Top 20 tracks of 2009

I really wanted to be part of the tornado of top 10 lists that nearly took down the internet in December, but it was a busy month. I did this and this, which kind of counts, I guess.

Never mind! About a week too late, here are my top 20 tracks of 2009, with a Spotify link at the bottom so you can listen and, if you like, post a comment about how wrong I am, particularly if your name's Charlie No.4, who will probably pour boiling Lemsip on my trousers for putting Kasabian in there, or if your 'job' title's "Gigwise journalist", who thought Dan Black had one of the worst albums of all 2009 - the worst of all 2009! I'mma have to go into hiding now, like Rushdie. Dunno why I started talking like Kanye, there, he's not in the list.

On a side note, why did everyone ignore the Doves album in the end of year polls? I know they're fucking boring and that, but wasn't it all right? I've stopped giving albums more than one spin, so don't ask me. Nah, s'just I have a special place in my heart for those boys after Jimi Goodwin snapped at me for suggesting Lost Souls sounded a tiny bit different to Sub Sub's 'Ain't No Love (Ain't No Use)' in an interview ("If you'd listened to the rest of the album..." snarked he. "Well if you'd sold a few more copies, it'd be up on Spotify..." I should have said, although he probably would have responded by asking what Spotify was and then pointing out that this was the year 2000 and that I didn't even have an email account, and wouldn't have a fucking MySpace login for at least four years).

Anyway here's the list which is, in the words of Dermot O'Leary, in NO PARTICULAR ORDER. Talking to you, Olly Murs.

Zero - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Angela - Jarvis Cocker
The Fear - Lily Allen
Symphonies - Dan Black
Auditorium - Mos Def ft Slick Rick
In for the Kill - La Roux
Magpie to the Morning - Neko Case
Sticks 'n' Stones - Jamie T
Metropes - Orphans and Vandals
Wheatfields - Brett Anderson
The Pharoahs - Neko Case
Fire - Kasabian
Ludlow St. - Julian Casablancas
Sea Within A Sea - The Horrors
Cigarette Pack - Dan Black
This Love is Fucking Right! - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Zorbing - Stornoway
Lifelines - Doves
A Whole Lot Better - Brendan Benson
Remorse Code - Richard Hawley

Click to listen in Spotify


Twenty-five tracks of 2007 (didn't do one last year, for some reason)
Twenty-five tracks of 2006
Twenty-five tracks of 2005

A haiku for 2010

Out running, I feel
Last night's fried chicken, moving
Like a loose foetus.


More Goose haiku

Rage Against the Typography

Those who didn't die Those who didn't die Those who didn't
die Those who didn't die Those who didn't die Those who
didn't die Those who didn't die Those who didn't die Those
who didn't die Those who didn't die Those who didn't die
Those who didn't die Those who didn't die Those who didn't
die Those who didn't die Those who didn't die Those who didn't

Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died
Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died
Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died
Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died
Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died
Those who died Those who died Those who died Those who died

Rage Against the Venn Diagram

An Electric Goose oldie
And these are, of course, very good...

"Suddenly, it's on barren land..."

Thinking of getting someone a goat this Christmas? Karl Pilkington has some thoughts (couldn't be bothered to read Virginia Ironside's Mail piece, but here it is):



Oh, look, I sort of blogged about the goat issue THREE YEARS AGO. Time: it flies.

And finally... Minehead

(For MBV's ATP, though, so I still win.)

Then, Hamburg!

First, Venice!

Walking wounded

Fascinating stuff from David The Wire Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which I've been blazing through recently like the bookhound I once was (Wolf Hall, you tore apart my averages and gobbled up my confidence):

The distortion of television and popular culture is nowhere more apparent than in the intimate relationship of bullets and bodies. Hollywood tells us that a Saturday Night Special can put a man on the pavement, yet ballistics experts know that no bullet short of an artillery shell is capable of knocking a human being off his feet...

Although the popular belief that many people fall down upon being shot is generally accurate, experts have determined that this occurs not for physiological reasons, but as a learned response. People who have been shot believe they are supposed to fall immediately to the ground, so they do. Proof of the phenomenon is evident in its opposite: There are countless cases in which people - often people whose mental processes are impaired by drugs or alcohol - are shot repeatedly, sustaining lethal wounds; yet despite the severity of their injuries, they continue to flee or resist for long periods of time.

(Don't worry, mum, I'm not about to go and shoot up the high school.)

What's in the lunchbox?

Apart from the time one of the entrepreneurs from Dragon's Den personally delivered a customisable voodoo doll to my office, I haven't really had that many nutty free promotional gifts (although a colleague did once receive these in the post). On Tuesday night, though, at a screening of the Sci Fi Channel's upcoming US import, V, I became one weird object richer.

The lunchboxes, lined up in shiny rows like Stormtroopers as a trio of grinning PR people looked on, were really light; I assumed they would just contain a two-page press releases banging on about how V was going to be the greatest TV event of early 2010, like, if you've got a decent satellite or cable bundle and can be bothered to spend an hour a week staring at Americans with the most distressingly perfect teeth ever (NB snarking aside, the show is actually pretty decent - I guess you could say it's V. good, hahaha). But I was wrong.

*Applause*


Update: More on V this way