A bunch of stuff I've enjoyed in March.

That there picture is of Josh T Pearson, troubled troubadour, former singer with Texan psych-rockers Lift To Experience, and now country solo singer extraordinaire. He falls into the first of today's categories of....

Gigs I've loved this month: Josh T Pearson at Stereo - a hushed crowd (generally) gathered to hear Pearson play morbid songs of heartbreak and bad times, and he did so beautifully, puncturing the sombre mood with a stand-up routine that had the crowd laughing and entirely at his mercy. Check a wonderful solo performance here. New album Last of the Country Gentlemen might just be one of the albums of the decade.

I also took in the folk-rocking delights of The Decemberists, and the guitar majesty of Deerhunter who had the audacity to open their set at Oran Mor with a brand new song. This bunch are what guitar music should be about: inventive and listenable.

Records I've loved this month: Aside from Josh T Pearson, there's been Jessica Lea Mayfield's Tell Me, wonderful drone rock/jazz metal from Earth with Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1, The Dodos back on fine form with No Color, and finally, Kurt Vile with Smoke Ring for My Halo.

Tune in tomorrow for the first review of April....who will it be?

Top 33 of the Year.....The Top Ten!

Ooooh, getting close! What's at numbers 4 and 3?

4. Spoon - Transference.

Seven albums in, and Britt Daniel's band continue to weave their angular magic.

Coming after the pop majesty of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, there's an unsettling quality about Transference, with the band taking their studio trickery to new heights. Demo-sounding snippets suddenly surge into full blown productions, vocals suddenly drop out of the mix, there's stereo separations, but above all there's some cracking tunes.

There's the familiar groove of 'Trouble Come Running' and 'Before Destruction', the skeletal funk of 'Who Makes Your Money?' and the frenetic 'Got Nuffin'. The record also contains what's possibly Spoon's most lovely-sounding song, the gorgeous 'Out Go The Lights'.

At the centre of it all, however, is the seething, piano-abusing 'Written In Reverse'. Rarely has Daniel sounded so angry and urgent, bitterly spitting out lines about an unrequited love:



The sound of a band who just enjoy letting their hair down.

3. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest.

Simply a wonderful album about childhood nostalgia and the joy of discovering new music.

Bradford Cox continues to have a knack of being incredibly prolific as the helmsman of Deerhunter while also producing music as Atlas Sound, and Halcyon Digest is an amalgamation of the direct pop of the former and the bedroom electronica of the latter.

Incredibly, on a record full of Cox's brilliant songwriting the highlight is actually guitarist Lockett Pundt's 'Desire Lines'. Having said that, there are so many moments of joy that it's hard to focus in on just one. So here's 'Helicopter' as well:



Can you really argue with the brilliance of an album that reminds of the thrill and excitement of discovering new music? Answer: No.

Album Review - Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest

In which Bradford Cox proves that his band are just getting better and better. After the epic double of Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. one might have thought that it was downhill all the way, but Halcyon Digest goes to show that Cox has a bottomless well of shimmering pop songs to charm and beguile the listener with.

It's a more laid-back affair than Microcastle, with the focus on a nostalgia for childhood memories and the discovery of music during the days before downloads, MP3s etc. This is something that makes its way into the lyrics of "Basement Scene", an elegy to the days of DIY music scenes.

There's a mix of the floating dream-pop of Cox's solo work as Atlas Sound in tracks like lead-off track "Earthquake" and the recent single "Helicopter", and the more insistent Deerhunter sound of "Revival", which would have soundtracked the Under the Sea prom in Back to the Future if Marvin Berry and the Starlighters hadn't gotten in first, and the psych-pop of "Desire Lines" and "Memory Boy".

It ends with the lovely, touching "He Would Have Laughed", a tribute to the late Jay Reatard. It's a fine way to end the record, bringing it back to the present despite the yearning for the past redolent on the rest of the record.

Here's hoping Cox and co. continue to be so prolific, and so brilliant.

Deerhunter plus Dennis Cooper equals.....

....one of the most beautiful and affecting songs of the year so far.



That is all.