A bit of a misunderstanding with regard to this album from Hush Arbors and Arbouretum, “Aureola”, which at first looked to be a collaboration between two acts I’ve written a fair amount about over the years.

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Lots of goodness in the playlist this week, but before we get there, a quick heads-up for the new issue of Uncut which should be out about now.

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There is a fairly telling moment, about three-quarters of the way through this mostly excellent night of three guitarists, at the Lexington, between the Angel and King’s Cross.

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Phew and all that. I’ve just been listening again to the 37 minute stream of new music by Neil Young and Crazy Horse that was posted at the weekend on neilyoung.com. I’m sure there were more important things I could have been doing throughout the day, like filling in health and safety reports and similarly essential tasks. But after reading John’s Wild Mercury Blog on the Neil and Crazy Horse jams, which are titled, tantalisingly, ‘Horse Back’, I haven’t needed much encouragement to utterly neglect such housekeeping duties to further take in the roiling brilliance of Neil and Crazy Horse.

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Late Saturday afternoon, I was sat at the computer checking football scores when I received an email from Mark Golley, as passionate and assiduous a Neil Young fan as I’ve ever come across. “Check out the front page of neilyoung.com,” it advised.

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Post-war Los Angeles was doubtless a swell place to live if you were a movie star, Hollywood mogul, business tycoon, captain of industry, political big-wig, gangster or otherwise a money-bags, cosseted by wealth, not much in life you couldn’t afford.

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Mildly annoying evening last night, as I watched the ecstatic tweets coming in from the Lubomyr Melnyk show at Café Oto, unable to be there myself. Comfort came from the Ukrainian pianist’s new album, “The Voice Of Trees”, which I think has been one of my favourite personal discoveries of the last month or two.

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A long list this week, reflecting perhaps a certain current fixation on the work of Julia Holter and Elephant Micah.

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As I mentioned the other day, after a grim 2011 it looks like 2012 has the makings of a good year for film. Later this week, I’ll be posting Jonathan Romney’s review of Alexander Payne’s tremendous The Descendants. But meantime, I hope you’ll indulge me while I throw forward to one of February’s best releases, Young Adult – a terrific sort-of-comedy from the Juno team of director Ivan Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody.

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It would be nice to pretend otherwise, but I’m far from an expert on medieval lute music. A few years ago, however, a strong enthusiasm for the British guitarist James Blackshaw lead me to an album he’d made with a Dutch lute player – lutenist, apparently – called Jozef Van Wissem.

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