

Old Fruit 5th June 2025

Pentangle – Travelling Song

The favourite new album release at Fruit Tree Records this week is the Lavinia Blackwall ‘The Making’ record and so, in honour of its acid-folk splendour, here are another half dozen cherries of a similar ilk picked from that late 60s/early 70s period that Lavinia draws so much inspiration from. Top of the pile are Pentangle whose magnificent melange of influences created music that was a fusion of jazz and folk with a worldly wise outlook that transcends the era in which it is forever connected.

Fotheringay – Too Much Of Nothing

Sandy Denny’s first post-Fairport Convention project was this band, Fotheringay, who were only around long enough to release one album in their lifetime. Consequently, film footage is scarce which makes the excellent colour quality of this clip even more special. Undoubtedly it was Sandy who was the star presence in this combo and personally, I would pick her ‘Nothing More’ composition about former Fairport colleague Richard Thompson as the real standout track but this version of a Bob Dylan tune, taken from his at the time unreleased ‘Basement Tapes’, is a fine take with Trevor Lucas on lead vocals.

The Incredible String Band – Painting Box

The Incredibles were the most psychedelic of all the acid-folk brigade, both in terms of their multi-coloured sartorial elegance, the far-out nature of their approach and the apparent full embracing of hippie ideals and lifestyle. Their music too could stretch and weave way beyond all normal boundaries of song structure, occasionally flying close to the brink of collapse but always somehow magically holding together to form something unique, confusing and often beautiful. This is one of their lovelier melodic moments, performed with Julie Felix on her TV show, of a track that featured on the 1967 LP ‘The Five Thousand Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion’.

Renaissance – Can You Understand?

If the Incredibles represented the more psych end of the acid-folk spectrum then Renaissance leaned towards an exploration of the classical elements in their sound, especially as they were in the first few years of their existence. The original line-up featured two former members of the Yardbirds, Jim McCarty and Keith Relf alongside Keith’s sister Jane on vocals. However, for Renaissance, it would only be after wholesale personnel changes, including the introduction of Annie Haslem on vocals as featured here, that would push them to wider recognition and chart success, most notably on ‘Northern Lights’, a massive hit later in the decade.

Magnet – Willow’s Song

Perhaps the defining song of the whole acid-folk movement of the era, this was played and recorded by a band who were not really a band at all in the truest sense, more like a group of musicians assembled for the purpose of recording the soundtrack to the 1973 dark cult classic film ‘The Wicker Man’. Starring Edward Woodward and Britt Ekland, it is remembered for its use in an erotic scene where Ekland’s character Willow sings to Woodward’s Neil Howie seductively through the wall of an adjacent room. The music for the film was actually arranged, scored and partly composed by Paul Giovanni.

Richard & Linda Thompson – I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

Richard & Linda’s 1974 album of the same name is one of the essential releases in UK folk-rock of any period, not just the early seventies. The live TV clip here is admittedly not a patch on the original studio version but film footage of the duo is not exactly in plentiful supply and therefore is offered up as the features are about showing performances, where possible, as much as hearing them. The song is about as upbeat as the pair would ever get whilst still retaining some of Richard’s trademark doom, even if it is merely in the sense that this night on the tiles is bound to have a messy ending. My first introduction to their work came in 1999 when John Peel played this song on the radio, continuing to say something along the lines of “anybody interested in music should listen to Richard Thompson”. Well, yes indeed!

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Old Fruit

Old Fruit 30th May 2025

Supergrass – Lenny

It feels like there is a lot of Britpop nostalgia in the air right now, what with the really creditable return of Pulp, the upcoming Oasis reunion concerts and frequent references to 30th anniversary landmarks of notable 1995 Britpop releases. The Supergrass debut album is one that I have repeatedly heard included in the conversation these past few days and quite rightly so, it really did seem to cement the notion that something was happening with all these guitar bands enjoying high profile pop chart hits. Guitar bands of the indie scene were clearly nothing new in 1995, but it can be argued the other high flyers were tangibly born out of other movements. Blur were riding on the coat tails of indie-dance and shoegaze in 1991, Oasis were indisputably indebted to the flowery end of the Madchester scene of Stone Roses with a sprinkle of Merseyside throwbacks The La’s whilst Suede had burst onto the weekly music press radar in 1992 on the back of a seventies Bowie and Roxy Music aesthetic. Supergrass, on the other hand, arrived at the moment Britpop was starting to become recognised as a movement, seemingly tailor made to fulfil the mission drive as being set out by Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher. They were a young vibrant band, with a classic sixties inspired cartoon image, who were also a tight playing unit writing their own earworm ready songs with a one-way ticket to the top of the singles chart. That debut album, ‘I Should Coco,’ has not aged one bit and the Deep Purple referencing of this underplayed classic alone shows what a serious proposition they were both when they arrived then as they evolved…

Dodgy – Water Under The Bridge

A look back at the Britpop years does tend to throw up a number of also rans that give the impression the scene overall was not that inspiring. Personally, I don’t need to revisit the work of Menswear or Gene but isn’t that the way with every movement? By that measure, there are also a multitude of acts who put out amazing quality work that have unjustifiably faded from view. Dodgy hit big in 1996 with the oh-so catchy ‘Good Enough’ but they had been furnishing the British pop landscape with impossibly lush offerings for a few years before that. This tune from 1993 more than adequately demonstrates Dodgy’s long standing mastery of major/minor melodic magnificence…

Edwyn Collins – A Girl Like You

History dictates that the shining lights of Britpop were all artists making their breakthrough in the 1990’s but in reality, there were a quite a few acts contributing to this wave of retro sounding pop chart action who had enjoyed success in previous decades. Paul Weller, Suggs and Terry Hall are all fine examples of names who enjoyed a raised profile with their own music on the back of Britpop appropriate releases (it is not unreasonable to suggest Paul Weller’s ‘Stanley Road’ is one of the classic albums of the whole movement, especially with that Mod classic Peter Blake album art) but arguably the most enduring single with instant whip echoes of the period is this little wonder by Edwyn Collins. Edwyn was best known as the singer with early eighties indie darlings Orange Juice but this 1995 marvel, complete with gizmo flexing guitar riffage, successfully repositioned him as a solo attraction and probably, all things considered, remains his best loved song…

The Lemon Trees – Let It Loose

The other thing that Britpop raking turns up is a very real impression that there are multitude of undiscovered rock/pop nuggets waiting for an enterprising compiler. This would definitely be one, a tune that pushes every guitar pop band button with assured competence, something that is probably not surprising when you consider that the lead singer here, Guy Chambers, was the man mainly behind all the musical hit landmarks Robbie Williams would enjoy towards the end of the decade. Here however, the ex-World Party sideman had to settle for the artistic satisfaction of creating a great indie pop tune without the hit single status and widespread acclaim…

Edward Ball – The Mill Hill Self Hate Club

Ed Ball was a member of the Television Personalities and The Times as well as a number of other fairly under-the-radar acts in the eighties and nineties who had his profile, comparatively, raised with the endorsement of Alan McGee’s Creation Records and some proactive publicising of Ed’s solo work during the peak of the Britpop era. This one is especially resonant with its mentioning of London locales and a video that includes cameos from McGee himself and one of the few Premier League footballers known to be a lover of indie bands, Graeme Le Saux. Above all though, ‘The Mill Hill Self Hate Club’ was a top level bluesy, folk-rocking pop tune that deserved a brighter day in the sun…

The Wonder Stuff – The Size Of A Cow

The great myth that has grown about Britpop is that it was born out of Suede and Blur deliberately making records that sounded undeniably like works by classic British bands of the previous three decades around 1992 and 1993 before the journalist Stuart Maconie coined the phrase in an article in the British music press. This does not stand up to a deeper scrutiny as my final selection more than adequately demonstrates, for here are the Wonder Stuff brilliantly doing Britpop before Britpop in 1991 (with a top ten pop tune shamelessly referencing British pop greats like Slade, Madness and The Jam). Not only that but revisit the pages of the NME and Melody Maker in 1991 and you will easily find journalists describing what the Stuffies were doing as Britpop, so it is clear the idea and the template had been floating around for a few years before the more enterprising commentators put a stamp on it. The only thing missing with the Wonder Stuff was the look, they still favoured the shaggy haired grebo image here but everything else is in place. I fondly recall the Wonder Stuff lighting up the pop landscape in 1991 and regretted that they really had no interest in following through by playing the commercial game. Mike Scott’s Waterboys had their biggest pop success too that spring with a re-released ‘The Whole Of The Moon’ and he too resisted any demands to comply with publicity and promotion campaigns the marketing department pushed for, he like the Wonder Stuff held firm to his deference to the artistic integrity of the music. This is the primary difference between them and the Britpop generation that followed, as soon as Noel Gallagher had a voice the idea of aggressively pushing for the top became accepted, old fashioned indie speak of the “we like it and if anyone else does it’s a bonus” variety was consigned to history. Still, at least the Wonder Stuff made some undeniable ahead of its time Britpop, like this…!

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Old Fruit

Old Fruit 23rd May 2025

Bob Dylan – Not Dark Yet

Bob Dylan is arguably the greatest living songwriter on the planet, only Paul McCartney could have a shout at being as culturally significant, and this week marks Bob’s 84th birthday so this weeks half dozen older song selection is a Dylan celebration in honour of his enduring career. This tired, forlorn and reflective song is a real beauty from an LP, 1997’s ‘Time Out Of Mind’, that I frequently conclude and fight a corner for being the greatest of Dylan’s entire back catalogue. It maybe lacks the cultural impact of his famous mid sixties releases but as a collection of songs it is thematically and sonically extremely satisfying and pulls you in for a rewarding return visit again and again…

Jeff Tweedy – Simple Twist Of Fate

Jeff is one of the great US songwriters of our time too, particularly for his timeless music as the lead singer of Americana lynchpins Wilco, and he approaches his version of this Dylan with understanding and emotiveness as if the song were his own. He digs deep and gets lost inside this lyric originally from a Dylan album, ‘Blood On The Tracks’, that mediated on the subject of relationships, divorce, heartbreak and separation with a depth and 20/20 eye that few have equalled before or since…

Joan Baez – Love Is Just A Four Letter Word

Ever since Joan played this song to camera in the extensive Dylan documentary ‘No Direction Home’ it has been associated with her romantic connection to Bob that briefly bloomed in the sixties and evolved into legend when she wrote about it on her own ‘Diamonds And Rust’ in the seventies. The brilliant story around this song is that Joan was around Bob when he spontaneously made it up then, playing it back to him at a later date, he enquired “that’s pretty good, who wrote it?”. “You did, you dope” she replied before claiming it as part of her own repertoire from there on in…

Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel

There is a similar story to the Joan Baez tune with this one, the connection being it is an act picking up on one of Dylan’s discarded scraps and turning it into one of the most popular tunes in their own catalogue. This time Old Crow Medicine Show picked up on a fragment of a tune called ‘Wagon Wheel’ that surfaced on a bootleg record taken from studio sessions around 1973. They wrote to Bob and asked for permission to finish the tune off, although if you manage to hear the source material it is clear the song was pretty much all there already, to which they received a positive reply and away they went, delighting crowds with their wagon wheeling ever since…

Lou Reed – Foot Of Pride

Lou Reed and Bob Dylan today seem a natural fit as writers and performers thanks to their masterful capacity for poetic lyrics and the strong individualistic personality of their singing styles. Their paths rarely crossed though, but Dylan did go through a period in the 1980s when he was very vocal about his admiration for Lou, especially in the liner notes for his 1985 ‘Biograph’ box set when he set Reed was one of very few modern artists he had any time for. Lou returned the compliment here, at Dylan’s 1992 Madison Square Garden all star tribute concert, with a spinning rock mass rendition of a song that had first appeared the previous year on Dylan’s very first Bootleg Series box set release…

Timothee Chalamet – Outlaw Blues / Three Angels

The grand service Chalamet has done to promote the Dylan legend with his incredible biopic portrayal of the great mans early years cannot be understated. However, even more delight should be derived from the way he has played Bob Dylan material, not only in the film ‘A Complete Unknown’ but when promoting it as he did here live on US TV. Timothee played a brace of deep cuts too, no mere imitation, no stars in their eyes karaoke, nothing played with a knowing nod and a wink to the audience; no Chalamet did exactly what Bob himself would have done, he played the songs exactly how he felt them and in doing so made them his own.

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Old Fruit

Old Fruit 16th May 2025

The Renegades – Thirteen Women

It’s a sixties garage rock themed half dozen track selections this week beginning with this, a raucous and still ever-so-slightly cheesy version of a song that, up to that point, was maybe best known as a Bill Haley b-side. It has a special place in my garage rock heart for it was a routine enquiry about this tune, being played by a dealer at a Record Fair, that led to him giving me a cassette tape compilation he’d made of similar tracks which proved to be my gateway to a lifetime of sixties garage and psych collecting. I think it might have been that little keyboard riff that hooked me in with this one? The Renegades were from Birmingham but had their biggest success in Finland and they are just one of hundreds of under-the-radar Beatles / Stones inspired bands from the era who put out killer 45s…. (more to follow, but first)…

The Sonics – Strychnine

This, now legendary in the right circles, band from Tacoma, Washington, produced a raw and ragged, totally aggressive sound that was punk by any other name. Their debut album ‘Here Are The Sonics’ seems so ahead of its time for a 1964 release with singer / main songwriter Gerry Roslie attacking his vocals with a pure venom that must have sent a lightning jolt through any of the middle America populace that encountered this at the time. Original film material is scarce but I am good with this later clip from The Sonics 21st century reformation; if nothing else, the gig they played in London sometime around 2008 remains one of my all time definitive life-affirming gigs…

The Lemon Drops – I live In The Springtime

Chicago’s The Lemon Drops only issued one 45 in 1967 but, despite that, they still managed to release more incredible singles than Spandau Ballet and Heaven 17 combined (in my opinion). In fact this rather delicious fuzzy guitar explosion of sound on the Rembrandt label was something of a curio in its own right because there was a version released, which was actually the more common, or at least more frequently heard version, that was issued as a mix without the bass and drums. The track presented here has the full mix although weirdly the edition without the full range of instruments remains satisfyingly hypnotic and glows with a dawn-of-summer hazy warmth. Just goes to show what a good song it is then doesn’t it?

The Smoke – My Friend Jack

The Smoke were an English psych band from York who played with a pure garage energy and it is indeed a treat to find some film footage of them that captures the Mod edge in their style. This one was an outstanding 1967 45 that effectively bottles the spirit of the period; inevitably it was banned by the BBC and therefore received very limited exposure. Sometimes the British institution could be a little too trigger happy with their black listings, a mere hint of a drug reference needlessly halting a promising tune at birth, but here I suppose you have to admit the lyric goes beyond a vague suggestion of chemical stimulants. At least they had a number 2 hit in Germany though, a great single will always find a way eventually…

Rupert’s People – Dream On My Mind

It is hard to definitively define who Rupert’s People really were or who they were supposed to be. Songwriter Rod Lynton’s original band, the Extraverts, had split but he gained a management contract as part of a new act called Sweet Feeling at which point an acetate, including a song called Charles Brown, was advised to be re-written to the tune of Air on a G String, reflecting the classical ambitions acts like Procol Harum and the Moody Blues were flexing successfully at the time. The band Les Fleur de Lys were involved in the recording but then backed out necessitating the formation of a new group for Lynton’s work, which is where Rupert’s People arrive. By the time of this track they were deep diving into the flowery, childhood memory referencing psychedelia stylings of the period which, bizarrely, left a groovy little psych-rocker like this languishing as a 1967 b-side…

Ty Wagner – I’m A No Count

This was one of only two 45s that fell under the garage umbrella issued by Wagner, ‘I’m A No Count’ being the first from 1966 on the Chattahoochee label. It is an out-and-out sleazy and scuzzy outsider bluesy rock classic; no wonder Jon Spencer was happy to showcase Ty on the, actually quite recent, clip below. What I love about this is how Ty comes across as completely and utterly the cool real deal, he does not break into a smile even for a split second! If you enjoy this you need to check out the original recording (it’s findable, as most things are online nowadays) but for now, let me sign off this weeks dig into the audio / visual archives with a performance that is about as real as you can get…

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