Right

Right, fucking hell, I will start remembering to write stuff in this thing, I promise.

Not for the faint hearted

There are no words.

Meanwhile, I'm spending my night-off-due-to-being-poorly trying to find out exactly why one of the bands tonight claimed to have organised a ten-person guestlist with me, when this is blatantly a lie.

Last Year's Good Things

So, I procrastinate for a month, then realise 2007 wasn't massively interesting anyway. Still, one to keep promises and all that. It's worth noting I'm writing this with man-flu, which means my judgement will probably be clouded and somewhat grumpier than normal. Oh well.

Onwards, then. Usual categories of Denby interest. Winner, and runner-up. Here we go.


ALBUMS
2006's brilliant double-whammy tie of Joanna Newsom's 'Ys' and Guillemots' 'Through the Window Pane' set things up nicely for 2007, but unfortunately things aren't as strong this year. Radiohead's long-awaited self-released effort was very good, but ultimately fell slightly behind its predecessor 'Hail to the Thief'. Likewise, Oceansize's 'Frames' failed to match the beauty of 'Everyone Into Position'. 'The Bedlam in Goliath' by The Mars Volta didn't come out until this month, despite my having picked up a sneaky copy a couple of months back. Napoleon IIIrd's debut offering is bang at the top, but he's a mate, so it's a bit iffy. So it's Kate Nash.

Fuck. That wasn't supposed to happen.

But then, neither was she. Exploding out of nowhere in the earlier half of 2007, Nash released a string of startlingly good pop tunes. The album, Made of Bricks compiles them. There's a couple of naff ones in the mix, but the good ones make up for it. It's like Lily Allen with twice the talent and voice. It's lovely, it's upbeat, and it puts me in a good mood. I really like that in music these days.

Napoleon comes second. But really he won.

Runner-up: Napoleon IIIrd - In Debt To


SINGLES
He's talking at me, he's like, "blah, blah, blah, blah..." But I'm not listening, I'm like, "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah..." - Middleman, and everyone who's ever heard the song, 2007, and forever and ever for all eternity.

Runner-up: Kate Nash - Birds


FILMS
Ooh, a tough one. I missed out on The Darjeling Limited, like a tosser, because I forgot to go see it before its run ended, and my internet's too iffy to download big files. I Am Legend started incredibly, and the first hour would have probably taken the title easily if it weren't for the horrible Hollywood ending. The Golden Compass did things the other way round, with a poorly-paced and nastily glossed opening blossoming into a fantastically epic finale. Oddly, then, we're faced with two pretty straightforward American family comedies as the front runners. Even odder, they're both cartoons.

The Simpsons Movie was always going to be great, and it was always going to disappoint everyone. Pretty standard clause for such a major release from such a fantastic team of writers and animators. Ratatouille, far less prolific until release, was an entirely ordinary Pixar dealie that just happened to do everything loads better than anything else of its kind. Paris, in animated form, has never oozed so much atmosphere and clarity. It's a tough one, and I've reserved judgement until right now. Errm... yeah, The Simpsons Movie it is. Both deserve it, really.

Runner-up: Ratatouille


VIDEOGAMES
I'm breaking the rules to fit a 2006 game into the 2007 list. I'll justify it thusly: I wasn't fortunate enough to play this in the final couple of weeks of last year. In the big Christmas rush I forgot myself, and made little effort until remarkably recently to play this game. And anyway, in every sense of the title, this really was one of 2007's Good Things, a provider of some fabulous times with friends this year. While the shadowy, liquidised suburbs of almost-amazing shoot-em-up Bioshock came close to swaying me back to my senses, I've gone for the 2006 game, just to annoy everyone.

Clearly, it's Wii Sports.

Perhaps the most finely chosen launch title on any platform, ever, Sports succeeds where other games fail by deadening the gap between 'games' and 'real life'. The amount of nights out that have ended by drinking far too much in front of a Wii at 5 in the morning, just trying to prevent reality emerging that little bit longer, is more than I can count, and all were fabulous. Sports makes people run around the living room like a twat, smashing lights and vases and each other in a bizarre attempt to beat up a small blob on a TV screen. It's fabulous. It was released last year, but I don't care.

Runner-up: Bioshock

Feel the riff

Meeting people at Grove for food in a bit, so just a quick one. DJ Scotch Egg + Bilge Pump + Red Stars Parade + other Benbow silliness tonight at the Brudenell. I'm strangely drawn to inhumanly loud gigs at the moment, though this one should be less noise-orientated than his previous events. The party moves to Trash in town afterwards - come find us.

Tomorrow, a belated Denby Awards 2008. I've been mulling it over in my mind since Christmas, and frankly, last year was rubbish for consumerism, brilliant for experience. So it might be a bit of an anticlimax, but who cares. It's more about me than you, face it.

L x

A quintessentially British blog

As if it were listening to my every thought, the great weatherman in the sky has transcended from the horrible, grey, sludgy excuse for snow when I awoke, into a full, blue-sky-and-all beautiful winter's day.

In the meantime, Frou Frou.

PAIN

I return from a metal night at The Library with an even worse headache than the one I arrived with. Shouty music during the peak of a surprising hangover that appeared over 5 hours after I woke up is not the most pleasant of situtions. Tonight was reasonably good though, despite the fact that someone had taken the PA apart for little or no reason so everything was running around half an hour late. I think I'd have quite enjoyed the bands, even, if I wasn't feeling so rotten.

Afterwards, Benbow comes round with Beth and Adrian and we talk about photography and cinema and offensive jokes and Whiskas and Ali from Dance To The Radio. We admire Beth's latest photoshoot for Ant and Dan's band, then we rave about Danny North's picture of James, and then my head feels like it's eaten a tray of poppers and I have to come to bed and watch Red Dwarf before I lose the will to live through this searing pain.

Tomorrow I need to go to the bank to ask why they've deposited the best part of a grand that I thought was missing into a bank account I didn't even know I had until I received the statement for it, so I'm going to set my alarm for some horrible time in the morning in the hope that there's a reasonable chance I get up more than three minutes before I'm due at a lecture.

L x

Return

Massive long absence from here. Sorry. Lifemess and being busy with various stuff. All back on track now.

Househunting is an absolute arse, and landlords and agencies are evil personified. I wish I were rich so I could buypass the whole renting thing and buy my own place. Don't think that'll happen for a good few years yet, somehow. It's also a bugger with Collette living dahn sahf currently trying to organise viewings and stuff around when she can make it up to Leeds. Hopefully it'll all fall into place soon.

The Jubilee gig was... a gig. A pleasure to share a stage with North and Shuman, certainly, but naturally they cooped themselves away on the tour bus for the majority of it, so we only met them briefly. I was happy to learn that Aaron North is approximately the same height as me. I felt validated by this somehow. Our single's out soon, anyway, and we're playing at Leeds' The Cockpit to launch it. 9th February. Come down if you can.

I need to get my writing head back on, but my creative energy has nosedived since Christmas in particular. Hopefully everything will brighten up soon.

L x