"See her picture in a thousand places, cos she's this year's girl..."

So the White Lies album is released this week. Relax, I'm not going to fall into the trap of giving it a review here. Besides, I haven't listened to yet. But those of you who've been reading this for a while will already know my thoughts on their live show and what I thought of Fear of Flying, so I won't repeat myself. Besides, you are probably sick to the teeth of reading about them on those New Bands For 2009 lists where people described as 'industry movers and shakers' (IMSs) pick their tips for the forthcoming year.

I mention White Lies because in another week of industry changes (Apple dropping its DRM, the Astoria closing, my local Asda no longer selling CDs), it's nice to cling on to good old fashioned highly-anticipated albums.

I was out with one of those IMSs last week. Tellingly, we actually went to the London Art Fair instead of seeing a band. It was fantastic, by the way, particulary the amount of Terry Frost stuff which, if I had a spare £20K, I would sooner invest in than a bank.

Afterwards over a bowl of noodles, the IMS lamented the lack of anything genuinely exciting out there. Now, this may sound like the usual jaded A&R whinge of cliche. Not so. Well, not so with this chap anyway, he's normally ludicrously positive about everything - there's generally a silver lining for him, even in acts which I can't imagine getting beyond their first single. With him, they get to the album and more often than not end up on the cover of NME. Sometimes they even sell loads of records. Not that I'm jealous of him or anything, you understand.

He actually has a lot of time for White Lies but beyond that - looking at the landscape of unsigned and newly-signed artists - he claimed that there really wasn't anything sure-fire exciting out there in the way that there is most Januarys.

But from all those IMS lists you wouldn't think that there was a dearth of new stuff, would you? How many times have you read the names Little Boots, Empire of the Sun, Florence And the Machine and La Roux? They were all present and correct on BBC's Sound of 2009 list, a list which has become such an institution since it tipped Duffy and Adele that news of Little Boots' top nomination ended up making the national TV news. They were also there in the Guardian, The Times, the NME and then were repeated ad infinitum down the chain of lesser titles who always follow suit with their 'picks'. I remember when I was an editor at AOL Music and we did our inevitable image gallery of annual music tips. Despite my loathing of many of the choices, like a coward I would always include tips from other media's lists because I didn't want to be seen missing anything. Remember when you couldn't move for accolades for The Bravery or Holly Valance? Incidentally, you really should click on that Bravery link and read it, then read this year's BBC tips - it will make you smile and nod sagely.

In yesterday's Observer Music Monthly list, there had clearly been an effort to swerve away from some of the more obvious choices and well done them for trying. The interesting thing about all the tipping this year is that with the record business in freefall, there is less and less chance of any of these tipped bands actually amounting to very much more than hot tips. Both Duffy and Adele were heavily invested in - certainly Duffy had to happen, the financial consequences would have just been too dreadful to contemplate if it hadn't worked. If the tipster's goal of 'getting it right' of being able to say at the beginning of the following year,"Yeah, we spotted Duffy ages ago" then the safest bet is to tip the artist who you know the record company is backing. Yes, that's why we all backed The Bravery in 2004.

Press expectation and the marketing budgets for White Lies are of a level that we now see less and less of; there simply isn't enough cash to do it on every new act. So aside from their Joy Division-meets-Duran Duran sound, there is something heart-warmingly old-fashioned about the whole White Lies vehicle, with its press ubiquity, its TV advertising and universal approval. That's with a small 'u' by the way. Even reviews where quite clearly the critic does not get it have been positive. Let's be honest, it is noveau goth music of the sort that teeenage boys can't get enough of; it's not made for 30-something critics who would rather be listening to Bon Iver (there, got a reference in this week, high five!). So critics have to judge it whilst wearing short trousers to avoid sounding dad-like.

In a similar way, I reviewed Graham Norton's debut in La Cage Aux Folles last night - except instead of short trousers, I had to review it in drag. I don't find camp funny of itself and most of the humour in La Cage is derived out of the assumption that men in glittery dresses and wigs is hilarious. But once I got into the spirit - and Norton, despite a limited vocal range, does a fairly good job - I found myself humming along to I Am What I Am along with the middle aged ladies and male couples sharing M&Ms.

Damn, this week, I wanted to go through the critics' picks of acts for 2009 and give you my informed and unbiased opinion on all of them. Instead, I've told you I like Sir Terry Frost and caberet. But would you really be interested to know what I think of Little Boots? Perhaps if I'd seen her live I would tell you but you don't need me to tell you what I think of her recordings - go and listen yourself. My one thought on her is this - and it probably applies to all the other lucky tipped artists too: in her Guardian Magazine feature two weeks ago, the interview ended with the usual bold copy where tradtionally, information pertaining to the release date of her record would be. But instead of these details it merely stated that we could hear her music on Myspace. Let's hope Atlantic are saving up a White Lies-sized budget for her campaign.

"You say you want a resolution..."

We're seven miles up in the air somewhere over the Atlantic when Maddy asks me, "Daddy, what's 'meaning'?"

I've just read her the synopsis of the film Wall-E from the tiny screen in front of us and the final line says words to the effect of: '... and at last the lonely robot finds some meaning in life.' As questions go from five-year olds go - or indeed from anyone at all, "What is meaning?" is the big one. And to get it at 35 thousand feet up in the air on New Year's Day makes it seem all the more poignant. How do I answer a question like that?

We're coming back from a ten day trip to the US to visit Robyn's folks in Virginia. Yes, for those of you wondering what had happened to me since the last blog entry three weeks ago, that's where I've been. And now the holiday and indeed the Holidays are over. Interesting that the American catch-all term for Christmas is being increasingly used over here - I got a number of heartfelt corporate festive greeting texts from friends on my return, none of them mentioning the word Christmas. No doubt if any clients of a non-Christian faith received a greeting containing the word Christ during their hard-won Holiday, they would immediately declare a business fatwa on the offending well-wisher.

Yes, Holiday is over and I didn't even get the chance to wish everyone a Merry Christmas or a Happy New Year but I do hope you all had a good one and didn't spend the time between crackers and Auld Lang Syne worrying about what how terrible 2009 is going to be financially, ecologically and of course for the record business. I spent the time in Virginia in the middle of what they call 'The Boondocks' (trans. 'the back and beyond') not once looking at the Internet, the news on TV, a newspaper or even turning on my mobile phone. Instead I cooked, helped my daughters invent games with the dolls and dug deep into the iPod shuffle for Christmas greats (Hark The Herald Angels Swing by The World's Greatest Jazzband Of Yank Lawson & Bob Haggart got a lot of love) as well as returning to my favourite CDs of the year and of course plenty of Maddy's - incidentally, if you have kids under 10 and haven't heard the Carrie and David's Pop Shop album yet you're in for a treat - it keeps your children off the streets, gives an ex member of Linx some well-deserved earnings and you get the fun of spotting the musical references as they plunder every genre to bring pop alive for kids. More fun than listening to Bon Iver, I Grant you.

I must stop going on about Bon Iver, I'm sure he's a very talented and likable guy. I actually did try and have another go at the album over Christmas. I figured I was in the middle of a forest, in a log cabin-style house, it was frosty outside with the nearest town, Scottsville, a twenty-minute drive away; aside from the fact that I wasn't on my own with only my beard for company, surely the atmosphere was identical to the one allegedly endured by broken hearted Justin Vernon when he made For Emma? But no, the thing passed me by again. I love simple voice and guitar music, from Iron and Wine and Elliot Smith to Jake Thackray and Bert Jansch but, for me, there is something missing about For Emma, Ever Ago. I just don't like the fella's singing, it sounds like he's putting on mannerisms, as if his voice isn't his own. And it's double tracked a lot too (e.g on The Wolves) which is always suspicious. And of course, my hackles are always raised when something is universally praised by music critics - every one of them falling for the dubious mythology of the tortured artist doing it for love and making it all my himself in a shed. I'm sure he did, but that doesn't automatically make it 'haunting' and 'beautiful'. I'll give it this though, I do quite like the final track Re: Stacks. But what an annoying indie song-title...

Consensus terrorism as Douglas Coupland calls it, is always rife in the press. I've mentioned it here before, it's when a couple of leading critics set an opinion , which is then followed by all the lesser journalists out of laziness or fear of getting it wrong, then the public follows suit and before you know it, people are either afraid to admit to liking Coldplay or fearful of saying they don't think Pet Sounds is the greatest album ever made. Given that I had time to reflect over things during my holiday in Les Boondocks, I concluded that this is one of the things that obsessess me and is perhaps the underlying motivation in everything I write.

I was angry about consensus terrorism as an A&R man, finding myself quite often very against whatever artists who were getting other A&R folk in a lather, and looking for inspiration elsewhere. Often I was wrong, and whoever it was I didn't care for (e.g. recently The Klaxons, or years ago, Suede) became huge and I actually ended up quite liking their stuff but just as often I was right (Where are The Twang now? And I'll be surprised if we'll hear much more of the Courteeners in 2009).

But why should I care about what 15-year olds listen to? I feel like I'm already father to a teenager as Maddy now wanders round the house singing Fabulous like Sharpay in High School Musical 2. When I started this blog a year ago (yes, amazingly it's been 12 months! I would hold some sort of event for its birthday, invite all of you and bathe in glory if I was the sort of person I dislike . Incidentally, I have to admit the popularity of A&Rmchair is one of the most pleasing things about 2008 for me and, as the risk of sounding like Halle Berry at the Oscars thank you all for reading it in such numbers with such regularity.

But I am digressing again. What I was about to say was that a year ago one of the first entries here was about me getting stopped by a beautiful girl who was collecting for The Samaritans outside Farringdon station. After having done the usual bloke thing of assuming that she had collared me because she found my rather splendid looks beguiling, was told that I reminded her of one of her dad's mates. Since then, I have rebuilt my confidence back to being convinced of my adorability. I've done this by means of growing a beard (see, me and that Bon Iver, we've got more in common than you might think).

The beard happened over the summer by accident really; we were on holiday and I just didn't shave for a week. Then, on being complemented by my wife, I kept growing it until, in her words, it 'got a bit Mick Fleetwood' whereupon I trimmed it rather than the usual post-holiday clean shave. Now six months on and I have embraced being a beardy. I never thought I'd be one - my dad has always had a beard and I whilst I always thought it looked good on him, I was on the side of Roald Dahl who disliked them so much he included a whole chapter on them in The Twits. I wear the beard now with pride. But with it come all sorts of new responsibilities - like the wiping away of toothpaste after brushing, or the disentangling of toasty crumbs. Also, I now have to think about the way I dress because it makes me look grown up. I've been to the Old Blue Last many times and stood at the bar next to lots of bearded-up Hoxtonites, but I am aware that if I went now, I could not pass for one of the Mystery Jets unless I was the dad. The beard is not some facial equivalent of a leather jacket and girlfriend 20 years my junior.

This notion crystallised while we were in America. We were doing a shop for kids' clothes at a store called Old Navy which is like a kind of low rent Gap. I wandered off to have a look at the Men's section and found a whole load of T-shirts for $7 each (American T-shirts are always a bargain, it's almost as if they are subsidised along with the petrol). These shirts were individually designed, some had messages, others hand drawn Mo-Wax-style creatures or line drawings, here's one I really liked and tried on. It was then that it hit me: I realised that while I am still fortunate enough to have a waist and reasonably broad shoulders, I just can't pull off the logo T-shirt anymore with the beard (PB). In fact, I'm now not sure if I could even pre-beard (BB) It was a big revelation, to be honest, as I am a huge fan of graphic design on T-shirts, but right there and then I made the decision that I was no longer going to wear shirts like that anymore. I may not be mutton, but I'm damn sure not going to sink into some ignoble middle youth. So there's a New Year's resolution - along with all the others that I'm not going to share here. If you do see me out in a T-shirt, it won't have a graphic design on it. If it does, I hereby give you the right to say, "Oi, grandad! Get yourself something nice from Marks & Spencers instead!"

So what about meaning in life? What did I say to Maddy, who wanted to know about meaning all those feet up in the air? I said this: meaning is your friends, it's knowing that you're not alone - just like Wall-E in the film, which we watched about five minutes of before Maddy got too scared. I told her we were finally going to see her friend Katie who lives next door to us in Walthamstow. Katie, whose name Maddy had mentioned almost every day of the trip, normally in the sentence: "I'm bored, I want to go home, I want to see Katie!" It's about me going out with for the annual Scared Hitless Christmas lunch with two of my oldest mates both of whom are now hugely successful in the music business and being able to talk and laugh as equals for three hours and not notice the time pass or indeed the time that has passed between us - we realised that we'd been having these Christmas lunches for 14 years. So if meaning in life equals friendship, there's another resolution for all of us in 2009: think less about your office desk, your inbox and making money, and see more of your friends. Happy new year!