20. Sufjan Stevens -- Illinois (2005)

Sufjan’s Prairie State

I wish he did all fifty

(Yes, I fell for it)

19. Jeffrey Lewis -- It’s the Ones Who’ve Cracked That The Light Shines Through (2003)

Anti-folk hero

Serves comic stripped down delight

Raw, honest and fun

18. PJ Harvey -- Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000)

Poptastic Polly

Her most commercial album

That never sells out

17. Pulp -- We Love Life (2001)

Leafy perfection

From kitchen sink troubadours

Sad, Sheffield swansong

16. TV on the Radio -- Dear Science (2008)

Arse-shaking anger

As Sitek and crew unleash

Brooklyn funky stuff

15. Bruce Springsteen -- Working on a Dream (2009)

My favourite Boss

Is reconciled with E Street

Glory Days again!

14. Midlake -- The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006)

Lush, pastoral grooves

Et in arcadia they go

I think I’ll head home!

13. The Strokes -- Is This It (2001)

New York storybook

A soundtrack of the decade

This, it seems, is it

12. Johnny Cash -- American III: Solitary Man (2000)

Departed legend

Au revoir, L’homme en noir

No one sounds like you

11. Brian Wilson -- Smile (2004)

Infamous Beached Boy

Went back to sea triumphant

And served up Surf’s Up

10. Grinderman -- Grinderman (2007)

Black Crow Kingdom reigns

As Bad Seeds bear twisted fruit

(See what I did there?)

9. The White Stripes -- White Blood Cells (2001)

Third from Jack and Meg

With incandescent gee-tars

And Awesome Welles riff

7. Lift to Experience -- The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads (2001)

A Lone Star Statement

They burnt fast but -- by God! -- burnt bright

“Don’t mess with Texas”

8. Wilco -- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

Tupelo’s Tweedy

Overcame Warner Bother

To create this gem

6. The National -- Alligator (2005)

Late night, low-rent wit

Don’t compare to Tindersticks

They’re better than that

5. Arcade Fire -- Funeral (2005)

Mournful joie de vivre

Joyous momento mori

(Inadequate praise)

4. Tom Waits -- Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards (2006)

Gravel voiced Bardfly

Serves up three courses of treats

We hunger for more!

3. Warren Zevon -- Life’ll Kill Ya (2000)

Sardonic singer

Enjoyed every sandwich

Then left us a feast

2. Lambchop -- Nixon (2000)

Funky slide guitars

Where country and Curtis meet

Mayfield, not Stigers!

1. The Flaming Lips -- Yoshima Battles The Pink Robots (2002)

Fearless freaks, rejoice!

Perfect bubblepop classic

Don’t you realize??

Here’s another pesky but obligatory year-end list for me to get out of my system: it’s my Top 5 list of the gigs I really would have liked to have gone to in 2008 but for one reason or another didn’t.

I’m sure I can come up with something snappier than that.

5. Public Enemy, Custard Factory, Birmingham. I mentioned this during one of my 11-11-11 write-ups, but sort of subsequently forgot about it. I’m sure it would have been fun.

4. Band of Horses, Birmingham Academy. Clare bought us a pair of tickets, there was a mix up over the dates and we missed the gig. Bugger.

3. TV On the Radio, Birmingham Academy. I’ve been following them since 2004’s Desperate Youths, Blood Thirsty Babes. 2008’s Dear Science was one of my favourite albums of the year. For some reason I didn’t catch them on tour. So it goes.

2. Bruce Springsteen. The last time I saw The Boss play live was at Villa Park in June 1988. That’s fucking ridiculous, that is.

1. Leonard Cohen. Clare and I came close – this close, I tell you – to nabbing a pair of tickets to see Laughing Len in Manchester. I’ll spare you the details.

My significantly better half Clare (Bless ‘er) bought me Scarlett Johansson’s new album of Tom Waits’ covers this week, Anywhere I Lay My Head. Now, I’m a bit of a unrepentantly obsessive Tom Waits fan (you noticed?), so when I first heard about this project I was more than a wee bit sniffy. Over the years, I’ve heard many, many, many cover versions of songs by the Great Voice of Gravel. A few have been sublime (Springsteen’s Jersey Girl and T. Bone Burnett’s Time spring to mind), most have been all right-ish to goddamn mediocre (The Ramones I Don’t Wanna Grow Up and The Eagles’ Ol‘ 55) and then there’s Rod Stewart’s take on Tom Traubert’s Blues. It’s at the bottom of the pile by a nautical mile and the less said about it the better.

If that wasn’t enough, I also have an innate problem with Hollywood A-Listers who want to sing songs. This is a generational thing, I know: for my parents, it was de rigeur for the Hollywood elite to have the innate capacity to act, sing, dance and possibly shit through hoops at twenty paces. I, however, have always been hampered with post-Method school expectations: actors should act, rock stars should rock and never the ‘twain should meet. Unless it’s Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth, or possibly William Shatner’s Rocket Man.

The prospect of a contemporary Bright Young Thing – talented though she may be – tackling the oeuvre of my all-time favourite recording artist bar-none did not fill my heart with giddy anticipation. “What next?” I wondered aloud, and possibly a bit too aloudly. “Keira Knightly releasing an album of Captain Beefheart covers? Jessica Alba Singing the Best of Billy Bragg? Gwyneth Paltrow doing Coldplay?”

Well, I needn’t have worried. Ms Johansson’s album is an absolutely marvellous thing of beauty that radically reinterprets and almost reinvents songs that have been hard-wired into my frontal lobes. Produced by the mighty TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek – and featuring guest vocals from none other than Mr David Bowie of Brixton, London – it’s one of the best dedicated covers albums I’ve heard since, oh, Jeffrey Lewis’s 12 Crass Songs and has been on heavy rotation on my tinny but temperamental car stereo for most of this week.

Like all good covers albums it reinvents and sometime reinvigorates the source material. The wistful, heartbreaking Small Change track I Wish I Was In New Orleans is turned into a musical box accompanied lullaby, whilst Bone Machine’s swaggering singalong I Don’t Wanna Grow Up is transformed into the bastard offspring of New Order and the Pet Shop Boys. It shouldn’t work and I shouldn’t like it, but it does and I do.

Clare’s favourite is the title track (as she said literally moments ago: “Listened to it, picked my favourite, stuck with it”), but I’m torn between I Wish I Was In New Orleans and I Don’t Wanna Grow Up.

Says it all, really.