Playlists

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.

I guess there’s some fairly auspicious new entries in this lot, though I’d also direct your attention to a couple of the other records here, by Bitchin Bajas (a Cave spin-off, I believe) and Jonathan Wilson. Really good stuff.

Some good things here, and a couple of stinkers. Beyond this, though, I’m onto one of my seasonal Dead jags: their early ‘70s stuff has been perfect for long, bright, early walks these past few mornings.

Thank you one and all for your extraordinary patience and willingness to play along with the game, and my apologies for not publishing messages from those of you who guessed correctly. Today, finally, I can reveal the tremendous mystery record that’s been preoccupying me for the past few weeks: check out Number Four in the list below.

All new arrivals this week, I think, though of course one or two of these albums have been round the block a few times one way or another.