Last Gasps

Back at work this afternoon. I just walked up and down the hill and then went for a swim later on and now I'm knackered. It's scary how quickly you move from relatively unfit to positively dormant under the influence of the fabled 'festive spirit'! They had this weird mix tape playing in the baths, too - Gorrillaz, Kate Bush, a bit of Trance Ibiza Volume 97 (it could have been Volume 98, I'm not sure...!), "give me hope, Jo-hanna", Jay-Z's '99 Problems' - it would have been enough to put me off my 'stroke', were I possessed of such a thing. That said, I almost stayed in for a couple of extra lengths when Althea and Donna came on - I'd definitely soundtrack the sedate swim to vintage reggae if I was in charge. I love that line "see me in me halter back/see me give you heart-attack" - makes me chuckle...

Addendums to my album chart for 2012:

I was just going to mention some things that were, as it were, 'bubbling under', to whit: 'OFF!' by OFF!, 'Tuczon' by Giant Giant Sand,'Toy' by Toy, Julia Holter's 'Ekatasis', as mentioned, and the Allah-Las debut (also self-titled.) Actually, given the amount of listening time it got in my kitchen over Christmas (in between the Wombles and Kate Rusby, naturally!) the latter almost got bumped up, last-minute, to full chartdom. it certainly tests the listeners tolerance for the derivative - and it's amazing that a bunch of hipsters in 2012 would spend so much time and effort making something that sounds like it was recorded in a West Coast garage in 1965 - but it's still a lovely album; kind of blissed out and blurry. It sounds a bit as if someone dragged the Crystal Stilts out of their basement in NYC and exposed them to a bit of desert sun.

Some honourable mentions for the Indiepop weirdos, too: I very much enjoyed The Lovely Eggs' 'Wildlife' (though I missed both the album launch party and the Shonen Knife support slot!), the Just Joans' 'Buckfast Bottles In The Rain' and the Tigercats' 'Isle Of Dogs', though I'll admit that they're all a bit of an acquired taste . (The singer for Tigercats, in particular, I found intensely annoying when I saw them support 'Allo Darlin' in Leicester early last year but he's grown on me to the point where I now find him quite endearing.)

AND I deliberately left out some fine examples of 'new' old music : Can's 'Lost Tapes', 'The Complete Singles Collection' by A.R. Kane, The Sugargliders compilation, 'Nest With A View 1990-1994', My Bloody Valentine's 'EP's and Rarities' collection and 'Stay with Me: An Anthology' by the Faces. I could easily have added the first three in and made it a 'Top 15' (if I'd done my counting right in the first place, that is...!)

Right, that's quite enough of that. Clearly the list-making can easily tip into the obsessional - I promise not to mention it again!