Holiday Pop Medley

 Holiday, at least whilst being on the road, is more a time for casual listening. As last year I blindly bought a stack of pop CDs to entertain us while we were away. The highlight from the previous crop was The National's High Violet, a sterling disc that catapulted the band high on my list of favourites.

This year I hit the bull's eye with Mumford & Sons' Sigh No More (which is this London band's first and as yet only album). In fact, my son (who is otherwise not very much in to music) had brought it already last year to my attention, but I left it, at full price. Now, at a mere 5 euros it was a no-brainer. I thoroughly love M&S's brawny kind of folk rock (or country rock). The songs are raw and relatively uncouth but they are really well composed, full of interesting twists and turns. This is more than just packaging some nice tunes. There's not a weak point in the whole album. But pressed I'd single out White Blank Page, Little Lion Man and Thistle and Weeds as highlights.

Scott Matthew (not Matthews, who is someone else) is an Australian singer-songwriter I hadn't heard about. His Gallantry's Favourite Song is, however, a very atmospheric and intelligent album that has given me considerable pleasure. The music comes across as very simple and straightforward, wrapped in sober acoustic arrangements. But it is surprisingly subtle. I am particularly struck by the harmonic niceties that are woven into the music. As a result it sounds more playful and urbane than Bon Iver's For Emma, for example. And Matthew's distinctive, nasal voice does the rest to keep the listener spellbound. The nocturnal phantasy True Sting is no doubt the absolute highlight of the album. Very nice artwork too, by the way, with mysterious pictures shot in some Corsican palazzo.

Talking about Bon Iver, I also bought his much anticipated second album, with the rather uninspiring title Bon Iver, Bon Iver. This was a bit of a downer. For my taste this sounded a little bit all over the place. It misses the coherence and the winter sky transparency of the debut album. I could live with the too clever, top heavy arrangements and the kitchy reverberance if the songs were truly distinguished. But they aren't. It's all rather flat and clichéd and sometimes outright irritating. Even in scattered highlights such as Michicant and Wash there is atmosphere but too little substance. We'll hope for better next time.

PJ Harvey, then. An album she co-wrote with John Parish in 2009: A Woman A Man Walked by. This is PJ at its wildest and wackiest. Not for the faint-hearted. Scatological lyrics wrapped in punkish extravaganzas. But somehow it speaks of real artistry. The more I listen to it, the better it gets. It's much, much better than her latest, the rather phony Let England Shake (also with JP, by the way). This may end up there with Is This Desire and To Bring You My Love.

Three more to go. Johnny Cash's last recording before he passed away is a nice collection of wistful songs of the ageing, tired American bard. I listened most often to his moving take on Gordon Lightfoot's classic If You Could Read My Mind.

Elbow's Sleep in the Dark was their debut, in 2001. I have it already since last year. But now the album really hit me. It's a fantastic collection that doesn't have to stand in the shadow of its more popular successors. Perhaps a little more hard-bitten than what was to follow, it provides solid, rowdy listening pleasure. Highlight certainly is Newborn, which starts like a hymnic ballad and after 2 minutes morphs into a darkly obsessive extemporation, stretching the song well into the 7 minutes.

A few years ago someone mentioned Mogwai to me. 'Wall of Sound', he said. I never came round to listening to it. But now I was seduced by the nice urban photography that graces the cover of their latest album with the rather sophomoric title Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. Someone else said: 'Post-rock, like Sigur Ros, but without the fairy tale element." Maybe, but give me Sigur Ros any time. I don't think Mogwai delivers the goods. I love the broad soundscapes but then again it's all surface and little meat. At least I haven't been able to detect up to now. It's not terribly well recorded to boot. This is, in fact, a double album including a bonus CD with 25 minutes of music for the film 'Monument for a Forgotten Future' (again that bombast). I'd have to give it a little bit more time, but it seems to me the bonus might be the thing that draws me back to this music. We'll see.