Tag Archives: Oracle Sisters

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

19th June 2023

Oracle Sisters – Hail Mary

This is another Fresh Juice 2023 offering from the Oracle Sisters album ‘Hydranism’, a record that is fast becoming one of my favourites of the year thanks to its effortless deployment of pop classicism. ‘Hail Mary’ is a great example of this, essentially a piano ballad of the type that Lennon was putting out in the early seventies. The focus on the core musical elements is fine because the Oracle Sisters hooks are easy on the ear and infectious, add to that a soaring Harrison-esque guitar solo and that cool nonchalance they exude, it all flags up a winning summer pop potion here that should enrapture all that encounter it…

Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain

It seems to me that anything produced by anyone associated with the band Big Thief at this moment in time is delivered with a vitality and conviction that ensures essential music on every occasion. This is the new solo material from the bands guitarist Buck Meek; ‘Haunted Mountain’ is the title track from his forthcoming album, out 25th August on 4AD and it already sounds anything but a side project, all honkin’ no tonkin’ indeed…

Luluc – Diamonds

Luluc are a band who first caught my attention with the sublime track ‘Heist’ from their 2019 album ‘Sculptor’. They are a dream-folk songwriting duo made up of Zoe Randell and multi-instrumentalist Steve Hassett. In last weeks Fresh Juice I made a passing reference to critics making lazy comparisons to Nick Drake, I mention this because in reading up on Luluc I learned that the significant authority Lucinda Williams has called Zoe a “female Nick Drake” and whilst this is not a name that immediately jumps to mind, I would not question the opinion of Lucinda and do agree that there is a weightless, timeless, floating quality to the sound of Luluc. This is the official music video for the title track of new album ‘Diamonds’ out September 15, 2023…

PACKS – 4th Of July

This bittersweet grungy delight of a tune was from PACKS new album ‘Crispy Crunchy Nothing’ released in March 2023 on Fire Talk/Royal Mountain. I have been enthused at how many young US bands are building on the templates set out in the psychedelic rock era in tandem with the lo-fi nineties scenes, continuing to drop wonderfully rusty sounds in the modern era. If a band sounds to me like they’ve listened to Pavement just as much as they have The Beatles or Nirvana then that can only be a good thing in my book…

Mapache – People Please

Mapache are the Americana offspring of Glendale, California who have forged a deserved reputation as superior purveyors of open-eared cosmic country music with echoes of the greats a-la Simon & Garfunkel and The Byrds. New music from them is always eagerly anticipated and never disappoints so it is welcome news indeed that their new album ‘Swinging Stars’ is out 18th August on Innovative Leisure…

The Jordan – Temptation

Not exactly a new artist but a new identity, image and sound for a singer who over ten years ago I was very excited about as she reigned supreme with a stunning repertoire of soulful, swingingly vintage jazz vocal stardust as Caro Emerald. So this is a proper gear change and as new album ‘Nowhere Near The Sky’ released on Cooking Vinyl pleasingly demonstrates, none of the power and command in that voice has been sacrificed in pursuit of this new, widescreen, cinematic and pleasingly modern audio adventure…

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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…

https://youtu.be/Ms8dvgOlu-o

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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