The severity of my doubts - and the severity of my certainty that I should doubt - about the future of REM after Bill Berry quit outs my skill level as a pop music precog - that is, zero. Up has since wormed its way into my heart  as a desert island REM record, no less. And that last record nobody listened to, Accelerate, was terrific, so it’s your loss. Not that I’m un-thrilled but final judgment for their new Jacknife Lee-produced album, being recorded in New Orleans as you read this, is hereby reserved until its release. Given that it’s never been my habit to rummage through music news sites and swim through the indie media bath, I had to Google the brief’s title (also the piece’s title) to get a scoop on what everybody had up their sleeves for the year to come - am excited that there will be new Sareena Maneesh, new Frightened Rabbit, new National, new Avalanches, new Massive Attack, new Final Fantasy, new Arcade Fire, and new Knife. Also a rather belated return to the three-minute pop song for Magnetic Fields, a possibly ill-advised or possibly brilliant or most likely somewhere-in-between Peter Gabriel covers album, and the new Toro Y Moi with a track called Talamak (Filipino for ‘brazen’) beating every local group to the song title/band name of the century.  Of course, whatever leaked/advance tracks up for streaming there remained mostly unstreamed. But much as I only tend to get excited over a new album by a band I like when I’m actually tearing open the plastic, as it were, virtually or otherwise, these five do have me a little prematurely giddier than usual.

1. Here Lies Love by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim

Exempting Burt Bacharach & Elvis Costello, and maybe Mandy Moore & Michael Stipe, there’s no musical match-up that smacks of mortal lock as this one that it makes you wonder what took them so long - would it now be too much to ask for Byrne to go into a studio with MIA, or better yet, Lady Gaga?  Having been avid about their ex-bands - Talking Heads and Housemartins, respectively - only means I’ve signed up for this on principle alone, out of the imminent possibility that exquisite rhythmic pay-offs abound, and that’s even before we get to the object of their hooking up. Which, of course, is a musical about Imelda Marcos - and there’s your sweet hook right there if all else fails.

2. IRM by Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck

Neither perplexing nor harmful, last year’s boomlet of actress-musician pairings mostly squandered what little promise they held in a puddle of meh. Well, Zooey Deschanel and M.Ward’s self-conscious moonlighting as She & Him did, at least, running out of breath halfway through, much as it’s since been over-excitedly exalted into the canon of hipster-than-thou - the girl has ‘connect’ after all, but I’d stick with Mr. Ward’s records on his own from here on, starting with Post War. Far less patchy and really far better and really rather lovely is Breakup, Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn’s collaborative tribute to Brigitte Bardot’s collaborations with Serge Gainsbourg. A one-up looms, though, with itinerant Serge disciple Beck’s forthcoming collaboration with kooky Serge daughter, Charlotte, last seen in an enchanted forest at the end of the world in Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, which was magnificently fucked up and something I sort of wish would transpire here. Reports have it that the title track is a valentine to the MRI machine used to detect Charlotte’s brain hemorrhage after a skiing accident and is laced with more than a tinge of krautrock. I am so there, then.

3. Plastic Beach by Gorillaz

I own everything they’ve done but I think I prefer their videos to their songs - Jamie Hewlett is go! Having said that, it’s the roping in of walk-ons from Lou Reed, Barry Gibb, Mos Def, and Bobby Womack that sells me on this. That, and Damon Albarn’s declaration that this is the poppiest thing his cartoon militia has ever done - and the world needs more pop than it’s willing to admit. Not to mention Gorillaz videos.

4. Romance Is Boring by Los Campesinos!

5. Wake Up The Nation! by Paul Weller

Having long discarded the blinders that come with being a fan, I tend to approach every new Paul Weller record these days with a cocktail of enthusiasm and bemusement and dread and trepidation except that, underwhelming first singles notwithstanding, every new record tends to be the twist in my sobriety. It clouts me up the head for harboring even the tiniest of qualms - with 2008’s 22 Dreams clouting me twice as fierce than the others. A brass band and a drenching in strings is promised. High hopes.