Today, the Uncut Music Award judges ruminate on the power of Josh T Pearson's debut solo album, "Last Of The Country Gentlemen". Allan Jones: This has all the hallmarks of his former band Lift To Experience, it’s basically acoustic guitar, some string flourishes, a little Appalachian fiddle. Most of the songs come in at around 10 minutes, so for a mainstream audience it’s perhaps very demanding. For me, it’s one of the most gripping records of the year, one that I’ve returned to perhaps more than others on the list. Stewart Lee: I didn’t know Lift To Experience or much about the backstory, so I came to this record clean without any preconceptions. The bad thing about it is that the lyrics are quite silly – and it’s not helped by the fact that you can read them clearly. I couldn’t really work out if he was in character, but if he is it’s a fairly clichéd character. But I think it’s really bold, the minimal instrumentation, the length of songs, the fact that it takes you time to get into them. If they pop up at random on your iPod you have to stop what you’re doing, they’ve got this atmosphere about them that stops everything else. I think, in a way, it’s a bit like an excessive version of those strange auteurs who’ve been around for ages, like Jandek. But I think it has an amazing sparseness, and a confidence in not trying to augment the sound in any way. I also like the fact that stuff happens with the guitar playing, there are suddenly breaks in the pattern of the song where he’ll go off and do some sort of instrumentation that doesn’t seem to fit with what’s gone before. I think it’s really good, it was great to come across it without having any preconceptions. Nick Stewart: I did know about Lift To Experience, I played them a lot on my radio show, but this couldn’t be more different. You get drawn into this extraordinary experience. The songs are long, some of them are close to complete indulgence. When you think about the PJ Harvey album and its songs of two minutes and 30 seconds that condense so much, the flipside is this man sprawling himself to 12 minutes in some cases. But there is something quite fascinating about it, and it’s a record I’ll want to go back to again soon. If you think about Tim Buckley and those artists signed to Vanguard or Elektra all those years ago, he’s somewhere in there but at the same time he’s not. Is he Randy Newman? No, he’s not Randy Neman either, but he does fit into that field of American auteur observer. It’s intensely personal, it doesn’t look out very much – at least Bill Callahan is looking out, as is Bon Iver. Stewart Lee: What I’d also like to say about this album, in common with the PJ Harvey record, is what’s really good about them is that they’re both on the edge of being ridiculous at times. I think it’s really great to see someone not trying to be cool. It’s on the edge of absurd, you can almost laugh at the joy of the risk of it. Allan Jones: I think one of the aspects of it that hasn’t been too widely remarked upon is the level of pitch-black humour in it. He does take it to the edge of caricature. Nick Stewart: I agree with Stewart; this is right on the edge, PJ is right on the edge. Mark Cooper: When you see Josh live, as I did at the appropriately-named Slaughtered Lamb, the perfect venue to see him, he actually talked more than he sang. He was a stand-up comic, he was hilarious. I think there’s a way of looking at this record as a stand-up comedy record, I really think you could go that far with it. I think it’s just as dramatic as Polly’s record, you could say it’s a record about self-pity, self-mortification, blaming the woman, all the things that happen in straight country music. He’s interrogated all that in a very post-modern way, and then made a very self-indulgent but also rational record. I think it’s very funny, although all I heard initially was the tragedy of it. But there’s often a lot of comedy in tragedy, and there’s a lot of laughs in this record. That might be a weird thing to say when he’s wallowing away for 10 minutes, but I think he knows exactly what he’s doing. I think, as much as PJ has, he’s created a kind of character. Allan Jones: I saw him at The Great Escape in Brighton, and my first reaction to it was that was like a stand-up routine, with the songs interspersing these increasingly weird monologues. Mark Cooper: I love the idea that there he is in Texas, really caught up in the religiosity of that culture, and as an artist he transposes that into a high-wire act, it’s really impressive. He’s an original. Phil Manzanera: Not knowing anything about him before, and not having seen him live, I just didn’t get it. I just thought it sounded incredibly doomy, and it just didn’t do anything for me at all. Maybe because I didn’t know about this other side of it, I didn’t think Americans did irony. I just heard it as this guy who seems to be into religion, but also the feeling that he was just making it up as he went along, as if the reason why the tracks were so long was that he was just stoned in the studio. If that’s not the case, and all this is done on purpose, then I’ll have to listen to it again in a different way. Mark Cooper: Yeah, it is so close to something that could be so awful or, like Stewart said, ridiculous. It does suck you in, though, it stops you in your tracks. Leonard Cohen is a good comparison, because he’s funny in the way that Leonard is. Phil Manzanera: Maybe it would make more sense to me if I’d seen him live. Mark Cooper: Yeah, I think live you’re able to get it more easily, it’s not quite as pious as it may seem on the surface. Stewart Lee: I do feel it’s one of the records on this list that you can go back to, I feel there’s always more to get out of it. It’s a thing that can keep on giving, whereas a lot of the other records, you get to the end of them and you feel they’re a closed book. Tony Wadsworth: I’m more on Phil’s path, the light bulb didn’t quite click for me. I liked it when he brought a bit more colour into it, like the track “Sweetheart, I Ain’t Your Christ”, there was a shaft of light. I didn’t really want to wallow for that long in this misery. I like miserable records, don’t get me wrong, but I like them to be a bit more structured. Something like Neil Young’s On The Beach is such an amazingly bleak record, but it’s fantastic. Allan Jones: I think that’s funny as well... Tony Wadsworth: ...Leonard Cohen has that as well, but it’s much more disciplined. I dunno, maybe self-indulgence is a good thing sometimes. I get what Stewart said about being stopped in your tracks when something pops up on shuffle on the iPod, but do you really want to listen to a whole album like that? Stewart Lee: Well..., yeah. But I wouldn’t want to inflict it on people. Mark Cooper: It’s not a social record, is it? Stewart Lee: No, it’s not a very social record, it’s something you’d probably end up having quite a hostile relationship with. A lot of this isn’t the sort of stuff I would normally listen to, and I was struck, having not listened to 25 modern rock records in a row for a while, that we’ve reached a sort of saturation point in production, where it’s quite hard to hear through things to what’s going on. In a way, that thing of low-fi about 15 years ago when you make it deliberately a mess is also a kind of cliché. I knew a guy who was remastering things for the Smithsonian Institute, he was taking all the crackles off old Robert Johnson records but then asked to hold on to them so that someone could put them on to a Chris Rea record. But this album is not guilty of either of those things; it’s not produced to the point of, say, Fleet Foxes being trapped in their own architecture, but it isn’t self-consciously scruffy either. Linda Thompson: Josh is somebody who’s over-pathologised his sadness, to the point where he’s seen how risible it is, and I think that’s fantastic. What a lot of people might think is ill-discipline is just free verse, free association. I like it. Phil Manzanera: But in that free verse has he actually said anything that’s illuminating? Mark Cooper: I think the way he shifts the voices, he shifts his attitude to his self-pity is dramatic. It may appear to be wallowing, but there’s a drama to it. I’m not trying to say that it’s not meaningful, but it is artful. Linda Thompson: I don’t think he means it to be particularly ironic. Nick Stewart: I think he’s a poet, he’s interesting. I wish more records were made like this.

In certain circles, it remains sacreligious to criticise Brian Eno. No matter how many awful records he’s involved with, his reputation seems undiminished; never mind the music, we’re advised, feel the ideas. The problem is, of course, that unless you’re a musician of exalted stature, to some degree bored with the process of making records, it’s hard to be privy to those ideas. Oblique strategies might be stimulating for Coldplay or U2 in the studio, but when the end product is so meticulously tailored to the mainstream, the quirks of its genesis are more or less undetectable. Even on Eno’s recent solo albums, it all seems blandly elitist; rather disdainful of the idea of finished music, and of the listeners who are meant to be impressed by it. A few things this month, though, reminded me of Eno’s original genius. First, there were Adam Granduciel’s selections for My Life In Music (page 8 of the new Uncut), in which the War On Drugs’ canonical rock influences sat alongside Fripp & Eno’s "Evening Star" and a 2007 self-titled album by Blues Control, the low-key New York duo of Russ Waterhouse and Lea Cho. “I’d put Blues Control on late at night, maybe after Evening Star,” said Granduciel, an admirer and, perhaps, friend of Blues Control, since his sparring partner Kurt Vile contributed a few diffident bursts of trumpet to their "Local Flavor" (2009). Both of these Blues Control albums are great, as it happens, but "Local Flavor" has, I think, the edge, with its pianos and squitting drum machines floating through fairly lo-fi synthscapes, and some disruptive guitar buried deep in the mix. One track, “Rest On Water”, is like “a needling reimagining of, maybe, an old Budd/Eno jam,” I wrote on my blog at the time. The blues, incidentally, are conspicuous by their absence. Eno no longer appears to have much active interest in this sort of music, allowing the likes of Blues Control to follow through trajectories that he at least seems to have neglected for three decades. With no little serendipity, a new Blues Control album turned up this month, a collaborative jam with a spiritual maverick that Eno discovered busking, on his zither, in New York’s Washington Square. "Frkwys Vol. 8: Blues Control & Laraaji" is the product of a day long session at the end of 2010, and acts as a neat sequel to both "Local Flavor" and "Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance", Laraaji’s 1980 set with Eno. That latter record focused on the playing, at once contemplative and joyous, of Laraaji (born Edward Larry Gordon in 1943), who had dabbled in acting and stand-up comedy before various spiritual revelations led him to the sparkling consolations of the zither, and providing soundtracks for a generation of yogis, meditators and transcendence-seekers. "Day Of Radiance" established a template for the emerging New Age scene, but Blues Control have instinctively grasped that Laraaji’s music is much more vibrant and exploratory than stereotypes of New Age might suggest. Over the 35 weightless minutes of “Somebody Screams”, with (I presume) Laraaji incanting in a voice pitched somewhere between Pandit Pran Nath and Richie Havens, the psychedelic grace and euphoria of the Blues Control/Laraaji album really hits home: a late personal favourite of 2011. And, just plausibly, one that could still resonate with Eno. Today, I remembered the last time I’d heard a sound like Laraaji’s zither, albeit polished to nefarious ends. It was dancing serenely over tablas, in the intro to Coldplay’s “Life In Technicolor II”.

The latest transcript from the judges' meeting, as our panel get to grips with the second Bon Iver album. Allan Jones: The debut album was famously recorded in a shack in Wisconsin, and kind of set a pattern for rural backwoods recordings. Tony Wadsworth: Shack rock! Allan Jones: Haha! The new album is a much more collaborative effort, with a 10-piece band, altogether a more expansive and dramatic sound, almost cinematic at times, very dense occasionally. But it doesn’t seem to have surrendered the cardinal virtues of the first record. The intimacy of the lyrics seemed to strike a resonant chord with a lot of people. The album did amazingly in America, it went to Number One. Tony Wadsworth: I really liked it, partly because he’s done what Fleet Foxes have failed to do, in that he’s actually moved on. This is such a different record, but his voice is so recognisable that it maintains a consistency with the first record, he’s not left people behind. The thing I get most from this album is that I’m really interested to see what Album Five is going to sound like, to hear what he does next. He does this song at the end which is not like anything else on the album, which reminds me of Todd Rundgren, it’s all '80s guitar, even sounds a bit like Prince. Thinking back to the first album, it was the last thing you’d expect, so I think he’s got a hell of lot more breadth than I got from the first album, which was intimate and charming, but this actually opens things up a bit. No, it opens things up a lot. It might be boring to keep saying something is really good, but I think the whole shortlist is really good. Phil Manzanera: I never heard the first album, although it’s a name I see all the time, but I found this record totally refreshing. My first impression was that I loved the musical context, although I found the high falsetto voice a bit grating, I prefer it when he sings in his middle register. I love the playing on this; the arrangements are fantastic, as is the music underneath them. I tried to look at the lyrics but I couldn’t read them, so I never really worked out what he was singing, but there’s so much great music here, the guitar licks are to die for. It’s an album I can put and know that it will stay with me, which most of these albums wouldn’t, but this one seems to work on many different levels. Mark Cooper: I agree with everything Phil says. Great musicality, brilliant arrangements, three or four great cuts but maybe not enough. “Calgary” really stands out. I suppose again it’s a case of with the second record, how do you match the back story of the first? The first one was all about the woman who’s broken his heart, but although this grows in depth somehow there isn’t the same magic for me. I really wonder if artists like Bon Iver or Fleet Foxes will ever recover from their first records, because there’s something very particular about what both of them do and I don’t know if you can really build a career around that tone. You can make a great record, but can you really sustain a career? Nick Stewart: I’d love get Brian Eno’s reaction to this record, because if you, as I did, turn it down to almost inaudibility it has a sort of curious whine to it. I’m sure Brian would be able to write screeds about the tonality of it. There’s a warmth to it which, to my ears, is exactly the same as the Fleet Foxes record. This a slight progression from the first album, and what would be interesting is to play the two of them again side-by-side in about five years’ time and see which you prefer. It’s not quite doing it for me, in terms of this list, it’s not up there with some of these records. Also, some of these records are very similar, this is similar to the Bill Callahan and we’ve got the Josh T Pearson record to come. Stewart Lee: I agree, and of the three I think the Josh T Pearson is the best of them. It’s difficult with Bon Iver, when there was such a romantic story attached to the first one and you find yourself wondering if it was that story that sucked you in to it. I don’t want to spend too much time on it, because of the records that are like this I think the other one we haven’t talked about yet is better. Linda Thompson: I think he’s very good, he’s a nice bloke, and I like that he’s made a jump from the first record. This one isn’t as acoustic. I think I still need to listen to it more, it’s probably one of those records that will grow on me more, given time. I like the whiney voice, the falsetto, because it’s not practised, it’s not slick. I like it, but I don’t love it. Allan Jones: A hard record to love? Linda Thompson: I don’t think it’s a hard record to love, I just didn’t love it as much as, say, Polly Harvey. It’s amazing that it went to Number One in America, I’m so happy for him.

Today the Uncut Music Award judges discuss the album that turned out to be their winner; PJ Harvey's "Let England Shake". Allan Jones: This is probably one of the year’s best reviewed records, it’s already won the Mercury Prize, and has emerged has both a career best and a landmark record. It’s ambitious in terms of its scope, very poetic, it’s a meditation on England and its role in the world, and PJ’s own role in England. It brilliantly uses ancient conflicts to illuminate current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iran, via songs involving the battle of Gallipoli. I think it’s a brave and dramatic record. Mark Cooper: For me, she’s been the best British artist of the last 20 years; a brilliantly inventive and self-demanding artist. Her mode of writing is really impressive on this. I was always disappointed that she didn’t become a big rock star around the time of To Bring You My Love like she was shaping up to be, but I think that would have probably killed her. I think she’s reinvented a way of writing, in a similar way to how Tom Waits reinvented a way of writing that works for him. It’s like, to me, she found a war memorial somewhere in Dorset and read the list of names and transposed herself inside the price of those journeys. You can feel the weight of British history in these songs, which is an incredibly powerful thing to channel, and I really admire that. I think it’s a brilliant record, but having said that I think there’s a couple of really stinker songs on it. I don’t really go through it listing them, that would be annoying, because ultimately it doesn’t detract from the record’s genius for me. But there are couple of songs that don’t quite stand alongside the incredibly high quality of 90 per cent of the record, and 90 per cent of this record is a masterpiece. I know I sound really mean and snotty, it’s just that I have really high standards for her because she has such high standards for herself. Phil Manzanera: I think she ticks all the boxes in terms of an artist with a brain who likes challenges. I think it’s telling that the lyrics are quite short on every single track, she’s distilled it down. You look at some artists and there are pages and pages of words to say what they want to say, but she does it in a very pithy sort of way, which is great. What I also like is that there seems to be more melody than I’ve heard on a few of her albums. The musical context is great, John Parrish and the other people working with her resist the temptation to overdub too much, it’s very stark. It’s the PJ album I love the best. Tony Wadsworth: In the past I’ve always wanted to like her more than I did. I knew her records were really good, but why didn’t I want to play them more than three or four times and really fall in love with them? I’ve not been able to do that with any of them until this one. It really got to me emotionally, all the issues about Englishness, loss of Empire, the futility of war. It reminded me, lyrically, of The Good, The Bad & The Queen album - musically as well, because that was quite sparse. So, yes, I could relate this emotionally more than any of her other stuff. Linda Thompson: I loved it, I was impressed that a woman could go through a whole album and not mention some stupid bloke, except a stupid dead bloke. I love anything without hooks and choruses, that’s bliss for me, and these songs are beautifully played – beautifully underplayed. Stewart Lee: I like the fact that she’s not really in it, it’s quite an ego-less record. I think the instrumentation’s really interesting, it’s different to most things you’d expect to see covered in Uncut. I think the lyrics are interesting, they do a really good job. Sometimes songwriters get praised for using complicated language and showing you their vocabulary, but a lyric is not the same as a poem, and it’s not the same as prose. But the words here do the job they’re supposed to do, and if they do seem a little bit clichéd in places, a bit like on the Gillian Welch record, it’s because they have a deliberate relationship with existing poetry or folk song or hymns. The subject matter is written about really well without being preachy or dogmatic or necessarily taking a position, she’s not there as an authorial voice. I’ve always been impressed by her, but this the first of her records that has really stopped me in my tracks, that made me feel emotions I was really surprised by. I like the use of the samples, where they appear to be off the beat, it’s quite jarring in places. It’s interesting where the sounds sit in the mix, it’s sort of the opposite of the Fleet Foxes album in the way, they take you by surprise. Nick Stewart: I need to declare a few interests here. Firstly, I was in the army so I can absolutely relate to what she’s singing about. Secondly, her manager also oversees someone I work with, but for my money this is the outstanding album on this list. I think it’s a work of absolute genius. I went to see her at the Royal Albert Hall, the record was beautifully reproduced and it was a mesmeric evening. I think this is a stone cold classic, I can understand why it won the Mercury Prize. An absolute work of genius.