2 years in - started with some acoustic wailing and last year polished off a rather ruff round the edges (mostly) electronica album.

This year I have three option - all of them concept albums - and haven't decided which to attempt yet, so I will outline all three....

My first instinct was for a Smiths inspired, ranty piece of introspection from the point of view of me as a 30 something - summed up by the title 'settling, but not settled' looking at bits the bits and pieces of my life that don't quite make sense or piss me off - however, I have grown concerned that the idea is a bit to pleased with itself and lives in the land of been done before...depressing etc etc....

The second idea, for which I have no title is in part inspired by the very recent loss of my beloved dog. I would not want to pen a load of sickeningly maudlin pieces, as that is plain not how I think about her. However, I have a spark of an idea for an selection of pastoral romanticism exploring our shared love of outdoorsiness and adventure. Think it would be kind of Wordsworth meets Van Dyke Parks with 3 chord progressions - I am also working on an adventure education assignment for Uni at the moment which is also feeding this mini obsession. I think this is probably the most ambitious of the three projects, but am unsure of whether I can carry it off without the emotional intensity falling into bad song writing and soppiness + I am still majorly upset about my dog....

The third, and probably safest option is to side step emotion entirely and go for a bit fun. Listening to Radio Four the other morning and heard a reading from Ioan Grillo's 'El Narco'. Besides that the book seems a damn good read, one bit stood out. Grillo discusses the profitable art of penning ballads for Narco's (drug running bandits and gangs) stating that it was not unheard of for 10s of thousands of dollars to change hands for the writing of a celebratory ballad, glorifying the tale of these modern days smugglers....naturally my sights are far lower, with an album entitled 'Ballads of the minor criminal' charting the exploits of some less than successful denizens through a bit of story telling and overhype.

I haven't completely decided, but thinking it will likely be option one or 2 or a double ep focussing on the two - which would be fantastically jarring and would entertain me no end with alternative thing to work on if I get stuck...let me know what you think.

Oh yeah, kit...

This year I will be using a battered acoustic, mac book, iPhone, nintendo DS 8bit synth prog, out of tune piano and not much else....it shall be fun!!!