It's that Time of Year Again!
One of the best things about this time of year are the annual reviews of the year's best music according to the music press. Each magazine, blog or e-zine has its own bias so I like to take a cross-section: in terms of the printed press this means NME, Mojo, Uncut, Shindig! and Wire. Apart from the obvious joy of the list (!) there are three pluses: the fun of disagreement; the thrill of finding something explosive that you've missed; and most of all because it's the prompt for me to survey my albums of the year. To date I've seen the lists from Mojo and Uncut and both of these agree on one thing - their album of the year is Julia Holter's album 'Have You in My Wilderness'. It’s a great album and features one of my tracks of the year - it could even figure in my top 10, but that'll have to wait until another post. In the meantime here are a few tracks from some of my contenders... An absolute screamer from Anna Von Hausswolff...