I find Mumford & Sons utterly insipid: their songs don't seem remotely distinguishable from your Keanes and your Coldplays.

Laura Marling and Johnny Flynn have a bit more interesting stuff going on. Can't say I actually like either of them.

But I've been listening to Laura Marling's new album, I Speak Because I Can, quite a lot on Spotify.

Mainly because it's the best-produced album I've heard in years. It's a sonic masterclass in how to mix acoustic instruments. All the guitars and vocals sound unbelievably present and intimate. It doesn't sound that compressed (though I'm sure it must be).

From a recording-geek point of view, anyone interested in recording ought to hear it. Whoever mixed it is very, very, very good at their job.

Like I said, I don't really enjoy it - it's way too in thrall to its influences (Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell) for me. She even adopts that kind of funny upper-class American accent (over-enunciated, slightly-English accent) that you'd hear in some of Joan Baez and other 60s singers. Which is kind of funny coming from a 20-yr-old English girl.

And her lyrics are really terrible, as most young peoples are when they're trying to be clever. (Bob Dylan is a very very bad role model for teenage singer-songwriters. You will try. You will fail.)

But she can certainly write a tune. There's a nice tune on it that's like a third cousin of On Top of Old Smokie – I think it's even called 'Covered in Snow', which is of course a quote from it.