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Jack White’s Third Man cottage industry has produced a bit of a mixed bag of releases in 2009, with the highlight thus far (of those I’ve heard, anyhow) being his own solo seven-inch, “Fly Farm Blues”. The whole disdain he seems to have for standard record company practise, the sense that decisions are made on a creative whim, is really admirable. But it can’t hide the fact that singles by, say, a local gospel group, Transit, haven’t been hugely compelling.

I’ve not been hugely interested in much of the end-of-the-decade stuff that’s been appearing over the past few weeks, but this piece by Simon Reynolds at the Guardian is worth a read.

Awful news over the weekend: the wonderful guitarist, Jack Rose, died of a heart attack on Saturday. Of all the adventurous new American primitives who’ve emerged in the past decade, it’d be just to call Rose the most talented of them all; a warm, intuitive and truly inspired player who dissolved the lines between traditional and experimental music.

Because, as I have just had pointed out to me, I have foolishly mistakenly read their name as MegaFUN, when the three members of MegaFAUN hove into view, led by a large bearded man with a banjo and a big grin, I somewhat feared they would prove to be relentlessly hearty, the distressing musical equivalent of bouncy castles, red noses, playground japes, a particularly unwelcome wackiness. The kind of jollity, in other words, that makes you want to run screaming from its larkish presence.

Just had a quick read of the blog on Hot Chip’s “Made In The Dark”, to make sure I don’t repeat too many points on this one about “One Life Stand”; endless stuff about the paralysing insidiousness of many of their songs, and so on.

More 2010 goodness this week, kicking off with the fierce new jams from Voice Of The Seven Woods, newly renamed. A glut of stoner spacerock here, actually, with the new White Hills album and a real find, Carlton Melton (thanks, Simon), who record in a geodesic dome in Mendocino County.

Find out what we think the greatest records of the Noughties are here

We count down from 100 to 51...

We count down from 150 to 101...see our choices here

A note on last week’s playlist from Nick, praising the new Cluster album in the face of what he descibes as “kosmische-light” (lite? leit?). Quite tempted, actually, to use that as part of some self-sabotaging branding project. Wild Mercury Sound: Hyping Kosmische-Lite Since 2007.