Done rockin'

Readers, thank you for tolerating my albums of the year chart, which provides me with a vital week off at Christmas. Here's the list in full, including numbers 21-30. For most of the year it seemed like nothing good was coming my way, but by November I was pretty much overrun.

1 YS - Joanna Newsom
2 THE BEATIFIC VISIONS - Brakes
3 THE TRIALS OF VAN OCCUPANTHER - Midlake
4 THE GULAG ORKESTAR - Beirut
5 THIS IS HAZELVILLE - Captain
6 NICE AND NICELY DONE - The Spinto Band
7 BLUES AND BOOGIE SHOES - Keene Brothers
8 DEMON/FREEJAZZ EP - Envelopes
9 THE CRANE WIFE - The Decemberists
10 ESPERS 2 - Espers
11 HOWLING BELLS - Howling Bells
12 WHITE BREAD, BLACK BEER - Scritti Politti
13 A BLESSING AND A CURSE - Drive By Truckers
14 MODERN TIMES - Bob Dylan
15 THE LEMONHEADS - The Lemonheads
16 CITRUS - Asobi Seksu
17 STARRING SOMEONE LIKE YOU - The Tiny
18 LET'S GET OUT OF THE COUNTRY - Camera Obscura
19 THE BEAUTIFUL LIE - Ed Harcourt
20 OVER AND OVER - Erin Bode

21 WHAT IF IT WORKS - The Loud Family & Anton Barbeau
22 RABBIT FUR COAT - Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins
23 EASY BEAT - Dr Dog
24 BOYS AND GIRLS IN AMERICA - The Hold Steady
25 MORPH THE CAT - Donald Fagen
26 TWELVE STOPS AND HOME - The Feeling
27 WE ARE THE PIPETTES - The Pipettes
28 SEMIFINALISTS - Semifinalists
29 SCHMOTIME - Absentee
30 OH YOU'RE SO SILENT JENS - Jens Lekman

"A child who has learned the truth about Santa"

Music journalism is frequently a right load of old rot, a miserable wrong 'un if ever there was one ('un). Who do I blame? Society.

But sometimes it can go right. I would never knowingly listen to the music of child rocker "L'il Chris", but here (from Popjustice.com) is the best, funniest interview I have read in years. I was crying by the end of it.

Traditions

I drew a new Christmas header for the website today, featuring Shelley, Manny and Ed goblin, Old Ivor as Father Christmas, Douglas Fir and his sister Elise! Here it is at a slightly larger size.

Clay-mation

I think you, as a Scary Go Round reader, will enjoy Sophie Swanson, Titular Heroine. It is a short film specially designed to delight.

24 hours of hot tinkering

I've started work on Scary Go Round book 5, since the foul weather insists I stay indoors at all costs. Preliminary stages of book-making involve deciding what I'm not going to put in the book, what needs re-drawing or re-purposing, and what I can let fly with a clear conscience.

The outcome of all this decision-making by the executive board was a day of redrawing faces that looked funny. For some reason, when I re-started drawing by hand, I was drawing huge bug eyes on everybody. That in and of itself might not have been a problem, but a lack of match fitness meant I seemingly couldn't draw a pair of eyes level with one another. It was pretty inexplicable why I drew that way, but it was a fight in front of the drawing board each day for that first month.

Another problem was the colours I was using. The vicious, bright shades that worked so well in Illustrator looked garish and inappropriate when applied to more traditional drawing routes. And to be honest, I wasn't exactly being careful slapping it on there.

Rather being than a shopping list of complaint, I found this quite a soothing task. I think I've improved a lot in the seven months since I went back to pens and ink.

OLD

NEW

Move with the moss

A reader only calling himself "Mike" (one assumes it is basketball star Mike "Air" Jordan) sent me this lovely animated Shelley gif. Congratulations Mike, it is another "slam dunk" ho ho oh my sides.

The plan for winter warmth

As you probably know, winter is here and that means the icy winds doth blow. However, as an innovator, dreamsmith and imagineer, I have come up with an excellent scheme to avoid frostbite. I am going to sit in the tumble dryer until April:



Think how nice it is when the clothes come out of the dryer! It takes a strong man not to put a nice warm tshirt or towel over their face and just live for pleasure alone. Well, what if you could enjoy that great sensation for hours at a time? As the diagram above indicates: NOW YOU CAN.

See you in spring!