Top 10 albums of 2012/13 so far - my opinion

At last somewhere where I can throw my opinions out to the world on music. I may of course find this difficult as I don't like it when people disagree (my wife thinks that I'm pretty pretentious and precious about music) but what the hey! Rather than start by reviewing an album I thought I'd do something I've always wanted to do and do a top 10 list! The following is a personal list of the best new albums added to the Library Catalogue in the last 12 months (I should have known that I wouldn't have been able to keep it down to 10!):

• Antony & the Johnsons - Cut the World
• Bat for Lashes - The Haunted Man
• Paul Buchanan - Mid Air
• Beach House - Bloom
• Cat Power - Sun
• Crystal Castles - III
• First Aid Kit - The Lion's Roar
• Grizzly Bear - Shields
• Richard Hawley - Standing at the Sky's Edge
• Lambchop - Mr.M
• The Lumineers - The Lumineers
• Mumford and Sons - Babel
• Of Monsters and Men - My Head is an Animal
• Lucy Rose - Like I Used To
• Sigur Ros - Valtari
• Tindersticks - The Something Rain
• The xx - Coexist
• Lana Del Rey - Born to Die

Avengers Assemble, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises

I have to say that I was beginning to think that you could have too many comic-book hero films until I saw three films in recent months all of which blew me away in their own quite different way - Avengers Assemble, The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spiderman.

I loved the first two Sam Raimi Spider-Man films and thought they had probably taken it about as far as it was possible to go (witness film 3!). Not true - this is absolutely brilliant - a fantastic story-line with just the right amount of action without going too far down the road of over-relying on CGI rather than plot. Importantly to me young British actor Andrew Garfield plays Spidey this time (I thought he was amazing in Red Riding) and I do like a proper actor playing my super-heroes!!

Robert Downey Jr is enough to make me try most films but I didn't really have massive hopes for the Avengers Assemble film and I just put it on one Saturday evening when really I was too tired to watch a film and wanted to watch something that I didn't care if I fell asleep while watching it. I know, I know - what an interesting and dynamic Saturday night-life I must have! Ignoring that thought I have to say that again this was fantastic - quite a bit more comedy than Spider-Man or Batman but oh my god the action!

The main criticism I'd heard about this was that you couldn't tell what the main villain Bane was saying due to his Hannibal Lector style face mask but I really don't understand that - I could understand him just fine (again a young British actor giving gravitas to a role - this time, Tom Hardy beefed up just like in Bronson). This is a very long film (160 mins) but it flew by. I just love how dark and grim these films are - far more my thing than the camp sixties TV show or indeed the Tim Burton versions although Batman Returns was pretty cool at the time. A fitting end to the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy although for me nothing could beat the The Dark Knight but I did see that at the cinema and it's difficult to follow that Heath Ledger performance as The Joker!