Hi! Happy new year! Did you know Said the Gramophone's Best Songs of 2010 are still online? All 100 of them? Indeed! Read, listen, leave a note, tell yr friends. They won't stay there forever.

Frederick Squire - "Old Times Past New Times". Let's pretend it's New Year's Day; let's sit with a piece of driftwood on our laps; let's see if we can draw a calendar from memory. Sackville's Fred Squire, the Fred Squire who sang on the best album of 2008, has made a song of recollections, resolutions, "decisions that I've made". Not all of the recollections are true, but our recollections rarely are. It's the resolutions that are truest, that ring cold & solid like horseshoes. Fred makes few of these. He is staying warm, with coat and whiskey, navigating memory, lowering sails, grateful for everything.

[Hero Hill wrote a great, thoughtful review of March 12/buy]

James Leroy - "Wasting Our Time". Set up a frozen puddle in my hall. I invite people over, call to them from the kitchen, Come on in! They hang up their coats and fall on their asses. I slide a fruit-bowl down the floor. This lets them know that I meant well; that this is not a cruel joke. We all sit on the hardwood, beside the frozen puddle, eating clementines. We peel them and put the peels in our pockets. I dream that one day someone will arrive at my door wearing skates.

[buy/via Weird Canada]

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Elsewhere:

Wrapping up the end-of-year: Destination:Out our favourite jazz music-blog, have listed their favourite albums of 2010.

Musicophilia, a blog posting only meticulous full-length mixes, are back after seven months with a new one, Her Heart Had Six Strings vol II, representing singer-songwriters 1965-1977. Their earlier mix, Still, was one of the best full-length recordings of 2009.

(image source)