Feel good hits of the 8th August

This bumper instalment brought to you in large part by Piccadilly Records' excellent and instructive Mid-Term Review...

1. 'Laura' - Bat For Lashes
2. 'Pink Flag' - Wire
3. 'Going To A Town' - Rufus Wainwright
4. 'Debonair' - Afghan Whigs
5. 'Death' - Ty Segall Band
6. 'How Long Have You Known?' - DIIV
7. 'Drifting In And Out' - Porcelain Raft
8. 'Acid Head' - White Manna
9. 'Old Lord' - Pretty Lightning
10. 'Endless Flowers' - Crocodiles
11. 'Replicate' - Disappears
12. 'Visions Of The Past, Present And Future' - White Hills
13. 'Cracking Eggs' - My Best Fiend
14. 'Ghosts' - Monolake
15. 'Dr Martens Blues' - Heavy Blanket

Notes:

1. If this is genuinely representative of forthcoming third album The Haunted Man (due in October), then it's going to be very special indeed.

2. I invested in Chairs Missing recently but still can't get past Pink Flag...

3. Enjoying the fact that, like Thom Yorke, Rufus Wainwright has an extraordinary ability to sing with his mouth only half open.

4. A highlight from Gentlemen, the Whigs' masterpiece of regret and self-loathing.

5. No record that opens with a track like this is going to fail to win me over.

6. Sweet, serene, hummable daydream shoegaze-pop that fills a hole quite nicely while we wait for the next Deerhunter album - and it's arguably better than anything on the last Atlas Sound record.

7. Not as keen on the other tracks I've heard from Strange Weekend, but 'Drifting In And Out' is gently charming in much the same way as Youth Lagoon.

8. For anyone (myself included) who misses the old Sleepy Sun.

9. Storming gothic blues from Germany. Unexpected.

10. The video's cack and makes them look like poseurs, but 'Endless Flowers' is vibrant and zesty in a Best Coast kinda way. Consider yourselves added to my list of must-sees at the 1-2-3-4, boys.

11. Good to see that, like Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley is keeping himself busy and distracted from the implications of the Thurston/Kim split and Sonic Youth's hiatus, by joining Disappears on a permanent basis. 'Replicate' has the deadpan relentlessness of Joy Division - a rare delight given the hordes of youths recently clamouring to indie-discoify them.

12. Julian Cope nods his head while those of others around him melt. White Hills, White Manna - is white the new black, then?

13. An exhilarating country hymn in the vein of Spiritualized. Most un-Warp-like...

14. ... whereas this sounds like the label's bread and butter. Tech-step, apparently. Otherworldly, and ultimately rather sinister.

15. J Mascis felt he needed an outlet for his guitar solos. And there was me thinking that was Dinosaur Jr...