An Incredible New Year...

Ever since I name checked 'A Very Cellular Song' in reviewing Robert Plant last year, I've kept going back to the Incredible String Band themselves. And reminding myself just how much astonishing music they made - alongside an admixture of clunking whimsy. They took far more risks in the course of an album than many of their peers managed in a career, and a good proportion of them paid off beautifully.

Well, I never had their earliest albums on vinyl. I first got into them via the Relics compilation and eventually got CDs, by which time the originals had got pretty expensive. So all praise to eBay - bargains are still to be had: I happened upon a reasonable US copy of The 5000 Spirits on red Elektra for all of $8.50, and then Amazon Marketplace produced an equivalent UK copy of The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. Sorted - while keeping a weather eye open for the first album...

Anyway, if you have listened to the Incredibles recently, I recommend you do so. 'Nightfall' offers the best western use of a sitar I've come across: 'Koeeaddi There' the best childlike, but not childish, evocation of childhood; while 'A Very Cellular Song' is just extraordinary - all together now:

May the long time sun shine upon you

All love surround you

And the pure light within you

Guide you all the way on.

Christmas records

And where are the recommendations for Christmas records, I hear you asking? This year's festive treat has to be Wooden Shjips' 12" (in appropriate green or red vinyl) of 'O Tannenbaum' and 'Auld Lang Syne' - so you can keep playing it through till January. Their usual chugging stoner groove - lovely stuff.

The traditional record in our house to accompany tree decoration, present wrapping, etc is a Ze Records compilation from 1982

which includes The Waitresses' wonderful "Christmas Wrapping" alongside the much more obscure, but equally wonderful, 'It's a Big Country' by Davitt Sigerson. Worth hunting down if you're not allergic to tear-jerkers...

And to listen to at dinner time, Carla Bley's Carla's Chrismas Carols - quirky jazz that won't frighten jazz-hating horses...

Have a good one.

Stephanie & Chuck

The excellent BTV session from Stephanie Finch and Chuck Prophet that I saw being recorded is now available here. Great stuff.

2010: the compilation

Here's the track listing for my mix CD for the year. Rules: released in some format this year, not so bizarre as totally to disconcert the casual listener, editable down to fit in with twenty four others. Oh, and excellence of course...

1. Meditation Song #2 (Why Oh Why) - Cloud Control (Bliss Release)
2. Zorbing - Stornoway (Beachcomber's Windowsill)
3. Beautifully Broken - Jon Dee Graham & The Fighting Cocks (It's Not As Bad As It Looks)
4. United Provinces of India – Cornershop (The Battle Of New Orleans EP)
5. She Just Likes To Fight - Four Tet (There Is Love In You) 
6. Horchata - Vampire Weekend (Contra)
7. Bright Lit Blue Skies - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti (Before Today)
8. The Sweet Part of the City - The Hold Steady (Heaven is Whenever)
9. Losing My Patients - Shit Robot (From The Cradle To The Rave)
10. Bad Luck Boy - Liz Green  (Crow Cries EP)
11. Sickie Boy - Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 (Propellor Time)
12. Someone's Gonna Rescue You - Neil Young (Le Noise)
13. What's New? - Wyatt, Atzmon, Stephen (For The Ghosts Within)
14. Six Toes – Brasstronaut (Mt. Chimaera)
15. House of Cards - Robert Plant (Band of Joy)
16. The Visitor - Portico Quartet (Isla)
17. Sashimi – Tunng (...And Then We Saw Land)
18. Rambling Man - Laura Marling (I Speak Because I Can)
19. (Bit Part) - The Wooden Sky (If I Don't Come Home, You'll Know I'm Gone)
20. Heirloom - Sufjan Stevens (All Delighted People EP)
21. For Everyman [Live] - Jackson Browne & David Lindley (Love Is Strange)
22. New Year's Eve's The Loneliest Night Of The Year -Trembling Bells with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (Single)
23. Returnal - Oneohtrix Point Never (Returnal)
24. Silence of a Moonlit Sky - Cocos Lovers (Johannes)
25. I've Seen It Go Away - Merle Haggard (I Am What I Am)

If you'd like a copy, and Santa doesn't bring you one, let me know...

2010: the records of the year

I know these lists are arbitrary and subjective and annoying...but good fun to do and a good opportunity to remind yourself what you've been buying and listening to over the last twelve months.

When I've put end-of-year compilations together in the past I've tended to mix in some older tracks that I've been listening to a lot, but there's certainly no need for such ballast in 2010. Even the first official releases of some great older stuff - Dylan's Witmark Demos, Springsteen's The Promise, Johnny Cash's Ain't No Grave - haven't been able to get a look in. Twenty five different artists squeezed onto my compilation and, narrowing the field further, here's the top ten:

10. Isla - Portico Quartet. I hadn't heard them before seeing them support Anouar Brahem in the Brighton Festival and bought the CD at the concert: inventive and immersive jazz, horns twining round the distinctive tones of the hang drums.

9. Love is Strange - Jackson Browne and David Lindley. Gorgeous live versions of many of Jackson's greatest songs with his finest accompanist and a range of Spanish guests adding complementary textures.

8. Bliss Release - Cloud Control. An unexpected joy: a blast of fresh air from an Antipodean Airplane. Thanks for the introduction BTV!

7. If I Don't Come Home, You'll Know I'm Gone - Wooden Sky. A fine young Canadian band I first heard at last year's Edmonton Folk Festival. Great songs - and bonus points for releasing on vinyl with a lovely gatefold sleeve.

6. Band of Joy - Robert Plant. Beautifully sung, inventively arranged, impeccable and eclectic song choices. Great stuff from an iconic singer.

5. For the Ghosts Within - Wyatt, Atzmon, Stephen. Robert Wyatt is another musical hero who refuses to trade on past glories and is always looking for something different: a fascinating collaboration with sax and strings, ending with a glorious cover of 'What a Wonderful World'.

4. Le Noise - Neil Young. The third of a trio of old buffaloes still  thundering across the prairie and raising dust...

3. I Speak Because I Can - Laura Marling. Moving back to the young turks...she can certainly sing as well as speak, and writes beautifully. A remarkably mature second album. Try also to hear the Dharohar Project EP she and Mumford & Sons made with a group of Indian musicians.

2. It's Not As Bad As It Looks - Jon Dee Graham & The Fighting Cocks. Chiming guitar rock from Austin, Texas with lived-in vocals and great songs from a former member of Alejandro Escovedo's band. Makes me smile every time I hear it, which has to be worth something.

1. ...And Then We Saw Land - Tunng. The band who've given me the most listening pleasure this year - not only with this, their fourth and beefier-sounding album, but getting to know the first three and seeing them at the Hop Farm. A winning combination of melody, racket and off-the-wall eccentricity.

What do you think? How does your list compare?