Tag Archives: Richard Thompson

Fresh Juice

Fresh Juice 18th August 2025

HONK – Vine-Glo

Well, this weeks first offering takes about three handbrake turns in the first sixty seconds leaving you wondering what the hell is going on here? But in the best possible way. It starts off like a hillbilly cousin of Telstar by the Tornados before launching into space with a disturbed yeouch of a lead vocal only to surf rock over the waves of a chorus that hits all the right targets. They call this unique grain “trashcan country” which does kind of tell you what you need to know about the scuzzy, rootsy and energetic sound HONK purvey. The new ‘Closing Down Sale’ EP is the follow up EP to their debut ‘Grand Opening’ EP and drops this week, released digitally and on cassette via Leeds label Shooting Tzars, HONK also have a run of gigs across the UK this summer

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Annick Michel – Between

Sometimes brilliant new music can be discovered online clouded in mystery and this is one such example, I came across this incredibly soulful, impassioned, intense acoustic song earlier purely by chance, simply by being on the right page at the right time and served suggested content by an impressively on-the-money computer algorithm. My digging has deduced that the artist has released a little music under the name Annick Michel, she is possibly a Montreal based singer-songwriter and this track may have been around on the internet from as far back as 2022. But the mystery is around the identity and back story, for I have found the song presented under the artist name Ama & Jaguar Dream although it is definitely the same person. Whatever, this is an great new song sung and played with a conviction that demands proper attention and incites use of the old cliché, one to watch.

Paul Kelly – Rita Wrote A Letter

If you are inclined towards a knee-jerk resistance or cautious suspicion when an artist is heavily touted as a ‘great songwriter’ then I fully understand, I am of a similar disposition myself. After all, there are people who pile those kind of accolades towards Ed Sheeran or Chris Martin and it rather lowers the bar in terms of being credible, worthy praise. However, if you are of the opinion that a great songwriter will have a flare for chord progression and melody, an acute facility for observing the minutiae of human life and interaction, strong story telling instincts, a sense of the absurd and a self-effacing tendency to recognise the fallibility in themselves, then wrap it all up in a song shaped bundle that will keep you listening and coming back for more, then Paul Kelly is a great songwriter. Furthermore, this Australian tunesmith has got 45 years of experience behind him and the advance single presented here, from November’s forthcoming new album ‘Seventy’, shows there are no signs of his craftsman like quality diminishing any time soon.

Peter Holsapple – Larger Than Life

Releasing his first new solo music in seven years with the album ‘The Face Of 68’, this is a recent live clip of Peter performing ‘Larger Than Life’ from that record. The song itself is a tribute to Carlo Nuccio of the Continental Drifters and features, as does the rest of the LP, Robert Sledge from Ben Folds Five on bass and Rob Ladd of The Connells on drums. As this tune definitively makes plain, the Holsapple of 2025 is firmly in touch with his jangle and power pop roots for there is a more than passing echo of this former dB’s co-founders musical heritage. And that is great news indeed, as this is the sound of a man in touch and plugged in to the pretty damn wonderful music he is making.

Luke Haines & Peter Buck – The Pink Floyd Research Group

Moving on from a former R.E.M. sideman to a former R.E.M. man in acting side man guise, it is always so great to hear Peter Buck bring that trademark jingle-jangle style of his to the table in the name of niche, outsider, eccentric British songwriting. The song itself is a whimsical slice of Summer-of-67 flowery spacedust which, if the Pink Floyd Research Group of the title are to be believed, was written by some kind of artificial AI assisted song bot. At least that is what someone claiming to be the PFRG in the YouTube comments are claiming and if it is really them, what a brilliantly offhand way to have a gentle retaliatory slap back to a song that is not as convincing in its sincerity as it is in its freak flag flying quirkiness.

Richard Thompson – Siggy’s Song

For the recent Radio Two hosted project called ’21st Century Folk’, five current folk artists were introduced each to five people in order to learn their back story and write a new folk song about their lives. In this edition arguably our greatest living folk composer Richard Thompson meets Siggy, who came to London from Barbados in 1962. He began working on the railways and playing cricket as soon as he arrived. At the age of 85, he still works at a train station, and he still plays cricket! Tapping into the folk tradition of participation, Richard’s new song pulls in Siggy’s teammates at the Holtwhites-Trinibis Cricket Club in Enfield for some rousing backing vocals.

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Old Fruit

Old Fruit 25th July 2025

Jo Rose – I’m Yr Kamera

For this weeks dive into some selections and recommendations from the past I thought I would go back and see what Fruit Tree Records were causing a stir exactly ten years ago this month. Jo Rose had come to my attention at the time, a crazily gifted singer-songwriter from the Manchester area, with this song which instantly proves ten years later that quality is timeless. I do not know what brought him under my radar, maybe it was his association with First Aid Kit who he was not only supporting in concert but was also in a relationship with the duo’s Klara Söderberg. Whatever, his work had a musical finesse that is hard to find but as is so often the story with artists at this pubs and clubs level, they can disappear from view or just quietly drop out of music altogether. And so it is with great sadness that I have just found, after searching the internet for news on his current whereabouts, that he tragically died last year at the age of 36 following a head injury connected to an epileptic seizure. I had not intended for this post to be a tribute to someone special who has gone too soon, I was merely hoping to throw some appreciative retro light on wonderful music, but now I am doing both. Please listen to Jo Rose.

Wolf Alice – Turn To Dust

The good thing about having this sites monthly playlists stretching back a lot of years (roughly fourteen) is that I can occasionally find that I was actually slightly ahead of the curve on a band or singer. This tune from Wolf Alice’s newly released debut album ‘My Love Is Cool’ featured in the July 2015 monthly playlist and I do recall going on to feel they were a thoroughly deserving recipient of the Mercury Music Prize in 2018 following the release of their second album ‘Visions Of A Life’. This was a record that took the bare bones of the ghostly sound they are perfecting here, in a quality audience live clip from the following year, into new fields of celestial majesty with a sprinkling of indie-pop hooks for good measure. They have a fourth studio album called ‘The Clearing’ set to be released next month.

Flo Morrissey – Show Me

Here we revisit a singer with an eerily spiritual and acid-folk laced voice. Flo Morrissey, a former pupil at the Brit School who expressed regret that she did not meet as many like minded people there as she would if she had attended a normal university, had at the time just released her debut album on Glassnote Records. In 2017 her record of covers with Matthew E. White was equally loved in these parts thanks to its focus on eclectic late sixties, early seventies pop, baroque pop, folk and psych material but the Flo detail I have only just caught up on is that she is married to the equally eccentrically gifted Benjamin Clementine and that they have released music together as The Clementines. She can now be found performing as Florence Clementine and remains a creative artist ripe for discovery.

Bop English – Struck Matches

By 2015 the band White Denim were a long term favourite psych rock band from Austin, Texas who had built a deserved reputation as practitioners of wild, free, looping, jamming and essentially wonderous boundary defying rock. Many a time I had heard them playing radio sessions that would end in what the DJs could only advertise as a live wig-out. So I believe it could only be the White Denim connection that led me to front man James Petralli’s other musical outlet, Bop English, essentially a solo project. They were an altogether more structured, song based concern although that wild energy is still there for all to hear on their album ‘Constant Bop’, from which this track is taken.

Richard Thompson – Beatnik Walking

Returning to old playlists blows the dust off numerous acts and songs that did not stay in the forefront of my musical mind but nevertheless are a delight to revive and re-experience. That is not the case with Richard Thompson, much like a Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell or Tom Waits he is an ever present whose song compositional work and masterful guitar playing ensure he is always very close to the surface. This was a tune from his ‘Still’ album released early in 2015, a record which gained slightly more attention than some of his releases thanks to it’s being produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

Max Jury – Home

Re-listening to this tune ten years later it surprises me to read that it was Max’s debut single. This sounds like the work of an artist whose work has matured over many years but here he was, ten years ago aged only 23, sounding for all the world like the next Rufus Wainwright. That may not have quite come to pass yet but in 2025 he is three albums in, growing as a musician and still very much producing recordings with tasteful echoes of the seventies, now with a clear move towards disco and pop production flourishes. The pop world needs natural creativity from single minded musicians with a vision and voice, Max could still be moving into that space. That said, even if he does not take that path, it does nothing to detract from the beauty of a song like this.

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