Features

Quite tempting yesterday to play nothing but “Signed Sealed Delivered I’m Yours”, but here’s this week’s playlist, with quite a few new clips (Broadcast, Jessica Pratt, Hiss, Ty!), links and new entries.

You catch us on a pretty busy day, deadlines fast approaching for our last issue of 2012. That’s the one, of course, that traditionally carries our end-of-year lists of best albums, reissues, films, DVDs and books. This means we’ve all been recently asked to nominate our personal Top 20s, from which John has been compiling the definitive countdown, the full list to be published when he’s finished his painstaking calculations in the Uncut that comes out at the end of November.

As you might expect of a book about Leonard Cohen, Sylvie Simmons spends a fair proportion of I’m Your Man writing about love, faith, depression, finance, and the demands and consolations of poetry and women. Mostly, though, the focus of this hefty and thorough book is Leonard Cohen’s charm: about how an exceptionally gifted artist has seduced most everyone who has come into contact with him, through the course of an uncommonly eventful life.

If you've ever suspected that Brian Eno's enduring reputation as an avant-garde genius is more mythical than actual, his discography from the past few years makes for a satisfying read.

That pretending-not-to-be-annoyed-by-the-Mercurys morning of the year. But as way of distraction, here’s this week’s rather late office playlist.