Mixtape of the Year, 2007

On the last day of Twenty-Oh-Seven, I'm going to look back at some of my favourite songs of the year, helpfully compiled in a collection of digital files conveniently compressed in the MP3 format for your downloading pleasure. The link is at the bottom!

This obviously isn't a countdown, it's a tracklisting. These aren't my favourite twenty-two songs, but I think this makes a nice collection of the music that was buzzing through my year:

1. Radio Nowhere - Bruce Springsteen: No better way to start than Springsteen's most rocking track since the eighties. Somehow this commentary on the faceless, corporate radio that is decimating America's radio waves saw Springsteen being banned by Clear Channel over their networks - ie, every radio station in America. Most stations played him anyways, so I guess there is a tiny spark left in the heart of radio. But only a tiny one. I would like to see Clear Channel programme directors try to add the Shins to their playlists.

2. La Costa Brava - Ted Leo & The Pharmacists: Quality rock'n'roll about wanting to go hang out on the beach in Spain, which, quite frankly, is an awesome thing to do. This track got me checking the cost of flights as I haven't been to Spain in over three years and a return is overdue.

3. Tournament Of Hearts - The Weakerthans: Curling as a relationship metaphor. If you hadn't know before, suddenly it all becomes clear: the Weakerthans are from Winnipeg.

4. Is There A Ghost - Band Of Horses: I don't think the new album is as good as the last one, and this track is a bit of a one trick pony, but what a trick! It starts quietly awesome, and they just gets awesome. Result!

5. Keep The Car Running - Arcade Fire: 2006 - I buy a mandolin. 2007 - it turns out so did the rest of the world as mandolin rock takes over the airwaves - well Arcade Fire and Sir Macca anyways. Propulsive and strange making, Arcade Fire took a "traditional" instrument and recontexturalised it for the twenty-first century, creating a Modern Rock gem that sounds simultaneously ancient and brand new.

6. Plus Ones - Okkervil River: A hard one to pick - I've really fallen for Okkervil River in the last month, and I really wanted to put a track of theirs on this mixtape (proving that like all mixtapes, even those with good intentions, really put the focus on songs that are exciting right now rather than have been exciting all year, even if there still are lots of those). However, 'The Stage Names' is a great album and not really one that is easily mined for singles. So I picked a song that gets all meta about other songs. It's still pretty cracking outside of the context of the album, though.

7. Start A War - The National: The National's 'Boxer' is another great album that doesn't give itself easily to singles, at least for me. There aren't really any standout tracks, but it is a standout album. I've been listening to this one regularly since last spring, and this is a rather nice track that isn't going to blow your mind, but if every track on a mixtape did that, there would be far too many blown heads across the planet. The song is great, though.

8. I Still Remember - Bloc Party: the best song - a fantastic one, indeed - from one of the worst albums I've heard in the last twelve months. Massive, massive disappointment. This song is great, however, albeit a little slight from the awesomeness of 'Silent Alarm'.

9. Wide Awake - The Twang: Remember U2 in the eighties? Echo and the Bunnymen? Simple Minds? James? The Twang do.

10. Run Run Run - Goldenhorse: technically a 2005 release (in New Zealand), a 2006 UK rerelease, and 2007 getting around to other people actually hearing it. Female fronted indie jangle with Cocteau Twins tendencies. You know, like Delays, now that I think about it. Less interesting (or maybe just more straightforward), Goldenhorse was a nice discovery found on the blogosphere this year.

11. Moving Pictures - The Cribs: have the Cribs always been able to write such cracking pop songs and have just been hiding them in sloppy performance and production until now, or did it just occur to them to try to sound professional? Whatever the case, Cribs in great pop tune shock!

12. Moving to New York - The Wombats: have heard the Cure circa 'Wish'. This is a good thing.

13. Hip Hop Is Dead - NaS: Matthew proclaimed this single of the year last January. He might not have been far off. An Iron Butterfly sampling monster of a track attacking hip hop bling culture. The Smiths' chant of "hang the DJ" for the twenty first century.

14. Lips Are Unhappy - Lucky Soul: another blogosphere find. And now I'm pimping it on you. Sixties white pop soul by way of the Jam. The album is a little too even sounding production wise, but there are some corking tracks on it, Lips Are Unhappy the best of the bunch.

15. Breakin' Up - Rilo Kiley: I think that the new Rilo Kiley album actually gets less good the more you listen to it, but I give them props for trying to make a pop/rock record of the sort that went out of style at the turn of the nineties. Song based, each track distinctive in its own right, it is almost like a mixtape in itself. I love albums like that, but there is just something cold at the heart of this album that puts me off. Of course, having said that, Breakin' Up is still great - fun, playful and bouncy as can be. It sounds a lot looser than the rest of the record.

16. Here (In Your Arms) - hellogoodbye: I think this song works better as a video than just audio, but it isn't too shabby on its own. Electro-pop can be so wonderful sounding, ebullient and celebratory, and Here has that in spades. It may use too much vocoder, but there you go.

17. Accident & Emergency - Patrick Wolf: if anyone has seen our Patrick Wolf CD, could you please let me know? It hasn't been seen since the move, though it must be around here somewhere. I've been through all the CDs far too many times - unless this is God's way of telling me it is time to alphabetise those suckers again.

18. Have You Seen In Your Dreams - Miracle Fortress: I picked up this album after hearing it in Rough Trade while shopping for a couple of CDs only to walk out with four - I love Rough Trade. Like a lot of great music this year, Miracle Fortress is Canadian. His/their album 'Five Roses' is possibly my second favourite album of the year, after Arcade Fire's.

19. My World - The Go! Team: from yet another shitty second album. I'm not sure if a single UK act has put out a good second album this millenium. I can't possibly be right, but pretty much every single one of the great new band crop of 2003-05 have all blown it in the second album stakes. Regardless, there are still a few good tracks on the Go! Team lp, and this is one of them, a nice pastoral instrumental.

20. 1234 - Feist: the iPod ad has taken this to the point of over-familiarity, but the song still holds up for me. As soon as we got this album back in the spring, 1234 was all over my iPod and mix CDs. And it is still awesome.

21. Safety Bricks - Kevin Drew: Feist's boyfriend and Broken Social Scene leader released his first solo album this year, as performed by Broken Social Scene. I really like the BSS aesthetic where projects blur into one another, and a Kevin Drew "solo" album is just another BSS album, but without the expectations - so win/win. I look forward to the next 'BSS Presents...' album that should be out sometime this year.

22. Here Comes The Phantom:The Clientele: wrapping up the mixtape with the Clientele's patented blend of dreamy melancholy. Even in their upbeat songs they understand that sad is happy for deep people.

You can download the Mixtape of the Year here. Give it a listen, let me know what you think. Tell your friends, too. See you all in Twenty-Oh-Eight, and hopefully in person! It's going to be a travelling year.

*hey record labels - if you want any tracks removed, let me know; I'm just trying to promote the great songs you've released!

Die Hard Four point Awesome

As the title indicates, 'Die Hard Four point Awesome' is awesome. While is it obviously not as awesome as 'Die Hard' and 'Die Harder', it is miles and miles better than 'Die Hardest', which was not nearly hard enough. And had Samuel L Jackson for no particular reason, which is normally a sign of greatness, but was really a sign of desperation. But this post isn't about how 'Die Hardest' sucked, but how 'Die Hard Four point Awesome' is awesome.

While the idea of John McClane fighting Evil Nerds is not necessarily a promising one, enough brutal fights and chases proves that it can still work. The Evil Nerds aren't as cool as the Evil Nerds on Buffy or 'Enemy of the State', but they did the job and gave McClane plenty of opportunities to taunt them via mobile communication devices, which is really all we are looking for.

The action set pieces were exciting and looked remarkably real and not digital, which is a plus. The action often went over the top in just the right sort of way that tickled my Baileys lubricated funny-bone. The big action spectacle conclusion went a little too far as McClane in his semi faced off against a fighter plane, but the movie had built up enough goodwill before that sequence to get away with it - barely. Did I mention the Baileys?

While McClane was at times looking too old for this shit, Willis can still pull of the pissed off man of action as if he invented the role. Which he did. Joining him was a comedy relief nerd sidekick who learned what it took to be a hero. Bless. And Silent Bob turned up to play an uber-nerd that nerd sidekick gets to help McClane deal with computers and mobile phones and all this technological craziness that the Terrorists are turning against us, 'cos that is the plot. Wackiness ensues, etc.

To sum up: welcome back John McClane, and welcome back big budget action movies that aren't full of obvious computer effects, even if they still had some.

Where did you go, Mike Myers?

ITV4 was showing 'So I Married An Axe Murderer' late last night, and MK was watching it while I wandered in and out while pulling up the floor in our hallway. Anyway, we got to talking about 'Axe Murderer' star Mike Myers, and all the things he hasn't done. In the last fifteen years, we reckoned he had starred in a grand total of six live action movies (Wayne's World 1 and 2, Axe Murderer and Austin Powers 1-3). We disagreed as to whether his appearance in '54' was an extended cameo or an actual role (although he is fourth billed and on the poster), and we - unsurprisingly, as we blocked it out - forgot 'The Cat in the Hat'. Upon further research we also didn't realise that Myers made a dramatic film in 1998 called 'Pete's Meteor' where he played an Irish drug dealer. No, really. Additionally, Myers has obviously spent at least three afternoons recording his voice for the Shrek movies. All in all, for a high profile actor, that is not a lot of work. His Shrek co-star Eddie Murphy has almost trebled it in the same time.

When 'Wayne's World' first appeared, I actually thought Myers could be the suburban heir to Woody Allen, but Myers willingness to do sequel after sequel and pander to his audience has really show his true colours. I felt he could have taken his comedy into meaningful art and really say something about the society that he grew in, but he has opted for being an entertainer. Fair enough. I can't argue with his financial rewards, nor with his work ethic - he doesn't make many films because he wants them to be exactly the right films he wants to make.

Myers actually has a new movie coming out next summer called 'The Love Guru,' where he plays a self help guru. It sounds terrible, but I'm sure it will actually be quite good. I'm really glad to see Myers playing a new character and not one from a previous film or from his Saturday Night Live years, although he keeps threatening to make another Austen Powers film. Please Mike, move on. You're a really talented man, do you really needed to be richer and more famous than you already are? Have you moved past your insecurities and need for the cheers and laughter yet? At least stop reusing the old ideas over and over again. Just because Peter Sellers made all those Pink Panther movies doesn't mean you should keep churning out sequels. Sellers made all sorts of things in between. It's cool. I promise to still like you. Just change it up. 'Love Guru' - a good start. Keep it up.

Saturday Night Staying In: Ocean's Thirteen

Mademoiselle Kitty and myself are trying to start a new tradition: watching a film together every Saturday night. As we are generally homebodies, this works out pretty fine. Anyway, tonight was 'Ocean's Thirteen'. Neither of us had seen it, but had wanted too. We just couldn't get our acts together last summer at the cinema.

I think I'm glad we waited, because while the movie was highly enjoyable, it came across as much more of a renter than a cinema must see. Granted, it was miles better than the 'Ocean's Twelve' misstep, but it couldn't touch the awesomeness of the original Clooney/Soderberg Ocean's film.

The movie jumped into its plot remarkably quickly - Danny and the boys are out to screw over Al Pacino because he screwed over Elliot Gould (obviously I'm talking about the characters, not the real people - but geez, do you expect me to know character's actual names? OK, Pacino played a guy named Bank. Happy now?). The movie clicks along, all the while the audience - namely me and Mrs K - waiting for the twist. When it comes, it isn't so much a twist as a complication, and doesn't really raise the level of the film. Of course, Clooney, Pitt and Damon are as charming as ever, and the lesser members of Ocean's gang are given more screen time (at least it seems that way). Super Dave Osborne even appears, which is awesome, because Super Dave is awesome.

All in all, the movie just sort of sets up an engaging situation and the audience watches while the whole plan more or less gets pulled off exactly as planned - the only real wrinkles turning out to not be wrinkles after all. It was a fairly tension free exercise, but still an enjoyable evening at the home cinema.

Darren K calls for banning of Damon Albarn

Over at the NME.com, they've got a headline screamingBlur's Damon Albarn calls for the end of 'The X Factor'. On Radio 4's 'Today Programme', Albarn has stood up against reality TV talent shows, because they are "creating a mindset that suggests you can get something for nothing and that it's easy to acquire status and fame. It should be one of the hardest things to do." He then went on to not add, though everyone listening was thinking it, "Just like I did it." In his mind, Albarn then asked for some sort of medal for his heroism in becoming famous when it was hard to become famous, adding in his mind, "It's not fair that some chav chancers can luck into fame when I had to work at it by writing songs about just these sorts of people."

Darren K, upon reading the NME's report, announced that henceforth Damon Albarn would be joining Ray Manzarek and Paul Kanter in the exclusive group of people that Darren would like to hit with a chair. He noted, "hearing the famous moan about being famous is one thing, but hearing the famous moan that it is now too easy to become famous crosses the line." The blogger added, "I have been a fan of Albarn's work with Blur for some time, but jeez, just fucking shut up you miserable old twat. Stop going on about Africa and stop criticising the cultural system that you exploit to make your livelihood from. You can't bitch about culture from your high horse, all the while playing the cultural games you play with Gorillaz and profiting from them."

Darren K ended his rant on a defensive note, claiming that he "wasn't defending X-Factor, just saying how much he wants to hit Damon Albarn with a chair".

Albarn made no response to K's statement, as contacting Albarn would require effort.

Yes, I am having a laugh

While I admit that Ricky Gervais can be very funny, we have a strained relationship. I mean, after what he did to Mademoiselle Kitty's finger, it is hard to go back to the beginning and start fresh. Plus, I find his tendency towards awkward comedy to be unwatchable. He can do lots of really funny things without going for painful, I like it when he does that, but sheesh, I just can't watch it when he and Stephen Merchant crank up the discomfort levels.

Fortunatly, the final 'Extras' only once when for the big cringe, most of the time it was just being alternatingly hilarious and poignent. Well done to Gervais and Merchant for ending the series so well and letting Andy leave our screens with dignity. His moment of clarity inside the Big Brother house - so appropriate and cutting - was a fantastic piece of television, and when his new agent then offers him everything he wanted as a result, only for Andy to make a break for it, nicely done. This is a shitty review. I thought 'Extras' was fantastic tonight, even with Andy's appearance in what clearly was mid 80's Doctor Who. Overall, I was moved by the programme, and thank you Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, for that.

Now appologise for what you did to Mademoiselle Kitty.

Doctor Who and the Voyage of the Space Titanic

As I nattered away in my Best of post a few days ago, I really do hold Doctor Who to very high standards, which it regularly surpasses, much to my delight. However, the annual Christmas special gets held up to a different set of standards, as it is a different beast to the other thirteen episodes. The Christmas special is supposed to be bigger, louder, and designed to first and foremost entertain a nation full of turkey and wine, a Yuletide after-dinner dessert of digestif. Expectations aren't lowered, but they are different. The Christmas episodes tend towards being lighter and fluffier, but that is pretty much what I am looking for on a Christmas evening. Honestly, if 'Blink' or 'Human Nature' showed up on a Christmas evening, that would certainly harsh my buzz.

So as Christmas episodes go, 'Voyage of the Damned' was an all around enjoyable ride. Overall, not as good as 'The Christmas Invasion,' but without any of the final act weaknesses that brought down 'The Runaway Bride', the episode was an exciting, adventurous bit of Christmas entertainment.

The plot was incredibly straightforward, the Doctor arrives on a space cruise to Earth on a replica of the Titanic, only to have the Captain purposefully lead the ship into destruction that could threaten earth as well. The Doctor has to lead a band of survivors up to the bridge to sort out the engine problems that are going to take out all life on earth. For all intents and purposes, it is 'The Poseidon Adventure' in low orbit. Who has a long history at playing these sorts of games of references - just look at the mid-to-late-seventies heyday of the show. Things go wrong, survivors are wiped out one by one, all the while the Host, the information robots, have gone bad and are helping to kill the surviving passengers. In all actuality, the show would have worked just as well without them, but where would Doctor Who be without killer robots?

The look was great, the space Titanic well realised, and the guest cast interestingly - if not slightly over the top - sketched. Additionally - you might not have heard, as they kept it pretty quiet - Kylie Minogue played the Doctor's companion in this episode. She was fine - nothing fantastic, but believable. She really wasn't given much range to play with, but Minogue managed to be spunky and brave, and had a wide-eyed glee in stepping out of the ordinary. There didn't seem to be much to Astrid beyond this, but she filled the companion role nicely. The Earthanomics professor also filled that role, and in fact he was probably a more interesting character than Astrid, although he showed considerably less leg.

So, all in all, a lovely Christmas episode, a nice bit of pie and wine at the end of my day. Here's to next year!

(oh, and if you pop down to the post below, you can still find a link to my mp3 Christmas mix CD/playlist. Download and enjoy!)

A Christmas Gift for You

Merry Christmas Everybody!

My gift for you all this year: a patented Darren mix CD with a fantastic Christmas theme! You can get it by going here. Twenty-nine of my favourite Christmas songs. Throw them into a playlist, hit album, and golly gosh, there it is, sequenced to perfection. Tracks from the heroes of Britpop, the American underground, and classics of high reknown. So celebrate Christmas Rockin' Eve with my Christmas Gift for You, 'Merry Christmas, Everybody!' the rockinest, popinest, rootinest, tootinest, ass-kickingly awesome, butt-whuppingly jaw-dropsome Christmas Mix you are going to have given to you this year!

Tell your friends! Come back for seconds! It goes great with pie!

A Night to Remember

As we are less than thirty-six hours away from Doctor Who teaming up with Kylie Minogue on the Space Titanic, let's try to keep our excitement down and put things into proper perspective. According to The Sun, that bastion of quality journalism, 95 year-old Millvina Dean, the last surviving survivor of the Titanic, said that "[i]t is disrespectful to the dead and bereaved to make entertainment of such a tragedy." I feel exactly the same way; it's just . . . too soon. But that's Doctor Who, always pushing the boundaries. I'm still outraged that they made the Depression entertaining by putting Daleks in it!

The Year in Review

Album of the Year 2007: Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Far and away, the best album I have heard this year. A dark, intense meditation on mediation, of being lost in the twenty-first century among security cameras and reality TV. Win Butler sings like a southern preacher, and the band create a rhythm of apocalypse behind him. The fact that the album is about trying to survive and be human is what redeems it from the blackness, but even the triumph of the penultimate track, the escape manifesto 'No Cars Go' is then undercut but perhaps the bleakest track on the album, 'My Body is a Cage' at the records conclusion. I wouldn't call 'Neon Bible' a concept album, but the thematic unity of the record creates a powerful listen.

TV Show of the Year 2007: Doctor Who

Like it could be anything else, especially considering it was the best season ever for the Doctor. I can hardly be objective when it comes to Doctor Who - no, scratch that, I can be very objective. But the revived show has yet to let me down. There have yet to be any bad episodes of the show (though there have been a fair number of less successful, kinda dull episodes), and believe me, if there were I would admit it. Just because I have sat through all fourteen episodes of "The Trial of a Timelord" at least twice doesn't mean that I didn't know how bad it was.

The only other shows that came close to Doctor Who love form me in 2007 were Heroes, which couldn't maintain that love, and The Office, which certainly could. Damn writer's strike!

Film of the Year 2007: We used to have a joke at the 'Toban back in the day, "It was a bad year for film". This was said every year. It was funny at the time, honest. Never the less, this year was a bad year for me seeing film. I didn't see nearly as much as I would have wanted, and not nearly enough that I liked. I'm trying to remember all the movies I've seen, and it hasn't been all that many, and none of them were particularly great, and if they were, I can't actually remember what they were now. Whatever.

Probably the best movie I saw this year was 'Ratatouille'. Granted, I did see it in Paris, which may have made it even better. None the less, it wasn't great, but it was very good. I wouldn't put it on par with 'The Incredibles' let alone Brad Bird's masterpiece 'The Iron Giant', but it was probably the best movie I saw this year. Looking back on my blog posts over the year, I haven't seen a lot. New Year's Resolution 2: see more films in 2008. (Resolution 1 is to be more sociable)

Comic Book of the Year 2007: Justice League of America

This one is all down to writer Brad Meltzer, who relaunched the title from issue 0 starting last year and wrapping up his twelfth issue a few months ago. Since then, I have actally stopped reading the title as it has stopped being anything like the comic I loved.

The thing that I loved about it was that Meltzer was writing an adult comic. Not "adult" as in full of sex and swearing and violence (that usually just means adolescent), but adult as in complex and challenging. It still was a super-hero comic about super powered men and women, but for the first time, they read like real men and women in remarkable circumstances. The narrative style was built around overlapping narration - narrator usually identified by colour coded narrator boxes - and the reader wasn't treated with kid gloves - you had to pay attention to the comic.

Perhaps most remarkably, Meltzer ended his run not with a multi part epic, but a series of "done in one" issues that focused on character rather than action. Normally, I feel a little ripped off when I buy an action comic with no action, just people standing around and talking, but Meltzer is a much better comic writer than most.

The best issue of the bunch, and the single issue of the year for me, was issue 11, where Meltzer and guest artist Gene Ha tell the story of Red Arrow and Vixen trapped under a collapsed building. A tense, claustrophobic issue with a fantastic conclusion. Easily the best comic I read this year.

Gig of the Year 2007: Springsteen in Copenhagen. You always remember your first time. Runner-up: Arcade Fire in St. John's church, London. Both were spiritual, albeit in their own ways.

More esoteric ______ of the Year to come!

Top 5: Stage Banter from 'Rattle and Hum'

As I am a fan of bloated double albums, I am clearly a huge fan of U2's 'Rattle and Hum', the Darren Album of the Year for 1988. One of the things I particularly love about the part live. part studio Frankenstein of an album is Bono's overblown stage banter. Looking back at it, I honestly am astounded that U2 were called pretensious, as clearly Bono is an arch stand up and not an overly serious young man who believed the half the planet that was calling him a genius.

And with no further adieu, the Top Five:

5. And I can't tell the difference between ABC News, Hill Street Blues and a preacher in the Old Time Gospel Hour stealin' money from the sick and the old. Well the God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister.

4. Heyuh. Silver and gold. This song was written in a hotel room in New York City, 'round about the time a friend of ours, Little Steven, was putting together a record of artists! Against! A-PAR-TIGHT!

3. Am I buggin' you? I don't mean to bug ya.

2. This is the song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We're stealin' it back.

1. OK Edge - play the blues.

If this had been a Top Six list (and seriously, who has those?), I would have included: "... a man who has lost faith in the peacemakers of the West, while they argue, and while they fail to support a man like Bishop Tutu and his request for economic sanctions against South Africa." I really like that one as it reads like the opening crawl to 'The Phantom Menace'.

...and the CDs just keep a comin'

Christmas shopping yesterday, and I did not buy as much for myself as I was afraid I would, particularly because I went to Fopp; three CDs and two books. Uh, plus the other stuff from the other stores, but I was going to buy those things anyways (comics, toys, etc).

Right now Fopp is selling the new Ryan Adams ep for £6, which isn't a bad price for a six song ep. However, Adams' entire back catalogue is also on sale there for a fiver each, so I've been picking those up instead. Adams is one of those artists who a lot of people have a lot of very good reasons to hate, and I am not going to argue with them, provided they don't argue with me for liking him none the less. He puts out albums as often as baby's pooh - all the time (others argue that he puts out albums that sound like baby's pooh, but I digress). So yesterday I picked up his 'Jacksonville City Nights' album. I haven't spun it yet, but with the exception of his 'Rock and Roll' album, I have enjoyed all of his records to varying degrees, from good to excellent, and there is no reason to expect this one is any different. I don't know if I would be picking his albums up at full price - actually I do know, as I have never done it - but for a fiver, they are excellent value for money.

I also grabbed Stars' 'In Our Bedroom After the War'. I am a middling fan of the band, I loved 'Heart', but found 'Set Yourself on Fire' to be a badly sequenced mess. Maybe I should resequence it? Anyway, 'IOBATW' has gotten, at best. OK reviews, but it was £8 and came with a fifty-five minute making of DVD. I like those things, and this one should be either really interesting or really boring, depending on how far up their asses it goes. I'm hoping for some honest behind the scenes action and not a glorified EPK like major label artists put out. Of course "fly on the wall" can be very dull at times, but as a bonus DVD on a CD that I was eventaully going to buy anyway, might as well go for it, as most of the rest of the stock were stickered at £13, and even the regular version of the album was £10. I almost bought it at that price about a month ago, so I'm glad I held out.

The final CD was Sugar's 'Copper Blue', an early nineties classic that it was about time I owned. The Wednesday Press toyed with covering "If I Could Change Your Mind" back in the day, but we never go around to it in our short life time. I think I'm going to cover it on my own now. Anyway, I'm very much into straight ahead indie rock right now, and this is just a perfect example of it, overdriven guitars and great melodies. Awesome.

Boss II

I honestly don't know how to describe London's Bruce Springsteen show a couple of nights ago. I mean, it was awesome, and I can pick out a dozen more superlatives to describe it, but they can't really descrive it, you know?

I'm prety good at talking about music, I can do a fairly good job of putting the magic of music into words, explaining how I feel about it and what it does for me (and presumably others). At least I think I do. But gosh, I just can't do it with a Springsteen show.

His shows (and I've only seen two, I don't want to be Jaded Robot here, but you can pick things up about the rest) are communal sing alongs, songs of triumph, songs of loss and desperation. Springsteen and the E-Street Band give 100%, and, remarkably to they cynical gig goer, so does the audience. Going to the shows, it is amazing how many audience members are wearing old tour t-shirts. They aren't being That Guy, though, they are simply testifying, being part of the congregation. They are old, mostly (meaning older than me), but they take on the show like a twenty year old at his third concert ever. The audience, virtually the whole audience, takes on the show head on. They all know the words, they all sing the words. You can feel it, taste it, the pheremones or whatever, that weird feeling of being part of something when you are in a crowd, and a crowd with one purpose. No one is there to get fucked up, no one is there to talk with their mates while an expensive jukebox plays, no one is there to chat up others, no one is there because they are a plus one of a friend of the support act, no one is there because their friends were going. Everyone is there to rock with Springsteen. And it didn't matter that I was in the pit in Copenhagen, fifity feet away, or in a seat at the opposite end in London, the feeling was the same, of being a part of something special, of the magic of rock and roll. Laughing at the awesomeness and triumph of 'No Surrender', even shedding a tear during 'Racing in the Streets,' that sad, fucked up Beach Boys elegy to innocence. The emotions can be overwhelming when they're felt at that scale, and maybe that's why I loved it. Rock and Roll is about feeling alive, and my God, did these shows make me feel alive.

So I'm going again in the spring. Yay! And this time, Mademoiselle Kitty is coming with me. Yay!

Space Titanic!

I had a giddy thirll this morning, putting 'Voyage of the Damned' into the Sky planner. While I am a little appreshensive, as the trailers I have seen make the episode look like a shiny gold spectacle, I hold out hope that the episode has more heart than the surface seems to show. I'm really just hoping the space Titanic isn't an appropriate metaphor for the episode. Still, we'll see how it plays out with a belly food of food and wine!

The Top 20: Album of the Year 1987-2006

In addition to getting everything right, one thing that Nick Hornby got particularly right in 'High Fidelity', his seminal treatise on being lost and working in a record store, is that serious music fans - the very serious sort who end up working in record stores - love lists. It's true, 100%. In our obsessive/compulsive love affair with vinyl and plastic and their attendent myths and legends, quantifing these records, capturing and ordering the grooves somehow becomes vitally important; an attempt to control the wild, uncontrolable beast that is rock'n'roll. Hence, the Top Ten, Twenty, Forty and so on until infinity. Lists are awesome. Full stop.

So it is with the heart of the record store clerk that will always beat inside me that I drew up my list of my album of the year, dating back to 1987, the year I became a fan. I drew this up, starting in 2003, while I believe I still was working in a record store, at least in the dying days of it. Every year I had an album of the year, I would mention it, but this was the first time I put it down. As this blog wanders around the fact that it is my cultural diary, as such, it makes sense that I add this list to the blog. So here it is, The Top 20: Album of the Year 1987-2006. Expect a post on the 2007 album of the year shortly, but it doesn't take a monkey to figure out which Montreal band earned the prestigious accolade this year.

1987 U2 - The Joshua Tree / The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
1988 U2 - Rattle and Hum
1989 Prince - Batman / Tom Petty - Full Moon Fever
1990 They Might Be Giants - Flood
1991 Billy Bragg - Don't Try This At Home
1992 Rheostatics - Whale Music
1993 U2 - Zooropa
1994 Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
1995 Oasis - What's the Story (Morning Glory)
1996 Trashcan Sinatras - A Happy Pocket
1997 Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One / The Weakerthans - Fallow
1998 Belle & Sebastian - The Boy With the Arab Strap
1999* b'ehl - Bright Eyes
2000 The Salteens - Short Term Memories
2001** Stephen Malkmus - Stephen Malkmus
2002 The Reindeer Section - Son of Evil Reindeer
2003 Belle & Sebastian - Dear Catastrophe Waitress
2004 Delays - Faded Seaside Glamour
2005 Bloc Party - Banquet
2006*** The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America

* while Bright Eyes is actually a 2000 release, I received my copy in autumn 1999.
** best of a generally bad bunch. Regardless, miles better than the Strokes
*** I did not hear this album until late 2006 if not 2007. I had not awarded an album of the year in 2006 as no one really knocked it out of the park - lots of good albums, no great ones to my ears. Until I heard this one. So, just as Spin Magazine once famously took back its 1991 album of the year award from Teenage Fanclub and gave it to Nirvana well after the fact, I maintain that I can award this album of the year whenever I damn well please.

So there you go. A few ties, but that's ok. I must add that these are my Albums of the Year. They aren't the best, they aren't the greatest, but they are the records that ment the most to be in those years, the albums that said the most to me about my life, in whichever way I wanted to hear it. And I love them all.

Quality mobile footage

I wouldn't be surprised if the folks at Warner Brothers recorded this themselves: the first six minutes of the new Batman film in high quality mobilephonovision.

The Golden Compass

Took in 'The Golden Compass' yesterday afternoon. It was OK. It had that unreal digital sheen that I am growing increasingly annoyed with, but it followed the story of the novel, all the while ignoring the tone and subtleties of the source.

Strangely, for a "children's novel" that totally fails to read or seem like a children's novel, the adaptation really put the emphasis on the kid's book aspects of the novel. The story, stripped of the prose, is very simple - someone is stealing kids, and Lyra is going to find them and get them back. On her way she makes fantastic friends and enemies all of whom help her on her quest.

If you had given me that rundown after I had finished the book, I would have said, "Well, sorta - I guess that is kinda what the book is about, but not really at all". So good on the adaptors for finding a kids movie inside the novel. Of course, without the rest of the novel to hold things together, the movie's plot just seems to move from set piece to set piece, with things happening for little or no reason, other than there is some "prophecy" about the girl, none of which really makes any sense, as the real heart of the book, the quest to kill God, has been pretty much completely obscured behind the digital wonderment.

The digital wonderment is fairly wonderful, I suppose, but special effects for the sake of special effects is fairly pointless. The movie at least does things with them, usually, particularly with the bears of Svarlbard, especially in the most gruesome scene I have seen in the movies in some time, when Iorek Brynison rips the jaw off of the bear king. There was an amazing sense of shock in the cinema, it was genuinely palpable. I don't know the last time I could feel a whole room full of people reacting that way.

So, all in all, the movie was OK. Lord Azrael was less of a bastard than in the book, Lyra was coloured more positively as well, the production design was less steam-punk than the book implied, and the digital vistas and altheometer [sp] effects got on my nerves.

Broken vows

I swore, I swore I would never again return to the Brixton Academy, my least favourite venue in my least favourite part of town, ever again. But here I just went, buying tickets for a show at the most hated of all academys.

The thing that swayed me, however, was that this show wasn't a rock show, it was "a journey through time and space", and it is hard to turn that down, even at the Brixton Academy.

So next October (!) Mademoiselle Kitty and myself will be enjoying The Mighty Boosh, not in the comfort of our own home, but in the "comfort" of the Brixton Academy, along with some several thousand of our undoubtedly closest friends.

On a very related note, The Mighty Boosh are the cornerstone of MK's and my UK version of NBC's "Must See TV" (Must See Tele) Thursday night gloriana. It is remarkable how NBC has spent the last twenty/twenty-five years with a stranglehold on Thursday nights in America, from the class Cosby/Family Ties/Cheers/Nightcourt set in the eighties, to the nineties Friends/Frasier/Sienfield, to today with The Office/Earl/30 Rock block. Of course, our British version is slightly different, often watched on Friday thanks to Sky+, and will soon be ending, but having The Mighty Boosh/Never Mind the Buzzcocks/Californiacation and 30 Rock all showing, it makes a fantastic set of comedy. Of course, they are on four different channels, and partially at the same time, but that just says so much about the fragmentation of post-modern times. Make your own Must See TV!

Okkervil River - The Stage Names

Fell through the mail hole. Heard MP3s on various blogs. Sounds like . . . rock. Indie. Sprawling. Wood. Water. Ancient. Rock.

Magic.

Ordered it. Listened to it. Listened some more. Looking forward to drive to work to listen some more yet.

Hard to categorise. I like that.

Time for bed.

Photos of Denmark over in Facebook. Check out pic of me eating danish in Denmark.

Crazy

God Save The Clientele

Ah. Another bit of full disclosure, and so soon after the last! Um, expect another one to arrive with the post tomorrow.

Anyway, I finally got around to ordering "God Save The Clientele" by the Clientele. Of their previous three albums, two are among my favourites of all time, and the other I haven't even bothered to own, I dislike it so much. For this album, the advance mp3 (Bookshop Casanova) was so far from what I wanted from the band, I put off checking out the record for like six months. However, as it turns out the "look how we've changed" of Bookshop Casanova was a red herring, and the album is another gentle gem swimming in their glorious, intimate reverb.

It's not all the same, however, where "Suburban Light" was an autumn album and "Strange Geometry" was a (late) summer album, I think "God Save The Clientele" might well be a spring album. I wish I had ordered it when it first came out in America last spring (on Merge, the finest record label in the world), but better late than never.

Full Disclosure

I have decided that in an act of full musical disclosure, I will post the name of every CD I buy for myself from now on - both as a reminder to myself what I have bought in a year (and how much I spent) and also as a forum to give a quick review without feeling the pressure on myself to write a fancy, "proper" review. I mean on that last point, I'm sure nobody cares but me, but I care, so I have to find a way around that.

And so, while in Denmark, I bought Spearmint's 1999 album "A Week Away" for the exorberant price of 19 Kroner (about £1.90ish). It's OK at best. It does contain the absolute classic "Sweeping the Nation", but I already had that on a Rough Trade comp. The other early tracks on the album are pretty good, but on the whole, it's not much of a record. Lead vocalist and songwriter Shirley Lee (a guy)'s voice is not really used to the best of it's capabilities. There is more variation in the vocals on "Sweeping the Nation" than the rest of the album combined. He just sort of sings in this understated almost croon most of the time, never pushing his voice and letting go. It leads to a sameness that sort of holds the record down. Some good tracks, one stone cold classic, and the rest just kind of goes in the ear and out the other without making much of an impression. Still, for DKK 19, not a bad buy.

Return from the Promised Land

OK, it's just been one of those fortnights. Things going wrong, things going right, getting wet, getting dry, getting stressed out and getting a good nights sleep. Finally.

I saw 'The Darjeeling Limited' a week and a half ago, and it was quite good. Like all of Wes Anderson's films, it had its own individual style and sensibility, which I quite like. What Anderson does from there can be hit and miss, sometimes completely or sometimes just within the film itself. 'Darjeeling' was much more of a consistent hit than 'The Life Aquatic', and I left the cinema quite happy. Of course, then I was greeted with a downpour of Biblical proportions. I have never been as wet as I was walking home in that rain storm than any other time in my life bar the times I have actually been in the shower/bath/lake/ocean/pool. On considering this statement, I can now officially proclaim that I have never been completely submerged in a river. I suppose I should add this to the list of things to do.

There was much more I wanted to post about the film and that night at the cinema, but the phone chaos (long story - not worth telling) just stressed me out. BT fixed the problem though, everything is cool.

As soon as phone stress was over, then the going to Denmark stress began. I haven't travelled alone in years, and here I was sick, stressed (it is essay season at work) and unprepared about my trip. Needless to say, it all worked out in the end, but I was getting my worry on about it, almost certainly needlessly.

Copenhagen was OK. I stayed in a hostel the first night and ate awesome Mexican food, but the only other English speakers I encountered in the hostel were gathered around the biggest blowhard I have heard in some time. He was letting everyone know how life and Europe works - not giving his opinion, only unchallengable statements that no one was bothering to challenge. You know, it was like me and music, but with everything. So I just quietly ate my burrito, which was awesome. Of all the places in the world I expected to find a great Mexican take away, Copenhagen was way down my list.

On Saturday, my only full day in Denmark, I think I managed to wander through the most boring parts of the main centre of Copenhagen. It was fairly dull and kinda uninteresting. I spent some time at the National Museum being disappointed that the Viking section was closed until next March, but the rest of the museum was OK.

Saturday night was awesome - more in a paragraph.

Sunday was a worse weather day than Saturday (cold and rainy, instead of just cold) but I wandered through the much more interesting part of the city. I was very disappointed I seemed to get my days backwards, as I would have liked to have spent more time where I was on Sunday. Plus all the shops were closed due to it being Sondag. Danish is a cool language, because it looks and sounds like an evolved version of Anglo-Saxon, which it is in a way.

Anyway, Saturday night was the reason I went to Copenhagen - to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band! Fuck yeah!

I had pretty high expectations, and much to my surprise, Springsteen lived up to them. I knew he wasn't playing the kind of shows he was playing back in the eighties when he was young, but he still played for two and a half hours, just rocking. He played most -if not all - of the new album, which sounds more and more like a collection of classics than ever before, and all sorts of the old hits - but Springsteen hits, not radio hits - Darkness on the Edge of Town, Badlands, that sort of thing. I even bought a t-shirt, which I never do anymore. It made me so happy. When he opened with Radio Nowhere right into No Surrender, I felt like a teenage girl, I almost started crying, just being overwhelmed with awesome.

That's all I'm going to say about the show. I fucking loved it, and I get to see the man again next week up the road at the O2.

Once again, fuck yeah.