Review of the year 2008
Sorry, you won’t get one of those homogeneous memes from me. You know I like to do these things long-handed, with as many photos as possible.

So, let’s have a look back over 2008.


What an incredibly forgettable year. About the only thing which warrants a mention is that lots of people I know became parents, and strangely almost universally seemed to give their children names beginning with J (welcome to the world James, Joseph, Jacob...).

Elsewhere in 2008, I spent more time than ever before writing to girls on the internet lonelies, with quite astonishingly negatively exponential results. For example, during my six months’ paid membership of Match.com I met a total of two people, one of whom joined me on the briefest date of all time. 2008 was the year that it started to painfully sink in that I will be unlikely to ever have children, which is proving very difficult to come to terms with. Just to rub salt into the wound, (by virtue of alphabetical order) my ex-girlfriend still appears at the top of all of my address books; clearly I need to befriend somebody called Aardvark during 2009.

Anyway, on with the year. As usual, we begin with pop music...

Best Album: British Sea Power: Do You Like Rock Music?
Perhaps a little unfair on the competition, as this was released in mid-January and the year always looked like going downhill after that. It’s a real Psychocandy of an album, from which almost every song could have been a single. I had worries about them following up Open Season as their previous effort had covered all bases, and it was difficult to see how they would move on from there. But they achieved this by spending much longer than previously writing and working on the songs, and it certainly shows in the result. Songs which welcome economic migrants from Eastern Europe, bemoan modern-day light pollution, soundtrack the flight of North Sea birds, chronicle the Canvey Island flood of 1953... Songs that other bands simply don’t write, largely because they aren’t good enough.


Elsewhere the competition was very limited, in perhaps the weakest year for albums since the mid-nineties (the fact that people are actually getting excited about people like Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes perhaps illustrates this rather tellingly). It was harsh on The Wave Pictures to have released their masterpiece in the same year as the winner above, and we were treated to Ballboy’s finest album so far. Portishead surprised everybody with a comeback which was every bit as good as their previous glories, and that was a lovely feisty effort from The Duke Spirit as well. But none of those albums listed between 6-10 would have been likely to make this list on any other year; 2008 was a disappointing one for recorded pop music.

2. The Wave Pictures: Instant Coffee Baby
3. Portishead: Third
4. The Duke Spirit: Neptune
5. Ballboy: I Worked On The Ships
6. Andy Yorke: Simple
7. The Mountain Goats: Heretic Pride
8. American Music Club: The Golden Age
9. Noah And The Whale: Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down
10. Sons And Daughters: This Gift

Best Film: 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
Eastern Europe does it again. I suppose it’s a cop out, but I’m going to dig up what I said about this film at the time... We see a portrait of 1980s Romania in which nobody really has very much and yet everybody is trying to borrow money from each other (that they can never realistically expect to pay back), attempting to place themselves above somebody else in the personal class system, and regarding even their closest friends and lovers largely in the context of what they can get out of them (in short, you have nothing, yet still everybody is out to screw you). Oh, and it’s also about family, relationships and an illegal abortion.

But this is not even the film, it’s just the backdrop. The story revolves around watching bit-part player Otilla struggle to maintain a passive indifference, an attempted resignation in fact, as she is dragged into a wide variety of genres of mud by the people that she cares about and the people that she doesn’t. There are no dreams of escape, not even any horror or dissatisfaction at her surroundings and her life, just an inability to strive towards anything else. There is nothing to aim for. Nothing at all. Yet this film has so much more than just the brilliant storytelling involved. There is not a single character in the film that is not acted and portrayed superbly, even those that only speak one line. And the camerawork is superb; as Otilla’s emotions and moods are captured by the contrasts between sharp and shaky visuals, bright plain rooms and dark sinister housing estates (I felt like I was watching The Blair Witch Project at one point).


It was worth spending the money which you saved by not buying CDs during 2009 on going to the cinema instead, as there was a real surplus of gems (I had to narrow down the shortlist, as my initial “top ten” turned out to have twenty films in it). A disappointing showing for British films this year, although Eddie Marsan gave the best performance of the year as a neurotic driving instructor in Happy-Go Lucky, edging it marginally ahead of the emotional sledgehammer The Diving Bell And The Butterfly. The big surprise of the year was not so much Lars Von Trier turning his hand to comedy, but just how successful he actually was; and although it was warming to experience treats like Caramel and Jar City appearing to come out of nowhere, it was equally heartening to see The Coen Brothers getting back to what they do best. Oh, and as Laura Fraser didn’t appear in a single film during 2008 (she seems to have defected to television now), I Served The King Of England helped to confirm that I am now in love with Julia Jentsch instead.

2. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
3. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
4. The Boss Of It All (Lars Von Trier)
5. Caramel (Nadine Labaki)
6. Jar City (Baltasar Kormákur)
7. Paris (Cédric Klapisch)
8. The Savages (Tamara Jenkins)
9. I Served The King Of England (Jirí Menzel)
10. Burn After Reading (Ethan & Joel Coen)

Best Pop Concert: British Sea Power (Thursday 10th January, The Czech Embassy)
There just wasn’t any keeping them down during 2008. They’d have the whole top ten to themselves if I allowed bands to feature in this list more than once, as I saw them play at venues ranging from the eclectic surroundings of the Natural History Museum and the Edinburgh Film Festival to the shitholes of Koko and the Carling Academy Oxford, with never a half-hearted performance among them. This one was the most special of them all though. And which other band give you unlimited free Budvar and nibbles at their concerts?


The Indietracks festival provided one of the all-time great Darren Hayman performances, albeit in a hall which was too criminally undersized for most people to be able to get inside; and this festival additionally gave us a performance from Ballboy which almost crept into the top ten of the year as well. It’s nothing short of an outrage that The Broken Family Band don’t play live more often; and special kudos to immensely enjoyable comeback shows from My Bloody Valentine and Carter, between them managing to nudge iLiKETRAiNS and The Mountain Goats down into 11th and 12th spots.

2. The Jesus And Mary Chain (+ British Sea Power) + Black Box Recorder (Monday 27th October, The Forum)
3. Darren Hayman (Saturday 26th July, Indietracks Festival)
4. The Broken Family Band (Wednesday 9th January, The Luminaire)
5. Kristin Hersh (Sunday 23rd November, The Borderline)
6. Billy Bragg (Tuesday 4th March, Camden Roundhouse)
7. The Wave Pictures (Thursday 18th September, The Scala)
8. Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine (Saturday 22nd November, Brixton Academy)
9. American Music Club (Wednesday 13th February, Dingwalls)
10. My Bloody Valentine (Friday 20th June, Camden Roundhouse)

Best New Band: The Wave Pictures
Well, strictly speaking they didn’t first emerge during 2008, but this was certainly the year that they first began to play, record and release regularly. And already they’ve turned into one of those bands that you wonder how you lived without for so long. I’ll let you into a secret, kids... The most influential and striking bands in your record collection (the ones that influenced all of your favourite bands from nowadays) weren’t all that popular at the time. When I went to see The Smiths play their last ever show in December 1986 it didn’t even sell out. My Bloody Valentine were playing in pubs when You Made Me Realise and Isn’t Anything came out, and it was rare to meet anybody that had ever even heard of The Pixies during their heyday (even amongst indie kids). With The Wave Pictures, here is your chance to get there before everybody else does (and they will do eventually; already Instant Coffee Baby is a more formidable album than Dog Man Star or Doolittle). They have such an extensive portfolio of brilliant songs that they turn up to shows without a setlist, and just play whatever seems to suit the mood; and the fact that their recent show at the St Aloysuis Social Club consisted mostly of unreleased material promises a lot for 2009.


Best Music Venue: Bush Hall
Loathe as I am to award this title to a previous winner, there are so few venues these days getting it absolutely right that I have decided to give them a second place in the limelight. The antithesis to this decade’s phenomena of greedily overselling tickets, Bush Hall compares in size with venues such as ULU, yet restricts capacity to less than half the number of tickets. A nice high stage means that everybody can see, there’s enough space to visit the bar and not have to fight your way back to your friends with the drinks, and it’s a bloody lovely environment in which to watch a pop concert. They’ve recently also branched out into comedy nights, and fill the venue with seating where appropriate. Sometimes there is a man playing the piano at the back of the hall during intervals. It would be hard to invent a better venue than this.


Best Cinema: Notting Hill Coronet
Now that ticket prices seem to universally be going through the roof (and many of the discount schemes which I’ve been utilising for so long are disappearing), it’s an absolute wonder to find a cinema in London which still offers current release films for just £3.50 on a Tuesday, and where a ticket will never set you back more than £7 at any other time. The original décor still remains from when it was built as a theatre in 1898, whilst the modern programming offers a fiercely impressive slant towards independent and European films. This place is a treasure.


Best New Drink: Budvar Dark
Winner of the World’s Best Lager title at the World Beer Awards in 2007, this was an incredibly pleasing find when it began to roll out into pubs and shops during 2008. Building on the emerging cult appeal of black beers such as Herold Bohemian Black Lager and Krušovice, this is one that you can actually go on drinking all night (well, until you fall over at least). Don’t go paying £1.69 a bottle for it at Waitrose though; you can buy them for £1.09 each in my local off licence.


Best Television Show: Doctor Who
After the relative disappointment of Ashes To Ashes, it was good to see the BBC’s other flagship show on top form. David Tennant commits the remarkable achievement of taking on a character with an exceptionable amount of baggage (let’s face it, everybody has their own feelings about the historic traits which Doctor Who should have) and remaining true to tradition, yet also bringing plenty of new quirks to the role. If he wasn’t planning to bow out shortly, he could well end up eventually surpassing Tom Baker as the man that everybody ends up historically viewing as the real Doctor Who. Tremendously fun, well-written and watchable episodes throughout the entire series. Television at its (rare) best.


Best Festival: Indietracks
Probably the most tailored line-up (to its audience) that a festival has ever had, Indietracks combined a wide array of tiny indie bands with almost no commercial appeal whatsoever with the cult heavyweights; lacking in big sellers, but exploding with justified credibility as bands like The Wedding Present, Ballboy and Darren Hayman And The Secondary Modern rubbed shoulders with the likes of Airport Girl, The Mai 68s and The Voluntary Butler Scheme (The Wave Pictures were bloody awesome as well!). Stages in an engine shed, a small church and on the back of a lorry, pub prices at the bar and free steam train rides (and visits to the local zoo) thrown into the ticket price. Somebody, somewhere decided that festivals were supposed to be all about fun. And they got it absolutely right.


Best Book: Nicola Barker: Darkmans
A handful of British novelists from recent years have been looking increasingly unlikely to remain unsung, due to their being a little too offbeat for those delicate souls who like their authors’ names to be printed on the cover in shiny letters. Nicola Barker comfortably joins the likes of Alan Warner and Laura Hird in this bracket (if not perhaps actually leading the way in it), and in her eighth book there are certainly no compromises. Incredibly astute and witty observation is accompanied by her usual array of exceptional characters, relentlessly imaginative twists in the storyline and punctuated by recurringly killer one-liners (“One irreducible fact is that people who climb mountains are invariably cunts”). Nicola Barker is a stunningly consistent writer, and this is her best book yet.


Subbuteo
In a brand new category, and because boys like making lists, these were my Subbuteo scores from 2008:
19th January: Hey Hey Haines 3-0 Hey Hey Dunsdon
20th February: Hey Hey Haines 5-0 Hey Hey Dunsdon
1st March: Hey Hey Haines 4-1 Hey Hey Dunsdon
5th April: Hey Hey Haines 1-2 Hey Hey Dunsdon
19th April: Hey Hey Haines 2-0 Hey Hey Dunsdon
3rd May: Hey Hey Haines 3-1 Hey Hey Dunsdon
23rd August: Hey Hey Haines 2-0 Hey Hey Dunsdon
11th October: Hey Hey Haines 3-1 Hey Hey Dunsdon
15th November: Hey Hey Haines 3-0 Hey Hey Dunsdon
24th December: Hey Hey Haines 3-2 Hey Hey Dunsdon (a.e.t. final score 1-1)
28th December: Hey Hey Haines 2-0 Hey Hey Dunsdon



2008: The Year In Photos

In January I visited the Czech Embassy.


In February we went for a day out in sunny Middlesbrough.


I told the Daleks what I thought of them in March at the Doctor Who exhibition.


In April I finally gave up the ghost and ditched my old phone.


In May I witnessed the great escape at Portsmouth, where we somehow scraped clear from relegation on the final day of the season.


I went to Dublin in June for a conference, and spent the whole time pissed further enhanced my professional reputation.


In July I joined such marvellous characters as strange_idol, what_she_wrote and beattiedee at the Indietracks festival.


Lots of extremely lovely people turned up for a drink on my birthday in August.


In September I bought a Ukulele, courtesy of winnings at Ladbrokes.


In an extremely unexpected turn of events, Black Box Recorder reformed in October.


I evidently haven’t quite got the hang of this Gregorian calendar, as my work “Christmas” party took place in November.


In December another one of those annual bloody festive events happened.



Right, I’m off to the pub. Happy new year.

p.s. I’m planning to shake off the hangover with a 10k run in the morning. You are, of course, welcome to join me...