This year’s readers poll has 2 days left to go – as per usual, we’d like to hear your thoughts on what bowled you over during the last 12 months (plus our tradition villain of the year despite the fact that the category is probably redundant until 2021.) There are still no clear winners in most categories so voting now you’ll have a real chance to affect the results (and you could win some nice CDs). Head here to cast your vote (wisely of course, like one of the three wise men!) before midnight on Sunday. Have a good weekend dear readers.
If, like many of us, you’re hoping a copy of Dylan’s “More Blood, More Tracks” might be among the presents awaiting your attention under the Christmas Tree, I suggest you drop the fat man in the red suit a little note, requesting this stocking filler as a late addition to the Christmas list. ‘No One Else Could Play That Tune’ is an outstanding piece of rock history. Writer Clinton Heylin has left no stone unturned in his attempt to bring us the definitive breakdown of the Blood on the Tracks recording sessions that resulted in Dylan’s 1974 masterpiece – and which, in turn, created the latest release in the highly acclaimed Bootleg Series. 
At last, a grown up Christmas album which acknowledges the conflicting demands of the season, how to weather the commercial blitzkrieg, keep the kids happy and keep oneself sane. Rodney Crowell’s Christmas album has been some years in the making with the man himself admitting that it’s not his favourite time of the year but that he’d always indulged his kids by making up “silly little Christmas songs that we’d sing around the house.” It was hearing Hayes Carll’s ‘Grateful For Christmas’, back in 2011, which “tweaked my creative curiosity. I began mulling over the idea of writing an album’s worth of original Christmas songs.” And so here we have Crowell’s contribution to the season’s excesses although it has to be said this is lean and nutritious, food for thought indeed as he peeks behind the tinsel. 
You know an album’s made an instant impression when your first response on reaching the end of the last song is to immediately give the record a second airing, as well as committing to take the time to discover the artists’ back catalogue. Such is the case with Cam Penner and Jon Wood’s ‘At War With Reason.’ Almost impossible to pigeonhole musically, the whole ensemble makes more sense once you realise that Cam Penner listens almost exclusively to hip-hop, soul and electronica because he doesn’t want his creativity to be unduly influenced by other Americana artists.
It is probably no surprise that singer-songwriters and balladeers will often draw their inspiration from the world in which they hail. Although now living in the UK, George St Clair hails from the high plains of Texas and, after twenty years as a professional archaeologist and anthropologist, it is those roots that is the stimulus for ‘Ballads of Captivity and Freedom’.