An unrelated Popular thread prompted some reflections on my favourite Beck album (although judging by the stream of Morning Phase, it could have a challenger).
Read More
21 February 2014Your disco needs you too: more 1997 UK number ones at Popular.
Popular enters 1997 in a blur of good-to-great tracks.
Life and Death
Man still remembers teacher who made him fall in love with writing.
What a grocery store looks like without honeybees.
Peter Freuchen, Arctic explorer. Call that a knife?
The pleasant morning of an evil day.
Mary Beard on the Miss Triggs question (Mefi).
On authenticity, appropriation and eating (Mefi).
Oceanic force and mystery (Mefi).
Rolling Stone’s 500 worst reviews of all time (Mefi). Essential reading for any past subscribers who bought their share of “four-star” turkeys on their say-so.
Film Crit Hulk on THE LEGO MOVIE. Saw it with W. the other day; recommended for any Lego kids and parents.
The Things. For fans of the singular John Carpenter.
1996 was an unexpectedly strong year for UK number ones, with thirteen votes from me in Popular’s end-of-year poll of songs worth six or more out of ten. Only a few were songs I was actually listening to then and would listen to much today; what I really loved that year were Suede’s Coming Up and Ash’s 1977, still my favourite albums by each band. But one or two became favourites not long afterwards...
A second instalment of my Popular comments on late 1996, indirectly featuring one of my favourite bands of a few years later, and directly featuring one of my favourite bands of the decade after that.
Tom Ewing has been on a roll at Popular since Christmas, moving quickly through the second half of 1996 and on into 1997. Here’s a first instalment of my comments on the period in question.
As part of a gradual process of belatedly adding galleries to Detail, here’s a third collection of Scottish castles to add to the ones I made a decade ago. The castles range from the rugged and rural to the urban and urbane, and include a few revisits of old favourites. As someone who grew up in a land where the only castles were bouncy, I can never get enough of the real ones.
Your One-Stop Running-Away-From-Things Shop
Happy new 95.34% of a year. As you can guess, I’ve been busy elsewhere, and that’s likely to be true for a while, so the blog side of things might be quieter than usual in 2014. But I’m keeping the lights on just in case.
In the meantime, here are two clips of people running away, from floods and fireworks.
So This Year
With two hours of 2013 to go, here’s my favourite music of this year—and for the first time in quite a while, almost all of it was from this year as well (all releases below are 2013 unless otherwise indicated). Once again in chronological order of my discovering it, because ranking music is exhausting.
So Last Year
So for a few years I’ve been doing these retrospective entries about the previous year in music, and this year I’m so far behind that I now have less than 48 hours to write about 2012, or else I’ll have to call it “So the Year Before Last”, which doesn’t work nearly as well. So here’s the best stuff I listened to in 2012, in chronological order of discovering it. All releases are from 2012 unless otherwise indicated.
That’s a Wrap
Like any good six-year-old, our son has been bursting with anticipation for Christmas, asking us again and again for weeks if we can tell him what some of his presents are. We should line a packing box with wrapping paper, bundle him into it while he’s asleep, and tell him his present is the whole world.
December 2013