Features

As a knock-on effect of posting my Best Albums Of 2012 list every day this week, the office playlist is about double its normal length, as you’ll see.

From Uncut's November 2009 issue (Take 150), Bryan Ferry and his bandmates recall the making of Roxy Music's classic single, "Street Life"

The last 25, then. A few of you have asked for some help as to what these records sound like. I’ll try and put some links into these lists over the next few days, and also a blog of favourite track clips that might help a bit. See you what you think, anyhow… Previously: 112-76 Previously: 75-51 Previously: 50-26

Nearly there now: the third instalment of my personal favourite albums of the year… Previously: 112-76 Previously: 75-51

The Allah-Las make their UK debut in the back room of a north London pub on a freezing December night, the inhospitable weather not something familiar to in their native Los Angeles, where it probably only gets this cold in disaster movies, palm trees turning brittle with frost, the ocean becoming ice, CGI snow drifts on Sunset Strip and Denis Quaid in a parka and Bermuda shorts standing square-jawed and wrinkled-kneed against the elements.

OK, here’s the second part of my 2012 albums list… Previously: 112-76

Preamble: I’m going to start rolling out this list over the next couple of days whenever I get a chance to post. Apologies, first, for the weird number…

In May 2011, Jonathan Demme filmed Neil Young on the three hour drive from the singer’s hometown of Omemee to Toronto’s Massey Hall, where he was scheduled to play the final shows of his Le Noise tour.

One of those rushed weeks, I’m afraid – it looks like I won’t be able to construct a Wild Mercury Sound 2012 chart ‘til next week now, if you can bear the agonising wait. Lots of links and clips to be getting on with here, though: please make sure you have a listen to the new Sun Kil Moon and Plush tracks, and check the clip that Neil Young scholars are claiming shows the first time he’s collapsed onto the floor and wiggled his legs in the air mid-solo.

On my way home last week from The Rolling Stones at the O2, still a-buzz with excitement, I ended up chatting to a group of similarly exhilarated fans, who between them didn’t have enough fingers to count the number of Stones shows they’d been to, Brian Jones still a Stone the first time a couple of them had seen them.