A rifle through the shelves at www.fruit-tree-records.com in search of an hours worth of disconnected / connected sonic thrills from the past seventy years... dig in and dig out!

When I caught up with the musically eclectic, eyes and ears still wide open, renaissance man Sid Griffin at this summer’s Ely Folk Festival, he was briefly revisiting the Coal Porters section of hi…

Finding a psychedelic band previously unknown to me is nothing new today, the scene seems to throw up a plentiful supply in 2026. But occasionally, as has occurred with my coming across Leicester’s…

Considering how grand and satisfying a listening experience this whole record is, it may be surprising to learn that The Delines built it almost as an afterthought following 2025’s ‘Mr. Luck And Ms…

We have made a few changes for this autumn, going forward the ‘Fresh Juice’ feature on this site will be merged with the Mixcloud playlists of the same name… meaning you find all …

Danny Neill, alongside photographer Sophie Reichert, reports on End of the Road’s 20th anniversary at Larmer Tree Gardens — Geese, Pulp, Ty Segall, Carson McHone, ØXN’s murder ballads & lots more.

There is an instantly familiar feel to this album but in the best conceivable way, so much so that the entire content of this review could just me sitting back and referencing the top-tier sonic no…

For this month’s playlist I am accompanying it once again with a giant photo feature. This time I have been digging out a series of photos I took twenty years ago this month at the Spitz Fest…

YouTube video by Kieran J Conway

Well, this is a thing of beauty and wonder is it not? When making music that is adjacent to pop music, albeit a popular music that honours the standards and craftsman like processes of the past far…

Around the release of her fourth full length album, the follow up to 2023’s highly rated ‘Echo The Diamond,’ Margaret Glaspy has been musing on her place in the world as a working musician. She is …

Kathleen Edwards does not remember her previous concert stop off in Halifax with much warmth. Such is the feelgood happiness in the room tonight though, she is prepared to recall the now, thanks to…

The name Wayne Rooney might not be one that readers of the music press, or musical criticism and appreciation in general, regularly associate with this particular field of the arts. For those who d…

This is a record made by a duo who were raised, schooled, and immersed in the folk tradition but who wish to reach for something far away from that world sonically. In fact, they are looking at the…

Margaret Glaspy – Michigan This is a mesmerising live rendition of the song that opens Margarets latest ‘I Am Both’ album, an arresting piece of folk‑leaning indie‑rock that clear…

Welcome to Volume Ten in our mix show series of new music, latest release and soon-to-land gems, collectively known as Fresh Juice. This one takes in a mouth watering collection of up and coming so…

It might raise a few eyebrows if I were to describe making an out-and-out power pop album a brave move, in doing so creating a sit up and take notice statement release, but I believe this to be bot…

Rhiannon Giddens – Carolina Rain ‘Carolina Rain’ bursts forth as a vivid first glimpse of ‘Hope Is The Thing With Feathers,’ Rhiannon Giddens’ seventh studio album arr…

This is not your average festival, not by a long stretch, which is why having tasted the thrill and ambience of Ely Folk Festival for the first time last year I have returned for more. And the mood…

I have found such delight in the discovery of this superb debut album by an act I had previously never heard of, that it prompted me to ponder with some frustration the crowded field they are about…

It might seem like country music has done all its evolving by this point, that the end game has been arrived at with its current mainstream pop sheen success. Where can it go from here other than r…

Dent May – I Remember Dent May’s latest release ‘I Remember’ is much like a postcard from the wide‑open creative world he built while making ‘The Big One,’ his seventh…

This months playlist is accompanied by a photo feature. If you read my review of the latest Tift Merritt album you will have seen my referring to the first time I saw her at a festival about twenty…

I have seen Richard Thompson live more times than I can remember over the past three decades, but this is the first time he has ever considered performing a strip. Not, I should add, because he has…

Beth Orton – Waiting Beth Orton’s new album is a stunning left‑turn from an artist who has spent three decades refusing to sit still. ‘The Ground Above’ demonstrates how she has moved beyond …

Beth Orton first began to surface around thirty years ago, the charismatically detached voice that had featured a little on electronic dance tracks began to plough her own folktronica field with th…

Welcome to Volume Nine in our series of new music, latest release and soon-to-land gems, collectively known as our Fresh Juice offerings. Well, it is the middle of a record breaking heatwave in the…

Country music is having a big moment these days, if anything it can plausibly be claimed this is the biggest era since the 1950s where the genre has become a major presence in the mainstream. And I…

The Delines – Dilaudid Diane This features on one of the most quietly enduring albums I have heard this year, The Delines latest ‘The Set Up.’ This is the kind of slow‑burn storytelling only they c…

Volume 5 of our shelf rifling dive into the deep Fruit Tree Records collection is a genre surfing run through some of the tracks that have excited and delighted over the past couple of weeks. These…

Yea-Ming And The Rumours – Sweet Opiate This track is one of the new ‘Residue!’ albums quietest gut‑punches, a song that distils Yea‑Ming Chen’s gift for turning heartbreak into something soft‑glow…

Isn’t it the truth that sometimes you do not know you are missing something until it comes right back staring you in the face? And so it was with this band, specifically my chance encounter with th…

It was the summer of 2006 when I chanced upon Joan Wasser for the first time, performing in her Joan As Police Woman guise, at a venue called the Spitz near central London’s Spitalfields Market. I …

Bedouine – Long Way To Fall ‘Long Way To Fall,’ is one of the standout moments on Bedouine’s new album ‘Neon Summer Skin.’ It arrives as the record’s first true exhale…

It is always a delight in the business of music discovery, record hunting and general audio thrill seeking, to come across an artist who you assume will be of a familiar type only for them to far e…

This is the second chapter in our series exploring the moment folk and singer‑songwriter traditions were wired straight into the mains. This one picks up the voltage enhanced thrills where the firs…

Now this might seem at odds with the name of this site and the record collecting missions I have attempted to set readers off on, but I have a confession to make; I have rekindled my love affair wi…

The Coral – Let The Music Play It is always a welcome return when The Coral announce new music and their latest album ‘388’ was officially released last week, following a low‑key,…

The more head scratching you do when first exposed to some albums, the better they turn out in the long run. That is definitely the case with the work of Visible Cloaks, a forward thinking duo who …

My journey into collecting and loving ’60s garage rock began more than thirty years ago, long before I fully understood what the term meant. By then I was already a devoted fan of sixties music in …

Wewantsounds’ ongoing excavation of Meiko Kaji’s early‑’70s catalogue continues to reveal just how much more there is to her legacy than the cult‑cinema mythology. Best known internationally for La…

Alela Diane – Dusty Roses On her new album, ‘Who’s Keeping Time?’ which was written in the quiet daytime hours of her 1892 Victorian attic, Alela Diane carries the unhurried…

I have always thought of Barrie Cadogan as a Jeff Beck or Ronnie Wood kind of figure in the modern music world. Appearing to be more comfortable as the engine room of the electric guitar rather tha…