Bring on the warmth

Cold weather demands warm music. To which end I am delighted that Mojo, the monthly rock magazine for the more gnarled music fan, has chosen as its album of the year Queen of Denmark by John Grant. As we all know to our cost, albums adored by music magazines tend to be more rigorous and admirable than enjoyable, but this one is as warm and welcoming as a hot bath, a cup of mulled wine and an enormous cheque all rolled into one. Mr Grant, who is 41, gay, from Denver and very gloomy, is the former lead singer of a band called The Czars.

You can tell how serious and gloomy the album is going to be from the off: the photograph of the singer on the front cover is blurred and makes him look like an alien, while the liner notes are written in pink, in his own scrawl, against the pictoral background of a dead bird on an oil-polluted beach, so you have as much chance of reading them as of winning the 100 metres at the next Olympics.