Here's the first quarter of my very subjective favourites list of 2011. The ordering is pretty arbitrary, to be honest, but I guess it's all part of the game.
Pretty interesting and diverse list, I think, pieced together under some moderately intense deadline heat. “Raid” by Pusha T with Pharrell and 50 Cent is the best rap track I’ve heard in a while, though truth be told I haven’t heard much in a while.
Ashley Wales’ remix of “You’re No Good”… the second movement of Fucked Up’s rock opera… “I Had A Dream” by The Long Ryders still sounding levitational, right up to the last second when someone observes, correctly, “That was tight!”… Robert Stillman… The People’s Temple ramalam I blogged about yesterday… “The Only Way I Know To Love You” by Joe Tex… Andre Adams… “Supercollider”… and Sun Araw covering Teenage Fanclub, downloaded from the always on-point Raven Sings The Blues… All good…
An extra-long list this week, since we seem to have worked our way through more stuff than usual. A lot of good stuff, too, I’d say, with one or two exceptions, and a tremendous new mystery record that’s coming out in the summer and which hasn’t, I think, been announced as yet – hence the necessary evasiveness.
Roy Harper arrives on stage at the Festival Hall with a healthy selection of excuses. He hasn’t played in three years. He’s only had half a soundcheck. He met the soundman at four o’clock – no, at ten past five. The first song is brought to a temporary halt after about thirty seconds, due to his guitar sliding on the passport secreted in his trouser pocket.
It may be a stretch to call Joanna Newsom’s third album her down-to-earth pop record. "Have One On Me" does, after all, extend across three CDs of generally very long songs, features a harp duelling with a kora, and a dream sequence in which the singer arrives before her lover “on a palanquin made of the many bodies of beautiful women.” On the back of an elephant.
