The Football Field - Where Parental Screams Come True

Swearing at football on the television from the safety of your armchair is all very well, but there’s no substitute for absorbing a little abuse yourself and getting some cardiovascular exercise at the same time. To this end, I recently took the necessary exam, and am now qualified to blow loudly on a whistle and give a stiff-arm salute without fear that my German in-laws will think I’m taking the piss out of their history.

A few dozen games giving vent to my latent authoritarian streak have confirmed what I always suspected about youth football - there’s nothing wrong with the players, just the parents who watch it and the coaches who coach it. When I played as a kid, you rarely heard from either. The parents were either absent, or quietly observant, and you learnt to tune out the odd hysterical mother until her mortified son banned her from watching. The coaches told you their thoughts before the game, at half-time, and afterwards. This was your 90 minutes of escape from the class room and parental oversight, when you had the chance to run free and express yourself with limited instruction.

Nowadays, children’s lives have to be micro-managed, while many parents and coaches think they absolutely need to be centre stage, all the time (although needless to say, it's the loud ones you notice most). To rescue football from this intrusive plague, I plan to develop a range of referee’s products that will aid in cleansing the game of its brash, loudmouthed egos who think they have the right to control every move of a child’s recreational time. They are as follows:

For the linesman on the spectators’ side of the field
*A luminous shirt that will, when pointless parental shrieking reaches a certain volume, automatically flash the words SHUT IT NOW! And (prevailing winds permitting) trigger an emission from a capsule blasting out a noxious gas that will force them at least 20 yards back from the touchline. The display will alternate with questions like Have You Ever Read The Laws Of The Game? or You’ve Never Actually Kicked A Ball In Your Life, Have You? Or, Do You Really Think Repeatedly Shouting KICK IT HARD Qualifies As Useful Advice? (I’d add some qualifying labels at the end of these too, if this weren’t a family blog.)

*A Retractable, Idiot-seeking Flag that will fly sharply backwards out of the linesman’s hand and poke in the eye anyone who claims to have spotted an offside while standing 40 yards behind the play. Or who insists on telling you that the throw-in should have gone the other way. Or who yells for a foul just because their kid fell over or got tackled. The flag will zip back into your hand quicker than the human eye can see (I have Spiderman’s people working on this), thus saving you from litigation, while disabling the irritant for the remainder of the game.

 
For the referee:
The pocket-sized Bench Blaster will despatch any raging coach who encroaches on to the field of play back to his or her bench with a single zap. The Deluxe Model will coat them in an adhesive substance to prevent them from standing up or opening their mouths for the remainder of the game. And the Platinum Model will implant a microchip in their brains containing a copy of the FIFA Laws of the Game. Ad slogan: The Bench Blaster - Because Sometimes A Red Card Just Isn’t Enough.

There have been many advances in the science and philosophy of youth coaching over the past two decades that I would certainly have benefited from as a teenager, but I definitely missed the memo that said shouting at kids will make them better footballers. When you shake their hands at the end of the game, you always like to tell them that they played well. But you also feel like adding, “Could I just apologise for my generation too?”

Infidelity And Armageddon

You scratch my blog, I’ll scratch your yours – over at Sweet Sinner Gwen’s (nice title – sounds like a Marc Almond song), I’m engaged in a discussion with my newest follower (I now have a total of three, which means my goal of making this blog Bigger Than Jesus still has a way to go) about monogamy, infidelity and open marriages. It’s far more interesting than the mundane bitching you’ll find on here, so head on over and join in the fun.

Meanwhile, I bumped into an ice sculptor called Steve the other day at Café Caribou in Bethesda. He told me he’s working on an educational video for YouTube that will use a slab of butter and a chunk of ice to explain how the Arctic Circle’s ice is thawing from within, and that global warming is happening much quicker than we think. Basically, we’ve two more years before the floods come and we head to hell or the hills, depending on our preferred destination. It fair cheered me up.

After he’d outlined the coming collapse of society, we chatted about my career as a football writer. His parting words: “Enjoy the World Cup – it’ll be the last one.” Good news for the winners, though – they’ll be eternal World Champions.

Failed Examiner

The first thing some people do in the morning is swear at an alarm clock, but at least you can quickly silence the beep, and it only happens once a day. I reserve my slander for the telephone, because the chances of it being someone I actually want to speak to are around one in twenty. It’s rarely, or never, a publisher offering me a six-figure, five-book contract, or a magazine editor proposing a fat freelance deal for an article I could write off the top of my head from the safety of my desk (“Yes, we’re looking for a piece entitled 50 Things To Bitch About Before You’ve Even Left The House”). If it’s not one of my daughters’ class mates calling to find out what their biology homework is, it’s a pointless marketing survey (“We were wondering, How often do you field annoying phone calls just as you’re preparing dinner?”), or a guilt-edged inquiry about your willingness to contribute to the Veteran Fireman’s Retirement Fund, with the unspoken issue hanging over the conversation of just how rapidly an emergency response vehicle might make it your front door should you choose not to make a contribution.

You can tell a junk call because of a slight delay at the other end (they’re usually calling several people simultaneously), and the fact they always ask for my wife, whose simple surname they hopelessly mangle because it’s foreign. Mostly I hang up straightaway, but this morning, for some reason, I asked them what they wanted. I’m so glad that I did. It turned out they were from The Washington Examiner, a daily paper owned by reclusive billionaire Philip Anschutz that is occasionally delivered to our front door, at no cost and certainly not at our request. They wanted to know what I thought of it.

Here’s an example of the slant in last Thursday’s edition, which I’ve just fished out of the recycling pile. The editorial attacks House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for having the temerity to be a tough Democrat. Stop Kicking In Our Doors, Madame Speaker says the headline, illustrated by a picture of her looking like she’s about to hit someone. The main story is about a transgender aide suing Montgomery County Council under an anti-discrimination law she helped draft – the newspaper’s main front page headline ‘Transgender sues under her own law’ is inaccurate, missing as it is the word ‘aide’, while the story itself is 99 per cent unfounded insinuation. A page of ‘Crime & Punishment’, with pictures of two wannabe tough looking crime reporters standing with their arms folded, relishes both the crime and presumably the ensuing punishment by perniciously linking separate issues with headlines like Police: Illegal Immigrants Raped Alexandria Woman, and Panamanian Murderer Caught, Lived Off Federal Subsidies. Columnist Chris Stirewalt devotes several hundred words to criticising President Obama because he seems “gloomy”, a result of “the desperate spectacle of the president’s effort to impose his health care plan on a defiant electorate.” Two more pieces on the Politics pages talks of Obama being “off message” on health care, and House Democrats “working desperately” to pass health care reform, topped off with a commentary from David Freddos on What Obamacare Has Already Done For Massachusetts (everyone’s as good as dead up there already, apparently).

That’s the health care reform bill that was passed yesterday, despite all this stunningly objective journalism. So, what do I think of the Washington Examiner? I’m so glad you asked.

“You mean that crappy right wing rag you keep tossing on to my property? I’d rather you didn’t, thanks. It goes straight in the trash. Your paper’s a disgrace. It’s verging on the fascist. So even though I know it effectively means you can’t even give your shitty paper away, I’d be really grateful if you stopped delivering it and we can all make a saving on the waste paper.”

“Are you a subscriber to the Washington Post, sir?” the caller wanted to know. Subtext: “Yeah, well that’s the kind of thing I’d expect to hear from a communist, America-hating Post reader.” Though the Post is a paper I almost cancelled when it ran an editorial supporting the Bush invasion of Iraq (but I like to know the weather, and read Get Fuzzy).

“Yes, I am,” I said with as much pride as you can muster for subscribing to a daily paper. And I should have added, thanks for letting me have my say. Your call has made my day.

Oasis Lock-In

Bethesda’s Organic To Go sandwich and salad bar only has one toilet, but the management has devised an ingenious way to make sure you don’t stay in there too long. Hardly had I locked the door one lunch time this week when the nasally strains of Liam Gallagher began to sing ‘Wonderwall’, prompting me to ignore the graffiti (‘Organic girls do it naturally’), stop plucking my eyebrows, and get out of there as swiftly as possible to return to the handcrafted comforts of my spinach and arugula wrap.

In those few seconds of panicked entrapment the profound inanity of the lyrics struck me: “I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now.” That’s less a heartfelt, melody-encoded entreaty and more like a desperate, whiny plea on his knees, a clumsy call for mercy that any good woman would meet with a deft swing of the right boot to the odious, gutter-sucking singer’s miserable maw. I’ve no idea why it’s taken me 15 years to realise why I hate this song. Perhaps it was the proximity of the bog and the sound of waste water being flushed to oblivion. Ah, that’s better – now I feel culturally purged.

Thou Shalt Not Overtake A Cop

I was told at Sunday School that “God is everywhere”, and though I stopped believing that at around the same time I stopped believing anything else I was told, I learnt on a short trip to the US South last week where the phrase came from. There’s just no escaping the entity down there. “They’re commandments, not suggestions!” a reproachful sign in Mount Airy, NC, informed us. This was a sign at a petrol station. “Fear of God is the only path to wisdom!” barked an apparently very angry preacher on the radio. GDS ARMY read a number plate on a pick-up truck in Roanoake, Virginia (Great Deity in the Sky?). In a restaurant in Asheville, Tiger Woods appeared on a TV screen, prompting a man at our neighbouring table to remark, “That man’s gotten lost on the way to heaven.” Though looking at some of the women he’s been involved with, you might argue that he’s been there and back already.

Christian morals don’t necessarily mean Christian behaviour. I was idling along the I-40 just before Hickory, NC, cruising in the fast lane on a perfectly clear day, driving in a perfectly safe manner, when I passed a state trooper. Yes, I overtook a cop. Yes, I am that stupid. Though I should add that I was going at about 65.1 miles per hour in a 65 mile per hour zone, and by the time I saw him hidden in the line of traffic, it seemed too obvious to slow down and pull in behind him. So I drove carefully past, moved in ahead of him after indicating, and at that point state trooper Christiansen of F Troop, District 5, North Carolina, excitedly activated his flashing lights and pulled me over. Then he kept me and the family waiting for 25 minutes while he returned to his vehicle to write me out a ticket (I have a long surname).

It wasn’t the $25 fine that bothered me, it was the $130 “court costs” that he slapped on top. Out of state number plates are an easy revenue-raiser, because state trooper Christiansen of F Troop, District 5, North Carolina, knows as well as I do that I’m not going to show up in court on March 19 in Newton District Court, six hours drive away from home, to contest the fact that I was speeding. We all know you shouldn’t get smart with cops, because while you are undoubtedly smarter than them (even idiots like me who overtake them), they have several ways of compensating for their stupidity, most of them involving guns, electronic stun-sticks, handcuffs, lies and cold cells with hard stone floors. So it was probably good that by the time I’d taken in the enormity of the fine, he was striding back to his car, and therefore I didn’t have the opportunity to congratulate him on his fabulous detective work and his incredible, crime-cracking acuity at hunting down a hardened felon like myself, accident-free in almost 30 years of driving but surely about to cause a multiple-car pile-up if not for state trooper Christiansen’s absolutely brilliant intervention.

Or to say to him, “Goodbye state trooper Christiansen, and as we like to say in Germany, Geh ficken, Du doughnutfressendes Arschloch!” (translation: drive safely, and I hope you enjoy your lunch).

Weather Event

We had three feet of snow at the weekend, and the power was knocked out for two days, but that didn’t stop me from having my ritual English breakfast with bacon, eggs and hand made Lincolnshire sausages. Not to be denied my weekly quota of artery-choking lard, I cleared a tunnel to the grill, liberated it from the snow, lit summer’s leftover coals, and sent the aroma of sage, garlic and slaughtered swine across the silent winter gardens (see picture). The bottle of genuine Worcestershire Sauce featured in last week’s exciting blog entry dribbled its stuff and added the final touch of low cuisine.

A gust of wind above three miles per hour is guaranteed to throttle the electricity in our infrastructurally challenged neighbourhood, so it was no surprise that we were thrust into darkness once the most widely publicised snow storm in meteorological history had set in on Friday evening. Our power company, Pepco, was brilliantly prepared, at least in linguistic terms. Callers to the firm were greeted with a message informing them that following the “winter storm event”, it was impossible to predict when power would be restored, but that this was likely to be a “multi-day event”. Sort of like those big weddings that well-to-do families in the south like to stage when they’ve placed their daughters with a chinless but appropriately loaded heir from the food processing industry. Here’s how Pepco’s “multi-day event” played out:

FRIDAY

Evening: Welcome to the winter storm event! No power

SATURDAY

Morning: No power. All guests to gather by the log fire for body temperature enhancement event

Afternoon: No power. Cold buffet event by the fire

Evening: No power. Guests to form huddles to prevent hypothermia event (will continue until morning!)

SUNDAY

Morning: No power. Element-defying English breakfast event. Guests/neighbours no longer exchanging cheery quips about the weather conditions

Afternoon: No power (apart from two-minute burst of electricity at 3pm to raise your hopes of imminent warmth). Extended snow shovelling event

Evening: Power returns! Event over. Enjoy the last half hour of Super Bowl

Pepco’s message also advised its customers to “take appropriate action” in the face of the power outages, though it didn’t offer specific suggestions. I hope that at least one customer responded to this by seeking out the home of the PR stooge who thought up the phrase “multi-day event”, torching it, and then warming their hands on the embers. Otherwise known as an arson event. It wasn't me.

More Saucy Stories

There are not a lot of things I’ve stuck at consistently down the years aside from drinking, swearing at other road-users, and maintaining a hardcore belief in the superiority of my musical taste. But I’ve been a proud user of Lea & Perrins’ Worcestershire Sauce ever since my Mum suggested over breakfast one morning a few decades back that I split a Lincolnshire sausage down the middle and sprinkle it with the dark, acidic condiment. Now I can’t make a soup or a stew without a vigorous shake of the brown bottle to add a touch of English flavour. Those of you who know English cuisine may argue that there’s no such thing. And if it wasn’t for Worcestershire Sauce And Marmite, you’d probably be right.

So anyway, I was on my customary trawl through Safeway this morning and found that the supermarket chain has dared to produce its own brand. Not only that, the Safeway Worcestershire Sauce was less than half the price of Lea & Perrins. How different can they be, I wondered? A checklist of the ingredients showed them to be more or less identical, although Safeway’s version had slightly less sodium. Lea & Perrins, on the other hand, does contain chili pepper extract. Would this mean the Safeway version was safer? It was excuse enough – brand loyalty trumped financial considerations, and I stayed true to the company of my native land that has consistently served my palate so well down the years.

In case you’re wondering why in the name of jumping Jesus I’m telling you all this, it’s because some people simply do not realise the daily dilemmas faced by stay-at-home-pops. It’s not all perusing the paper followed by morning coffee and six-way interactions with tag teams of willing housewives, rounded off with an afternoon nap in front of the Premier League or an Argentine soap opera. There are hard domestic decisions to be made, and you have to be on your toes if you’re not going to waste the entire morning hanging around the aisles, blocking the way for diligent but surly shelf-stackers, or getting sidetracked by old ladies’ demands for you to reach up to get them a can of pureed okra soup. Even now, I quake ahead of presenting the daily accounts to Mrs. Pop this evening after dinner, in which I stutteringly justify the extra outlay born of my steadfast adherence to the UK firm.

But as she docks two dollars from my pocket money and sends me to my room, I will tell her, “Darling, in these troubled, flavour-challenged times, a man must stick by his choice of sauce. Not every nation has produced a striking combination of vinegar, molasses, anchovies and tamarind concentrate. And it ill befits me to stoop so low as to purchase a cheap, counterfeit version made in a country that hypocritically chides the Chinese for breach of copyright laws. Tomorrow, presented with a hotpot of simmering Irish stew, you will thank me.” If I can get all that in before the bottle is cracked down upon my balding head.

But if this turns out to be my last post, be sure that I’ll have died a happy man, swooning on a snatched final mouthful of Lea & Perrins’ finest product, mixed with tiny shards of brown glass and honest red blood from a shopper of high principle.

Going Home Via Rome

“What were you doing in Italy?” the accusatory customs officer at Boston Logan International Airport asked me last night as I re-entered the United States. I could have given any one of three answers.

Answer one: “Ah, you know, I just thought I’d stop off there for a few hours to see the Colosseum, take in a Serie A game at the Stadio Olimpico, sip an espresso at the Piazza Venezia, flirt with a Francesca or two, stroll the Via Condotti and pick up my spring fashions, pop in on the Pope and put him right on a few ecclesiastical and socio-political issues, degust a plate of artichoke ravioli at La Pergola rooftop restaurant topping the Hilton on Monte Mario, and then retire to my five-star room with an Alberto Moravia novel. I mean, what else would an international man of leisure like myself get up to there?”

Answer two: “Thanks to the weather, massive airline incompetence, and the staggeringly pointless new security measures introduced by your government since a martyr-fixated half-wit sewed semtex into his breeks, I was diverted to the Italian capital for the privilege of sleeping for three hours at the airport hotel, three security checks, having my luggage vandalized with the lock and zip ripped off - though, strangely enough, no Fiumicino baggage handler was interested in pilfering my soiled shreddies, snotted hankies, bottle of Maggi sauce, Christoph Biermann’s ‘The Football Matrix: The Search For The Perfect Game’ (in German), a Serious Drinking vinyl LP, or a four-DVD set of Ken Burns’ PBS documentary on the history of Jazz - and then standing for six hours in the airport terminal, watching pigeons fly around the cafeteria while security officers frisked assorted Category One risk passengers, such as wheezing pensioners, or soccer senoritas with their two-year-old kids. It was fun, I tell yer, though don’t let it stop you aggressively tossing out questions as I enter the fourth and final leg of this soul-sucking two-day trans-continental quest to lie down in my own bed.”

Answer three: “I was diverted to Rome on my way back to Washington DC from Germany because of the bad weather in Europe. Sir.”

Answer three is the correct one, unless you want to be slapped to the floor for an intestinal scan, enforced contortion, and indefinite incarceration. Uniforms have a knack of curbing my sarcasm, so I made it through by resisting a descent into wit’s allegedly lowest manifestation. The rest of the family, sent via London and Toronto, straggled home too in the end, although my battered suitcase - held together with duct tape and shrinkwrap - is still missing, along with the precious contents described above.

Mind you, I’m still extremely miffed that no Italian was interested in nicking my Ben Sherman shirt.

Unnecessary Stuff

Do you ever worry that you might one day become fabulously rich, and then have no idea what to spend all your money on? If so, help is available. The Financial Times publishes a glossy supplement every month just in the time for the weekend with the no-holds barred title How To Spend It. Here are some of the highlights of last Friday’s issue.

A set of six Fortnum & Mason Royal Velvet crackers for £500 (“contain luxury accessories”). An Atelier winter coat, from £1,100 up to £2,880 for the rose-trimmed design (is it just me, or is that the most hideous fucking garment you’ve ever seen in your life?). A tube of anti-ageing cream called Pure Alchemy Cellular Radiance Serum for £19.99 (“really seems to work,” according to the FT, so if you meet one of their hacks who claims to be 40 but looks 18, that’ll be Lucia van der Post). A Jaeger-LeCoultre Hybris Mechanica à Grande Sonnerie, part of the Coffret 55 set (otherwise known to you and me as ‘a wristwatch’), starting from £1.6 million. Tsk, like it's too much trouble to ask a passer-by what time it is.

Also available, should you be feeling flush, is a Salvatore Ferragamo python bag for £2,009 (not just the python getting gouged there). An 18ct Jackie O gold cuff for £15,000 that looks like a gaudy kids’ fancy dress item. Or you can follow in the tyre-tracks of a bloke called Tarquin (even within the context of this magazine, you have to feel sorry for any poor bastard called Tarquin), who goes ice driving in Finland for £900, plus £433 per night in a luxury log cabin for six. Thirteen quid for a Romeo Short Churchill cigar seems like a relatively bargain way to watch your cash go up in smoke.

Best of all is a six-month course of counselling for male business executives who are going through a mid-life crisis. It costs between £6-12k from a company called Overton Smith, run by two sympathetic women who “have no formal therapeutic qualifications” (hey, who needs them?). The magazine interviews one of the company’s clients, a 54-year-old named “Dennis”, who went for help when he realised that he was unhappy being “surrounded by unnecessary stuff. I started questioning the purpose of my life. I realised materialism isn’t as important as relationships and quality of life.”

What, you mean the answer doesn’t lie in owning a pair of 8 grand cufflinks from Wartski? I’m going to have to use up my 10-week Alpine ski lodge timeshare slot all in one go to recover from that monstrous revelation. Note to self: don’t forget to take off your £1.6 million watch before you climb into the mountain-view hot tub.

Top 30 Albums, 2009

It’s already that time of year when music executives gather restlessly around a wireless, clutching semi-unplugged bottles of chilled Bollinger and waiting for the BBC World Service to announce this blog’s top 30 albums of the year. Setting the benchmark for middle-ageing indie-farts since 2004, my carefully researched list - a more or less arbitrary ranking of most of the albums that one individual just happens to have bought this year - is seen by music lovers across the globe as the industry standard pointer towards buying seasonal gifts for people they intensely dislike, usually the family’s aloof musical snob with an inflated sense of his own importance, especially where it concerns musical taste. You’re welcome.

30. The Avett Brothers – I And Love And You

There seem to be less albums like this around these days, filled with muscular, emotional, country-influenced music. As serious and as musically deep as you’d expect with Rick Rubin producing, the fundamentals here are fiddles, philosophy and a vocal finesse that underpin a solid, if sometimes overly safe set.

29. Monsters Of Folk – Monsters of Folk

Indie super group featuring M Ward, Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Jim James, with each contributing a handful of songs, all too easily recognisable in Oberst’s case. It’s a broadly successful collaboration, though, which thankfully has as much relation to R&B (on the superb opener ‘Dear God’), rock, pop and country as it does to folk.

28. Dead Man’s Bones – Dead Man’s Bones

Why didn’t I think of this? Indie-mood, electro sounds composed by a pair of actors backed sparingly by a children’s choir. Could be a disaster, but it’s quite the opposite, despite the juvenile band name.

27. Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Beware

Another year, and another immaculate slow-burner of a record from one of America’s most prolific, consistent songwriters. As ever, it’s not exactly packed with laughs and party tunes, just the usual low key musical musing on love, loss and death. So, something for everyone.

26. The Pastels/Tenniscoats – Two Sunsets

Fancy a nice cup of twee? Check out this Scottish/Japanese indie-pop collaboration. Glasgow fey may have had its day (give Stuart Murdoch’s tame God Help the Girl project a miss), but the two groups here work off each other to produce a neat little box of spangly gems, if you’ve got a quiet half hour to spare.

25. Alela Diane – To Be Still

I’m still a sucker for a Joni-influenced girl with an acoustic guitar if the voice, the songs and the string-picking can endure over the course of a whole disc (although this voice may not to be to everyone’s taste). Catch a thousand copyists in a coffee house near you, but none as good as this.

24. Califone – All My Friends Are Funeral Singers

If you’ve ever wondered what an album recorded in an old barn by possibly drunk musicians messing around with dusty equipment would sound like, then welcome to Califone. From the lo-fi doodlings there eventually emerges some half-realised, rough-cut jewels. Perhaps there’s more scheme to this than seems apparent from the end result, but I prefer to believe they just put it out the way they recorded it. Categorise under ‘experimental country/broken folk.’

23. Manchester Orchestra – Mean Everything To Nothing

I think it was on the letters page of Paste magazine that someone described Manchester Orchestra as “ridiculously derivative”, but that’s probably just because they’re from the grunge states. True, they still channel that 90s sound through big guitars and interludes of introspection that sometimes verge on the timeworn, but they have the songs, as well as an overt flair and bite to their delivery, that allows them to carry it off.

22. Eels – Hombre Lobo

Nothing much unexpected here from Mr E, but he’s one of the elite who can pull off delivering stylistically similar sets, thanks to the inherent strength of his compositions, fuelled by the throaty, soulful suffering of a lead voice that mixes the sour with the sardonic, while never forgetting the importance of delivering a tune.

21. Jah Wobble – Chinese Dub

Best Chinese folk-influenced dub album of the year. Oh heck, ever.

20. Royksopp – Junior

I love the simple things in life, like thoughtfully manufactured electronic pop. It’s easy to digest, and if taken in limited doses you never lose your taste for it, even if you would never throw yourself upon its practitioners and passionately proclaim them harbingers of the world’s most indispensable art. More likely you’d say, “Nice work, keep pressing those buttons.”

19. Maria Taylor – Lady Luck

We all love Maria in the Indie-Pop household, reliably recording a fine album every couple of years, and half-packing them in at the Rock and Roll Hotel, where we all get lost to ‘Song Beneath The Song’ at the end of a beer-travelled night.Lady Luck is another very decent collection, although slightly patchier than her first two superb efforts. 11:11 and Lynn Teeter Flower.

18. Metric – Fantasies

This band remind me of Blondie, in that they write nakedly commercial pop songs boasting enough punch and power to keep them bouncing around your sub-conscience, but in a rewarding rather than an irritating way. And yes, I still love Parallel Lines.

17. Sufjan Stevens – The BQE

Stevens recently told Paste that since this classically-oriented project, presented here with a mesmerising film fixed on and around the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, he’s lost the ability to write ‘normal’ songs. So the 50-album project, with each record focused on an individual US state, is on hold for now, 48 states short of its target. In the meantime, lose yourself in this astonishing journey, where he uses alternately manic and reflective composition to transform an unwieldy, traffic-clogged concrete artery through New York into an absorbing mirror of the urban human condition. Brave, fascinating, disconcerting and musically moving, all in one culturally packed package.

16. Magnolia Electric Company – Josephine

MEC’s mournful latest is a stripped down song cycle that apparently laments the titular subject, but on the band’s admittance is more of a loose tribute to its late bassist, Evan Farrell. It avoids the descent into dirge that has occasionally blighted Jason Molina’s voluminous and mostly magnificent past register of grey cloud, country-blues. It’s hard to imagine Molina as a London resident now - every note of this record is steeped in the feel of a vast and lonely America.

15. Modest Mouse – No One’s First, And You’re Next

There’s no group in the world that sounds remotely like Modest Mouse. Their nonsensical name underlies a twisted creativity that can be initially off-putting, but which ultimately draws you into a musical universe where so much is going on that there’s barely enough space in every song for all the weird ideas and tortured riffs that are kicking around. Persevere, and the rewards are durable.

14. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast

It takes some kind of peculiar genius to finger-pluck a violin, whistle, and not just desist from spoiling but actually improve already excellent songs. Even though this is not Bird’s best album, that only speaks for the extraordinary quality of his back catalogue. Added award: best live act of 2009, on a dream ticket with Loney, Dear at the 9:30 Club.

13. Neko Case – Middle Cyclone

Stunning, smart, shockingly gifted, Neko Case gets better with every album. Bold as a banker grasping for a bonus, every song demands your attention and, in the end, your appreciation. Case’s New Pornographers band mate AC Newman put out a good enough album with Guilty, but he must have listened to this with some measure of envy and conceded, “She’s the best.”

12. Vieux Farka Toure – Fondo

Imagine a record by Vieux’s father, the late Ali Farka Toure, played on electric guitar, and you have an idea of the extra sonic dimension added to what Vieux has happily inherited – a gift for vocal palliatives, understated rhythm, controlled improvisation (if that’s not an oxymoron), and overwhelming beauty.

11. Brandi Carlile – Give Up The Ghost

Anthemic, brash, cool… the abc of Brandi, and I could go on to devilish, euphoric, fresh but fragile, and beyond (to gargantuan, hoarse-heavenly, incandescent), but all I want to really do is pathetically declare my love. Mindy Smith and Tift Merritt were just one-off flings, Brandi. This is your third album, and you’ve still got me.

10. Iron & Wine – Around The Well

It says something for the depth of Sam Beam’s exhaustive library that a double CD collection of b-sides, outtakes and cover versions can compete with the year’s best recordings. Maybe it’s because this mostly takes us back to the sparse format of his wonderful early records, with just a voice and an acoustic guitar. Two whole sides of bliss.

9. Jason Lytle – Yours Truly, The Commuter

No longer Grandaddy in name, but very much a continuation of the older generation’s genre. If that group’s thick, creamy pop sound was your favourite indulgence, then a dollop of this will sweeten your ears too.

8. Au Revoir Simone - Still Night, Still Light

Pop angels sent to soothe you with synthesisers and sisterly singing along the lines of, “I’m moving on/I hope you’re coming with me…” Definitely.

7. Kings of Convenience – Declaration of Dependence

Maestros of melody produce a third irresistible album of wistful, guitar-led singalongs. Impossible not to love.

6. Marc Almond – Orpheus In Exile: The Songs of Vadim Kozin

Almond’s albums veer between seductive twilight dance electronica and collections of atavistic, cabaret-style, Brecht-Weillian numbers, but either way he’s a genius who deserves a ton of recognition for his lifetime achievements. This album is in the latter camp, featuring the folk songs of a little-known Russian folk singer of the early 20^th century, and perfectly suited to Almond’s strong but sensitive vocals on top of perfectly realised arrangements that speckle the songs’ traditional timbre with minimalist technological touches.

5. Wilco – Wilco (The Album)

A cogent piece on the excellent Quietus music site posited the theory that Wilco are, quite simply, boring. It was a well-constructed argument, and I could see where the writer was coming from, but unfortunately the theory is wrong. This album - Wilco’s seventh or eighth, probably - should by rights be boring. Just look at the disingenuously dull title. And most bands are churning it out long before this point. Except that it isn’t - it’s brief, and it’s brilliant, their most accessible, least indulgent ever slice of whatever we’re calling ‘Americana’ these days.

4. Loney, Dear – Dear John

The subtle crescendos of Loney, Dear take you on a most relaxing rollercoaster ride, with enough warmly crafted songs to make this one of the year’s most endlessly repeatable releases.

3. Baaba Maal – Television

“Africa is the future” declares a sleeve note slogan, and if it sounds this good, the future will be shaped by hope and harmony. The record stacks a fuller sound on top of Maal’s trademark intricate acoustic work, fusing traditional rhythms with plangent bass lines and vocals that straddle a range from didactic urgency to tender crooning.

2. Anna Ternheim – Leaving On A Mayday

The darkness and the rain drive this Swedish nightingale, whose Nordic litost is matched only by her peerless delivery and immaculate songwriting. An almost perfect record.

1. Malcolm Middleton – Waxing Gibbous
Melancholy, bitter and thoroughly Celtic may not seem a high enough recommendation until you throw in Middleton’s extreme gift of being able to shroud his misery - darkly awash with the smile-shy humour at which Scotland excels - in consistently addictive, even invigorating tunes. Life is grim, but you can turn it into something dark, funny and beautiful, even as the rain keeps coming down.

The next 20:

31. Aidan Moffat and the Best-Ofs – How To Get To Heaven From Scotland

32. Twinkle 3 – Let’s Make A Solar System

33. Wye Oak – The Knot

34. Elvis Costello – Secret, Profane and Sugarcane

35. The Handsome Family – Honey Moon

36. Heartless Bastards – The Mountain

37. Beirut – March of the Zapotec/Realpeople Holland

38. Dan Deacon – Bromst

39. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

40. Mindy Smith – Stupid Love

41. M Ward – Hold Time

42. Hope Sandoval and the Warm Invention – Through The Devil Softly

43. AC Newman – Get Guilty

44. Osso & Sufjan Stevens – Run Rabbit Run

45. Lisa Hannigan – Sea Sew

46. The Nightingales – Insult To Injury

47. Steve Earle – Townes

48. Atlas Sound – Logos

49. Air – Love 2

50. Regina Spektor – Far

Previous years:

2008, 2007, 2006, 2004