Blogs

A fine morning thus far, thanks to Julia Holter, Leonard Cohen and, as I type, the new album by Lee Ranaldo, “Between The Times & The Tides”.

We’re still just about at that time of the year when there’s ample of it left to look forward to what’s coming up in the rest of it. Everybody’s at it, of course, it’s one of the things we do annually around now.

Rarely has the disparity between the quality of a performance and the quality of a film been so striking.

I’m increasingly conscious that one of the main criteria for inclusion in this column appears to be a penchant for very long tracks. When writing about The Necks, a questing trio from Australia, it is especially easy to come up with a timetable rather than a review.

Strange times, I guess, when the third Howlin Rain album appears to have been delayed to some degree by the small business of Adele. But then, the fact that Ethan Miller’s band have fallen under the enigmatic and somewhat digressive tutelage of Rick Rubin means that, commercially speaking, there are more pressing matters than the construction of the dream 1970 throwback rock record.

Happy new year, everyone. A bit of housekeeping first: if you haven’t posted your 2011 Top Tens on this thread, please do so asap – I’m going to start adding up the votes end of this week.

An unsentimental tribute to the silent era...It is very easy to become consumed by a cosy nostalgia for the silent era. We all know Gloria Swanson’s anguished protest as the ageing silent queen from Sunset Boulevard: “We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces!” We’ve seen Chaplin’s bow-legged walk, Keaton’s stony-faced escape-artistry and Harold Lloyd dangling from the clock face.

Thanks for all your kind responses to my 100 Albums of 2011. In case you missed it the other day, one of the blog’s most diligent regulars, Nick, has put together a Wild Mercury Sound Spotify playlist with most of the 100 featured. Enormous thanks again, for that; let me know, of course, what you all think.

The last in our series of transcripts from the judges' discussions: Gillian Welch, "The Harrow And The Harvest".

This morning, a look at what the Uncut Music Award judges said about Paul Simon's "So Beautiful Or So What".