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And so to the records of the year. I usually do this piece in December, but as all sensible shoppers know that’s the worst month in the year to buy anything for yourself — particularly music, in what is very much a buyer’s market. Amazon’s prices, normally comfortingly low, lurch up into realms of profitability during December, to catch out unwary parents and relatives who don’t buy things there for £4.98 every day of the week. In mid-December I wandered through a branch of Zavvi, the doomed rebrand of Virgin Megastores. I was there, and some tumbleweed, and a couple of sad teenagers in shabby Zavvi uniforms, who may have been making alternative career plans for the new year. If you can’t flog CDs and computer games and DVDs in the fortnight before Christmas, you haven’t a prayer. The heart seems to have gone out of the music business, but fortunately the music hasn’t, which is all that need concern us here.
As is traditional in this column, I find that few of the records I have fallen in love with were released in the past year. This is probably my failure rather than the music’s, but I’m sure I’m not alone in buying the latest album everyone’s talking about and then wishing I hadn’t. This year’s H.M. Bateman experience was the Fleet Foxes album, over which everyone swooned and even foamed with heartfelt appreciation. I just couldn’t hear it. I tried, I really tried. But that’s pop music for you: the endless joy of discovery is always offset by the dismay of realising that your tastes are utterly your own and everybody else’s are often incomprehensible. Alexandra Burke’s version of ‘Hallelujah’ is the fastest-selling single by a female singer of all time. To anyone who loves the original, this feels like a calculated insult, the musical equivalent of a gobful in the eye. But we can’t take it so personally; indeed, to stay sane, we must turn the other cheek. (And look forward to the CD of Leonard Cohen’s live shows, which I suspect may be a highlight of 2009.)
Whereas anyone who loves Alexandra Burke would grimace with disgust if confronted with James Yorkston, say. This croaky-voiced singer-songwriter from Fife, one of the least showbiz people who can ever have lived, releases quiet but intense albums of acoustic loveliness that creep into your subconsciousness and never leave. I first discovered The Year Of The Leopard (2006) and moved on to Just Beyond The River (2004), and both are magnificent. His is an unashamedly rural, introverted, reflective, melancholy voice from a folk background but with wider ambitions: the further he moves away from traditional folk the better he seems to be. I would definitely suggest that you try before you buy, for Fleet Foxes reasons; but it’s such a rare pleasure to find someone whose records you know you are going to collect with pleasure over many years. There’s a new one out, When The Haar Rolls In, which I haven’t bought yet. Why hurry these things? It’ll be there when I need it.
Some of these albums I may have mentioned before here: Circus Money (2008) by Walter Becker of Steely Dan, his skanking reggae album; Worrisome Heart (2008) by Melody Gardot, a frighteningly young and talented jazz singer-songwriter who will appeal to anyone who wished Norah Jones could have been a bit better; and Raising Sand (2007) by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, which everyone else loves so that’s OK. I also liked Liejacker (2008), the latest by Oxfordshire’s Thea Gilmore, and a subtle refinement of all she has done before; Adieu False Heart (2006), an inspired collaboration between Linda Ronstadt and the Cajun singer Ann Savoy; and Subtitulo (2006) by Josh Rouse, a prolific American singer-songwriter of folky tendencies who can never quite conceal his love of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. And I loved Traffic and Weather (2007) by Fountains of Wayne, the Massachusetts powerpop band who are Squeeze’s true heirs: wonderful hooks, droll lyrics, old blokes’ knowing world-view. But best of all? The album I’ve played most this year has been Joni Mitchell’s Taming The Tiger, from 1998. It’s not one that anyone really talks about: it’s all quite similar-sounding, with a lot of guitar-synthesiser washing over you. And then, this summer, I finally got it. A stunning, multi-faceted record I’ll be playing forever. Perhaps I’ll give the Fleet Foxes another go, in around ten years’ time.
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