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...


 Father John Misty gets a bit self-absorbed...

This is a live version of 'Jet Black Hallucinations' from the album of the same name; an album that I've returned to often...



Roughly translated as "Everyone's thing" - it's certainly mine, especially the guitar that just aches to break into overload...

 

Moon Duo continue to plough that furrow on their latest album, but they do it so well


With added Raven Bush, so so good...


Releasing two wildly contrasting albums in one year seems like madness, but for these guys it seems to be the way they roll, from their most recent album 'Paper Mache Dream Balloon' here's 'Trapdoor' - dig that crazy flute maaaaan...



Maybe I'll look out a few more tracks but at least until the top 10, that'll do for now :-)

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