Been away for a while, so as you might imagine there are a lot of new things in here. Particularly liking The Field, Feist and James Blackshaw at this early stage.

Few notes about this lot. The Mark Fry album is brand new, though sounds rather compellingly as if it was recorded in 1971, while the Modeselektor album features Thom Yorke on a couple of tracks and works in places as a neat Berlin companion piece to “The King Of Limbs”.

Still much taken with the Mikal Cronin, Hiss Golden Messenger and Meg Baird records, but some nice new additions this week, from Real Estate, Plaid and Wild Flag (I have the full album now), among others.

A few to flag up this week: Hiss Golden Messenger of course, Mikal Cronin (produced by Ty Segall; kind of kin to the first Ganglians record maybe), Meg Baird, Wild Flag.

A bunch of Roy Harper reissues seem to be dominating this rundown, justifiably I guess, but hopefully you can spot some other interesting stuff in here…

Looming deadlines mean my blogging has been sketchy this week, but I have at least kept a longer-than-usual log of the records played in the past few days. As you’ll see, a good few interesting new arrivals here, too.

A few anxious messages these past few days, enquiring about the new Wilco album. For various reasons (not least because I have a stream rather than a download), I haven’t been able to play it and concentrate on it as much as I’d like, so I’m reluctant to say too much at this point.

I suspect there may be one or two things on this list that you’ll be asking questions about, though bear with me a little: I’m playing Number 11 for the first time as I type…

Thanks once again to Nick this week, who’s added a load more albums to the Wild Mercury Sound Spotify playlist. I doubt whether many of these selections will be available; the Bon Iver, maybe?

Many thanks to everyone who has contributed lists to our Best Of 2011: Halftime Report blog – please keep them coming. I’m staying staunch, for the time being at least, and refusing to publish that list of disappointments you’ve been asking for; I guess you can probably figure a lot of it out, given what doesn’t appear in my Top 30 anyway.