Anyone For A List?

Musical Revelations Of The Week:

Lavender Diamond - 'Imagine Our Love' - I adored 'You Broke My Heart' from the early EP, 'The Cavalry Of Light' which I was alerted to by Mark Lamarr's excellent Radio 2 show, 'God's Jukebox'. That's not on this record, but it still manages to be consistently excellent. Pretty without being twee and with a soundscape so clear it's hard to believe it's a modern CD, this could be in my end of the year list. Highly recommended.

Pet Shop Boys - 'Cubism' DVD - As considered below, this is the latest PSB live DVD and it's up to the high standards set by previous efforts. The audio is superbly produced and the stage show is well-filmed. It sent me scurrying back to my PSB records with glee. I may well check out the commentary later today.

Wilco - 'Sky Blue Sky'/'The Thanks I Get' on vinyl - The double vinyl, gatefold spangly edition arrived on Monday and sounds gorgeous. The vinyl is quiet and the music absolutely suits the format. In addition this meant I had a copy of the 'enhanced' CD of 'Sky Blue Sky' which comes free with the vinyl edition. The UK CD doesn't have the enhanced feature and thus doesn't allow you to load the disc and download new song, 'The Thanks I Get' for free. Do whatever you can to track this song down as it's up to the standard of the rest of the album.

Non-musical Revelations Of The Week:

Frasier - Season Eight - The region 1 DVD set arrived this week and I approached it with as open a mind as possible. Thankfully, I've found the humour fairly sharp - as with so much of Fraiser- but the whole pregnant Daphne as a 'binge-eater' remains one of the most ludicrous attempts at writing the plot around an actor ever seen. As it stands I'm very happy to see it again, but we're not up to full-size Daphne yet so I may well come out in a rash soon enough.

Have I Got News For You - Kilroy Out-take - 'The Best Of The Guests Vol 2' DVD dropped through the letterbox the other day, and amongst the out-takes on disc 2 is the unbroadcast, full version of Paul Merton's exchange with Kilroy when he appeared on the show. Watching Merton completely lose it and shout 'Shut the fuck up!' at him is a beautiful moment. It also contains the famous soaking, slurriyng and shafting clips.