Everything we feared about 2017 didn't quite come true. We thought we might not see the years end. The horrendous foreboding of 2016 shuffled to a close and the threat of impending doom hung over the planet like a massive Circus Tent containing the most terrifying clowns and freaks. Trump, Kim Jung Un, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, all the buffoons blundering along fucking the whole shooting match up.
Pretty much everyone except the most staunch euro-sceptic and/or ignorant racist bellend thinks Brexit is a terrible idea. Organised by a ramshackle group of grey faces with dead eyes and dead hearts and nothing rattling around in their vastly inflated heads. We don't know if in the long run that being out of the EU won't be a good thing but is it worth the misery in the short?
The Grim Reaper kept his scythe to himself for the most part, perhaps waiting to see if he had the whole field of human life to sow. That could be yet to come.
But... BUT.... while there's moonlight and MUSIC and love and romance, let's face the music and dance.
My albums of the year, are as follows:
1) Desperate Journalist - Grow Up
2) Paul Draper - Spooky Action
3) Ghostpoet - Dark Days and Canapés
4) Big Moon - Love in the 4th Dimension
5) Johnny Flynn - Sillion
6) Father John Misty - Pure Comedy
7) Morrissey - Low in High School
8) Marika Hackman - I'm Not Your Man
8) Lost Horizons - Ojala
9) Laura Marling - Sempa Femina
10) Noel Gallagher - Who Built The Moon
11) Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice
12) Slowdive - Slowdive
13) Unqualified Nurse Band - Trashland
14) Reverend and the Makers - Death of a King
15) The National - Sleep Well Beast
16) The Horrors - V
17) Menace Beach - Lemon Memory
18) Flo Morrissey & Matthew E White - Gentlewoman, Ruby Man
19) Ryan Adams - Prisoner
20) Alt-J - Relaxer
The anticipation for Paul Draper was fever pitch amongst his merry band of followers and it went far beyond not disappointing. If it had been released to a world where a band like Desperate Journalist didn't exist then it would have been number one but when a record like "Grow Up" possesses 11 flawless songs, it lost out. And then after those two, the shock of finding an album like "Dark Days and Canapés", a record that wouldn't normally enter my radar but didn't leave my turntable for weeks.
Personally, 2017 was a step forward. I saw my name in print for the first time as a freelance writer, in the excellent Loud and Quiet, a proper, old fashioned style music paper, and Louder than War Magazine, the legendary publication started by John Robb. 2018 can only mean things getting better. It's getting exciting.
On that front I'm looking forward to the new Hookworms record, "Negative Space" is an absolute banger, and I don't use that phrase lightly, and the debut from the amazing Shame. They are such an exciting new band, full of piss and vinegar, angry and intelligent, but as rock'n'roll as fuck. Booze, drugs but brilliant tunes. Live they'll be something else entirely.
Live wise, there are gigs already booked in, another Desperate Journalist gig in London in January to make it the 6th time I will have seen them in a rolling twelve months, Hell is for Heroes with A and Vex Red and a two night double salvo of Paul Draper playing Attack of the Grey Lantern in full in February. Then in March the much maligned Morrissey at Brixton Academy. The year will peak early.
A Happy New Year to you all, let's hope we see it through. But if we do all go up in a nuclear apocalypse, please let's make it after March when I'm back from Reykjavik and NYC.
