Peel Back September 2026: June Tabor/Half Man Half Biscuit/PJ Harvey

This month's Peel Back... selection in my Dandelion Radio show takes us first back 50 years ago, to the September 1976 session broadcast by June Tabor. Soon after, the punk bands would begin to barge through the doors of Maida Vale - more on that next month - but Peel never lost his appreciation of those artists who continued to offer vibrant and innovative music of whatever genre or no identifiable genre at all.

Tabor is a case in point. This was the second of six sessions she recorded for John Peel, the latest of which was a collection of cover versions in 1990. That's also well worth revisiting when the time comes but this Pull Down Lads, which features John Gillespie on keyboards, is as good an introduction as any to Tabor's bewitching vocal style. The version featured in the show is the one from her Airs & Graces LP.

The second featured track comes from that worrying period during which it seemed Half Man Half Biscuit might be about to quit for good, the demands of a working band impinging too much on Nigel Blackwell's schedule of long walks, football matches and daytime TV. Fortunately they would eventually decide to return but there's a treasured brilliance to tracks like The Best Things In Life made all the pertinent for the threat that hung over a band who Andy Kershaw once labelled 'the greatest English folk band since The Clash'. Recording in 1986. this is from their fourth session for the show: the fifth would come following their reformation more than three years later.

Finally, we feature a track from PJ Harvey's fourth session for the show, a track that would later appear as a Harvey/John Parish release. That Was My Veil was from the 1996 session recorded at Peel Acres and marks the period when Harvey's recordings were beginning to outgrow the Peel environs: not by choice but because, as Peel later commented, it became much more difficult to secure approval from the bigwigs who began to oversee her recording career at this point. Like HMHB, she's remained consistently interesting and innovative ever since, of course and, for Polly herself, Peel remained a valued mentor until the end.