Present thoughts

’Tis the season to be cheerful, especially if you like shopping. Which, obviously, as a heterosexual white middle-class male in his forties with no money, I don’t much, unless it’s for books or CDs. But at this time of year those of us of a non-shopping persuasion must bury our prejudices, venture out into the madness of pre-yule consumerism and buy lots of books and CDs for our friends and relatives. Or for ourselves, just to cheer us up.

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Tom Bower

The truth about Mohamed Al-Fayed

So here are a few seasonal recommendations. Such is the profoundly subjective appeal of all pop music that these recommendations may turn out to be completely useless to you — in which case, I should probably apologise now, just to save time. But, speaking entirely subjectively as ever, I think this has been a good listening year. Previously mentioned in this column: the Pet Shop Boys’ Fundamental (Parlophone), produced by Trevor Horn, their richest and strongest album in a decade and a half, repaying endless listenings (especially on headphones in the middle of the night, I have found); Donald Fagen’s Morph the Cat (Reprise), a solo album from half of Steely Dan that, for a brief period in the spring, I thought was one of the best albums ever made …silly bugger …but it does have three or four wonderful songs in the late S Dan style (jazzy, complex, cynical, groove-based); Boo Hewerdine’s Harmonograph (MVine), a gloriously direct and melodic covers album of sorts, in that Boo covers songs of his that he wrote for and with other people …it’s mainly acoustic, and quite stripped back, and the sort of music Radio Two would be playing if it had the guts; and John Martyn’s On the Cobbles (Independiente), his...