The second night of Ryley Walker’s UK tour comes two weeks ahead of third album Golden Sings That Have Been Sung (no, that second word isn’t a typo) which only the illegal downloaders in the crowd will know. Walker was meant to appear in a duo with legendary former Pentangle double bassist Danny Thompson, fifty years his senior (Ryley is 27). But Danny is ill – at least that’s the official story – so we get his regular trio, featuring two musicians from Oslo. It’s hard to imagine how this show would work without terrific drummer Stale Liavick Solberg, whose flamboyant jazz chops propel the evening’s tight, spacey improvisations. Walker’s intricate guitar work soars, while understated bassist Julius Lovid holds it all together. They create…

Lawrence Block is best known for the Matt Scudder novels and Burglar series, although these form a relatively small part of his output over the last fifty years. I used to have a triumvirate of favourite crime writers: him, Ed McBain and Elmore Leonard. The other two are gone now, which makes Larry the King of Crime, as far as I’m concerned. We’ve met a couple of times and correspond occasionally. Back in the day he did a guest blog on this site about one of his many pseudonyms (pseudonyms, and why writers use them, always interest me). He’s an accomplished, original short story writer, too, going back to before most of us were alive, when a writer could make serious money out of the…

He knew, of course, throughout the writing and recording of this album, that it would be his last. So many songs about death, the afterlife, such generosity of spirit. I haven’t fallen for a Bowie album as heavily since Scary Monsters, 35 years ago. He made a handful of good albums after that, Outside and Heathen probably the best of them, but none as brave or consistent as this. I’m glad I had time to come to love Blackstar before it became so inexorably associated with his death. Bowie made his death a work of art, as his producer Tony Visconti pointed out earlier today, but none of us spotted it. Even the (now unbearably poignant) video for Lazarus was taken as related to the…

Last week my friend Giles asked how many albums I’d listened to this year and I guessed at a hundred. In putting together a list of albums that I’d listened to properly (as against tried and discarded) it came to almost exactly a hundred. Many (Kamasi Washington’s three disc opus The Epic, for instance) I haven’t had time to form a considered opinion of. The number keeps growing, even as last year’s releases are pushed aside by leaks of this year’s (Bowie’s Blackstar is very good in part). Anyway, usual drill, I cut off my list at the point where it feels like there’s serious competition to get in. The 41 is based on how much I enjoyed the album over the year, not seeking…

This year’s sleeve-notes are a little late, for reasons suggested by the post above, so I shall be posting the tracks slightly more frequently than once a day in order to catch up. For those of you new to this, my partner Sue and I have been making best of year CDs (or cassettes!) for our friends since 1988. In recent years, I’ve written about the songs chosen on this blog (MP3s are low bit-rate and only up for a while. They will be removed at copyright holder’s request). The title of this year’s CD, the cover of which (forced rhubarb in our allotment, by Sue) is above, may need explaining. ‘Bitter’, because a few weeks ago my closest friend, Mike Russell, died after a…