These Fresh Faves were picked by our readers over the weekend – and reviewed by Fresh On The Net’s Del Osei-Owusu this week. You can hear all these tracks in a single Soundcloud playlist here.

Hi everyone! Welcome to another stellar set of faves. Neil and Sherry travelled up to Leicester for Day Two of FOTN Live, and by all accounts it went down a treat I wasn’t able to attend as I was not very well, but let’s not get into the details of that… The review of that will be up in due course!

If you’d like to be considererd for airplay on my show on Islington Radio drop me an email with an audio file and bio to del.owusu@gmail.com. Clean radio edits only!

Onto the faves!

I don’t trust myself with tea right now, so let’s stick with water for now.

BARBARA – Little Bird Sing

What I like about this song is that it’s stuck in a time warp in so many different ways. It’s talking about 1940s Britain at the eight of the war referencing playing cricket in the midst of war.

At the same time, the music gives you the feeling of a big west end musical, especially with the musical arrangement, but then you’ve also go the electric piano which if my calculations are correct it’s got to be a Wurlitzer. This has ELO written all over it because of the big sound, and the brightness of the melody. Barbara have done it again! This takes me forward in time to the 1970s especially with that technicolour sound towards the end, listen to the way it slows down and the harmonies…

Spot on!

Barbara are one of my favourite discoveries on FOTN, and are always a welcome sight in the inbox for me, they are brothers from Hove. They describe their as being a bit of 70s US AM radio, a dash of English music hall, with a bit of west end musical, a sprinkling of sequinned power pop, luscious Disney strings, and glorious golden harmonies.

I mean….

That’s just perfect!

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DICTATOR – Figure It Out

Dictator are back! I’m so glad they’ve sent this to us, I see them crop on my socials a lot and it’s always exciting to see what they’re up to. What we have here is a track that combines a pretty slick production – the trumpet solo that wanders in and out of the track is a nice touch especially since it does some tremolo notes that have made me smile. This track has a swagger, combining hip hop and and a bit of soul, I love the chorus:

“I’m aging like a fine wine,
Don’t feel like I’m falling behind”

Also throw in a bit of French in there et voila!

Other than the wandering trumpet you have a great old school sounding beat that could have been created on one of those dusty old drum machines and that adds to the charm of this track because it’s got a gritty sound added to it along with the lead synth that kicks off proceedings, this is a beaut of a track from a listening post that was pretty stellar to be fair!

Dictator are from Edinburgh Scotland, and say they are less artsy more fartsy.

That made me chuckle.

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ESCAPE GOATS – Andrew Lincoln

I had to look up who Andrew Lincoln was – it turns out he’s an actor, he was in Love Actually amongst other things – one of my favourite Christmas films as it goes! This speculation of course… This track has so much energy, lots of shouty bits, and switches gears a few times so it keeps you on the edge of your seat. For example, it starts off with chords that are disconcerting at a fast pace, over a drum pattern that is predominantly played on toms. It goes double time in the chorus which is a great way to break things up, and there’s a little guitar solo at 0:38 to 0:45 which I really liked!

The middle 8 at 1:11 is pretty sweet too, it brings the tempo down to a low simmer with harmonies before turning the heat back up and gradually getting faster to end the song. The speed change towards the end is so subtle and suddenly we are at the end!

I love it.

Escape Goats are a relatively new band, they formed in 2024 in Glasgow which is just north of London…

Oh I love their humour already.

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EVE BUCKLEY – Tongue Tied

Time for a change in tempo! This is a gorgeous ballad, I like the way Eve Buckley sounds on this, a bit soulful, a bit bluesy. The backing is perfect, I love that dusty drum sound very grainy like it’s recorded on old tape from the 70s, the guitar and bass provide progressions over Eve’s voice. She sounds wistful on this, and soulful at the same time.

The harmonies are what caught my ear, as they sit perfectly on the chord progression being played – this is handy as Eve is a guitarist in her own right, and the chord phrasing is precise! Add to that the strings and it just gives it that emotional lift – we need more strings in music!

You know what?

This is my track of the week.

It’s just a stunner of a track in so many ways, the off beat rhythm, the attention to detail in terms of the way it’s put together just makes me smile.

I needed this!

Who’s Eve Buckley?

Well she’s from Leeds aka God’s country, and she’s a guitarist who specialises in a hybrid of alternative soul and jazz…

I can tell.

I love the way there’s a dead stop towards the end where it’s just Eve singing the last line “It’s not what I deserve” the strings.

Erm… is there a strings only version of this song somewhere?

The world needs this.

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LIZ OVERS – Prayer To The Year

This is a stunning ballad in 3/4 a great soundscape built around guitars, vocals and what I suspect is a banjo. There are some sound effects in there too. The part I really liked starts from 1:43 with harmonies and Liz Overs singing oohs, it reminds me of wind blowing, add the sound of a malletted instrument it gives you that feeling of being carried off into a faraway land lost to history.

It’s a gorgeous folk song, all in all, and Eve Buckley has executed this beautifully with some great songwriting.

What a great ending too!

Who’s Liz Overs?

Great question I had to do some digging around, but I found her site, she’s a singer songwriter of traditional folk, who’s been singing for most of her life. She also has the hashtag #folkagainstfascism on her twitter account.

Good on her.

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SLANEY BAY – Break My Heart (For Fun)

The tempo goes back up here, this is a track from South West London quartet Slaney Bay. This track with a distorted chord on the guitar with a squeal of feedback before launching into a track that’s full of energy. The bass guitar is busy riffing away on one note over big drums, and then you have the wall of guitars giving Cait Waitley’s vocals space to breathe. Nothing is overpowering in this track and I like that.

Lyric wise this talks about a messy break up, where the person talked about in the song has a history of breaking hearts, they are bad for each other but where they know it’s bad things happen where that’s overlooked…

This song uses violent imagery to illustrate this, and you can tell it’s not a healthy relationship!

I could hear this being played on the radio a lot, it’s that kind of track, but then they are no strangers to the airwaves given that Steve Lamacq gave them the nod.

If that’s not a blessing I’m not sure what is!

According to their Spotify they’ve been out in Europe so it’s been a busy year for them, frankly I can’t wait to hear more from them.

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THE FOLDING DESERT – Lizard In The Flowers

The Folding Desert had one of my favourite songs of last year with “Afterlife” – if you haven’t heard that song you need to go find it. It still gives me goosebumps with the chord progression whenever I think about it.

This track finds the band in a more jazzy mood, I like the guitar playing on this as well as the piano as well. They’ve got those chord progressions that keep the song going but what they’ve also done is that they’ve brought a horn section to this! I was not expecting that. Overall the song has a Latin feel to it as well.

Standout performances for me come from the piano solo at 1:39 and you could tell the player’s having a lot of fun with it! But then you bring in the guitar solo at 2:06 and then you can tell this was a good day in the studio!

For me this is one of the strongest tracks in the inbox last week.

The Folding Desert are from the North East of England, and like to explore an eclectic fusion of alternative rock, psychedelia and jazz.

Seriously.

Afterlife.

That tune right there.

SO GOOD!

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THE RABBITTS – Salthouse

Time to slow things down again, this next one is by Norwich band The Rabbitts and this is broody, I like the guitars on this one, also there is a mandolin thrown in for good measure!

This is in 6/8 time, and the thing that catches my ear immediately is the vocals, they start out as a bit of a whisper while pleading not to be taken home but when the chorus hits there’s a little bit more power. The guitars and mandolin really do provide a sweet spot in terms of instrumentation giving this song a really strong flavour, this is a folk song for the ages, and very soothing to the soul!

This is from their EP of the same title, and even though this track is dark in its vibe with the minor chords I’m going to give them my chef’s kiss award for the arrangement and the songwriting skills going into this.

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VIOLET ALT – Unbreakable

Ahhhh Violet Alt! I have played her on my show in the past on Neil March’s recommendation, she is a former student of his. I like her, because her songwriting is unique. This is based around piano, strings, vocals and a drum beat that comes in for a short interval then drops out again. It just goes to show that even the unusual has a seat at the table, and this is definitely unusual.

What I like most about this song is Violet’s willingness to explore her vulnerability vocally and lyrically, she knows her limitations and voices this is comfortably within her words. I wonder if she’d be interested in listening to Siddhartha Khosla – he scored the music for the hit tv show “This Is Us” and having listened to an interview of his, he reached into the deep recesses of his soul to compose music for some of the most heartbreaking scenes of the show.

This has so much space, and doesn’t need overpowering elements to it.

Violet Alt did good.

She’s my one to watch.

Violet Alt is a London based singer songwriter and producer from Romania, she describes her style as creating heart wrecking (I like this word) ballads with relatable lyrics.

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WALDO’S GIFT – Malcolm’s Law

Do you want some glitchy synths and breakbeats that mess with your head?

Of course you do.

Waldo’s Gift make an appearance on the faves, putting what I’m assuming is a guitar through its paces. If it’s a guitar then they’ve done something to it to make it sound mangled as if it’s going through some synth lead to process it.

In any case the end result sounds great to my ears.

The drums are big in the mix, and the sub bass really adds to the whole thing, I like the way that at 3:00 the whole thing just settles so that the lead just screeches away at a melody that will get stuck in your head for some time.

This is genius.

The drums on this are just brilliant. I’m just applauding quietly!

What a tune to finish the faves on!

Getting a seal of approval from Gilles Peterson who invokes the spirit of John Peel by saying that he’d have played their music Waldo’s Gift are from Bristol, this act was born out of their improvisatory residency at Bristol’s The Gallimaufry.

Brill.
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PS from Del: If you’ve submitted a track that hasn’t been picked for the Listening Post, our team has definitely listened to it and there’s no need to send it again: feel free to send us an even stronger track another week. The same goes if you were picked for the Listening Post but didn’t feature in our Fresh Faves.

But if we’ve recently featured you in our Fresh Faves – please wait three months before sending us another track, so we have space to help other deserving artists… For more info see Robinson Has A Good Old Moan.