One of the albums I played most in 2009 was “II” by Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas, and in fact I got pretty hooked on everything Hans-Peter Lindstrøm had done. It was easy to assume that Lindstrøm, allegedly the musician, was the more prog and kosmische inclined, while Prins Thomas, allegedly the DJ, brought the disco imperative. Listening to this wonderful new Prins Thomas solo album, though, the distinction isn’t quite so clear. While Lindstrøm’s recently taken a path that ups the ‘80s and disco influences, “Prins Thomas” basically takes off where the percolating soundscapes of “II” left off. There’s plentiful live instrumentation, not least the martial breaks and heavy bass on the really wonderful “Uggebugg”, which feels very much like a sequel to the previous album’s “Cisco”. When I wrote about “II”, I mentioned in passing an affinity with the first batch of Michael Rother solo albums, which comes much more to the fore here. “Uggebugg” shares with much of “II” a feeling of infinite build, an indulgence of entirely justifiable noodling. But around 3.45 minutes in, it resolves into a languidly twanging guitar line which feels like that kind of refracted surf sound Rother on, say, “Flammende Herzen” or “Sterntaler”. It’s still unequivocally dance music, but there’s a sense that Thomas has penetrated ever deeper into the sounds of ‘70s Germany, a clean and linear take on cosmic music that can sometimes switch up into dronemusic of a kind: the ten minutes of, ahem, “Sauerkraut” pulse away like a mellower, warmer version of Kraftwerk’s motorik circa “Autobahn”, albeit with an unexpectedly louche guitar solo. “Wendy Not Walter” (a reference to Wendy/Walter Carlos presumably) edges closer to the less rockist disco sound of the earlier Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas records – in fact, it’s the one track where Lindstrøm turns up, on piano. But I can’t help thinking this album might alienate a few of the duo’s old dance fans, while Krautrock dorks like myself lap it up. In a similar vein, a quick mention for the new Jonas Reinhardt album on Kranky, “Powers Of Audition”, which summons up the same kind of synthy pomp-kosmische located so well by Oneohtrix Point Never last year. Check him out here.

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. Nevertheless, there’s a distinct sense that Newsom has moved on after the crenellated extravagances of her last album, 2006’s "Ys". There are no lavish orchestrations by Van Dyke Parks this time, with Newsom fronting a more compact and mobile ensemble led by her live band’s guitarist, Ryan Francesconi. The Pre-Raphaelite damselry has been superseded by some fiercely directional haute couture. Piano takes over from harp on five of the 18 tracks. And where Newsom’s voice was once an uncanny, shrill blend of the childlike and ancient, she now sings with a composure and soulfulness that stands comparison with Laura Nyro. Old, somewhat arbitrary categorisations for Newsom – acid-folk, say – have less use than ever when it comes to considering "Have One On Me". “Good Intentions Paving Company”, for instance, finds Newsom at the piano, leading her band off at a jaunty canter before sliding into an ineffably lovely, bluesy refrain. It’s an intricate song, certainly, but there’s a linear momentum which hasn’t previously been evident in her songwriting. A passionate lyrical directness is more pronounced, too: after five minutes of gripping prevarications on love, performance and a plainly emotional car trip, she announces, “I only want for you to pull over, and hold me/ Till I can’t remember my own name.” It’s a classic Newsom epiphany – one of a good dozen on the album –and the formal end of the song, but the track rolls on gloriously for another 90 seconds or so: some wordless multitracked harmonies; limber drumming from the consistently innovative Neal Morgan; a touch of banjo from Francesconi; and a woozy, jazzy trombone solo, of all wonderful things. Throughout, in fact, "Have One On Me" is suffused with space, invention and playfulness, even in the face of Newsom’s sometimes unnerving intensity. It’s also exceptionally beautiful, from the revenant sigh of “Easy”, to the stark song of parting, “Does Not Suffice”, Gospel-tinged and worthy of Nina Simone, that closes the album some two hours later. Faced with such a marathon, it’s tempting to comb the three discs for extraneous songs. But Newsom’s vision is so pervasive, and the quality of her songs so high, that the size of this indulgent-looking package seems utterly justified. Ryan Francesconi deserves to share some of the credit, for the imaginative but unobstrusive arrangements that provide such subtle variety. Four songs feature Newsom alone with her harp, in an echo of 2004’s "Milk-Eyed Mender", and a handful more find her discreetly tracked by a small string section. Elsewhere, though, Francesconi pulls off more audacious tricks. In “Go Long”, a kora (played by a Seattle-based scholar, Kane Mathis, rather than a Malian griot) slips adroitly into the mix, flitting around Newsom’s harp and asserting her claims to be influenced by West African music. Francesconi, who mainly favours a Bulgarian tambura (a kind of lute), punctuates “Baby Birch” with some empathetic clangs of fuzzy electric guitar. The 11-minute “Have One On Me” (the whole album is studded with references to drink and drunkenness, intriguingly) is a skewed jig, of sorts; a relative to “Colleen”, Newsom’s first studio collaboration with Morgan and Francesconi on the 2007 “Ys Street Band” EP. A buccaneering horn section figures, too, a recurring feature that helps give "Have One On Me" its peculiar swing. Along with “Good Intentions Paving Company”, “You And Me, Bess” and “In California” currently sound like the highlights from this embarrassment of riches. The first is a rapturous coupling of Newsom’s harp with trumpet, horn and trombone, who elegantly break out into jazzy extempores: the point at 4:53 when Newsom sings, “It seems I have stolen a horse,” is unaccountably moving. “In California”, meanwhile, has the ravishing gravity of something by Joni Mitchell from the back end of the ‘70s - “Paprika Plains”, perhaps? Newsom will always be a divisive figure, open to accusations of whimsy, and for all the relative directness of Have One On Me, lyrics like “Her faultlessly etiolated fishbelly-face” (from “No Provenance”) will provide bejewelled ammunition for her detractors. To devotees, however, it sounds very much like a second masterpiece: a different kind of epic to Ys, and one with enough hooks and charms to ensnare at least a few Newsom agnostics. Palanquins constructed from naked women? Nothing you couldn’t find in a Lady Gaga video, surely… * A quick note. I’ve had a copy of “Have One On Me” for something over a month, but have held off blogging ‘til now out of respect to Drag City’s (impressively successful) campaign to keep the album under wraps for as long as possible. Consequently, rather than the usual first impressions-style blog, I’ve decided to post the full review that’ll appear in the next issue of Uncut, out on February 26, since the album is obviously out any day now. Please look out for the issue: we’ve an extensive interview with Joanna Newsom at home in Nevada City, which explains a lot more about “Have One On Me” and its making. In the meantime, if you have any more questions about this amazing album, and about things I haven’t covered in the piece, please post, and I’ll try to answer as many as I can. Thanks. .

There’s a certain grim obligation, whenever tackling Steve Mason’s music, to harp on about The Beta Band’s first three EPs, and the distinctly spotty work which has followed them in the intervening 13 years. It’s a lot harder, though, to try and explain exactly why that initial clutch of songs are so much better. For as Mason’s new solo LP, “Boys Outside”, proves, his songwriting style doesn’t vary a great deal from project to project. The musical trimmings may shift, but Mason’s soft, linear flow is a kind of dazed constant, immediately recognisable, unsullied by melodrama or climax or, indeed, much in the way of variety. If the word wasn’t used as a pejorative, Mason’s music could be easily described as monotonous. I was thinking about all this earlier, playing “Boys Outside” for maybe the fifth time, and wondering what it is about this set that makes it more appealing to me than his other post-Beta Band projects. To be honest, I had to check Wikipedia to see what those projects actually were: Black Affair I remember, but there was a revival of King Biscuit Time, too, of which I only have the faintest memories. Black Affair, if I have this straight, was a stab at electro, but I’m beginning to wonder whether Mason’s records are essentially unchanging, and it’s just a question of mood as to whether they make an impact on me or not. You could say this about all music, of course, but Mason’s music seems peculiarly liminal and open to this kind of interpretation. “Boys Outside”, anyhow, was produced by Richard X, electropop mastermind of Annie and so on. With fitting perversity, however, there’s scant evidence of electro on these ten insidious songs. Instead, the musical backdrop is warm and unfussy, essentially a slightly more polished, less folksy, take on what the Beta Band did, on and off, so well. “Am I Just A Man”, in fact, sounds like one of the very best Beta Band songs, though I’m not sure which one: again, there’s this sense of a continuum in Mason’s work, as if the same stuff has been flowing out of him, with barely peceptible shifts in quality, for nearly a decade and a half. Perhaps you could draw a distinction between some of his quirkier, wilfully eccentric ideas and what appears more naturalistic and emotionally nuanced. If that’s the case, “Boys Outside” definitely falls into the latter category, as those who heard the appealingly fragile “All Come Down” single last year will probably testify. “Understand My Heart” and the title track are really strong, too: this, perhaps, is the simplest and most accessible way Mason has ever found to present his unravelling, idiosyncratic music. And there’s also a certain kinship with Hot Chip, possibly, in that Mason also sounds like an open-hearted indie boy unforcedly making a kind of pop.