Social music service Last.fm is my online radio station of choice. The Last.fm ‘scrobbler’ patiently notices all the music I play on iTunes and on my iPhone and makes recommendations I should listen to when I’m playing my Last.fm radio at my desk. If there’s stuff I’m listening to that I don’t own and want to buy, Last.fm makes it easy to buy a track or an album from iTunes Store. If the Last.fm recommendations aren’t exciting me today I can tune in to the tracks being played by people ‘like me’ on Last.fm.

So here’s a great idea: the best music of 2008 as scobbled by Last.fm users (well, minus the final few days of the year I guess.) Well worth a listen if you need to keep up with what Kids Are Listening To These Days.

Last.fm knows what all the young knob-twiddlers are into

The Last.fm Best of 2008 has introduced me to my new favourite band of the week: Glasvegas, who I’d describe as a mix of Futureheads and Teenage Fanclub with Phil Spector doing the mix.

Michael, Brendan and Stu giving you their best ‘Blue Steel’Since way, way back in 1995 Karma County have been making some of the best and most original music in Australia.

Arriving on stage in those early days with just a snare drum, acoustic guitar and double bass, they foreshadowed the acoustic roots movement that has become an essential element of contemporary music. 

Since those small beginnings they have grooved their way into the hearts and minds of discerning fans and critics, delivering five outstanding and timeless albums, the last of which, 2004’s Pacifico was released by Littoral Records (buy it here on iTunes Store).

Now Karma County have released a 2-disc retrospective collection, Headland. It’s  a must-have, with 36 tracks across 2 discs containing songs from all 5 albums, including 2000 ARIA winner Into The Land Of Promise. 

It also debuts previously unreleased tracks and live performances - remixed, revisited, remastered. Stand outs are the two new tracks; the new original The Feeling and a breezy cover of Yazoo’s Only You.

You owe it to yourself, you owe it to Australian music. Go check it out on the Vitamin store, where you can preview tracks and get your own copy the old-fashioned way - in the mail, on a couple of CDs. 

Great boy/girl harmonies, some crunchy guitar, very clever lyrics and heaping spoonfuls of energy. This is 20 Minute Loop on their album ‘People Marry Famous People’ - my favourite new listening of the week. Check them out…

I’m loving The Feeling’s music at the moment, particularly the 2006 song ‘I Love It When You Call.’

Then it struck me how good it would sound as a ringtone on my iPhone.

Just in case you think it would sound great on your iPhone too, here’s the ringtone I made.

(Just drag it onto iTunes and it should appear in your list of ringtones.)

Don’t thank me, just buy the album, it’s great!

• Twelve Stops and Home on iTunes Store US
• Twelve Stops and Home on iTunes Store Australia

Great news! Inspired by the massively positive feedback to James Cooper’s August 2006 launch gig at The Vanguard, Newtown, we’re delighted to announce five track live EP from the gig, “Live at The Vanguard EP”. The EP is available exclusively on iTunes Store in Australia.

Top of my music listening pleasure at the moment is The Vanda’s Silence EP - released earlier this year, and a happier mix of pub rock, jangly guitar ballads and clever hooks couldn’t found outside a You Am I gig. Well worth a listen, especially the track “Easily Replaced”. Check them out when you get a moment.

I’m a dad, and my four year old son loves music, but it’s hard to find him stuff that isn’t cutesy and annoying for adults. Here’s one artist that satisfies the toddlers and doesn’t offend the ears of the grownups.

I first met Enzo Garcia when he graciously let me stay in his room while I was visiting his brother and sister-in-law in San Francisco. He’s a great guy, and we got along well. He was trying to break it as a roots musician, but the banjo and fiddle scene is small even in the US, and just didn’t have room for Enzo, even though he was clearly talented.

Later, through gigging at a restaurant where young families were regulars, Enzo discovered he could make a better living performing and writing music for young kids.

His latest album, Pink, has his trademark touch of a little roots-style picking and lots of non-smarmy friendliness. It’s featured on the homepage of CDBaby.com right now, and here’s an excerpt from the CDBaby.com review:

“Few genres at CD Baby face the daunting challenge of having to appeal to such a wide age range in their fans. With the Kids/Family section, these artists not only have to keep the young ones interested but they also have to keep the adults from running out the door for pain killers. That responsibility can be quite a task. However, Enzo Garcia has a memorable way of being “cute” and catchy without dropping all integrity and conviction. It’s like he’s honed the playful and goofy elements of adult music and tweaked them to fit perfectly within kids’music.” Listen to it with your own young ones - CDBaby delivers worldwide! ;-)

I can’t remember how I happened across GOTYE’s album Like Drawing Blood exactly, but it must have been online, because the artist has released the album independently online, and although he’s had some great reviews and the album has been nominated for an award by TripleJ, most of his exposure has been online to-date.

Like Drawing Blood isn’t really the kind of thing we release on Littoral, but I love it personally and feel you need to know about it. If you’re a fan of Lemon Jelly, BT or Thievery Corporation, this is for you.

I’d recommend listening to Thanks For Your Time, a bitterly funny comment on telephone customer service, and Learnalilgivinanlovin (I think I’ve spelled that right) which is a mashup of Phil Collins which makes him not just listenable, but downright funky and danceable again.

Almost everything on the album’s a potential successful single - GOTYE’s writing, multi-musicianship, vocals and production work are top-class.

You can buy the album online from www.gotye.com and he has some samples there and on http://www.myspace.com/gotye. Judging by the reviews he’s getting on MySpace I think he’s probably starting to make good money from track sales too, which is great to see. Awesome to see the artist reaping 100% of the reward.

I can’t be the only one with a fetish for a bit of franco-gypsy accordion, especially when it’s used to adorn the fringes of a dance song. After all, how many people bought Grace Jones’ classic Nightclubbing for the track ‘I’ve Seen That Face Before”? If you’re a closet dance accordion fan too, you’ll dig the Gotan Project’s ‘Lunatico’, which I found on Word UK magazine’s monthly sampler, but which is also available now on iTunes. Read the reviews in Word and the album’s an atttempt to update the classic genre of tango music, originating in the latin world, and certainly most of the song titles are latin, but mostly it sounds French to me. Many of the songs have just a soupçon of accordion, and all are redolent of Paris in the early hours of the morning, after a night spent in the headlong pursuit of, well, hedonism. There’s up-tempo dancefloor numbers and more than a few of the slow, piano-and-bass-driven late night jazz types in-between. Highlight of the latter being ‘Celos’ and of the former, ‘Criminal’. But the highlight of the album is surely ‘Diferente’, a modern-day interpretation of Jones’ classic ‘I’ve Seen That Face Before.’ If I were Jones I’d be telling my publicist to get on the phone, because if Gotan Project goes Top 10, she’s going to be back in the limelight. For all the right reasons - ‘Nightclubbing’ is a timeless classic too.

Well, not new in the traditional sense - this one was released months ago and I’ve had it in my collection since the release, but I finally got to take Dead Marines’ New Day for a long walk today in my iPod. It’s one of those albums - it requires some focused listening time, because it’s not going to bash its way into the foreground. It makes good background listening but you’d be doing yourself a favour if you take it for a long walk, as the musicianship and songwriting are top-class.

It sounds like three guys with guitars sitting down and making some music together, the sort of serendipity that sometimes happens at a barbeque or in a pub. That’s because it’s basically that - Brendan Gallagher, Bow Campbell and Bernie Hall have been friends for some time and, as they put it, most of these songs have been, “refracted through the prism of a wine bottle or three.”

The band’s name comes from a story where shortly after receiving his promotion to rear admiral in 1790, William IV, known as the ‘Sailor King’, was at dinner on board one of his fleet’s ships. He ordered the steward to remove the ‘dead marines’ to make room for new bottles. After a complaint from a marine officer, His Highness responded that no offence was intended. The expression was used in the sense “…that, like marines, the bottle had given its life nobly and, given the chance, would do it again.

Not overproduced, not over-reaching, just toe-tapping goodness, a bit of light and shade, and a nip of wry humour. Dead Marines can be purchased online from distributor Vitamin.