DarBARTshire 2015

 Best Album

Tame Impala - Currents

Everything Everything - Get to Heaven

PSB - Race for Space

blur - Magic Whip

Django Django - Born Under Saturn

Best Song

Laura Marling – False Hope

Chemical Brothers feat. Beck – Wide Open

Tame Impala – Let It Happen 

New Order – Tutti Frutti

Maccabees – Spit it Out (could easily have been Marks to Prove It but don’t like to do two by same artist)

Best Musical (Re)discovery/

The three line whip inspired trip into Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden. Curious album...but an interesting listening experience.

Best Middle-Aged Man/Men Doing Excellent – If Hardly Ground-breaking – Stuff

Covered by blur, New Order and Chemical Brothers elsewhere.

Best Film

Haven’t been to the cinema this year so probably all released in 2014. Interstellar was the best I’ve seen, the first two hours so superb they made up for a ropey last 15 minutes. Pride, American Sniper and Wild were pretty good too.

Best Book

I bought the Roy Keane book last winter and finished it this spring. Brilliantly written by Roddy Doyle Ha ha ha. Yer man Keane is a fascinating character but it loses a bit of steam when he goes from playing for United to managing, say, Ipswich.

Best Gig/Event

New Order

Best TV Programme

Fargo Series 2, outstanding television. Second series of Penny Dreadful was good too. They’re currently pulling out all the stops for the final series of Peep Show.

Best Radio Programme

Unequivocally, Radcliffe and Maconie.

Best Website

Twitter

Best Sporting Moment

That time when United did an attack and scored in Spring...the 4-2 Manchester derby maybe. Failing that Andy Murray pretty much single handedly wining the Davis Cup. Oh, and Lancashire winning the T20 thing.

Revelation

The amount of decent new material from old men...something I’ve often thought was 6music’s Achilles heel in the past.

Worst Purchase / Disappointment

I need to listen to the new album properly, but after eulogising the previous Foals album I’ve been left a bit uninspired by their new stuff.

Also General Election 2015.

Best Child-Related Thing

The burgeoning, 100% independent of us as parents, friendship of the kids.

Best Lifestyle Change

Ha, 2 years ago I mentioned our new house...and thanks to our neighbour what a nightmare that turned into. But we really like our new new house.  

Sort

Eva Green

Person, People or Thing You’d Most Like to See Set Upon By a Pack of Wolves

Tories generally.

The Winning Thing You’d Most Recommend Your Fellow Judges to Own/Have/Consume/Do

Watch as many series of Fargo as you haven’t already seen.

And Premier Inn breakfasts.