A Year of Living Legends...

It's that looking back/looking forward time of the year again, etc.  It was a mixed year creatively, with few of the knockout films of previous years, but some wonderful records which are still being played.  Herewith then, my annual review of thrills and spills from music, film and books follows:

MUSIC

My 2014 soundtrack was provided by a few familiar artists and one or two very new. Finding the Album of the Year was simple.  I discovered The War Against Drugs (fronted by the Neil Young soundalike/lookalike Adam Granduciel) in January and according to some algorithm from iTunes, I have played their album Lost In the Dream pretty much more than anything else this year.  If you get a moment, try listening to Under The Pressure (no relation to Queen and David Bowie's song) and it's hard not to become wholly immersed in the layers and layers and layers of guitar.  The Springsteen references are obvious (and so are Dylan, John Cougar, Roxy Music and many others), but for me it brought to mind some of the early Waterboys tracks like This Is The Sea or A Pagan Place.  The song just builds and builds, rocks out and then burns away in three minutes of exhausted noise and feedback.   For an obvious taster, see below; the band, playing their single Red Eyes live in Barcelona, Enjoy.  

Living Legend.  Rick Rubin.  

Also in Music, some other highlights: Baseline of the Year was Best Friend by Foster The People. Guilty Pleasure of the Year was provided by Tears For Fears who did a special feature show on Spotify. Like many of us: older, crustier, talking about song-writing and playing music again.  Angus and Julia Stone accompanied me on my increasingly random commutes with an elegant record produced by the 'living legend' Rick Rubin, who described the experience of working with the Aussie siblings as "extraordinary, I've never worked with anyone like them before."  The album is an absolute gem.  They rounded off the year by selling out a European tour topped off at the Hammersmith Apollo.  I have already bored anyone I could grab hold of about how wonderfully good living legend Kate Bush was at the same venue [see post below].  Ben Howard made a hauntingly good record and I Am Kloot produced (with help from Guy Garvey) the Song of the Year with These Days Are Mine. Interpol failed to hit the heights with El Pintor (though they sounded great at Glastonbury), U2 did a 'Gerald Ratner' through their full-on marketing love-in with Apple: telling their fans (and non fans) that their music was indeed puerile worthless tosh by giving it away for free to 1/12th of the planet's population via iTunes. Their hum-drum inoffensive album now has the ignominy of being "the most deleted album" in music history.  Shame.  More spirited and genuinely heartfelt was the Pop Music Performance of the Year [and several million YouTube hits later] of Future Islands Seasons (Waiting On You).  If you've not had the pleasure of watching Samuel T Herring, see the video link below.  What a guy, and an affected gravelly voice that made me think of the too recently late Joe Cocker.  In NME he claimed the tune took only 30 minutes to write. Extraordinary.  

FILMS

I neglected films badly this year. I wrote no words. I saw too few films.  I failed to get to the London Screenwriter's Festival in Regent's Park. I drank no beers at the BFI. Abrupt memo to self for 2015.  

But then again, was it a vintage year? Inside Llewyn Davies was so absent of any cheer, I basically gave up.  Marvel's Winter Soldier was a surprise and fun and action packed in a way that Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't. A preview showing of The Kingsman was enjoyed for an hour, but then spoiled by Director Matthew Vaughn's penchant for extreme violence.  Blue Valentine was a compelling performance, but the film dragged after the opening. X-Men Days of Future was rare in its ambition and passed all the required tests for pace, imagination and plot.  Great fun.  Grand Budapest Hotel made me wide eyed for an hour and then became a bore as they chased to the ending and beyond that: Imitation, Boyhood, Dawn of the Planet, Hobbit3, not really sure anything really got me in the gut like a Senna, or Liberal Arts or A Royal Affair.  You will see from the above, there are about 10 candidate films I have neither seen or noticed this year.  Could do better.  

BOOKS

I've read too few fiction books this year, but the ones that hit home included Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway, Half Bad by Sally Green and & Sons by David Gilbert.  I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes was extremely good in a demented and I-am not-that-happy-about-how-scary-this-is sort of way.  I will write properly elsewehere about a number of new start-up/business/entrepeneurship books that I devoured from Easter through the summer - but two standouts were From Acorns by Caspian Woods and a fun, witty little book called Out of Office by Chris Ward. Appropriately, I read it in my favourite Pret coffee shop. Recommended.    

ELSEWHERE

Seeing King Lear at The National theatre, whilst eating popcorn in my local cinema was fun.  Attending a meeting in 10 Downing Street and being informed by a seriously gurning Mandarin that I would not be able to go to the toilet, because we "were in lock down" was quite a moment.  Doing a panel event with Alain de Botton, Jo Malone, Sarah Harper and various others in London was pretty special, but, highlight of the year was in found miles away in New York City...

Living legend.  Derek Jeter.

I have written before (and pretentiously) about baseball, but had never actually watched a game. In August, that gap was filled and I watched 3 hours of major league baseball in Yankee Stadium.   It was both brilliant and befuddling. 50,000 fans sat and cheered and munched their way through six-million tonnes of food. Meanwhile, led by the 'living legend' Derek Jeter, the home team actually hit the ball three times in nine completely non-eventful innings.  My prejudice was borne out.  It is just so flipping hard to hit a ball thrown at ninety miles an hour by some 7-feet tall monster on too much caffeine (or something stronger) stood on a pile of sand only a 'stones throw' away.  Unfortunately, I was queuing for a beer when the only home-run was hit and soared into the distant stand.  Towards the end of the game, the whole crowd stood and sang God Bless America. I knew there was a reason why I had enjoyed all those american Sports movies over the years.  This was sport, not as a game, but manufactured as live theatre; grandiose and celebratory, writ large, widescreen with a choreographed cacophony of sound that no 'Dolby' filter can replicate.  Jeter retired a few weeks later, having somehow hit the ball about 10,000 times in 20 years with the Yankies.  Another, living legend.  

That was the year that was Once

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January 2013 started with a rainbow.  Early morning, on the coast path, heading home to coffee and toast,  we were stopped in our tracks.  It was a sign.  Of a better year than the last.  Indeed, an excellent one.  So in classic web-log fashion, after The Times 'best books of the year', or Q’s 'top fifty albums', or NME’s 'records of the year'...  Herewith, a few reasons why there was indeed gold at the end of the rainbow.  MUSIC  It started with Bowie who tricked everyone.  Everyone.  Where Are We Now sounded weary and tenorous.  Like an old man singing listfully for the artist he was once was.  A decade or more before.  But then the album landed.  Guitars, tunes, solos, choruses.  It rocked.  The Stars Are Out Tonight, in particular.  Still, an artist.  A wonderful retrospective of 'stuff' at The V&A in March only reinforced the sense of wonder.  Bowie grew up less than a quarter of a mile from where I've lived for the past twenty years.  I pick up my dry-cleaning at the end of THAT road.  My kids remain unimpressed however much I eulogise.  Meanwhile, Night Beds produced a lovely record and then Foals released a monster single, Inhaler, and one of the albums of the year, with horses on the cover and a pop tune called My Number which was never topped all year.  Ben Howard won awards and filled my office with Keep Your Head Up.  Imagine Dragons teased momentarily, then The Boxer Rebellion released a magic record called Promises, which played better out of speakers and on video than it did live.  Why the band didn't hire a keyboard player for the tour rather than have Nathan Nicholson 'trying' to rock out while stood behind an electronic rack on stuff, I don't know.  It killed the shows for me.   The National plumbed new wonderful depths of morose shoe-gazing gloom with Trouble Will Find Me.  Karl Wallinger played live in London, World Party stripped down and brilliant.  He seemed a well man, alive in his music.  My daughter bought a guitar the same colour as Taylor Swift's.  More records this year tested on flights to New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai included ballsy-ness from Editors, electronic squeakiness from Chvrches and absolute knock-outs from Volcano Choir and London Grammar (I know).  Peter Gabriel and The Waterboys both did '25-year anniversary' tours of classic albums.  Fisherman's Blues won hands-down.  FILMS  Last year I found a historic melodrama from late eighteenth century Denmark as my film of the year.  This February I fell for Elizabeth Olsen in Josh Radnor's Liberal Arts, an altogether more cheery offering than Martha Marcy May Marlene and I've not had much come close.  Woody Allen's To Rome From Love was an entertaining postcard to a place I hold dear, but not scripted with the wit and wonder of Midnight In Paris. [I have yet to see Blue Jasmine, but hear great things.]  Gravity lived up to all the pre-release hype and even 3D-phobe Mark Kermode made it one of his films of the year. Sound City (a documentary homage to an analogue sound-desk) was fascinating.   Blockbusters mainly blustered, though the Costner mid-section of Man of Steel was wonderfully done.  Hobbit II was stunningly done - and looked extraordinary, but was way too long and spoilt by a strange 'Monty Python'- esque second act, with Stephen Fry annoying, not entertaining.  BOOKS were fab in 2013, with complete immersion in the Hugh Howey's Wool trilogy (now optioned by Ridley Scott) and Benedict Jacka's Alex Verus series took another step forward to awesome with a fourth volume. But amidst much that was wonderful, it was in the Phoenix Theatre in London, where I found the best moment of 2013.  Once is the stage adaptation of the film of the same name, which won an oscar for Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova for the song Falling Slowly.  The stage adaptation won 8 Tony awards on Broadway and the London show is awe-inspiring.  Usually, for a stage musical show, the band is in the pit, hidden from view.  Here they are on the stage (which is a pub), playing, and singing and performing like their lives depend upon it.  The lead, Declan Bennett (who plays Guy), is charismatic and holds attention throughout.  The cast are brilliant character actors and can PLAY.  The interval drinks are served on the stage, from the bar, blurring the line between performers and audience in a way that is not contrived or trite, but somehow genuine.  The music is the thing.  Not the Oscar song, but Gold, the song that ends the first half and is reprised in the second.  Wonderful.  Once will close in mid 2014.  It has none of the special effects of a West End 'spectacular' like Charlie [see review], but it is the best thing I have seen in a long time.

You will believe a script can die

I don't usually write single movie reviews on WYA, but…herewith, a collection of pithy, unstructured thoughts about the new Superman movie, Man of Steel.  If you don't want too many spoiler words, just simply skip to the next blog post, on something more important than a DC re-boot.    

In many ways, its like Christopher Nolan's Batman franchise, but without the humour.  But the guy who plays Superman (Henry Cavill) is so hot, you can't believe it takes two hours for anyone other than Lois to even notice.  Lois (Amy Adams) wears various cardigans and is so unlike Margo Kidder's Lois, that I kept expecting a calypso band to appear and start playing "How Can I Tell Her I Love Her", while furry animals clean the Daily Plant offices.  And then, and then, and then…it's got this bit in the middle, told non-linear, shot through long grass, which takes the Christ analogy from Bryan Singer's version and rolls it into a big fat smoke and ponders, literally, what it is all about?  Who am I?  Why am I here?  Why the cape?  The middle hour is a beautifully shot and paced episodic 'pause for breath' exploring the odd non-father-son relationship (with Costner, above, who is perfect).  Thankfully, this transcends the silly costume stuff (think Kenneth Branagh's Thor) and then ultimately the noisy Michael Bay style Transformer noise and visual debacle ending.  A fab 'reboot' franchise movie about becoming and then being a Superhero is unfortunately bookended by a terrible cacophony of visual effects rubbish at the end.  For Warners it will make at least a billion dollars and Henry Cavill will become as hot a star property as Hugh Jackman.