The list is what brings a world of chaos into some kind of pattern. The list fixes a broken world floating out into the outer world of emptiness. The list links us to ourselves, places us together, puts us in order. The list soothes us in the way it organises memory and shapes the consciousness. Everybody loves a list for making sense of the awesome nature of all the stuff that surrounds us. The list is at the heart of everything. Everything is part of a list. Humanity is one long list linking nothing with something.
(Paul Morley, Words and Music)

Paul Morley telling it how it is, & as the year starts to fade away, it’s time once again for the series of lists detailing the best of the best that’s passed through my eardrums in the last 12 months. We begin, as ever, with the ten most outstanding EPs. Read more