Few notes about this lot. The Mark Fry album is brand new, though sounds rather compellingly as if it was recorded in 1971, while the Modeselektor album features Thom Yorke on a couple of tracks and works in places as a neat Berlin companion piece to “The King Of Limbs”.
About five years ago, one of those serendipitous quirks of the music business made it seem, fleetingly, as if a bunch of underground folk musicians might find their way into the mainstream.
Still much taken with the Mikal Cronin, Hiss Golden Messenger and Meg Baird records, but some nice new additions this week, from Real Estate, Plaid and Wild Flag (I have the full album now), among others.
A few to flag up this week: Hiss Golden Messenger of course, Mikal Cronin (produced by Ty Segall; kind of kin to the first Ganglians record maybe), Meg Baird, Wild Flag.
A bunch of Roy Harper reissues seem to be dominating this rundown, justifiably I guess, but hopefully you can spot some other interesting stuff in here…
Looming deadlines mean my blogging has been sketchy this week, but I have at least kept a longer-than-usual log of the records played in the past few days. As you’ll see, a good few interesting new arrivals here, too.
In his book Hotel California, Barney Hoskyns describes Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, in the 1970s as “A funky Shangri-La for the laid-back and longhaired, who perched in cabins with awesome views of LA’s sprawling basin.”
A few anxious messages these past few days, enquiring about the new Wilco album. For various reasons (not least because I have a stream rather than a download), I haven’t been able to play it and concentrate on it as much as I’d like, so I’m reluctant to say too much at this point.
Many thanks to all of you who stopped by and registered your votes for this Albums Of 2011 Thus Far poll. I've finally done the requisite dark mathematics and come up with this Top 20. A big gap between the top three and the rest of the field and, perhaps, an unexpected winner…
