Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!

I was astonished by how good this was. The conventional wisdom about the Bad Seeds seems to be that they became purveyors of ballads while Nick Cave expressed his darker side through his other band Grinderman. Not true, at least on the evidence of this. The title track is especially good, but the whole album is excellent. I suspect that Cave's lyrics veer towards self parody, but not without surprises. For example, it is obvious, in "Albert Goes West", that bad things are going to happen to Albert and the other characters who head for different points of the compass. But the twist is in the last verse - the narrator isn't going anywhere because "I like it here", and sees the sun coming up.

Love - Forever Changes

This has just nudged past Trout Mask Replica as my favourite record of all time. I wish I could write a lot about it here, but there isn't time. The crowning glory is "You Set The Scene".

Schumann - Symphony No 1 (Spring)

About 15 years ago I bought a CD of songs by Schumann thinking they were by Schubert (I think they had got into the wrong rack in the shop - this was when people bought records in shops). When I got home I realised the mistake, and just put the disk away. I didn't play it until a couple of years ago, and loved it. I decided to listen to as much Schumann as I could - but, as with most things, I didn't get round to doing it.

I really loved this symphony. Obviously very Beethovenish, but with occasional foretastes of Wagner and Bruckner.

Mozart - Piano Concerto No 23

Listened to this again, and I'm worried because I'm just not getting it. It must be me, because I'm sure it isn't WAM.

Mozart - Piano Concerto No 23 in A

I'm a bit puzzled. I used to love this, but it left me a bit cold.

Various - New Weird Australia, Volume 6

I really enjoyed Volume 3 of this collection of experimental Australian music (compiled by Stuart Buchanan, of Fat Planet fame), so I was pleased to see that the series was still going and had in fact got up to volume 6 (I'll have to catch up on volumes 4 and 5). This wasn't as exciting as volume 3 - nothing as thrilling as K Mason's "Of Two Evils" - and some of the tracks didn't sound particularly new or weird (for example, the intro to Chrome Dome's "She Said" sounds like Killing Joke circa 1980). But still good things on here, particularly Eastern Grey's "24-5".