
So, as the New Year approaches, here are our favourite albums of 2011 for your consideration. Feel free to dispute, argue, or otherwise put us right because, if nothing else, music is as about as subjective topic as it is possible to get. Some of these may not be the "best" albums of the year as far as the critics are concerned, but that matters not, as they were the ones we enjoyed listening to most - give them a try, you might feel the same. 50 Jessica Lea Mayfield [...]

MAD MACKEREL'S TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS For our first ever Festive Feature on Mad Mackerel, we asked twelve of our favourite bands and artists of 2011 to answer twelve questions and we will publish them over the next twelve days taking us up to Christmas Eve. Lonesome Wyatt & The Holy Spooks latest offering Heartsick is described as " twelve mournful offerings of loneliness, sorrow and decay " and so it is, but [...]
Here is the new, and appropriately creepy video for Feast of Fear by our favourite southern Gothic folk doomsayers Lonesome Wyatt & The Holy Spooks . a Follow @madmackerel

We included Lonesome Wyatt & The Holy Spooks on our recent Halloween playlist and subsequently discovered a new album had been released just last week. Titled Heartsick , and recorded in a damp Wisconsin basement, it is another foray into their idiosyncratic world of doom laden, southern gothic folk and country. Lonesome Wyatt is one half of another dark country duo ( Those Poor Bastards ) so perhaps it is to be expected and sure enough you won't be disappointed. Instruments skitter and rattle providing the backdrop to skeletal tales of [...]
While we're not great ones for themed mixes on MM, Halloween is one of the exceptions we like to make. Here is a perfect mix for whatever ghoulish event you've got lined up today! Fifteen corking tunes, from the skewed new wave pop of XTC and off-kilter indie of the Mountain Goats to the trashy surf rock of The Cramps and from the folk-stomp of the Men They Couldn't Hang and the gothic drive of Ghost Dance to the pounding blues rock of the Scissormen and 22-20s . Enjoy. [...]