THE PLAYLIST: BUILT TO LAST

David Hepworth, founder of several music magazines including the Word, on the tunes he has loved this year ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Winter 2009

I’m the very worst person to ask what I’ve been listening to this year. I find the shuffle button on an iPod dissolves chronology. That seems only right. What is new anyway? Even allegedly cutting-edge contemporary music uses the body parts of songs ancient and modern. The best tunes still arrive unbidden from all sorts of people and places, providing us with new ways of listening and planting itches that we can never quite scratch. Which is why we play them so often.

JAMES MCMURTRY HURRICANE PARTY
Son of the novelist Larry, McMurtry has made a string of clever, ornery rock records that fans of Neil Young and Tom Waits would do well to attend to. This one features the line of the year: “I don’t want another drink / I only want that last one again”.

The DUCKWORTH LEWIS METHOD JIGGERY POKERY
Two Irishmen, Neil Hannon and Thomas Walsh, make a funny, pointed, affectionate pop record about a single moment in cricket history: the ball with which Shane Warne bamboozled Mike Gatting in 1993. Howzat?

MULATU ASTATKE & THE HELIOCENTRICS CHA CHA
He (pictured top) is the Duke Ellington of Ethiopian jazz. They are a London funk outfit with an iron hand on the groove. Together they’ve made the record I’ve played more than any other this year.

MOUNT ANALOG FEATURING KARL BLAU THAT'S HOW I GOT TO MEMPHIS
This song, steeped in the emotional geography of country music, was written aeons ago by the Nashville legend Tom T. Hall. He can never have imagined how minty-fresh it would come up in this jazzy-indie treatment.

THE DOOBIE BROTHERS LISTEN TO THE MUSIC (DJ Malibu Mix)
Somebody had the inspired idea of letting dance DJs loose on a collection of what you might call Hawaiian shirt music from the 70s (America, Maria Muldaur, George Benson, etc). It’s airy, guilt-free and goes to show there’s nothing pure about pop.

SPEECH DEBELLE THE KEY
If you travel on the top deck of a London bus you get plugged in to the constantly changing music of London speech. You also pick up some interesting information about how people live their lives. At its best, Debelle’s Mercury prize-winning album is that journey set to music.

THE UNTHANKS BECAUSE HE WAS A BONNY LAD
There isn’t much contemporary English folk music that you could accuse of being sexy. But there’s something about the way these Northumbrian female voices describe a flirtation that puts you right at the bus stop with them.

JESSE WINCHESTER STEP BY STEP
Some of the best things about “The Wire” are the montages that close each season. The first one goes out to this 30-year-old tune about failed saints. It works like you wouldn’t believe and proves that all great records eventually have their moment.

All songs can be downloaded from iTunes or 7Digital, “Step by Step” only as part of an album

Picture Credit: miguelteixeira (via Flickr)

(David Hepworth is editorial director of Development Hell, which publishes the Word and MixMag, and is the former editor of Smash Hits.)