Forget last week, it's spring now.

The title may be odd but for me it is something that has happened at about this time of year for several years now. In recent months, and while I was hardly short of new music that I wanted to hear, this time last week searching for new things was an effort of which I was faintly conscious. This week it isn't, it seems to be finding me, and perhaps because of that I'm finding things that sound fascinating almost by accident. You should see the list I now have and in time you probably will see at least some of it realised!

That said this week's UK #1 album looks a dead certainty as 'The Age of the Understatement' by The Last Shadow Puppets is hardly going to fail. It is a collaboration and side project for both key members, Alex Turner of The Arctic Monkeys and Miles Kane of The Rascals. If it does make #1 it will mean that the first three albums on which Turner has featured will all have gone to #1 on the week of release and make Domino Records justifiably proud; the label signed the Arctic Monkeys against competition from all the 'majors'. It deserves to succeed because, whatever the background of the collaborators and side projects like this can prove to be particularly dangerous territory, this one is remarkably good.

This is a temporary image and I'll add a better one as soon as I can not least because this album is available on 12" vinyl.

In the meantime, and if you have any interest in modern British folk, this is an absolute bargain. The cover looks cheap, it is hard to dispute that, but all thirteen tracks of the music most certainly are not. The price is perhaps the real shock.

It is £1.98 brand new from amazon.co.uk

This leaves the rest of my 'wanted list' to be dealt with later. That there are so many items in it is delightful prospect. Many are probably rather less than universally known but here are a few of them and they are mostly as yet unheard by me, and so of necessity mentioned without further comment, but suffice to say ennui seems almost unimaginable! Not all of these are 2008 releases, some have merely just become known to me or have now been mentioned to me so often that I feel I must be missing something. The first has not been officially released yet.

They are in no particular order:

Too Long Away - Emily Smith (2008)
Boxer - The National (2007)
Oracular Spectacular - MGMT (2008)
Circle - Uiscedwr (2006)
Little Amber Bottles - Blanche (2007)
Until Death Comes - Frida Hyvonen (2006)