In League With Paton

Candi Staton - Who's Hurting Now? (Honest Jon's, 2009) Raphael Saadiq - The Way I See It (RCA, 2008/Sony UK, 2009) Here are two albu...

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Beware (Domino, 2009) The cover is deep black, with a remarkably striking portrait of the artist in white si...

Various kinds of work have left me unable to blog for a while now, so I thought I'd post one of those occasional playlists, mainly to re...

AC Newman – Get Guilty (Matador, 2009) Neko Case – Middle Cyclone (Anti, 2009) This week two solo albums arrive from members of the infectio...

The Invisible - The Invisible (Accidental, 2009) It seems only appropriate to follow the tribute to Ian Carr with a review of something invo...

It’s a sad and rare day when I get to write here about a significant figure in British music with a direct and personal influence on my life...

Mountains - Choral (Thrill Jockey, 2009) Lars Horntveth - Kaleidoscopic (Smalltown Supersound, 2009) Joshua Redman - Compass (Nonesuch, 2009...

M Ward - Hold Time (4AD, 2009) Reviewing records is a difficult business sometimes, and as this blog is very much a labour of love, I don’t ...

Various Artists - Dark Was The Night (Red Hot Organisation/4AD, 2009) As the very endearing character JJ from Skins might put it – ‘oh my gi...

Morrissey - Years Of Refusal (Polydor, 2009) Describing a Morrissey album as a bit patchy is a bit like saying a packet of peanuts may conta...

Richard Thompson's 1,000 Years Of Popular Music, The Barbican, 3rd February 2009 I must admit to being something of a latecomer to the w...

Antony and the Johnsons - The Crying Light (Rough Trade, 2009) Reactions to ‘The Crying Light’ so far seem to have hinged upon the degree to...

Bruce Springsteen - Working On A Dream (Columbia, 2009) I’m increasingly wary of hyperbole at the moment (Gary Mulholland’s observation in t...

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion (Domino, 2009) Bon Iver – Blood Bank (Jagjaguwar, 2009) On the surface, you couldn’t find tw...

My good friend and musical associate Oscar Lomas today sent me a personal list of the best albums ever. Actually, rather than being some pho...