Marcus Berkmann

Kate comeback

issue 14 January 2012

What is Christmas for, exactly? For me, it’s a time of reflection and of sudden dawning realisation. Reflection on the year’s new music, and the sudden dawning realisation that I have hardly heard any of it. Not that I think it matters. Newness isn’t everything, or even very much, and there’s no reason why anyone should feel obliged to keep up with all the new releases, which is almost a job in itself. Far easier to let the songs worth hearing shake themselves free from the vast knobbly mass of tripe, drivel, Coldplay comebacks and Noel Gallagher solo albums. The good stuff will always find your ears in the end.

Nonetheless, this December I found myself reading all those ‘Best Records of the Year’ features and, not for the first time, feeling a little left behind. It’s all too easy to distract yourself with records of the past, only to find that records of the present have already become records of the past.

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