Nick Bryan

Music Reviews

BEST OF 2014 – Podcasts, Films, Music

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Right, 2014 is one week and a few Christmas crackers away from ending, so it’s time for bloggers to work out their Favourite [THING] Of [YEAR] lists. I am no exception, especially as I’ve hardly reviewed anything for ages and kinda miss it.

So, exactly as I did last year, I’ve broken my enjoyment down into a series of headings. In this first effort, we’ll tackle the podcasts, movies and music. One of those segments will be much, much longer than the other two.

Podcasts

Last year’s favourite podcasts, The Bugle and House To Astonish, both experienced erratic schedules in 2014, due to John Oliver’s new TV show and a presenter having a baby respectively. I think this proves conclusively the destructive nature of my love. (Although The Bugle produced some excellent episodes in the last few weeks, since afore-mentioned TV show went off air.)

Still – this clears the way for some newcomers on the scene. Firstly, yes everyone, I too listened to Serial, and quite enjoyed it. Sagged a bit in the middle for me, but I thought they provided a more convincing non-ending than I ever expected them to. I’ve watched true-crime-based films and documentaries before and judged Serial as another of that genre, albeit in a new medium. Seemed to stand up well.

Best newcomer for me personally, though, was Rachel And Miles X-Plain The X-Men. If a charming, funny, affectionately-poking-fun look back at the X-Men’s labyrinthine comic book history appeals to you, this podcast nails the pitch. So good, I signed up for their Patreon campaign. Their weekly YouTube reviews of current X-Men books are worth watching too.

Over in the weird-comedy section, the very, very funny ManBuyCow podcast put out the latter half of their second series at the start of 2014, hopefully 2015 will see series 3. The theme tune alone is worth listening for.Lastly, and most topically, both Tea and Jeopardy (the silly-but-fun scifi/fantasy books discussion show with Emma Newman) and Daniel Ruiz Tizon (South London’s master of melancholy) put out daily Advent Calendar shows during December, and both have been great in their own ways, exploring festivity and helping us all build towards Christmas

.I also attended the recording of the Daniel Ruiz Tizon Is Available Bumper Christmas Annual last night, wrapping up a good year for him as he took his show from podcast to Resonance FM, but kept on chronicling the small victories and defeats that band together to make up our lives. You might be able to hear me laughing in the background throughout the annual and saying something about Doctor Who towards the end. Looking forward to seeing what Daniel does in 2015.

Movies

Okay, this is going to be short, especially if we restrain it to viewed films released during 2014. It’s basically just the two Marvel movies (Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and The Lego Movie, all of which were very good, broad adventures with a unique flavour.

If I had to put them in an order, I’d say Guardians just edges out Lego for the top spot, but if you’ve any interest in those films and haven’t yet seen them, definitely rectify that. They all entertain and emote with balanced skill.

I also caught up on some late-2013 movies recently: Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, both of which were enjoyable, engrossing adventures. Catching Fire perhaps suffers a little from middle-of-trilogy-setting-up-for-last one syndrome, but they did inherit that issue from the book.

Frozen, meanwhile, aside from that very catchy song, is almost painfully likable and does interesting things with standard Disney tropes. Could’ve maybe used a few more memorable songs aside from Let It Go, but the story still held me regardless.

Music

I’ve mostly tuned out of current music, but I bought a few current releases this year – new Elbow album The Taking Off And Landing Of Everything was definitely much better than their last one, including a few songs that made me feel properly sad/uplifted as only they can.

I also listened to the new Taylor Swift album 1989, mostly to see what the fuss was about, and found it a fun hour of pop. After a few stern Twitter recommendations, I went back and tried Red, her previous one, and yes, that’s the country-catchy stuff. It stayed on rotation much longer.

New Weezer album Everything Will Be Alright In The End turned out to be an addictive collection of fun-but-not-stupid indie-rock, and no-one was more surprised than the band’s own fanbase. If you used to like Weezer and drifted away, the new one strikes a good balance between memorable choruses and genuine emotion. I especially like the songs Cleopatra and Da Vinci, but other people have different favourites, and it’s probably a good sign that there are enough high quality songs on the record for these arguments to exist.

Also played Weird Al Yankovic’s Mandatory Fun for a while to great enjoyment, although like many parody albums, it got old eventually.

Lastly, as with the movies, I also discovered some 2013 music belatedly – primarily CHVRCHES album The Bones Of What You Believe and Nocturnes by Little Boots. Both smooth, driving, haunting music and great for writing to, I’ve found. There’s a song on The Bones Of What You Believe that very much is the theme song of the fantasy novel I’ve just finished, to me. And I hardly ever have those kind of thoughts.

Right – probably two more posts to follow in this series, Books & Comics and Top Ten TV, same as last year. I’ll attempt to get both out before 2014 dies, although one of them may slip and I can only apologise if so. Gotta see the last episodes of Doctor Who, Agents of SHIELD and Homeland before I can do TV, for starters.

My Writing Music – Songs to mash the keyboard to

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Some writers don’t listen to music while they work, needing constant silence to produce their genius. However, I require an endless rolling soundtrack to drown out the screaming choirs of my own insanity (10 points for knowing where I stole that last phrase from), so I get through a lot of tracks.

A lot of the choices go in phases – new records come out, or I fancy immersing myself in the music of one artist, so I load my phone up with their albums. Then I listen to this person exclusively for a while, until I’m sick of them and don’t want to hear anything they’ve done for months.

A few songs/sounds do survive the gap though – elevate themselves above the flighty phases and become evergreen presences. Here, then, are my perpetual audio companions. Apologies if a few of them turn out to be part of temporary phases and I’m just blinded by momentary love.

Warren Ellis – SPEKTRMODULE

SPEKTRMODULE - by Warren Ellis

SPEKTRMODULE is an irregular ambient music podcast by British comics/novels writer Warren Ellis and is rarely far from my writing playlist. It helps that there’s loads of it and new ones sometimes slip out, but even with that, it’s a good soundtrack. A nice combination of atmospheric and relaxing, and always my first go-to when I don’t feel like listening to music with lyrics.

You can see all the episodes in their category on his blog, or subscribe to the iTunes feed here. Well worth a look.

In other beepy/electronic music, I sometimes listen to the Social Network and Girl With The Dragon Tattoo soundtracks by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, but they’re a little too scary to relax into.

Gorillaz – The Fall

This is the lesser-known fourth Gorillaz album, the one with less budget, very few famous guest artists and sparse/instrumental songs recorded on an iPad about Damon Albarn’s loneliness while touring America.

It didn’t top the charts like other cartoon monkey records, but it is great writing soundtrack material. Haunting and driving in equal measure. And just in general, if you like a good Blur/Albarn song, there are some nice ones on here, especially Little Pink Plastic Bags, The Parish of Space Dust and Amarillo.

The new Damon Albarn solo album Everyday Robots is pretty too, though a bit too languid for work-motivating purposes – in my opinion, at least.And to complete this segment, here’s the excellent song Amarillo in YouTube form.

R.E.M. – Up

I really like R.E.M., for which I blame their total ubiquity on my parents’ stereo when I was younger. Although considering they and Blur/Gorillaz are two of my favourite artists, it’s also possible I like music where the focus is just as much on the clever lyrics as the songs – this might be a writer trait? I don’t know. Someone tell me I’m normal, for god’s sake.

Putting self-analysis aside, a lot of R.E.M.’s stuff is hooky, attention-seeking indie-rock and not always ideal background work music. The album Up, however, shifted towards whispering, downbeat stuff or, even on the less grim songs, a swirl of noise rather than louder, more straightforward indie.

A music-minded person might say this is the album where R.E.M. most tried to replicate their good friends in Radiohead, but either way, this album really works for me as writing music. More so than most Radiohead stuff, actually, although Kid A does come out when I’m hitting the misery juice hard.And now, for a sample, the song Suspicion which I’ve always found pretty lovely.

Honourable Mentions

At this point, there is a risk of hitting some stuff that’s just a phase. For example, the new Elbow album The Take-Off And Landing Of Everything has lasted well, but I imagine it won’t be with me forever. Their classic The Seldom Seen Kid is a bit of an evergreen though.

Every year for a while now, around the time the sun comes out, I pull out The Duckworth Lewis Method album, and their 2013 release Sticky Wickets has joined it this time. Good times, very seasonal, if sometimes a bit loud and jangly for heavy work deadlines.

At the opposite end of the spectrum to most things we’ve talked about so far, I sometimes like a little higher-energy pop music, especially when crashing out first drafts. I’ve got the three-disc Genesis Platinum Collection for a lot of this, for better or worse. Also: the second Little Boots album Nocturnes, which really deserved more attention, and The Bones Of What You Believe by CHVRCHES.

That’s probably enough music to be getting on with – what can I say, after following Kieron Gillen on Tumblr for long enough, you start to think about the role of music in your writing. If you have any recommendations in a similar vein, feel free to leave them in the comments below. Ambient stuff in the style of SPEKTRMODULE would be particularly interesting to me – need a precise level of atmospheric but not too attention-grabbing.

Best of 2013 – Movies, Music and Podcasts Edition

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As half-predicted in last week’s WriteBlog, my fiction-writing has slowed to a standstill thanks to festive distractions and an inconvenient cold. I’m just about keeping up with Hobson & Choi commitments, but aside from those, all quiet.

So, both to keep this blog ticking over and because I genuinely love reviewing stuff, I’m going to do a few posts about stories, shows and stuff I enjoyed during 2013. These are in no particular order and may involve items released pre-2013 that I’ve only just got round to dealing with, though I’ll try to keep those to a minimum.

This time out: movies, music and podcasts. Subsequent posts will cover books, comics and TV.

Movies

Django Unchained

My film viewing has been slack, so this shouldn’t be a long segment. My favourite film from 2013 was Django Unchained, released on January 10th in the UK, so it does count. The ending ran a bit long, but I enjoyed the characters and knowing meta-Western aesthetic a lot. Christoph Waltz was as amazing as everyone says, but no-one was bad in this movie. Well, except Tarantino during his cameo.

Elsewhere, I didn’t even keep up with superhero movies that well – not seen Man of Steel or The Wolverine – but Iron Man 3 was excellent, one of the best Marvel movies bar Avengers and maybe the first Iron Man. Heavy on character and light on costumed punch-ups, but I think we’re all getting a bit numb to shiny fights anyway.

Speaking of which, Thor: The Dark World was decent superhero fun-action, but we’re so saturated with these films at the moment, “decent” isn’t necessarily enough to make a huge impact. Still, it was enjoyable and didn’t let the side down.

The World’s End was a fun cap-off to the Cornetto trilogy that has been rumbling through my entire adulthood; Zero Dark Thirty has already been reviewed on this very blog, and was compelling and light on triumphalism; I finally saw The Hunger Games just as everyone else watched the sequel and it did a great job of capturing what I liked about the books and converting the unfilmable parts into film.

Also saw Looper and yes, that was a dynamic, entertaining sci-fi movie, although maybe I’ve watched too much Doctor Who to be totally blown away by time travel mindscrewery.

Music

Arcade Fire - Reflektor

This should be even shorter as I’ve dropped out of current music almost entirely – Frank Turner released Tape Deck Heart, which was listenable and stayed on rotation for a while, but the new Arcade Fire lasted even longer, especially once I cut out the draggy second and third tracks. Seriously, try it yourself if you’re struggling to get into Reflektor – cutting We Exist especially makes a difference.

The Duckworth Lewis Method debuted Sticky Wickets, their second cricket-pop album. Yes, I’m aware songs about cricket veer into novelty music territory, but since half the band is indie-pop maestro Neil Hannon (of The Divine Comedy), it was still excellent, catchy work. Recommended, especially if you’ve enjoyed Hannon’s stuff in the past.

Finally, we dive full-on into the novelty music vortex, as both of the former Amateur Transplants duo released new parody albums in the last few months. Adam Kay’s album Specimens features more inventive offensiveness, whereas Suman Biswas’s Still Alive After Amateur Transplants is catchier and longer. Both are good purchases if you enjoyed their previous work, or Weird Al-style word-swapping pun-parodies in general.

Podcasts

The Bugle

The podcast champion of this year is probably satirical-surreal mocknewscast The Bugle, even though it always is and they’re almost too obvious a choice. The schedule was patchy at times this year, probably due to John Oliver’s increasing stateside celebrity, but news stories like the US government shutdown and the UK’s huge pig semen exports meant they were always on form when they did release.

Elsewhere, I subscribed to Welcome to Nightvale like everyone else in the geekosphere, and yes, it is excellent. Creepy, funny, endearing, generally lovely. Perhaps less predictably, I also listened to the entire backlog of Me1 vs Me2 Snooker with Richard Herring. It’s an acquired taste, perhaps best kept for when you’re also doing something else, but I got strangely into it.

Daniel Ruiz Tizon, South London’s master of darkly comic melancholy, seems to have put his Daniel Ruiz Tizon is Available podcast on hiatus for now. However, he did also write and star in The Letter for Resonance FM, a tragicomic series of monologues that distilled the best of his recent work into a single run. If you’ve never tried his stuff before, this is definitely the one to go for, and if the end of his regular show means more work like The Letter, I will have to grin and bear it.

House To Astonish

Finally, I listen to a few podcasts about comics, the best of which continues to be House to Astonish, dissecting recent comic book news and releases with exactly the right levels of fannish enthusiasm, cynicism and good humour. I also picked up Silence! this year, which also has good thoughts, analysis and chat. And yes, despite reading largely American comics, I only seem to like comics podcasts hosted by British folks.

Not entirely a podcast, but the makers of Alternate Cover also released a sci-fi sitcom called A Brief History of Time Travel this year, which is worth a look if you enjoy the Hitchhiker’s Guide/Red Dwarf Brit sci-fi comedy genre.

And that is it for now. Hopefully there’s stuff in there you haven’t already seen and might consider giving a shot. If I’ve missed anything of note, let me know in the comments below – especially in the podcast category, always looking for more good listening. I shall return in the near future to cover another category or two – probably Books & Comics unless plans change.

The End Of The Year Is Nigh

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Believe it or not, when I posted my brief and innocuous Christmas message last week, I received a complaint from one reader that I hadn’t produced something more substantial. The fact I’d provided a 2000 word story about Christmas a few days previously didn’t seem to placate this guy.

So it’s really entirely his fault, the moaning bastard, that I’m about to inflict a full-length End Of Year blog post on you. I’m planning on listing my own 2011 highlights, then outlining the best cultural “stuff” I have enjoyed during the period. If that floats your boat, read on.

Me, My Writing And I

I generally don’t talk about my life much on this blog, because I already do that on Twitter, and at a length I’m amazed anyone can stand. But just for the record, here are the events that leap out at me from 2011.
  • First published fiction work! That was always going to top the list, really. If you want to buy said story, details are here. It’s 12,000 words long and I’m quite proud of it.
  • And in general, I entered the second year of my creative writing MA. Aside from the current life-ruining essay, I’ve enjoyed it. Some of the feedback has been intense, but in a good way. Mostly.
  • Left the British Isles for the first time in two years, for 48 glorious hours in Belgium. This has made me nostalgic for the days when I could afford real holidays.
  • Moved from Android phone to iPhone. Positive effects so far: Instagram and better games. Negative: having to use iTunes on a PC, which is an abomination.
  • Got new TV writing gig for Television @ The Digital Fix, as well as continuing reviews for Dork Adore. Made glorious podcast debut which, after about six attempts, I even managed to listen to.
  • Finally started noticing the recession, after living in a bubble of childlike simplicity for ages. Didn’t enjoy this one as much as most of the above.

Stuff I Liked

That last section went on a bit longer than intended, so this will be fairly brief.
  • TV: Not sure the world needs more long rambles from me about television. Some things were good, especially Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, The Hour, Exile and The Killing.
  • Film: A raft of superhero films, many I suspect I only liked due to reading the comics. X-Men: First Class is the only one that might’ve been objectively good. Outside that subgenre, Studio Ghibli’s Arrietty was lovely, and I completely failed to catch most proper films at the cinema. Oh, Real Steel. I saw that. Um.
  • Music: Annoyingly, many artists I like released records this year, but often weren’t as great as I hoped. Best album probably England, Keep My Bones by Frank Turner. Suck It And See by Arctic Monkeys also very cool in a pop-rock way, and they’re not even a band I normally listen to. Collapse Into Now by R.E.M. was a triumphant rattle through their style, especially poignant since they later split up. Great if you’re a fan, others may not care.
  •  Podcasts: An art-form I’ve only recently started paying attention to, but Please Don’t Hug Me is very funny, and if you like that, consider The Daniel Ruiz Tizon Podcast, a solo effort by one of the presenters. If you like comics, I recommend House To Astonish most highly. Commenters: feel free to mention any other podcasts you recommend, I could use more.
  • Theatre: I went to see the Matilda musical the other day. It was fantastic.
That’ll probably do. If you’d like a short story themed around New Year as well, read this one from last year and pretend it’s called “Operation 2012”.

So, that was 2011. I could make some kind of prediction or publicly declared resolution for 2012 now, but I’ve learnt to stop doing that. Happy New Year, regardless. Hope it’s excellent for all of us.

A short review of The Divine Comedy’s "Bang Goes The Knighthood"

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I have a free half hour at lunchtime, so I may as well do a few words on Bang Goes The Knighthood, the new album by The Divine Comedy. I always feel a bit awkward reviewing music, because I don’t know anything about it. Books/films/TV shows have stories, and I’ve got much more experience with those. Music, not so much.

Still, clearly I’m going to have a crack anyway; it just might not be as long as it could’ve been. If you have Spotify and want to listen along as you read, you can hear the album by clicking this link. More Spotify links are sprayed liberally throughout the piece.

Anyway, since I am a fan, I quite like it. It’s not Neil Hannon’s best work ever (I still prefer Fin De Siecle) nor does it contain his best song (which, obviously, is this one). Still, there are some great tracks. The Complete Banker is sniping at a rather obvious target in its lyrics, but almost makes up for that by being such a fun, straightforward song. And I desperately hope I Like becomes a single, because it’s by far the most immediate thing here.

Aside from those two, other tracks are less obvious and jaunty (so may not appeal as much to people who only listen because they liked National Express), but there’s a pleasant mix of thoughtfulness and breezy music, as well as the usual clever lyrics. See the title track for an example. Oh, and Down In The Street Below is an excellent example of a Divine Comedy ballad.

Like most Divine Comedy albums, it includes at least one song which I find a bit annoying, namely Can You Stand On One Leg. As a b-side, it’d have been kinda fun, perhaps. But making it penultimate track just diminishes the aftertaste of the whole album.

Anyway, that’s probably enough. If you like The Divine Comedy, this is another solid album. If you want a pleasant, hummable record to start the summer off, you could do a lot worse. And yes, I did write all of that in half an hour.

Four Lions – One Review

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Earlier this week, I lucked into an early screening of the new Chris Morris movie Four Lions, which I gather is not on general release for another week. So, with my exciting advantaged position, I thought this was a good time to post a review on my blog. So, was it any good?

Well, obviously. This film has been knocking around for a while, talked up by millions as the next big topical controversial sweary Brit flick of the times. Basically, the press think this is the next In The Loop. And I fucking loved In The Loop, so I was excited.

The film itself is about a bunch of would-be terrorists in Britain, trying to plan their epic, world-changing jihad. Really, really badly. Farce ensues, and considering this is from Chris Morris and the writers of Peep Show, it does so with the exact mix of satire and cringing humiliation that you’d expect.

Yes, it’ll probably be done by the media as somehow “endorsing terrorism”, but all you need to do is glance at the actual movie to realise that almost all the terrorists are portrayed as being ridiculously thick. The only exception is the lead character, who is allowed to seem sane, albeit obviously misguided.

If the comedy had been less brilliantly honed, this film might have been disturbing, but it’s so expertly done that you honestly barely notice the subject matter much of the time due to being busy laughing. Even when reality does intrude, it’s in a measured way, and with jokes interspersed.

If you’re easily offended, I suspect you will be, but I think we have to live in a world where we’re allowed to mention these things, joke about them and discuss them in an adult manner. Turning them into taboo subjects and leaving them permanently out of reach makes them seem mysterious, horrible and terrifyingly efficient.

In short, if you don’t see this film, or at least accept its existence, the terrorists win.