2021 AT YEAR'S END!

You make the best of it, I guess. I wish I'd seen more friends, travelled more, been to more gigs and so forth this year, but I can't deny that, having moved in December (and being on furlough so not destitute), it was actually pretty sweet to have time in the early 2021 lockdown to explore the area, go on lots of country walks, get stuff done in the new house and garden, etc. And after far too many years of having hardly any time off at Christmas, it was quite something to get three months...

When it was possible to do so, we did start to see friends again. We had a brilliant holiday in Exmoor with Vic, Matt, Finlay and Seb, a boozy afternoon at The Gun Inn in Findon (the best pub in our vicinity by a country mile) to belatedly celebrate Anna's birthday and a night in a yurt somewhere near Newick for Emily's birthday. I got back to see my mum a few times, and we were able to start having (mostly Sussex-based) friends round to our new place. Even with restrictions eased, travelling was a little problematic as our cat is increasingly old and needy, and seems to take a turn for the worse if we leave him for even one night with someone else looking after him, but here's hoping I can get to see more of you lot in 2022.

My band Viaduct got going again with a new line-up, playing a few gigs which I'll detail below. New guitarist Rich has already left, so for the moment it's James, myself and drummer Ash, though hopefully we'll get a new guitarist, record some new songs and play more gigs next year.

And really, work aside, that's been it this year - well, that and the below...

ALBUMS

Initially I thought this was going to be one of my least varied selections; there were whole scenes and genres I barely checked in with this year, and there was a definite trend in my listening towards things which were long, heavy, slow, emotionally wrenching or all of the above. I'm not too sure how much of that was me feeling attuned to this end of things in dark times, and how much was a result of musicians naturally drawing inspiration from the febrile period we're living through. Looking at the final list, it's not quite as one-note as all that, despite definite pockets of intensity.

The usual disclaimers apply: clearly I didn't hear every record that came out this year, and some of the ones I did I haven't fully engaged with. This list was whittled down from a much longer one, and even then there were five or six which were in earlier versions of the top 20 which didn't make the final cut. As always, I've just tried to be honest and gone for the albums that I dug the most.

20. Erika De Casier, Sensational 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_4nRJxmDTE

 

19. Sharp Veins, Lips The Same Color

18. Stiff Richards, State Of Mind

17. Snapped Ankles, Forest Of Your Problems 

16. Sweet Williams, What's Wrong With You

15. Divide & Dissolve, Gas Lit

14. Trigger Cut, Rogo 

13. Bad Waitress, No Taste

 

12. Underdark, Our Bodies Burned Bright On Re-Entry

 

11. Squid, Bright Green Field 

10. Shame, Drunk Tank Pink 

9. Chvrches, Screen Violence 

8. Portrayal Of Guilt, Christfucker

 

7. Dinosaur Jr., Sweep It Into Space

 

6. Big/Brave, Vital

5. Part Chimp, Drool 

4. Lingua Ignota, SINNER GET READY

3. Mogwai, As The Love Continues

2. Converge, Bloodmoon: I

1. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!

 

 

SONGS

 

10. Chelsea Wolfe & Emma Ruth Rundle, Anhedonia

9. Stiff Richards, Point Of You

 

8. Lingua Ignota, I WHO BEND THE TALL GRASSES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTRRNwWnI_w 

 

7. Tropical Fuck Storm, G.A.F.F.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akqQCtM2QLc 

 

6. Chvrches, Final Girl

 

5. Converge, Blood Moon

 

4. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Military Alphabet...

 

3. Mogwai, Fuck Off Money

 

2. Converge, Coil

 

1. Mogwai, Ceiling Granny 

 

 

GIGS

Viaduct were back at it pretty swiftly after restrictions eased, but moving to Storrington has meant that making it out to gigs is a more costly and time-consuming business, so I didn't make it to as many other shows as I'd have liked. By my reckoning, I missed at least four opportunities to see Pascagoula, and probably the same again for Codex Serafini. These are the nine shows I did make it to, playing or otherwise. As well as the physical feeling of being back in small rooms with live music rattling my brain and body, it was fantastic to catch up with a bunch of friends, most of whom I hadn't seen since before the pandemic.

24/7: Viaduct gig w/Janus Stark @ The Pipeline

8/8: Viaduct gig at the Punkish/Noisish all-dayer @ Bar 42 with a bunch of bands including Human Invention

2/9: Viaduct gig w/Dealing With Damage & Sturdy Wrists @ The Albert

20/9: T House @ The Pipeline

30/9: Human Invention/Hawaiian Breeze @ The Pipeline

14/10: Mastermind/Burn Alive/Aerosol Jesus/Attestor @ The Cowley (I left before Cruelty!)

28/10: Viaduct gig w/Nil By Habit & Human Invention @ The Pipeline

12/11: Rolo Tomassi @ Chalk

5/12: Part Chimp/Modern Technology/Ezekiel Doo @ The Green Door Store

TV

This is by no means an original comment, but the sheer availability of options in our streaming age can be bewildering. It's hard, these days, to tell whether you're still watching something or if you've actually given up; I reckon there were times this year when I theoretically had up to 30 shows on the go, many of which I still haven't finished (which is why, for instance, previous faves Baptiste, Feel Good and Guilt are unrepresented here). And some of the best TV I watched this year wasn't actually from this year, with last year's Buffy marathon (which I will get back to writing about at some point, honest) followed in 2021 by my finally watching all of Stranger Things (just excellent) and Community (fantastic, though I suspect even the show's most ardent acolytes will accept that it went a little off the boil in later seasons).

Anyway, instead of trying to write in detail about everything I watched (or partially watched) this year, I've decided to go back to a Top 10 format (although it's currently a Top 12, and may swell further before I finish). So there's only brief room to address certain trends this year: you were certainly well catered for if you're into shows about ship's crews in peril (The Terror, The North Water, Vigil) or historical infiltrations of fascist organisations (Paris Police 1900, Ridley Road), for example. Unusually for me, no foreign language entries have made my top list this year, though I did watch a bunch, from the decent (Bordertown, The Valhalla Murders) through the watchable (Snabba Cash, Paris Police 1900 again) to the pretty rubbish (The Devil's Throat); special mention for sheer oddness goes to 50M2, a Turkish crime drama with jarring comedy moments.

Speaking of comedy, and in direct contrast to my musical choices, the bulk of my favourites this year (though certainly not all of them) included at least an element of the light-hearted, and that goes for some of the things that didn't make the list: the cartoonish Terry Pratchett-inspired fantasy The Watch, rollicking Nancy Mitford adaptation The Pursuit Of Love and raucous Muslim teen-punk show We Are Lady Parts, along with more obvious sitcom moves from returning favourites Motherland and Ghosts. And let's not forget Staged (having swerved the first series last year, I devoured both of them in 2021) and Taskmaster, particularly the year's second series with its brilliant bunch of contestants. The UK's silliest show remains an utter balm in trying times - unlike Frank Of Ireland, by some distance the year's worst new show.

Given that I didn't catch many of the year's most talked-about shows, there's no Squid Game, Succession, Mare Of Easttown, The White Lotus etc here; I hope the flip side is that there'll be some shows which may have passed you by.

Oh, and the hugely ambitious space (and time, natch) opera Doctor Who: Flux, while not without its flaws, was by some distance the best of the Jodie Whittaker era, though not quite enough to make it into the following list. I am looking forward to the New Year's special though, particularly with a guest spot from Aisling Bea. Speaking of whom...

12. THIS WAY UP

Aisling Bea's This Way Up returned for its second series, and things were looking pretty good for lead character Áine, now in a relationship and with a new business venture on the horizon. Of course, given that This Way Up is a comedy-drama with mental health as its central theme, it's hardly a spoiler to flag up that not everything ends up going swimmingly. Tobias Menzies is great as boyfriend Richard, newly loosened up from the rather austere character we met in the first series, while the chemistry between Bea and Sharon Horgan (as older sister Shona, and with her own raft of issues, not least that she's getting married while clearly not over her fling with colleague Charlotte) provides one of the most realistic and natural depictions of a sibling relationship you're likely to get on the box, every conversation packed with piss-taking, concern, sarcasm, affection, point-scoring and genuine love. Bea's script is whip-smart throughout, of course. Just wonderful.

11. STARSTRUCK

More obviously going for the laffs than This Way Up, but no less enjoyable for that, Rose Matafeo's Starstruck fell somewhere between Gameface and, well, Notting Hill. Matafeo's Jessie has a New Year's one-night stand with a feller called Tom - who turns out to be a famous movie star. The rest of the series takes us through the year's seasons as the pair, despite both being good-looking and witty and with a chemistry (that word again) seemingly suggesting they're made for each other, absolutely fail to get together. It's clearly a very rom-commy premise - and Jessie's dance through the streets on her way home from said one-night stand even tilts into something resembling big musical choreography - but it also has a lot to say about the malaise of late-20-something life and the loneliness of the big city. And if the small screen hasn't been notably lacking in charismatic but gaffe-prone leading ladies of late, trust that Matafeo's charisma and gift for both verbal and physical comedy makes Starstruck irresistible.

10. MIDNIGHT MASS

Midnight Mass seems to start as one type of show, and gradually, through the turning of multiple connected screws, becomes something else entirely. Initially, it's the not unfamiliar story of a man returning to the small, isolated community of his youth, and to his family and his childhood sweetheart, following the derailing of his life through addiction and its consequences. The opening episode is slow, sober and grown-up, with only the faintest of hints that there is something sinister lurking in the background. Well, sometimes it's a jarring cello note, which is hardly a faint hint. But still: you get to know these people, and that only makes it hit harder when the horror begins. There's a definite Stephen King feel here - I don't recall whether the precise location of Crockett Island is ever given, but it's spiritually off the coast of Maine - and many of the characters, like recently arrived Sherriff Hassan or the afore-mentioned childhood sweetheart Erin Greene, could have walked off the pages of one of his novels. The most remarkable performance comes from Hamish Linklater as the island's temporary (or is he?) new priest Father Paul Hill, chewing scenery even in his quieter moments. At once a dissection of faith and a journey into abject horror, the slowburning nature of Midnight Mass only increases its spellbinding intensity. 

9. BACK

Weirdly - and I certainly didn't plan this when I put them back to back here - there is, sort of, a similarity between Midnight Mass and Mitchell & Webb comedy-drama Back. In the latter's first series, Webb's Andrew returned to what he claimed was the pub-owning family who fostered him as a child, and his devious, tricksterish qualities, evident only to his supposed brother, Mitchell's Stephen (and the viewer) crackled with a malevolence that wouldn't have been out of place on Crockett Island. There's even a priest in evidence, though in Back he's dopey rather than intense. Anyway, Back's second series, much delayed not only by Covid but some serious health issues for Webb, was another dark treat, somewhere between sitcom and outright psychodrama - though characters like Geoffrey McGivern's Geoff, and Oliver Maltman and Jessica Gunning's husband-and-wife bar team, kept the laughs coming. A genuinely surprise ending set up a different dynamic for a hopefully-forthcoming thrid series.

8. LINE OF DUTY

Much of the noise that's persisted around Line Of Duty emanated from its ending, and while there was a certain degree of anti-climax in the eventual unmasking, the "I wasted hours of my life" brigade need to sit back and contemplate how enjoyable the journey was, no matter the final(?) destination. Kelly Macdonald was brilliant as slippery DCI Joanne Davidson, while characters (and locations) from throughout the show's run reappeared. Perhaps part of the issue many viewers had was that the most exciting moments took place earlier in the series: the ambush in episode 4 was one of LOD's most gripping set pieces, and the face-off between Kate and Ryan Pilkington at the end of episode 5 a tremendous cliffhanger. Anyway, at my mum's house earlier this year I watched one of those TV awards ceremonies, and watching Tommy Jessop (AKA Terry Boyle) punching the air when LOD won was a beautiful sight.

7. INSIDE NO.9

Like Line Of Duty, Inside No.9 is pretty much guaranteed to make it into my End-Of-The-Year lists. By its very nature, it's inconsistent, each self-contained story different in tone and style. Opening with the Commedia Dell'arte-inspired Wuthering Heist, with its masks, farce and fourth wall-breaking was a bold move, as this episode certainly wouldn't have been for everybody - but it did prove that showrunners Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton haven't stopped searching for new ideas. Everyone will have their own favourite episodes, but for me the pick of the bunch were Hurry Up And Wait, guest-starring Line Of Duty's Adrian Dunbar as a particularly odious version of himself, which combined a sort of kitchen sink Extras vibe with a sinister mystery, and the closing Last Night Of The Proms, an exploration of Brexit-fueled jingoism, poisonous family dynamics and religious allegory in such a masterful way that I really must rewatch it.

6. SHETLAND

By all accounts, Shetland garners very good viewing figures for the BBC, and is almost certainly viewed (in the UK, at least) by more people than many acclaimed Netflix series. And yet, it still feels like something of an underdog, slightly unappreciated despite being the best and most consistent crime drama on our screens. For the first time, this sixth series dipped into its past by reintroducing an old adversary alongside a typically knotty murder plot, while various faultlines opened up in the lead characters' lives. There was a strong theme of past sins returning to haunt the present, along with a moving sub-plot about Perez's dad's dementia. And, again for the first time, we ended on a cliffhanger, its only comfort being that we'll definitely be getting another series of this wonderful show.

Once again, this wasn't planned, but it would be remiss of me not to note that I've just talked about three sixth series in a row. Yep, 666 and all that.

5. THE OUTLAWS

Let's move on to something new, then. The Outlaws was, simply, way better than it had any right to be. I've not really followed any of Stephen Merchant's career since The Office and Extras, but I definitely felt that his sense of humour and my own had diverged in the years since. As it turned out, this comedy drama (yes, another one, and it won't be the last!) really was something special. Much was made in the pre-publicity of the presence of Christopher Walken, and it's pretty hard not to view that as something of a coup, but this was very much an ensemble piece, with newcomer (to me) Rhianne Barreto the standout. Given that the supporting cast included the likes of Dolly Wells, Nina Wadia, Richard E Grant and Ian McElhinney, this was not a production lacking in talent. But perhaps what was best about The Outlaws was that it really worked as a drama, and at times a pretty tense one at that, and that by its end you genuinely cared about all of its principal characters, even the ones that might have started out looking a little like cyphers.

4. THE GREAT

This comedy drama (yeah, yeah) finds us in 18th Century Russia, as Peter III's young bride Catherine arrives at his palace. Nicholas Hoult gives a riotous performance as the Emperor as a young tyrant driven only by hedonism and his desire for sex, violence and gluttony, probably in that order. There was a point in the first episode where I was concerned the entire series was going to ask little more of us than to find Peter's behaviour hilarious, but as Catherine realises her own desires will forever be sidelined and reveals her steely core, The Great becomes so much more than the historical romp it intially promised. Once again, there's an excellent cast, playing characters who soon develop between their initial, slightly one-dimensional roles - too many to mention, though certainly including Adam Godley's pious archbishop, Sacha Dhawan's bookish count, Douglas Hodge's drunken general and Phoebe Fox's fallen-from-grace aristo-turned-maid. With an atmosphere of terror where the tightrope between favour and disfavour is shaky and a slip can be fatal, Peter's court somewhat reminded me of The Death Of Stalin, suggesting that regardless of political system this was still how things were done in these parts centuries later. Anyway, the first series ended on an attempted coup, and the second has already started airing. Huzzah!

3. SEX EDUCATION

For all its flagrant indecency, there's something very, well, decent about Sex Education. Its writers ensure that even characters who've previously been antagonists or irritants are given, over time, the chance to be portrayed in a more rounded, sympathetic way. We saw this with bully Adam in previous series, and I'd say this time round it was true of his dad, Ruby and Isaac. For all the obvious unreality of the show, with its strange sense of being out of place and time, and a school quite unlike any that actually exist, there's something that feels true in this responsible way of dealing with its characters. Even this season's Big Bad - new headteacher Hope, whose breezy (initial) affability conceals a desire for conformity that borders on the fascistic - is given vulnerabilities that prevent her being a straight-up baddy. 

The core cast are all present and correct, and given storylines which keep the series interesting. There is drama both brash and subtle, and points where I genuinely worried for Eric and Lily's well-being, only to be blindsided by another character unexpectedly being in mortal peril. Of course, there is also comedy, not least a distinctly Inbetweeners-esque sequence involving human faeces on a school trip. But perhaps the most important component of the show is the debate, brought about by Hope's policies, regarding the right way to deal with sex and sexuality in schools. Spoiler: probably not by mandating abstinence.

2. BUMP

The surprise hit of the year, for me, was this Australian - you guessed it - comedy drama, about that classic soap staple, the unexpected pregnancy. That's unexpected as in nobody, teenage mum Oly included, knows about it until her waters break. I guess somebody needed more Sex Education, hey?

In fact, there are hints of Sex Education about Bump - clever dialogue, a diverse cast (in terms of both race and sexuality) and a willingness to give the adult characters their own stories. But Bump is unquestionably its own thing, with a heartwarming quality that creeps up on you and a no-bullshit sense of humour that feels distinctly Aussie. As much as Oly and her babydaddy Santi are out of their depth, we're shown that the adults around them are equally capable of fucking things up. Bump was a delightful new arrival.

1. IT'S A SIN

Russell T Davies's last joint Years And Years followed a family through a decade to explore a speculative dystopian future. It's A Sin follows an ad hoc family through a decade to explore an all-too-real tragic past. Years And Years was bold and brilliant, but now feels like a warm-up: It's A Sin is a masterpiece.

A joyful celebration that gradually but inexorably gives way to a mournful requiem for lost youth, it begins by capturing the wonderful abandon of the early 80s gay scene, particularly when seen through the eyes of someone escaping the dull, straight provinces. I can't report on the veracity of the depiction, given that I was in primary school in Somerset at the time, but the main thing is that the bravura direction makes it look like the most exciting, joyous, uninhibited period. But even from the first episode, a new disease is also beginning to creep into the narrative. We know what's coming.

Credit is due to Davies and his cast for balancing this sense of impending doom with hedonism and laughter. Olly Alexander (out of Years & Years, the band) captures central figure Ritchie's story arc wonderfully - frankly, the guy is a bit of a twat, which is a bold move for the de facto lead, but his vulnerabilities make him lovable nonetheless. There's also something about the devotion he inspires in his friends, particularly Jill, played by Lydia West (out of Years And Years, the show) that means he's never irredeemable. And while we see something of the families of Colin and Roscoe, it's Ritchie's background which most informs the piece. There's a point in the final episode featuring Jill and Ritchie's mum (played, with customary brilliance, by Keeley Hawes) which is probably the single best scene of 2021.

Like much of the music that soundtracks it, It's A Sin is simultaneously melancholy and life-affirming. And what music - it's easy to forget now how dominant gay and queer-adjacent pop was in the 80s, what with Bronski Beat, The Communards, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Soft Cell, Culture Club, Eurythmics, the entire synthpop and Hi-NRG scenes, not to mention the yet-to-come-out likes of George Michael and Freddie Mercury. In fact, it's hard not to look at the current charts and think something vital has been lost - but that's a dicussion for another time.

My only complaint about It's A Sin is that 'La!' in-joke, which I found teeth-grindingly irritating - but apparently merchandise based on it has raised something like half a million quid for the Terrence Higgins Trust, converting the show's essential humanity to real-life fundraising, and I'm certainly not going to argue with that.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Part 3: The Collective Intelligence

 YOU GUYS CAN DO THE BRAIN THING 

 

For many of us who were fortunate enough to attend one (and fortunate enough that their time to do so didn't coincide with a global pandemic), university was one of the most formative times of our lives. On the cusp of adulthood, away from home for potentially the first time, making new friends and pursuing new interests, maybe falling in love...

On the face of it, throwing Buffy The Vampire Slayer (and Buffy the character) into the world of further education makes perfect sense, and not just because, as touched on last time, the cast were by this point visibly not schoolchildren anymore. Buffy had always been about growing pains as much as fighting vampires, and this new setting for its fourth season was potentially ripe for exploring new experiences.

Also, it meant that poor Joyce's house could have a break from being smashed up every three weeks or so.

Of course, not every character can join Buffy, Willow and Oz at UC-Sunnydale. Xander, whose academic abilities have generally been portrayed up to this point as being somewhat remedial, ends up having a succession of jobs, though at least some of these will place him at the centre of various stories; Giles, meanwhile, what with being an ex-watcher and former school librarian, has little to do for much of this season beyond saying "Previously, on Buffy The Vampire Slayer..."

Ultimately, the significance of Season 4 in the wider Buffy story is mostly down to various character developments, only some of which are directly linked to the university setting. The main story arc is ambitious, but arguably the least well-realised of the whole run, and the done-in-one episodes vary wildly - though there is certainly one which is up there with the very best. Hey, there are gonna be SPOILERS ahead, quite obviously...

I'm aware that, up to this point, I've not really discussed Sarah Michelle Gellar's performance to any great extent. Despite being the lead character, there's something unflashy about her acting which means that it's somehow easier to notice some of the great cast around her. Except, when you stop and consider it, the character of Buffy is so multi-faceted that Gellar really deserves kudos for pulling it all off convincingly. She has to be a wisecracking and high-kicking action hero, single-minded leader, romantic heroine, rebellious teenager and goofy comedy character, and she has to do it all in such a way that everything feels like part of a convincing whole. (Of course, in real life we have plenty of different aspects to our characters, and end up adopting multiple roles depending on context and company - it's just that you don't necessarily always see people depicted like that in mainstream/YA film and television).

There's plenty for Gellar to get her teeth into (no pun intended) in her new environment. Somewhat less gifted in the learning stakes than best bud Willow, Buffy initially struggles with uni in a way which will no doubt strike a chord with plenty of insecure freshers through the ages. She's also, of course, still getting over the end of her relationship with Angel (again, a lot of new students will have left loved ones behind) and missing the mentorship of Giles (here, something of a stand-in for a trusted schoolteacher - Buffy's lecturers seem horrible, and one will indeed prove to be).

Comedy gets a look in too, of course. There's Buffy's annoying new roommate Kathy, with her Celine Dion posters and repeat plays of Cher's Believe. There's Buffy knocking a pile of books onto the head of imminent love interest Riley. And, most fun of all, Beer Bad boasts one of Gellar's best screwball performances as she falls in with some guys (including a pre-fame Kal Penn) in a student pub, not realising that the beer they're drinking has been spiked with some magic hoodoo that turns them into actual neanderthals. Luckily, Xander's job of the week is as bartender in the same pub and he manages to save the day, though not before the episode has managed to satirise both new students' susceptibilty to booze and town vs gown ill-feelings. 

 

In the interest of fairness, I should probably say that this is the season where Xander stopped annoying me, at least in part because of the great double-act formed by Nicholas Brendon and Emma Caulfield as returning ex-vengeance demon Anya. The decision to make the architect of Season 3's The Wish not just a regular character, but a somewhat sympathetic one, is a great example of this shows' ability to get the best out of its actors. Having not been a human for over a thousand years, Anya's lack of understanding of social behaviour - and consequent willingness to speak her mind, entirely incognisant or uncaring of how other people will react - will be a great source of humour for at least three seasons. Something that always bothered me, though: after being turned back into a mortal teenager at the end of The Wish, where was Anya living? How was she making an income? If these things were ever explained, I certainly missed them.

NICE COSTUMES. VERY STEALTHY

Speaking of such matters, in a massively predictable turn of events, Buffy and Willow's psychology professor Maggie Walsh turns out to be the leader of a covert government initiative (called, er, The Initiative) tasked with the capture and study of the sort of supernatural creatures with which Sunnydale is infested; along with various other students, her teaching assistant Riley is really a soldier working for The Initiative. Now, as the season continues, we'll see the dark side of this explored, but I can't help thinking that the real victims in all this are Professor Walsh's students, whose teacher is clearly not going to be giving them her full focus and attention.

Teams of Initiative soldiers are glimpsed in the first few episodes of the season - as obvious as it is that Riley and his two best mates are under three of these balaclavas, I appreciate the way this storyline is gradually teased, akin to the way the comic books I read in my youth would throw in little cameos pointing towards later plot developments. Spike makes a reappearance, only to be captured by The Initiative, leading to both imprisonment and the insertion of a chip which causes him pain whenever he tries to hurt a human. There's a lot to unpack here - the facility in which Spike and various other beasties are being held feels like a vivisection lab, while it's telling that one of his first responses to the situation is to ask whether "the Nazis" are responsible. In terms of the ongoing direction of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, this development was the turning point in making Spike, already a fan favourite, into a sympathetic character and, ultimately, a hero. More immediately, though, it sets up a great scene after he escapes from demon prison and goes in search of Buffy, convinced she has something to do with his incarceration, only to find Willow instead. Thanks to the chip, his attempt to bite her results only in a piercing headache, leading to an extended conversation between the pair that brilliantly sends up the awkwardness of impotence, both actors' comic chops in full effect.

 

Of course, Willow also faces some life-changing events this season, but before we get to that a quick mention of the first really great standalone episode of the year. Fear, Itself was the second Halloween-themed story in the show's history, after the everybody-becomes-who-they're dressed-as one in Season 2, and, as the title would suggest, it does a splendid job of tapping into genuine dread when a frat house party is accidentally taken over by a fear demon. Buffy, Willow, Oz and Xander's anxieties manifest in physical ways as they are separated in the house: Buffy finds herself alone, Willow is unable to control her magic, Oz finds himself turning into a werewolf and Xander becomes invisible. The sight of Oz rocking backwards and forwards in a bathtub, trying to stop himself changing, feels like something from an actual horror film. But there's humour, too, with a great twist/punchline when the gang (including Giles and Anya) summon and defeat the demon.

As it turned out, this would be one of the last appearances for Oz, and not being able to control his wolfy side would be the reason. Annoying (and unpleasantly-named) angst-rock singer and (I think) fellow student Veruca is also a werewolf, which kicks up some sort of scent-based attraction between the two, and while Oz has sought to minimise the damage of his monthly changes, she's embraced the bloodlust. Ultimately, were-Oz kills were-Veruca to save Willow's life, but the whole experience leads Oz to leave Sunnydale and human company, afraid of losing control again. Heartbreaker, right? I mean, where are Dingoes Ate My Baby gonna find another guitarist?

Oh, OK. Obviously, the real sadness here comes from the fact that the relationship between Willow and Oz felt like the reallest, most earned, not to mention straight-out cutest coupling on the show so far. At least, until Willow's next one. 

IT WASN'T SOMETHING I WAS LOOKING FOR. IT'S JUST POWERFUL

There are a few examples of foreshadowing in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Later in Season 4, Buffy will have a dream where she and Faith are making a bed and the latter says, "Little sister's coming" - something which won't make any sense until the following series. But there's another one in Season 3's Doppelgangland, where Vampire Willow gets a little amorous with real-world Willow, prompting the latter to say, "That's me as a vampire? I'm so evil and...skanky. And I think I'm kinda gay." Buffy reassures her by saying that a vamp's personality is nothing to do with how they were as a human, swiftly cutting off Angel as he replies, "Well, actually..."

Tara is introduced in Hush, an episode we'll deal with shortly. She's a fellow member of Willow's Wicca group, and the only one who doesn't seem like a bit of a bellend. From the off, there's a connection there - in that episode, the pair end up holding hands to maximise their magical potential and move a vending machine telekinetically. The shy, stammering Tara of these early appearances is, if I'm being absolutely honest, just a little bit irritating, but Buffy is all about character development, and the slow blossoming of this relationship is one of the more sensitive examples of the entire run. Willow is cautious about introducing Tara to her mates, ostensibly because she wants a part of her life that is hers alone, membership of a gang of demon slayers not leaving much room for privacy. There's a thin line here; you could read this as a sign that gay relationships are best conducted in the shadows or off to the side. But Willow never seems ashamed of her sexual orientation, and there's something honest in the faltering but positive reaction Buffy has to the news of her friend's love for Tara. 

 

Willow and Tara weren't the first openly lesbian characters on TV, but it was still early days for anything resembling proper representation. You can definitely read this as being part of the reason for the couple not even kissing onscreen until Season 5, originally aired seven years after Beth and Margaret's kiss in Brookside launched dozens of salacious and/or disapproving headlines in the UK press. Strangely, this slow build only made the relationship feel more romantic and genuine. It is nuts, though, to think that in the early 21st Century, there was still pressure from TV executives to downplay or conceal physical connections between gay characters. Well, until you remember that, a fifth of the way through the 21st Century, there are still people happily declaring their homophobia online every day. And there was, of course, backlash from a section of the Buffy fanbase at the time, and while some of that was probably down to the popularity of Oz, a certain amount was surely downright bigotry.

One last thing on this for now. I understand the drive for LGBTQ roles to be given, as a point of preference, to LGBTQ actors, but I can't imagine anyone complaining about the performances of Alyson Hannigan and Amber Benson here, neither of whom identify as gay in real life. And while introducing new gay characters rather than "turning" existing ones gay can also be positive, Willow's coming out is handled sensitively and with real impact.

CAN'T EVEN SHOUT, CAN'T EVEN CRY

So, on to Hush. As well as introducing Tara (and, for fans of hetero couplings, featuring Buffy and Riley's first kiss), this was the most formally daring episode of Buffy to date, a largely silent (or at least dialogue-free) piece thanks to The Gentlemen, contenders for the show's scariest villains, who steal the voices of, well, everyone in Sunnydale, all the better to carve out their hearts one by one. 

 

The Gentlemen are creepy in a way that Buffy's vampire foes could rarely manage. Their smart-suited look is sinister in itself, with something of the undertaker about it, while their bald heads, deepset eyes and bared, shiny teeth give them an uncannily indistinguishable qualty. But what is perhaps most unnerving of all is their graceful movement, floating along and using exaggeratedly graceful hand gestures that feel like a parody of Victorian politesse. People will certainly have had nightmares about The Gentlemen since seeing this episode, but what's scariest is the creeping sensation that they might also have had them before. 

 

The inability to speak provides as much of a challenge for the show's actors and creators as The Gentlemen do for its characters. In restricting its principals to silence, it ironically frees up the show to do something fresh; effectively forcing the cast to be mime artists for an episode gives them a chance to reveal their skills in physical comedy and facial expression. I believe Hush was the only episode of Buffy to nominated for an Emmy, not bad going for something which also includes a great sight gag based around masturbation.

As previously intimated, not all of the done-in-one episodes of Season 4 are anywhere near this standard. A Native American vengeance spirit here, Giles turned into a demon there; much of this feels like stuff we've seen before (though the latter example does feature some great Giles/Spike bantz). Much better is Superstar, in which occasional supporting character Jonathan takes the lead, and then some. The pre-credits sequence finds the Scoobies calling on an apparently important and universally admired Jonathan for help, a scene which feels like it will surely turn out to be a dream sequence or fantasy, given that the character has always been portrayed as something of an awkward geek. The actual credits sequence keeps this fiction going, with specially-filmed shots of Jonathan performing heroic feats cut in where we'd normally see Buffy. There's something quite fourth-wall-breaking about this; as it becomes clear that reality has somehow warped, retconning previous events so that Jonathan, not The Slayer, has been Sunnydale's saviour all along (as well as various other achievements, like inventing the internet), it's almost like the trappings of the TV show itself have been similarly corrupted. Obviously, it turns out that Jonathan had created this illusion with a spell, a bit like that time Xander made himself super-attractive to all women but with more world-altering consequences. It won't be the last time Jonathan's magical abilities lead to trouble.

 

Is it telling that it's been about a dozen paragraphs since I last mentioned the supposed main story arc of this season? Probably, and before we do go back there, let's discuss something sparkier, namely the return of Faith. Finally waking from her bed in a dingy and remarkably under-populated Sunnydale hospital, the renegade Slayer takes revenge on her nemesis with the help of a little beyond-the-grave gift from deceased father figure the Mayor. A highly effective cliffhanger at the end of the first half of this two-parter finds the two Slayers body-swapped, with Buffy unconscious in Faith's body, ready to face justice at the hands of the Watchers' Council.

Sarah Michelle Gellar and Eliza Dushku both deserve huge props for their performances (effectively, as each other) in Who Are You, the concluding part of the story. Gellar nails Faith's wayward swagger so well that it's remarkable that Tara, who hardly knows her, is initially the only one to realise that Buffy isn't, well, Buffy; Dushku has a less showy job to do as Buffy, but as we're so hard-wired to see her as a villainous, ungovernable force, she does a highly effective job in reining it in so that we can accept that it's Buffy in there. It's slightly head-melty to talk about this, but both actors make it work brilliantly. It also fits into a mini-canon of identity shake-up episodes within Buffy, like Doppelgangland or Season 5's The Replacement (or, I suppose, the one where Giles becomes a demon, but whatever...)

DOES ANYONE ELSE MISS THE MAYOR?

So, anyway, back to the main plot, I guess. If it was little surprise to discover that Professor Walsh was also head of The Initiative, it was similarly predictable that she would turn out to be something of a bad egg. There's a brief period when, having discovered each other's secrets, Buffy and The Initiative attempt to work in tandem, but it quickly becomes apparent to Walsh that Buffy is a threat to her secret project, a creature called Adam composed of various demonic, human and robotic body parts. There's an admittedly decent denouement to this, when she's sent Buffy into a trap in some sewer, armed only with a faulty gun and a camera. Believing her to have been killed by demons, she breaks the news to Riley, only for Buffy to become visible on the monitors behind her, to announce, "If you think that's enough to kill me, you really don't know what a Slayer is. Trust me when I say you're gonna find out."

Very cool. 

So, obviously at this point it seems like Walsh is the season's Big Bad... except, in an actual surprise, she ends the episode skewered by an unexpectedly-conscious Adam, who rather chillingly utters the word, "Mommy".

Adam is, somehow, both creepy as fuck and slightly rubbish. His similarity to Frankenstein's Monster is so undeniable that it's referenced several times, and there's something unnerving about his actions and motivations: dissecting humans and demons to find out how they work, and ultimately aiming to create an army of human/demon/cyborg creatures like himself. He turns Riley's mate Forrest into something like this, and reanimates Walsh and her assistant as zombified medical workers. The latter is realised with a particularly unpleasant visual look, taking Buffy into body horror territory. However, Adam's actual appearance is... OK, look: it's possible, throughout the run of this show to ignore the fact that the vampire make-up can be a little cheap-looking (and also not to wonder why it's only named characters who tend to default to human appearance, when their henchmen seem to stay "on" as vampires constantly - but that's another topic). However, Adam just looks rubbish, like a shit lifesize action figure. I'm not saying it would have been easy on network TV in the year 2000 to create a convincing look for a creature cobbled together from bits of human, demon and tech. I'm just saying maybe they should have had another go at it before finalising the design. Another few goes, maybe.

 

However, it remains the case that Adam is a particularly dangerous adversary, in terms of both his actual power and the way he's driven not by simple lust for power (the motivation which, ultimately, all of the show's previous Big Bads have shared) but by something more philosophical. In a conclusion which only feels slightly Deus Ex Machina, the core Scoobies use magic and some poorly-explained Slayer lineage hokum to imbue Buffy with extra power from Willow, Xander and Giles, temporarily turning her into an uber-powered being capable of defeating Adam.

Really, the best thing about this conclusion was that it restored the equilibrium of these four as the show's lead characters; perhaps part of the reason this season's Initiative-based story arc felt unsatisfying is that it often featured Buffy working alone, away from her friends. These final scenes also provided a great shot of them walking into a room to include on the opening credits of future seasons.

I SAID THERE COULD BE DIRE CONSEQUENCES

Except this wasn't the end of Season 4. The actual final episode, Restless, is a slightly bonkers but not insignificant series of dream sequences as the feral First Slayer stalks the dreams of the Big Four, having presumably been "let in" by the previous episode's magic shenanigans.

 

It's a "quieter" way to end a season than the usual epic battle, and a way to bring back various characters in dream cameos, including Principal Snyder (playing the Kurtz role in an Apocalypse Now segment in Xander's dream) and, for the last time, Oz (in Willow's dream). As with the affinity for the stuff of nightmares in Hush, this episode demonstrates an understanding of what dreams feel like, with their own logic (or lack of) and the bubbling up of suppressed fears or desires. Spike, Tara, Anya, Joyce, Riley and even Adam all turn up in various forms, and characters move between locations in ways that, again, almost break the fourth wall by revealing the artificiality of the show's sets. 

Much of Restless is genuinely funny, though the deaths meted out by the First Slayer at the conclusion of Willow, Xander and Giles's dreams are anything but. Only Buffy gets to confront her predecessor, rejecting her exhortations (voiced through Tara, as the original deals strictly in the non-verbal) that a Slayer must sacrifice her humanity to do the job. ("I have no speech, no name. I live in the action of death. The blood cry, the penetrating wound. I am destruction, absolute, alone.") By walking away from her, Buffy breaks the spell and saves the day. It's a neat end, one that emphasizes the imprtance of the Scooby Gang and draws a line under their drifting apart throughout the season.

Things decisively pick up again in Season 5, with the most powerful Big Bad to date and a new arrival who literally changes Buffy's world. As Tara puts it at one point in Buffy's dream: "Be back before dawn..."

 

 

 

Brighton 2007: Degrees Of Separation

My first gig of 2007 was a pretty classy affair. Anna and I took our seats in Brighton's Corn Exchange for the opening night of the 0 Degrees Of Separation tour, featuring Juana Molina alongside Adem, Vashti Bunyan and Vetiver, all described by Uncut at the time as "contemporary acoustic musicians". Calm down, Uncut, you're making this all sound so exciting!

The deal was that, rather than simply each playing for half an hour then buggering off, these contemporary acoustic musicians would perform a sort of ongoing collaboration, so while each would have a period of the evening when they took the lead, the others would drift on and offstage, capturing what I'm afraid we're going to have to call "the vibes" of the two most significant influences on this bunch: the community spirit of trad folk and the freeform jams of hippiedom past.

I remember it all as being rather effective, with the comparatively modernist feel of Juana Molina's looped vocals and Adem's folktronica gelling with Vashti Bunyan's gentle British folk and Vetiver's vaguely psychedelic, audibly San Franciscan take on the genre. And obviously, having started the year with a highbrow, seated gig in an upmarket venue, I would decide to dedicate myself principally to such sophisticated entertainment.

Yeah, right. A mere four days later I was enjoying another chilly January walk down to the Concorde to watch Arizonan punk'n'roll reprobates The Supersuckers. Now, when I'd last encountered them, a little over six years previously in Portsmouth, this bunch of larger-than-life rockers kicked up such a storm that their typically tongue-in-cheek self-aggrandisement (this is, let's remember, the band who released a greatest hits album called How the Supersuckers Became the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World, despite never having had any hits) didn't seem too wide of the mark. At this stage, however, their undoubted knack for lowbrow garage band jams had become second nature to such an extent that their rough edges had been somewhat sanded down. So while I still dug them, I probably enjoyed the supports, Swedish rockers Disco Volante and Eastbourne punks H8Ball, a fair bit more.

This pattern continued a week later when local rockers McQueen put on a launch gig for what I believe was their debut (and possibly only) album. Don't get me wrong, McQueen were decent enough: four women who probably wouldn't object to being called "rock chicks", playing the sort of slightly punky version of glam metal that residents of the Sunset Strip gravitated towards post-grunge. But although they'd end up getting American management and touring with Velvet Revolver, the bands they'd picked to open this show would go on to longer-lasting relevance: The XCerts, whose indie rock would become increasingly Springsteenish en route to a Top 40 album in 2018, and The Ghost Of A Thousand, themselves about to release a debut album and a band who I'd properly get into, and get to know, over the course of the year.

Before too long, I'd also become friends with members of With Scissors and Kill Kenada, two bands I saw at scuzzy seafront venue Volks on Valentine's Day, once again not quite getting this whole romance thing. A couple days later, you'd find me at fairly tedious fashionista night The Do (for the first and only time), located in hip venue The Core Club, waiting for a post-midnight set from brilliant Sheffield teens Rolo Tomassi. This really would be the start of something wonderful, as Rolo have become the sort of band I go and see nearly every time they pitch up in Brighton; throw in catching them at London shows and festivals, and I suspect they're one of the bands I've seen the most in my life. I also believe that some or all of the band now reside in Brighton, so I guess this was the start of something for them too. Anyway, at this point they'd only released one EP, the third release on a new label called Holy Roar, and their principal mode of attack was the sort of casiogrind you'd associate with bands like Trencher or The Locust. While it would be a stretch to say that I immediately predicted longevity and greatness, my review of this first contact did remark on both the entertaining lung-shredding vocals of Eva Spence and the quirky organ sounds generated by her brother James. Another couple days later - the gigs really were coming thick and fast in February '07, eh? - the singer from Down I Go, playing The Engine Room alongside The Phil Collins 3 and An Emergency, was telling the audience that they'd played an all-dayer the day before where he'd been out-screamed by a teenage girl. I've been unable to verify this, but it seems pretty obvious that he was talking about Eva.

A whole four days passed before I was back at it, with more long-term faves Part Chimp at fairly insalubrious nightspot The Ocean Rooms. This was, I'm pretty sure, another show from top local promoters Tatty Seaside Town, and boasted an opening set from a new duo called Fuck Buttons. Five years later, this unassuming pair would have their music used in the opening ceremony of the ruddy Olympics, and while nobody in this room would have seen that coming, it was clear that their electronic noise was pretty damn arresting. I don't remember too much about middle band Infants - a Google search throws up a deathcore band from Hull called Infant Annihilator, who I'm pretty sure have never played a TST gig - but Part Chimp were their usual overwhelming selves, playing tremendous material from the first two albums at ear-splitting volume.

 

As I've remarked previously, this period was a rare one in Brighton's history, in that cult metal bands of some repute were playing small venues with surprising regularity. Indeed, in the first two weeks of March, there was so much going on that I missed appearances from Decapitated and Necrophagist at The Engine Room - though not an incredible international bill of Rotting Christ, Malevolent Creation, Incantation and Rotten Sound. As the only band with a pronounced punk edge, the Finnish openers fell a little on deaf ears with their grindcore blasts, though I certainly dug them.  

It's always been a source of some amusement to me that New York death metal veterans Incantation share their name with the 80s band who played New Agey versions of traditional South American music. There were certainly no pan pipes in evidence on the night in question, just lumbering heaviness -  a quality shared by Malevolent Creation, who to my mind probably represented the pinnacle of death metal's second tier, pumping out a back catalogue of decent quality while never quite hitting the big league. I guess this was why they weren't even headlining a club as small as The Engine Room, instead supporting a Greek black metal band. People with no knowledge of or interest in the world of black metal may be surprised to learn that there is a distinctive strand of the genre that originated from Greece, and Rotting Christ were very much the Patient Zero of this strain of Hellenic black metal, having formed way back in '87. I've not followed their more recent albums, but at this stage in their career they'd introduced a hefty progressive quality into their work, creating something far more spohisticated than you'd expect from a band called, well, Rotting Christ. I even compared them to Somewhere In Time-era Iron Maiden in my review, which I suspect may have been going a little too far.

On the other hand, I was confoundingly sniffy about Amenra in a review of their show at The Prince Albert a couple of days later. I've enjoyed their work over the years since and can't fathom why I didn't dig them more live, although perhaps it was on account of being really into the two supports: Minus Two Quartet, a duo featuring Stuart Lee out of Jacob's Stories, and widescreen crustcore champs Fall Of Efrafa. The very next day, it was back to The Engine Room to check out Crippled Black Phoenix. Charlottefield opened up, another local band who I've recommended before and will do so again whenever they're mentioned. I might be wrong about this, but I have a feeling they had some equipment issues on the night in question, and I think I subsequently heard that the headliners were somewhat unhelpful in terms of lending some kit. 

Anyway, Crippled Black Phoenix were a new band, quite possibly touring for the first time, centred on Justin Greaves, known to devotees of cult metal as drummer with Iron Monkey and Electric Wizard Mk II, but in this context concerned with songwriting, guitar playing and music of a far more esoteric bent. Mogwai bassist Dominic Aitchison and Gonga vocalist Joe Volk were also involved, though in time CBP would become more of an amorphous collective centred round Greaves, which rather explains why over 20 musicians have come and gone from their ranks in a decade and a half. 

By the time of writing, CBP have released seven albums and as many EPs, and their music has come to be understood as part of the wider landscape of prog rock. I'm not sure, back in 2007, how many people were expecting music more in line with a Mogwai/Electric Wizard hybrid, but what we got was something with elements of Ennio Morricone, Hawkwind and English folk music - all stuff I love, incidentally, but in these early stages of the band they'd yet to find their feet as a live band.

Folk music also plays a part in the music of Midlake, who I saw at The Concorde with Anna and (I'm pretty sure) Sam, Matt, Adam and Sandra. Once again, I've not really kept up with this band in the years since, so perhaps I'm not qualified to judge, but it feels like this would have been their critical, if not commercial, peak, touring the quietly wonderful album The Trials Of Van Occupanther, and its lovely mixture of Fleetwood Mac, Flaming Lips, folk, country and rock.

In big news for fans of underground American alternative metal, though probably not for anyone else, Pelican and These Arms Are Snakes were on tour together in Europe. Their shows on these isles started in Southampton where, unbeknownst to me, my future bandmate James would attempt to get into the show for his first stag night, only to end up at a disappointing 70s theme club. Happier times were had six days later, as the UK leg of the tour wound up at Audio and us Brightonians enjoyed this comradely pairing of instrumental post-metal and rocking post-hardcore.

A week later, we were off to All Tomorrow's Parties, but for the first time this didn't involve heading to Pontins at Camber Sands. Instead, 2007 marked the first year that ATP took place at Butlins in Minehead, a comparatively upmarket site in the North Somerset coastal town where my gran had lived for a few years around the turn of the millennium. It was slightly disconcerting to discover that the main stage was now set up in a sort of concourse, the neon logos of various fast food outlets visible around its perimeter, though the two smaller stages, one upstairs and one off to the side of the main building, both felt appropriate to the spirit of the enterprise. 

On curating duties for this weekend were The Dirty Three, and the line-up reflected their interests, contemporaries and other projects pretty well. The preponderance of Australians, both on the bill and in the audience, made me imagine disappointed Melbourne publicans wondering why their drinking establishments were so quiet that weekend, while various musicians played on multiple occasions in different bands. For all that, though, and despite the presence of people like Low, Nina Nastasia and Einsturzende Neubaten, this was an ATP where expectations were more than usually weighted towards one particular grouping: the debut performances of Grinderman, the Bad Seeds splinter group featuring Nick Cave, Martyn Casey, Jim Sclavunos and Warren Ellis (the latter also, of course, a member of the curators).

Cave also gave a solo performance, seated at a piano with a plastic bag full of lyrics, which took in a generous helping of greatest hits and acted as a sort of calm before the raucous main event. Grinderman are perhaps best, and most commonly, understood as a sort of late period return to Cave's punk roots, a notion somewhat backed up by the comparatively elegiac albums he's gone on to release with the Bad Seeds in the 2010s. This wasn't The Birthday Party, of course; nobody was pretending to be in their early 20s, and a song like No Pussy Blues was clearly, and self-deprecatingly, the work of men in middle age. But what Grinderman did have was a stripped-back, comparatively frill-free approach which held a baser appeal than the more ornate Bad Seeds records of then-recent times. (Indeed, I'd somewhat drifted away from their early 21st Century records, only wooed back by Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus). Somehow, I'd never seen Cave live before, and was gratified to find him a convivial host in this context. We'd seen him, Bobby Gillespie and their wives and children hanging out around the holiday camp, a bucolic scene which I imagine would have been unimaginable to Cave's drug buddies back in early 1980s Berlin, and Gillespie ended up joining Grinderman to provide extra percussion. We'll get back to both Grinderman and the Bad Seeds (and Bobby Gillespie!) again in later chapters. 

 

All that excitement must have taken it out of me, as it was a good fortnight before my next gig, another international (and very mixed) metal bill at the Engine Room. Local black metallers Iceni opened proceedings with their debut performance. I'm not sure how much they went on to do, but I'm pretty sure this was the only time I crossed (left hand) paths with them. The audience appeared to change almost entirely for Bossk, doing their post-metal soundscapey thing, before a return to black metal, albeit of a rather esoteric stripe. Negura Bunget augmented their sound with traditional instruments from their native Romania, including a bizarre horn which was so long it stretched well off the small stage. At the time of writing, Wardruna have been critically garlanded for music not dissimilar in atmosphere and intent, so it seems a shame that NB remained relatively marginalised in the wider scene. Drummer and, it would appear, mainman Negru kept the band going through about as many reshuffles as Crippled Black Phoenix, before sadly dying in 2017.

 

The headliners that night were Ephel Duath, another oddity in the world of metal. They'd recently stripped down to a trio of vocals, guitar and drums - in terms of sonic components if not membership size, they were essentially playing avant-garde jazz metal with the same line-up as The White Stripes, which was something of a rum do, to say the least.

That weekend marked the second year of The Great Escape festival in Brighton, but having been pretty hacked off with the whole thing in 2006, we decided just to get a day ticket because Anna particularly wanted to see Willy Mason. In the end, I'm pretty sure we just went to the Pavilion Theatre and spent the whole night there, so that we definitely wouldn't miss Mr Mason - that we had to do this rather than wander round different venues checking out a variety of different bands is something of an indictment of the fatal flaw at the heart of this festival. Canadian singer/songwriter Patrick Watson, who confusingly had a song called The Great Escape, opened, but for me the highlight of the evening were The Besnard Lakes, not entirely dissimilar to Midlake but with a bit more psych and a bit more rock involved. Willy Mason seemed like a good egg - he apparently performed a couple of acoustic tunes outside for the queuing folks who couldn't get in, which was a nice touch - and if the Number 23 hit Oxygen is the only one of his tunes I can remember today, I'm sure the fault is mine. 

 

A week on from Ephel Duath, I was once again being entertained by Italian outsiders in a Brighton basement - well, a Hove one, actually. The Greenhouse Effect was a bar we'd occasionally have work drinks in, particularly as there was a club opposite we used to use for Christmas parties. For a brief period, it was also one of the venues Tatty Seaside Town used, and under their auspices on the night in question it was hosting OvO, a sort of theatrical noise rock/industrial duo whose punishing performance bordered on the psychologically uncomfortable. In support were Zettasaur, a new (to me) band playing exactly the kind of angular, leftfield skronk I associate with TST gigs of this period, and indelibly brilliant Brighton long-timers I'm Being Good.

Excitingly, Anna's parents were living in New York at this point, and we headed over there for a week that May. This is by no means an original observation, but there's something psychologically overwhelming about pitching up in a place you've never been to before, but which you know so well. It was like stepping into the Marvel comics I'd been obsessed with as a kid, so many of which were set there. Films, TV shows, music... there really isn't another city in the world which had cropped up so frequently in my cultural upbringing. I was also chuffed to be able to explore the city's record shops, and particularly pleased to find a copy of my chums Help She Can't Swim's album The Death Of Nightlife in one of them.

Clearly, going to a gig in the Big Apple was pretty high on my list of things to do while we were there, and given that I'd missed CBGBs by about seven months, this itch ended up getting sratched by a visit to the Knitting Factory for a show which was part of the NYC Popfest. The Knitting Factory was a Manhattan venue most famous for hosting avant-garde jazz of the John Zorn variety, while the NYC Popfest was the inaugural edition of an annual multi-venue festival which would run until at least 2016. I should mention that the "Pop" of its name was indiepop rather than, er, actual pop. Playing elsewhere that week were the likes of Best Fwends, BMX Bandits and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, while the line-up for our chosen gig consisted of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, The Ballet, Ballboy, Harvey Williams and My Teenage Stride. When we arrived, we thought there was a big queue (or "line", to use the American parlance) to get in, but it turned out this was the roped-off smoking area; five weeks before the UK's smoking ban, it was the first time we'd seen something which would soon become as familiar as any other aspect of gig-going. Headliner Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, a one-man band playing lo-fi electronic tunes with bleak, sometimes humorous lyrics, was probably the musical highlight, but it was particularly fun to be on the other side of the pond watching fellow Brits Ballboy, an Edinburgh band who'd been big favourites of John Peel, for whom they recorded four sessions as well as scoring multiple Festive Fifty entries with tunes called things like I Hate Scotland and I Don't Have Time To Stand Here With You Fighting About The Size Of My Dick. At some point after they played, we drunkenly accosted a couple of members of Ballboy to talk about how we were from Britain as well, and to extract a promise from them that they would play in Brighton soon. 

To the best of my knowledge, Ballboy have never played Brighton in the many years since these events took place, something for which I can't help but feel partially responsible. 

 

Back on home turf, ace Swedish hardcore band Trapdoor Fucking Exit played a sweaty show in a bar called Zuma that was round the corner from my house; I've a feeling that my buddies Hot Damn! might have supported, but it could just be that those guys were in attendance as punters. With Scissors were back at it a week later, opening up a pretty stacked bill at The Engine Room featuring touring US grindcore/screamo types Ed Gein and Phoenix Bodies, alongside UK mathcore types Chronicles Of Adam West, who like Rolo Tomassi had recently released an EP on Holy Roar. Phoenix Bodies, who not to be left out had had their album licensed for UK release by, yes, Holy Roar, were my favourite band of the night, their short blasts of grind/emo violence viscerally thrilling and stoopidly amusing in equal measure. History does not record whether they played evergreen classics You've Been Hamburgled or I Guarantee You're A Pile Of Shit, but let's just say they did.

One of the STE shows I regret missing back in the day in Southampton was a 1999 appearance from Florida thrashpunkers Asshole Parade. I'm not sure whether they'd split up and got back together, or just gone quiet for a few years, but I didn't repeat the error when they returned to active duty in the mid-00s and showed up at The Engine Room with semi-locals The Steal in support. Boris played the same venue a week or so later, though they're another band I've ended up seeing so often that I can't recall anything specific about the show, not even the supporting line-up; it doesn't help that internet searches tend to bring up results pertaining to a certain buffoonish politician...

There's less uncertainty around the following week's big gig: Converge at the Concorde2 alongside Rise & Fall, Animosity and Rainydayfuckparade, the latter (local) band proving they could still smash it on a larger stage than those to which they were more accustomed. I wasn't too bothered by Animosity's death metalcore, but Rise & Fall's crustier hardcore attack was more up my street. Converge, at this point touring sixth album No Heroes, lived up to their fearsome reputation, and no mistake. 

 

Ten days later, I headed up to the smoke for my only London show of the year, in the rather grand setting of Somerset House. I'd been to this palatial courtyard once before, to see PJ Harvey as previously discussed, and once again I'd been lured there by longterm favourites, in this instance Mogwai. 

As I pointed out in my review at the time, Mogwai had carved out a pretty unusual space for themselves. This show was part of a series hosted at Somerset House, with other scheduled turns including the likes of Mika, Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, gawd bless 'er; the next date in Mogwai's diary, however, was Birmingham's experimental festival Supersonic, where they'd play alongside folk like Sunn 0))) and OM. No doubt detractors would point to this seeming contradiction and suggest that taking part in one of these things should disqualify you from the other, but I prefer to admire the way Mogwai's success on their own terms allowed them access to the mainstream while still participating in more underground endeavours.

 

Anyway, this was a splendid evening. Malcolm Middleton out of the then-disbanded Arab Strap opened proceedings, having recently released what is probably still his best solo album in A Brighter Beat, and it was pretty sweet to get to write about him in a rock magazine which would normally have had no cause to get involved. Mogwai were stunning; this would have been the first time I'd seen them play outdoors since Glastonbury '99, and I'd forgotten how well-suited they were to performing under gradually darkening skies. Still nominally touring the previous year's Mr Beast, they played a set which drew on plenty of back catalogue, including some fairly deep cuts; opening with Superheroes Of BMX, a track track from their 1997 4 Satin EP (a #110 chart smash!) could be considered a bold move, and a track from their Zidane soundtrack was included in place of rather better-known tunes like Mogwai Fear Satan, Christmas Steps or My Father, My King. But this isn't a complaint: it was great to hear R U Still In 2 It, featuring vocals from Aidan Moffat, the other half of Arab Strap, and there were still plenty of brilliant tunes on offer, whether big riffers like Glasgow Mega-Snake and Ratts Of The Capital or melodic treats like Hunted By A Freak and the encore of Cody and 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong. 

A couple of weeks later, I was in London again - but for a work roadshow, from which I had to hurry back to make it home in time to see Brighton degenerates 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster play The Barfly, until recently known as The Gloucester but briefly co-opted into a national chain of gig venues. It had seemed, to be honest, that this lot were maybe a spent force; guitarist Andy Huxley had left a couple of years earlier, and their deal with Island was similarly in the rear view mirror. They'd scored five Top 40 singles (more than many famous or critically-acclaimed bands, it must be said - The Fall only managed three, two of which were cover versions) but, despite numerous festival and support slots and a prominent appearance on the Shaun Of The Dead soundtrack, lasting success seemed to have eluded them; 2004's second album The Royal Society, surely the record which was supposed to see them break big, stalled at No.68 in the album charts.

With the benefit of hindsight, this period of the band, culminating in a third album in 2010, was very much a last hurrah - but, on this occasion in particular, they were going down all guns blazing. Huxley had been replaced by Rich Fownes out of With Scissors, a winning character who I'd get to know (I think through his then-girlfriend Tora, who in turn knew Leesey out of Help She Can't Swim), whose frenetic stage presence complemented the shamanic vibes of frontman Guy McKnight. I try and steer clear of pulling direct quotes out of my reviews, but I'm not sure I can improve on my description of 80s Matchbox as "The Misfits meet The Birthday Party in an arthouse cinema, or, if you'd prefer, bubblegum avant-psychobilly." Certainly, if their time had been and gone, nobody had told the band -or the packed-out hometown crowd, who went absolutely batshit throughout the set. 

 

More straight-up punk thrills were to be had the following week, when Southampton fast hardcore favourites Whole In The Head and Leeds D-Beaters War All The Time presented their raging wares at that Zuma bar in Seven Dials. WITH and WAAT had a shared history, with the former's Jamie and the latter's Dingo both having played in peerless Soton thrashers Minute Manifesto, and a shared present, in the form of a natty split 7". WITH also featured Nath from Haywire, while WAAT had, it seemed to me, emerged from the ashes of the splendid Boxed In (not to be confused with the more recent indie band of the same name, as I've surely pointed out before). I'm pretty sure Brighton punks Constant State Of Terror also played - I mean, there's absolutely no reason why they wouldn't have, really - so that's three great bands to watch, a bunch of friends both playing and in attendance, no hassle, no bullshit: this is what gigs, or at least DIY punk shows, are all about. Mind you, as War All The Time apparently also played in The Philippines that year, it probably wasn't their most extraordinary experience of 2007.

Also playing a Brighton basement bar in the first week of August 2007 were Portsmouth's ace hardcore types Attack! Vipers! Like You're Smiling Now But We'll All Turn Into Demons, who we'll probably be talking about again before this chapter is done, I'd known Joe from A!V! since my Southampton days, when The Gilamonsters had played with his old band Jets Vs Sharks at an STE show, and I'd try and make it to see them whenever they touched down on Brighton tarmac. At this point , they'd recently released their banging debut album The Mirror & The Destroyer, and I really thought they had a shot at following the likes of Gallows and The Ghost Of A Thousand into wider acclaim. That might not have quite happened, but there were plenty of great records and shows to come. This show was on a Sunday, and I seem to remember perhaps wasn't particularly well-attended as a result, but they were still cracking. By chance, I'm wearing an Attack! Vipers! t-shirt as I write this.

Another interesting pairing turned up a few days later at the Engine Room. Humanfly featured members of Canvas and played proggy post-metal; The Freezing Fog featured members of Beecher and played stoner/classic metal. They probably shouldn't have gone together, but both bands were excellent, and Humanfly in particular would release a few great records; I'm fairly sure they'll be turning up here again sometime in the next six years' worth of gigs.

The following weekend, there was a very different sort of entertainment on offer with the inaugural Loop, which according to a website I just found was "a new one-day music and digital art festival spread across four specially created performance areas in the heart of Brighton." The main stage was a large marquee erected in Victoria Gardens, a green space which has as much claim as any to represent the geographical heart of Brighton. I have a vague memory of seeing Jamie Woon in the garden of the Sallis Benney theatre (although he doesn't seem to be listed on the festival bill, so I could well be getting confused here), but for the most part this was about a trio of great performances from local bands in that marquee. Well, local-ish; Foals had lived in Brighton for a short period, though the fledgeling art-rockers were really from Oxford. At this point, they'd only released a couple of singles; their Top 3 debut album Antidotes was still over six months away. I'd cool on them later on, but they were ace at this point, all intricate math-rock/dance-punk, and frontman Yannis Philippakis already seemed to be developing the sort of big room stage presence he'd need when his band got to arena. A band notably short on rock star posturing, Fujiya & Miyagi were much more understated but were certainly on their way to being one of the best bands in town. I'd worked with frontman David for a while, but there was no bias to my view that their music - somewhere between Talking Heads, Hot Chip and German experimental music - was a slinky, mesmerising delight. Headlining were The Go! Team, and while the perennial party-starters were somewhat hampered by less-than-great sound, their dayglo soundclash was at its prime back then.

 

Not playing at Loop, though conceptually closer in spirit than you might expect from a band featuring dudes out of Helmet and Don Caballero, NYC avant-rockers Battles pitched up at the Concorde a mere three nights later. At this point one of the hippest bands on the planet, their curious mixture of intricate noodling and glam rock stomping won me over, as did the way drummer John Stanier had one of his cymbals set up at a comically ridiculous height.

I'd always figured I kinda liked Yo La Tengo without being overly familiar with their back catalogue. Back in 2007, they'd have been touring their majestically-titled eleventh(!) album I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, and I headed to the Concorde once again, in the company of Steve and Charlotte who, as fully paid-up members of the band's fanbase, probably got more out of the show than I did. Don't get me wrong, though: there was plenty to admire in the band's mixture of sweet indie-pop and New York-style art-rock (obviously, I'm thinking more Velvet Underground/Television-type stuff than, say, Battles), even if I'd have struggled to name many of the tunes.

Hey, remember The Freebutt? The place had been closed since the previous year, but was finally refurbished and back in business by Autumn '07. There was talk at the time that it was now owned by the same company who'd acquired the Joiners in Southampton; whether or not this was the case, the stage had been moved and widened, from the left hand to the back wall, in exactly the same way the Joiners had been adapted a decade or so earlier. The movement of the layout necessitated a hugely annoying pillar, something of a staple for Brighton venues at the time, and there were still teething problems with the sound when Johnny Truant played a low-key show there, with support from ace fellow locals Thrown To The Wolves and instru-metal types Latitudes.

The rucksack-hawking Eastpak Antidote Tour tended towards North American poppy punk and metally hardcore, but for reasons known only to themselves they decided that their Autumn '07 offering would focus on Euro-metal. I was despatched, once again, to the Concorde, to cast my critical eyes'n'ears over four bands, only one of which was really any good. Headliners Soilwork played functional melo-death, Caliban's two-dimensional metalcore had me lamenting the waste of a good Shakespeare reference and openers Sonic Syndicate felt like a pop group, or possibly a Eurovision entry, in metal clothing. Dark Tranquillity provided the evening's by-a-country-mile highlight, annoying spelling and all; their take on melodic death metal had real class, and vocalist Mikael Stanne was in possession of a winning amount of old-school showmanship. Years later, at a Black Label Society gig, a fellow would tell me I looked like "the singer out of Dark Tranquillity." "You probably get that a lot," he suggested. This remains the only time anyone has ever said it to me.

 

Gnarly Rhode Island noise-rockers Daughters arrived at The Engine Room the following month, with a pretty great supporting line-up of With Scissors, metallic screamo types Errander and post-Refused Swedes The Grizzly Twister. Daughters had thrown something of a curveball the previous year, ditching the frenzied noisecore of their Canada Songs debut for malevolent art-punk on follow-up Hell Songs. This didn't make for any less intense a live experience, and as time has gone on this constant evolution has come to define the band - probably bigger in the present day than ever.

In that present day we were only just talking about, Raging Speedhorn are six years and two albums into a comeback, which makes it weird to look back to 2007 and realise that, much like 80s Matchbox, it already seemed like they'd been written off after line-up reshuffles and label changes. Not only were they back playing the sort of venues (the Engine Room, in this instance) they'd routinely demolished at the start of the decade, but they'd switched up their sound, incorporating the sort of moody Neurosissy sounds which were hip at the time - but arguably not what people wanted from a band who hadn't exactly built a reputation on subtlety. They were actually pretty good back then, but it wasn't really much of a surprise when they split the following year - or that their comeback has been based on their first principles of belligerently bouncy sludge.

Yet another evening was spent down The Engine Room, in the company of The Plight, Thrown To The Wolves and No Dice, the later having a bit of a shocker with equipment failure and a meltdown from their singer. The Plight were a decent hardcore'n'roll band from Leeds who'd recently released a great mini-album called Black Summer, and while they ultimately failed to make it to the level of contemporaries like Gallows or The Ghost Of A Thousand, they were a suitably lively experience in the flesh.

Next up, it was back to the "new" Freebutt to meet Qui. This outfit have existed as a duo both before and since, but at this point they were at their highest profile thanks to the addition of a vocalist, one David Yow. While clearly not on a par with his work fronting The Jesus Lizard or Scratch Acid, Qui's music was engaging enough, and the main thrill was clearly seeing Yow -  a man I'd last seen playing the main stage at eading some thirteen years previously - doing his unhinged thing in such a small room.

Almost exactly six months on from their OvO show there, I returned to The Greenhouse Effect for another way beyond leftfield Tatty Seaside Town joint, featuring (deep breath) Fat Worm Of Error, You're Smiling Now But We'll All Turn Into Demons, Sunshine Republic and Elapse-O. The last two have largely faded in my memory, though I have a feeling I quite dug Sunshine Republic, and that they were doing something pretty improvisational. As mentioned (by me) many times, I seem to have seen the ...Demons at least once a year around this point, and this would have been the first time since The Gilamonsters had played with them in London the previous summer. The Portsmouth psych-rock tykes were definitely at their most productive in this period, almost taking the piss by releasing a three album box set in a special presentation box complete with elastic band fastening. The albums in question boasted the oddly familiar titles The Freewheelin' Demons, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Demons! and Black Demon Time, and included one of my all-time favourites in total banger Jammin' On The 13th Floor.

 

Fat Worm Of Error featured members of Deerhoof - like Yo La Tengo, a band who'd somewhat passed me by, despite being much-loved by certain pals - but were substantially weirder. Their most recent full-length at the time of this gig would have been the memorably-monickered Pregnant Babies Pregnant With Pregnant Babies album on Load, a label whose attitude towards accessibility and conventional musicality can be gleaned by glancing at a roster whose most famous names are Lightning Bolt and Arab On Radar. As it happened, Fat Worm Of Error's deconstructed free noise actively irritated me, making this a rare show that I exited early. Sorry, Fat Worm Of Error.

Next on the calendar was the first of two visits to The Pressure Point for very different bands. Octavia Sperati were a goth/doom band who I only just discovered were named after a 19th Century actress from their native Norway, and I went to this show because my buddy Liam was bang into his European lady metal bands at this point. (Thinking about it, his band King Serious might have supported too.) More Scandi thrills at The Pressure Point followed a week or so later with Danish indie/folktronica troupe Efterklang, a gig attended by a larger group of my workmates (though not, I fear, Liam).

Louisville punks Coliseum had released one of my favourite albums of the year with their second full-length No Salvation, so it was cool to get a chance to see them at The Engine Room a few days before Christmas. Sharing a name with countless venues around the world, not to mention semi-sharing it with prog rock oldsters Colosseum, has made it nigh-on impossible to check who else played, though. No such problem with my last gig of 2007. Even in a town as relentless as Brighton, it's pretty unusual to find much of anything going on in the Christmas Gooch (AKA the last week of the year), but 80s Matchbox decided to throw a low-key party at The Engine Room, with support from Nottingham post-punks Wander Phantom, local riff-racketeers Motorbikes and the admirably dumb Mexican wrestling/thrashcore tag team Los Mendozas. Not sure whether it was the post-Xmas comedown or just the result of the often-inadequate Engine Room sound, but this wasn't quite the triumph of the Barfly show five months earlier. Most notably, Guy McKnight cut a rather more restrained figure, perhaps to the bemusement of his bandmates, one of whom thanked me for noting it in an otherwise favourable review published the other side of the New Year.

And that, clearly, is where we'll end it this time. Next time... well, next time will probably be another Buffy chapter, but the next music entry will see me get to grips with the most productive band I've been a part of thus far. Yes, we've finally made it to the story of Brighton doom outsiders Gorse, a band once described by a man stood on the Holloway Road as indie/sludge. That's a description to set pulses racing, surely?