What's That Racket?

I was going to leave this until the end of the year, but Sassy has asked us what we are listening to, so I'll do it now.

As my tastes lurk around the clankier and rather unlistenable recesses of modern "classical" music and the avant garde end of rock and experimental music, I won't bother subjecting you to any of that because you wouldn't listen to it anyway.
Instead, here's what's found its way onto my iPod this year from the more "commercial" end of things:

Album of the Year:

Jolie Holland: Springtime Can Kill You.
After two really good albums, Jolie Holland suddenly explodes, and out comes the astonishingly gorgeous Springtime Can Kill You. If you've not heard her voice yet, make sure and have a back massage before listening or the chills could damage your spine.
Dark, twisted and beautiful, Americana at its very finest. As mentioned in an early post, Ghostly Girl is my favourite song for listening to in a darkened attic …

Runners-up in no particular order:

Joanna Newsom: Ys.
Hokay … So we have a harpist with a voice like Billie Holiday doing Marge Simpson, singing reeeally long songs about … er … weird shit. Except she's recorded by my personal deity, Steve Albini, and VanDyke Parks has added an orchestration that is frankly mind-blowing.
This is stunning! Listen and fall in love.

Joan As Policewoman: Real Life.
Joan Wasser is one of Antony's gang; the New York art rock crowd. He appears on here, along with Devendra and a few others, but this is Joan's album and it's brilliant. This is about the closest thing to a pop album I've bought since Abbey Road, but it's bloody wonderful. And you can dance to it … well, some of it …

Richard Hawley: Coles Corner.
I'd love to have been there when he pitched this as a concept. "I'd like to do an album of loving pastiches of pre-1962 British chart music."
My mum's got this. She thinks it's lovely. I've got this. I think it's lovely. Buy it.
Richard is also Jarvis Cocker's guitar player, which leads us neatly onto:

Jarvis Cocker: Jarvis.
From the quiet instrumental opening to the rousingly anthemic singalong "C**ts Are Still Running The World", this is absolutely fucking glorious! The best Pulp album never made. It veers from 'Up' period REM, through classic Pulp, to Cocker and Hawley going completely apeshit and is utterly wonderful.

Regina Spektor: Maryann Meets The Gravediggers.
Not our own beloved Maryann; this one is the creation of mad Russian emigrée Regeeeena. Sassy already knows how good this is, so does Peahen, who bought it for me (hoorah). Now it's your turn.

Susanna And The Magical Orchestra: Melody Mountain.
Follow up to last year's wonderful "List of Lights and Buoys" by the Radio 3 Late Junction regulars, this is an album of very odd covers (Love Will Tear Us Apart, Crazy Crazy Nights, Hallelujah) given the 'Susanna' treatment; slowed down and stripped bare and jaw-droppingly transformed by her astonishing voice. The words "haunting", "ethereal", "beautiful" applied to classic rock anthems. The words "eh?' and "wow!" also spring to mind.

Party Album of the Year:

Rogue's Gallery: (Anti Records) Various illuminaries such as: Richard Thompson, Nick Cave, Loudon Wainwright III, Bill Frisell, Sting (eh?), Rufus Wainwright and Kate Mc.Garrigle, Martin and Eliza Carthy, Lucinda Williams, Jack Shit, Antony, Ed Harcourt, VanDyke Parks, Jolie Holland, Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley (yes, them again, going gloriously nutjob on "A Drop Of Nelson's Blood"), Lou Reed and many more; all gleefully ripping their way through 43 traditional sea shanties and pirate songs.
"What?", you may well ask …
All I'll say is, invite some musicians over, leave guitars, fiddles, pipes, pirate hats, grog, etc. laying around, then put this on. Loud. You'll wake up several days later from the best party you've ever had. Gloriously silly, yet musically transcendent. Skip the Bono track (as if you need telling). If nothing else, hearing Loudon Wainwright III's deliciously deadpan rendering of "The Good Ship Venus" is worth the price alone …
Don't play this to your mother!

Honourable mentions

Nina Nastasia
The Handsome Family
Tom Waits
Nordik Tree
Puerto Muerto

Right. Off you go to Amazon …