This month’s album digest features albums by Wilco, M.I.A., Local Natives, and a collaboration between Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Suzanne Ciani. Wilco Schmilco Schmilco is the tenth studio album by Wilco, which regular readers will know are one of my favourite bands. There’s no need to repeat that anecdote about why this blog has the name that it does. Meanwhile, this album follows on from last year’s Star Wars and is probably the third Wilco album to have a jokey meta- kind of title.

I have already given some of the personal background to why I love this album and now it’s time to give a bit of love to the music itself so I’ll stick to giving a track by track account of “A Ghost Is Born”. If you are familiar with Wilco’s first few albums, you’ll know that A Ghost Is Born is on the line of best fit through Being There, Summerteeth, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

The hat in question is a Wilco baseball cap that I bought at a gig of theirs in 2004, the night that Germany got eliminated from Euro 2004. I’d love to show you a picture of it but I can’t, there isn’t even a picture of it from a Wilco merch site: at least not one that Google or Bing images can see anyway. I did manage to find a side-on picture of it in my bedroom in 2005 and zoom right in on it like they do in CSI.

Hmmm, a rather grey looking selection of covers this month. The albums I have listened to most are: John Beltran Ambient Selections FabricLive 59 mixed by Four Tet The Rapture In The Grace Of Your Love Wilco The Whole Love I have actually only had the Wilco album since Monday of this week (the 26th) but it has inveigled its way into my consciousness quite quickly. As I have said before, this blog owes its name to a Wilco song and they are quite an important band to me.