The January Five

In this post I’m presenting my short list of 5 albums for January along with a few words about why this particular 5:

From left to right and top to bottom these are Cluster ('71), Oneohtrix Point Never (Returnal), Salem (King Night), The National (High Violet) and , bottom left, Wire (Red Barked Tree).


I’m sure you’ll have been following this closely, so I’ll not repeat the original list, though I do have a few words to say about why the other 8 albums didn’t make it.

First off the Mothers of Invention and Khan albums: these albums, like Cluster ’71, are from way back in the mists of time, and the rules only allow for one old album at most (the use of the term old is purely time related, the album may still be new to me) and Cluster won that honour, but why? Well, the Mothers album – much as I’d like to hear it - isn’t available online, so it lives to fight another day (perhaps).  The Khan album is available through Spotify, and is reported to be excellent (if you like that sort of thing), but lost out to the newly re-issued Cluster album because I have a weakness for “krautrock” (which will no doubt become apparent during the year) and this album is widely considered as being very influential in the genre.

All the rest of the albums on the long list lost out for the simple reason that I couldn’t find anywhere online to hear the whole album (another rule: I have to be able to hear the whole album).  I did find a couple of tracks off the P.J. Harvey album which sounded good, but at the time of writing it wasn’t released….so maybe next month it will be available online in full.  Lords of Falconry – an American band – have a My Space page with one track on it, but the combination of being quite a new band and being on an obscure label seems to result in them not being on Spotify yet.

I’ve actually been listening to these albums for a few weeks now already, so the next post will include some thoughts so far and maybe, if there’s time, a separate post about the January winner.