Kelly: Barts 2017

Sorry for the delay...

Best album

The National: Sleep Well Beast

Michael Head &The Red Elastic Band: Adios Senor Pussycat

Laura Marling: Semper Femina

Ryan Adams: Prisoner

Mark Eitzel: Hey Mr Ferryman

Best Song

Arcade Fire: Everything Now

Charlotte Gainsbourg: Deadly Valentine

This is the Kit: Hotter Colder

Afghan Whigs: Demons in Profile

Best Musical Re-discovery

Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach: Painted from Memory

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

Once again, that pretty much sums up my top two categories.

Best Film

Manchester By The Sea

Best Book

Sebastian Barry: Days Without End

Best Gig/Event

Everything Everything @ HBTC

Best TV Programme

Peaky Blinders

Best Radio Programme

Soho Radio (it’s really Radconie)

Best Website

Taking a wider ‘technology’ slant on this and going for Sonos.

Best Sporting Moment

Sergio Garcia winning The Masters

Revelation

The Charlotte Gainsbourg single

Worst Purchase / Disappointment

The demise of Lovefilm by post.

Best Child-Related Thing

Hughie breaking his tablet

Best Lifestyle Change

I’m doing too much travelling: but I am making a concerted effort to do more by train instead of driving, and it’s giving me a lot more time back.

Sort

They all have lovely bottoms…

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

Trump – I genuinely worry that he is resetting the moral benchmark

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

The Laura Marling album is very good, and notably absent from others’ lists.

"Sam" Barts 2017

Best Album

Th’Horrors

Baxter Dury

War on Drugs

Father John Misty

Best Song

Four Tet – 2017

Arcade Fire – Everything Now

Alt J - Pleader

Algiers – Underside of Power

Barnett/Vile – Over Everything

Best Musical Re-discovery

Gary Numan

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

Ride

Mogwai

Thurston Moore

Slowdive

The National

Best Film

Presumably once I see it over Christmas, The Last Jedi

Best Book

Richard Ford – The Lay of the Land. (As good as all the other Frank Bascombe books)

Best Gig/Event

Sugar Hill Gang/Furious Five

Best TV Programme

Detectorists

Best Radio Programme

Apart from the obvious contenders: Cerys Matthews’ Sunday morning show

Best Website

Not a website, but linking lots of e-mail accounts to my Outlook saves a LOT of time.

Best Sporting Moment

Moeen’s hat trick to seal the 100^th Oval Test. Seems a long time ago now.

Revelation

I won’t find much support here, but I really like that Noel Gallagher song

Worst Purchase / Disappointment

Morrissey’s warped world view

Best Child-Related Thing

Got them into card/board games beyond just Monopoly.

Best Lifestyle Change

Determination to – and action on – seeing more live music.

Sort

Hayley Attwell

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

Obvious, but Johnson/Gove/Davis/Fox. The Peter Principle in full and horrifying effect.

And Steve Lamacq for similar reasons.

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

Horrors (and back catalogue)/Richard Ford (and back catalogue).

"Andrew" BARTs

Best Album

The Horrors – V

Everything Everything – A Fever Dream

Radiohead – OknotOk Disk 2

Metronomy – Summer 2008*

*released and purchased in 2016 but too late to consider for last year so it’s going in

Best Song

Radiohead – Lift

Four Tet – Two Thousand And Seventeen

Bicep – Glue

Granddaddy – Evermore

Ryan Adams – To Be Without You

Best Musical Re-discovery

Not sure how to categorise that Radiohead album. Recorded 20 years ago so I guess it goes above and here, not below. Spent much of autumn listening to the first two Suede LPs. Also bought the 2011 Metronomy album The English Riviera which is excellent.

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

That Grandaddy single

Best Film

Full Metal Jacket....maybe La La Land.

Best Book

Finally finished The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. Excellent, but you’ll need to go in about 6 books earlier if you’re interested.

Best Gig/Event

2 gigs this year, both very good. Everything Everything at the Trades Club and St Etienne at the Titz.

Best TV Programme

Manhunter, Fleabag, The Crown, Twin Peaks – The Revival, Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Game Face, Trip to Spain, Stranger Things 2. This list may well be edited i.e. added to.

Best Radio Programme

RadMac

Best Website

Pitchfork album review section

Best Sporting Moment

United wining two trophies.

Revelation
n/a

Worst Purchase / Disappointment

Morrissey continuing his late life rapid descent into wankerdom, and his album not even being a small reason to like him like they used to be.

Best Child-Related Thing

They will now get up, feed, dress and entertain themselves for quite a while on weekend mornings.

Best Lifestyle Change

Haven’t really had one this year, a nice status quo from previous changes.

Sort

To try and bring some variety to this category I’ll go for Mila Kunis specifically in the Jim Beam ads http://portfolioone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Jim-Beam-3-1023x680.png Funny name Kunis, neither one thing or the other..

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

Too many to choose from these days but let’s go another year for Jacob Rees-Mogg for combining being a Brexit mentalist with revealing just how much he’s a God bothering mentalist.

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

The Horrors album/Netflix

BARTs 2017?

Sam, I see you as the keeper of the flame when it comes to keeping the categories relevant but as previously discussed my two penneth worth is that the music categories could be condensed to "music what I heard this year and quite liked" and the TV categories expanded to include the following: http://awards.bafta.org/award/2017/television

Big Brother

Seems Spotify is keeping an eye on me. Apparently I listened to 22,781 minutes of music in 2017. With this playlist being my most played:

Kurt Vile Overload

Listened to him and Courtney Barnett already today. Now on to the new WoD album. Both great in different ways.

Shameless Horrors Rip-Off

Right, I'm off to listen to loads of Gary Numan.

Prediction

Raymond - Indifference



Andrew - Active dislike







(I like it).

This is The Kit

Joining in with the recent flurry of activity to endorse this:

Back

Seen this? I don't think anyone's pretending it isn't Mark-in-a-different-scenario meets slightly-different-version-of-Jeremy, but it's still very funny.



All the caravan bits from last week were excellent.

BICEP | GLUE

Whatever ver kids of today say instead of "choon".

New Moz

First impressions...not very good...at all. 

Now that I'm thinking of this as a bit Human League-y

Rather than as particularly Horrors-y, I'm really enjoying it

A bit Gorillaz, a bit early Goldfrapp.

Suffice to say, I like it.

Booo...

I remain steadfast in the face of the sad news re the cancellation of the wonderful 'Count Arthur Strong'... It's Rory I feel sorry for. pic.twitter.com/5pMQMoAdZe

— Count Arthur Strong (@Arthur_Strong) August 9, 2017

I wasn't previously aware of this

But I like it a lot.

In fact, if anything, I think he could have taken it further away from the original.

Radiohead - Man Of War

AKA "Big Boobs".The greatest Bond song never released as a Bond song.



Between this, Sceptre and covers of Nobody Does It Better, I assume Thom Yorke has something of a fascination with the genre.

The smell of air conditioning

I've become slightly obsessed with this song...feels like it's new despite the fact they were doing it live 20+ years ago....we've probably all heard it live, certainly "Steve" as I think they did it in your 1996/97 era of seeing them a lot.



Imagine writing something so great and burying it for 20 years.

Harvey / Yorke

I had forgotten how good this is...

FAO Andrew and Raymond

To my ears, there is more than a hint of Prince about this. So I thought you might like it.



I think it is shite.

FAO Andrew

As this played I thought "Andrew will like that". Turns out it's produced yer man from Tame Impala.

Everything...

Mainly for Andrew in lieu of Sat night. Something a bit Blackstar about the video / choreography. Song feels like they are aiming for a bit of a crossover...

Thoughts?

My three word review: I like it.

Middle aged men etc etc and so on

Tha National

Predictably excellent return by The National...

While I'm here...

This is also great...

Sonic Middle Age

*Blows off cobwebs*. "Hello! Anyone home?" I like this...

Evermore

Seen mixed reviews for the album but this is great. Sophtware worthy.

5th November

Almost certain this is the first time I've nominated a Ryan Adams track but this is really good.

Metronomy - Hang Me Out To Dry with Robyn (Official Video)

Really like this...I bought the album sometime around Christmas so too late for the BARTs but it's very interesting. As I mentioned to Raymond it's right up there with some of my favourite "they were listening to a lot of Prince" albums of all time - see MGMT, Tame Impala, The Love Below.

TRAINSPOTTING 2

Saw this a couple of weeks ago. Hard to think how it could have been done much better with the pressure which must have been on their shoulders. Assuming you've all seen and/or read the original.

La La Land (2016 Official Trailer

Got my annual grown-ups visit to the cinema in early this year to see if this is worth the hype. I enjoyed it, more bitter-sweet than you might imagine.



In terms of recommendations, whilst completely dissimilar in content I'd imagine "do you like Grease"? would be a useful question. And my guess would be:



Ray - Yes

Sam - No

Steve - Not sure

The Crown | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

Not sure who's got Netflix...but if you do, this is good.

Merry Christmas (Mr Lawrence)

I watched Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence over the Christmas break - one for curiosity value / completists only I'd suggest. But I have become somewhat obsessed with the theme music. So here it is for your delectation...

Fleabag

Not sure the trailer does it justice but this is funny (based on the two episodes I've seen so far)

https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=ADFJ2SwF2G0