I've been looking forward to the new Joanna Newsom album for ages. I'd decided that in respect for this phenomenal (and very attractive) talent and the sheer ambition of producing a 3 disc album - I'd buy the CD of it, my first CD purchase for years, I've downloaded all my new music for the past 5 years, until last year when Spotify started up. I got really excited about going into a record shop to buy it. But when I called in at Fopp, near Seven Dials, last Thursday, I was told that it had actually come out the week before and was completely sold out. I checked with a few other music stores and they were all sold out too. Defeated, downhearted and all sold out online too, I had to buy it on ebay. But it was worth the wait; it's a monumental and otherworldly album, that like a great book, demands concentration, time and is hard to put down once you've started listening to it. It also leaves me awestruck how Kate Bush has such a dominant and indelible influence on contemporary music. You can hear her in everyone from Joanna, to Laura Marling, Goldfapp, Florence and the Machine, Bat for Lashes, Fever Ray and Ellie Goulding.
I've been listening to Laura Marling's second album 'I Speak Because I Can' everyday on my way into work this week and it's a very remarkable album. Not just because it's better than her first, ('Alas, I cannot swim',which was a stunning debut)but the maturity and quality of the song writing is so impressive from someone so young. It's an utterly English album, probably the most English album you will hear this year and quite likely the best. I also really like it as it's surprisingly uplifting given that it's a break-up album, in the best tradition of Dylan's 'Blood on the Tracks', Joni Mitchel's 'Court and Spark' and Marvin Gaye's 'Hear My Dear', which is, without doubt, the best break-up album of all time.
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