David Emery Online

"Love Interruption" is the first taste of Jack White's debut album, Blunderbuss, out April 23 on Third Man Records/XL Recordings.

Firstly: new Jack White solo record! I am a massive White Stripes fan, so this is a Very Good Thing. Also, we made a widget for it that spins at 45rpm:

I’m not sure if I’ve really mentioned the widgets we’ve developed and have been using since last August – they’re quite nifty, if I do say so myself. They’re HTML5-based and work on iPhones, iPads and other mobile devices; they get detected by the lovely HypeMachine so they show up when bloggers post about them; they’re completely fluid (using both media queries and a dab of JS) so they should work at any size; and lastly you can use them as little iOS web apps (if you have a data connection) – try saving this page to your home screen for example.

The short version is that Google search results are going to be automatically personalized (to a greater degree than they were already) for each user, with signals drawn from your Google+ Circles being used to highlight things your friends — or you, yourself — have shared. Any of these personalized matches will appear alongside ‘normal’ search results. And Google will also pull in photos shared on Picasa or Google+ (they’ll even show up if you’ve marked them private, but they’ll still only be visible to you).

It seems like there’s an ever growing opportunity for someone to come in and do search much better then Google does it, stripping it back to basics and focusing on the quality of results (which are appalling for so many search types – anything product focused just leads to page upon page of retailer sites, for example).

I think the attempt to (badly) add social features to all of their platforms could be the undoing of Google.

Taken from the album Acousmatic Sorcery out in 2012 on Hot Charity/XL Recordings.

I love this really quite a lot. Reminds me in a strange way of early White Stripes; obviously not in terms of the music, but in terms of atmosphere.

So, I think we can all agree that 2011 was quite the year, right?

A lot, err, happened.

From a personal perspective it was pretty good. Being part of the whole Adele thing was undeniably fun (if not a little bit surreal at several points), as was working another Radiohead record (although the record itself was really only a component in a larger whole). It’s fair to say work dominated 2011 for me, which is both good and bad. More non-work things in 2012 would be sensible, although I think I think that every year.

It seemed as though 2011 in general was less good for albums, and much better for single tracks. There was no great album of 2012, in my opinion. A good year for music, then, but not a great year for the long player format. I don’t think that’s any result of a grand “the world is changing” shift away from albums, more just that by pure coincidence and bad luck no one happened to make a collection of tracks that was “right” this year.

So, to that end rather then do a best albums of 2011 list that probably shouldn’t have a #1, I’ve compiled a list of my favourite 40 tracks of the year. 40, because it turned out that’s about how many I liked. It ranges about a bit genre-wise, which I think illustrates potentially illustrates a wider trend of the Internet enabling people to easily try stuff out that’s not traditionally in their comfort zone.

Spotify is the reason Rihanna is on this list, basically.

Best tracks of 2011

• 40. Baby Missiles – The War On Drugs
• 39. Georgie Ray – British Sea Power
• 38. 212 – Azealia Banks
• 37. A Chore – Tom Vek
• 36. Terra Incognita – Atlas Sound
• 35. Surgeon – St. Vincent
• 34. Countdown – Beyonce
• 33. The Words That Maketh Murder – PJ Harvey
• 32. Calgary – Bon Iver
• 31. Under Cover of Darkness – The Strokes
• 30. New Brigade – Iceage
• 29. Villains of the Moon – Cold Cave
• 28. Otis – Watch The Throne
• 27. Queen of Hearts – Fucked Up
• 26. Jesus Fever – Kurt Vile
• 25. Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair – Arctic Monkeys
• 24. California – EMA
• 23. Beat of My Drum – Nicola Roberts
• 22. Hold On – SBTRKT
• 21. Someone Like You – Adele
• 20. Everything Goes My Way – Metronomy
• 19. White Limo – Foo Fighters
• 18. Headlines – Drake
• 17. Scarlet – 2:54
• 16. Endless Blue – The Horrors
• 15. She – Tyler, The Creator
• 14. Diamond Way – Jeff The Brotherhood
• 13. Codex – Radiohead
• 12. NY is Killing Me – Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx
• 11. Dirt – WU LYF
• 10. We Found Love – Rihanna
• 9. The Wilhelm Scream – James Blake
• 8. Rolling In The Deep (Jamie xx shuffle) – Adele
• 7. Goshen – Beirut
• 6. The Look – Metronomy
• 5. Powa – Tune-Yards
• 4. Video Games – Lana Del Ray
• 3. BTSTU – Jai Paul
• 2. Mozaik – Zomby
• 1. The Daily Mail – Radiohead

You can listen to these tracks as a playlist on Spotify (if they’re on there).

Pitchfork is a popular-as-hell indie music blog. It's got a hipster-snobby reputation and the reviews are best summarised as "When Adjectives Attack," but their recommendations tend to be on the money and I've found a lot of good music thanks to their Best New Music category.

Pitchfork's also got a reputation of being a real tastemaker, anointing new albums & artists to the big leagues. But is this backed up by the data? I decided to find out.

In short: they don’t (although you need more data for a less flippant conclusion). Also: yay for graphs!