2007

I've been thinking back to my hopes and expectations for music in 2007. At the start of the year, I was most looking forward to new albums from Arcade Fire and The Innocence Mission and hoping that Tindersticks would get back together and record a new album. I was also hoping to attend more gigs than I did last year.

Well, I attended less gigs than in 2006 but the shows I did get to were absolutely brilliant. Tindersticks did get back together and record an album, but we have to wait until 2008 to hear it. The Innocence Mission and Arcade Fire albums were both excellent, although The Arcade Fire didn't manage to improve on 'Funeral'. But as with every year in music, 2007 brought some excellent new discoveries for me.

I don't know how I managed to avoid getting into the Hold Steady until this year, but from the moment I heard 'Boys and Girls In America', I was hooked. Certainly through the summer and early autumn I played little else but their three albums. Seeing them play live in July was one of the highlights of my year. I also discovered The National, who are a kind of American version of Tindersticks. As for new artists, I really liked the work of Twilight Sad (I still think of them as a mix of The Proclaimers and My Bloody Valentine, no matter what anyone says), the moody Tiny Vipers and the indie-folk of Emmy The Great, who surely will hit the big time next year.

One unexpected pleasure was the sheer brilliance of 'In Rainbows', which is 'a grower' of extreme proportions and I never expected, ten years after 'OK Computer' to love a Radiohead record as much again.

There were disappointments of course. The Bill Callahan record was, to my ears, poor. I spent a few weeks pretending to like it and trying to force myself to get into it, but it just seemed so unfocussed and meandering. The Iron and Wine record left me cold, despite the fact that I loved 'Our Endless Numbered Days' and it was sad to hear Wilco dismantle everything that made them great over the last five years.

What is sadder than any of these things though, is the fact that my home town of Bedford now doesn't have a record shop. Since I was a boy I have shopped for records in Bedford. I remember when we had an HMV! As I grew up and got into more alternative music I would spend hours perusing the racks of Andys Records and Sounds Good To Me, now we don't even have a Music Zone or a Fopp. It is sad for me because I have to order records online and wait for my visits to London but it is even sadder for music fans growing up today, who will never know how much fun it is to spend half an hour in a record shop with £20 in their pocket, choosing records on the quality of the sleeve and asking the friendly record shop owner if they can have a listen. Tragic. They will never know what they are missing.

Anyway, 2007 was great. My gig of the year was Mountain Goats at the Union Chapel, my album of the year will be revealed (as will the full top 30) next week.

Here's to 2008 and new LPs from Tindersticks, Mountain Goats and American Music Club.