It feels like this has been a rough year for a lot of people. That's obviously true in a global sense, but I'm thinking closer to home, where too many friends and loved ones have had to cope with brutal situations over the last twelve months. In the scheme of things, I've had precious little to complain about, though I will say that there was a large chunk of 2024 where it felt like all our time, energy and, frankly, money was being diverted away from anything you might describe as fun. On the positive side, we got away for a long weekend in Bristol and a few nights in a shepherd's hut on the Welsh border, plus daytrips to Whitstable and London, the Hampton Court Flower Show and a boat ride out to the wind farm off our patch of Sussex coast. I had an 80 minute chat with Paul out of Blood Incantation, and caught up with old friends at various times. And if I needed a boost towards the end of the year, I certainly got it from my birthday celebrations, seeing my Aunt and cousins for lunch before being staggered by a brilliant turn-out of chums old and new for drinks. Endless gratitude to everyone who could make it, and to Anna for making me celebrate the occasion in the first place.
This column is dedicated to John Hunt, Chris Wild and Rob Brown, and to their loved ones.
ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
As is so often the case, when everything else is going to shit, music has been a constant balm this year. In fact, it's been a ridiculously stacked year for excellent albums, with so many bands who've placed highly in previous year-end reviews returning that this has been one of the hardest ever to compile. It was a particularly strong year for noise rock and adjacent territories, meaning that this list is even more than usually dominated by bands of white blokes making a racket on guitar. I didn't listen to much (new) hip hop in 2024, and somehow not many electronic long-players really grabbed my attention. It was another great year for jazz, but in all honesty I didn't listen to any of those key albums enough for inclusion here; similarly, folk was twisted and revisited by an exciting bunch of sonic explorers - but only one such record made it into this Top 20, which I could easily have made a Top 25, or longer still...
20. Big Brave – A Chaos Of Flowers
19. Uniform – American Standard
18. Shellac – To All Trains
17. St Vincent – All Born Screaming
16. Nadine Shah – Filthy Underneath
15. Pallbearer – Mind Burns Alive
14. Oranssi Pazuzu – Muuntautuja
13. Sect – Plagues Upon Plagues
12. High On Fire – Cometh The Storm
11. The Jesus Lizard – Rack
10. USA Nails – Feel Worse
9. Kurokuma – Of Amber And Sand
8. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – No Title As Of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead
It's got to the point, what with the nature of streaming services, foreign shows coming to UK TV later than their original screening, and my frequent tardiness at getting round to watching things, that any discussion of my year's viewing will inevitably end up covering stuff of an older vintage. With that in mind, two of the first things I watched in 2024 were shows I came to late, having previously written them off.
With Channel 4's BIG BOYS, that was a result of the promotion around 2022's Series 1 making it look a little, well, Inbetweenersy. In fact, while certainly involving the sort of humour almost inextricable from a show about students, this was actually a really sweet programme that covered sexual identity, grief and mental health in a sensitive and rewarding way. Based on creator Jack Rooke's own life, it tells the story of a shy 19 year old, coming to terms with the death of his father, his as-yet-unexpressed gayness and the shock of leaving a sheltered home for uni. I haven't researched how much of the story has been exaggerated for comic effect, but Jack finds himself living not in halls, but - due to an administrative error - in what is essentially a shed, along with the geezerish Danny. The latter is portrayed with a welcome disruption of cliche: sure, he's a lad from Kent with a can in hand and an eye for the ladies, but he's also immediately unfazed by his new roomie's sexuality and swiftly becomes (other than Jack's mum, played by the brilliant Camille Coduri) his biggest supporter. Anyway, Danny has his own issues, with his beloved grandmother (Sheila Reid) ailing, his dickhead dad (Marc Warren, appearing in this year's second series) estranged, and his mental health decidedly shaky. Jon Pointing's performance as Danny is brilliant, and the loving way he's written made me fear that the whole show could be some sort of posthumous tribute to the real person (though ultimately I've seen no evidence of this). Meanwhile, Dylan Llewellyn, best known for playing feckless youths in Derry Girls and Beyond Paradise, proves himself capable both of leading a show and portraying a more three-dimensional character. Excellent support comes from fellow students Izuka Hoyle and Olisa Odele, while scenes are stolen by Katy Wix's hapless student union officer Jules and Harriet Webb's turn as Jack's boisterous cousin Shannon. I devoured both series, and would greedily accept more - though Jack Rooke's cameo in the last episode made for a suitably lovely farewell.
In the case of OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH, I actually watched the first episode on its original UK broadcast and dismissed it, again due to the humour being a tad too broad. Happily, I was convinced to give it another go, and - waddayaknow? - discovered a real gem. Come for the jokes about a rubbish pirate crew, stay for a show that covers all manner of LGBTQ relationships with a deft and almost subtle skill. Turns out the notion of a chosen family fits pretty well with the wayward sailors of Stede Bonnet's ship The Revenge. It appears that plans for a third season have been snuffed out by HBO, but at least the second ended with a satisfying conclusion rather than a cliffhanger.
Of course, plenty of shows I did get on board with immediately also returned this year. Chief among them was BLUE LIGHTS, the near insanely blood-pumping story of coppers policing a volatile Belfast. Almost all of the cast returned, including Series 1's now more experienced rookies Grace (Siân Brooke), Tommy (Nathan Braniff) and Annie (Katherine Devlin); even the previously disgraced Jen (Hannah McClean) and Jonty (Jonathan Harden) were given redemptive storylines, the former now a lawyer investigating the security services' possible involvement in a historical act of terrorism. The principal antagonist this time was Lee Thompson (Seamus O'Hara), a charismatic Protestant and former soldier with a plan to rid his east Belfast manor of its duelling drug gangs. A man with noble aims but a ruthless streak, his relative calm made him a more sinister threat than Series 1's criminals, while the tension only ramped up as the principals found themselves in some pretty sticky situations - and if you've seen the first series, you know that nobody is safe. Throw in some dodgy characters amongst the police ranks, romantic subplots (including for the sweet-as-anything Tommy) and some humour to offset the griminess, and you've got one of the best shows currently running on telly.
Did somebody say something about dodgy police? In the also-returning THE RESPONDER, there's nothing but. Martin Freeman's compromised copper Chris Carson is almost immediately thrown back into the shit, set up by a higher-ranking (and even more compromised) colleague and soon embroiled in the dealings of dealer Franny (Adam Nagaitis, once again crackling with the menace he brought to his role in The Terror). Also variously fucked are Chris's onetime work partner Rachel (Adelayo Adedayo), trying to get over domestic abuse and having failed her sergeants' exam; hapless Marco (Josh Finan), trying to stay off drugs and bring up his baby daughter; and Casey (Emily Fairn), now working for the unknowing widow of the dealer whose death she unwittingly triggered in the first series. There is humour here, though of the blackest kind (shout out to the inimitable Kevin Eldon for a cameo as a dementia sufferer). Really, it's no wonder Chris is so desperate to get off the night shift - The Responder paints nocturnal Liverpool as an absolute hellscape.
Also back on the box was SHERWOOD, taking a handful of characters from the first series (including David Morrissey's (now ex-)DCS Ian St Clair and Lesley Manville's widow Julie Jackson) into a new story. Where its initial run explored the fallout from the miners' strike and its policing, this year's sequel saw events sparked by a troubled young dealer shooting a man who turns out to be the scion of a feared local crime family, its heads played by Stephen Dillane and a frankly terrifying Monica Dolan. Actions have consequences, which is why Ronan (Bill Jones), youngest son of Series 1's crime family the Sparrows, is secretly meeting the half-sister he only just found out about in the same place as the shooting. As both the Sparrows and the foster family of shooter Ryan Bottomley (Oliver Huntingdon) are dragged into the ensuing retribution, things in Notts start to look no less intense than in the last two paragraphs' Belfast and Liverpool. It would also be remiss not to mention the real life fallout from the show, where Talk TV dimbulb Kevin O'Sullivan tried to stir up controversy about the casting of Ria Zmitrowicz as a gay, female Sheriff of Nottingham, seemingly under the illusion that this was a retelling of the Robin Hood myth. Incidentally, the first female Sheriff of Nottingham - a ceremonial position in modern times which involves a startling lack of shouting at wealth-redistributing outlaws in the forest - was Mrs. C. M. Harper in, er, 1931. God, the 1930s were so woke.
SHETLAND is clearly successful, now onto its ninth series and aired in prime time on BBC1, yet it seemingly sits sufficiently to the side of the cultural conversation that I don't remember the manosphere or the more fragile newspapers getting het up when Douglas Henshall's Jimmy Perez was replaced by not one but two female leads last time. Still helming proceedings this time round, the now fully-promoted Tosh (series stalwart Alison O'Donnell) and the apparently permanently resident Ruth Calder (Ashley Jensen) have a typically knotty plot to unravel when one of the former's mates goes missing. Spycraft, a diysfunctional family of fishermen, a shady medical facility, a Scandi couple with a sick daughter to enhance the Nordic Noir vibes, a conspiracy theorist called Campervan Angus... no matter how overloaded the elements look written down, you can be assured that everything fits together in the end. Perez is still missed, and Sandy (Steven Robertson and his wonderful, authentic accent) is underused this time, but the developing professional relationship and friendship between Tosh and Calder is a joy. The in media res opening was also a bold flourish to kick off the story.
A sense of place is crucial in the last four shows discussed, and so it is with Netflix's BODKIN. A cynical journalist, American podcaster and naive assistant travel to an Irish coastal town to investigate the disappearances of three people during a Samhain festival a quarter century before. The set-up and character types could lead to something rather predictable, but a slew of great performances and a rich streak of humour mixed into the folk horror and cold case tropes made for an eccentric gem. David Wilmot (Ripper Street) is particularly good value as shifty local Seamus Gallagher, while Chris Walley's feckless driver and Romanian hip hop enthusiast Sean O'Shea provides comic relief - his presence here perhaps explaining why he was largely absent from this year's disappointing fourth series of The Young Offenders.
Siobhán Cullen's portrayal of troubled Guardian hack Dove led us back to last year's OBITUARY. No, it wasn't an account of the career of the Floridian death metal veterans. Another tale of smalltown Ireland, this one had Cullen playing Elvira Clancy, who finds herself as the local paper's resident writer of, well, obituaries. With not much work incoming, she decides to make matters into her own hands - and it says much about the respective characters that Elvira is somehow much more sympathetic a character than Dove...
So for all the unpleasantness TV drama shows us in the Belfasts and Liverpools of the world, small town life is scarcely any safer. And so it was in two series set in Northern towns. PASSENGER was a wild ride, heading somewhere between Happy Valley and Royston Vasey. The excellent Wunmi Mosaku plays a weary Mancunian police detective, dividing her time between caring for her challenging mother-in-law and getting frustrated over the boredom of local policing. Litle does she know that Chadder Vale is about to become embroiled in a plot involving something nasty being smuggled via the bread factory, teens disappearing then returning slightly altered, dismembered stags, a weird computer game, a local fracking site... If that sounds a bit much, plenty was left unresolved at the last episode's cliffhanger, with writer Andrew Buchan revealing that he has plans for multiple series - though as yet there is no news of a potential recomissioning.
More self-contained was THE JETTY, starring Jenna Coleman as, yep, a weary police detective. Unlike Passenger's Riya, DC Ember Manning is still policing in the town in which she grew up, had a daughter at 17 and was later widowed. Consequently, she is more embedded in a community variously dealing with arson, the attempted suicide of a(nother) pregnant teenager and a visiting podcaster digging into the disappearance of (yet) a(nother) teenage girl 17 years earlier. You will note that much of this reads like a checklist of modern tropes - this isn't even the first mention of a true crime podcaster in this round-up! - but The Jetty transcends cliche to provide a layered examination of male violence, sexual exploitation and the cost of people turning a blind eye.
In theory, Michael Sheen's THE WAY was going to be a hard-hitting drama about tensions between unionised steelworkers and their bosses in Port Talbot, but it turned out to be a much stranger beast. Not so much in the basic storyline - a protest tuns violent, martial law is imposed in classic dystopian style, the central (dysfunctional) family goes on the run - but in the way it's presented, and the details inbetween the primary plot beats. The involvement of Best Living Documentary Maker Adam Curtis manifests in jerky editing involving CCTV footage, news clips both real and imaginary, and the potent imagery of the internet, including sections which the viewer knows to be either manipulated or taken out of context. These co-exist with weird fantasias to make everything, including the more kitchen sink/social realist heft of the main sequences, feel dreamlike, an effect amplified by the presence of a wild-eyed soothsayer, a red-clad monk, an Arthurian sword and Michael Sheen as a ghost. Arguably this show toppled under its own weight after the first episode as hostility towards the whole of Wales resulted in heavy-handed allusions to the refugee crisis and the presence of a bounty hunter called, preposterously, The Welshfinder. But it was quite unlike anything else on TV this year...
...although, weirdly, I found myself reminded of it while watching GENERATION Z. I didn't have a fight to the (un)death between Sue Johnston and Anita Dobson on my bingo card for the year, but that - amongst a lot, lot more - was what we got in Ben Wheatley's zombie satire. Like Passenger, it opened with something nasty escaping from a lorry on a country road, and like The Way it employed some speedy editing to show a town being shut down by the military. Shades there also of The Midwich Cuckoos I guess, although in this instance it was not sinister kiddywinks but the elderly who were the threat, turned hungry for flesh and restored to youthful stamina while retaining more sentience than yer average zombie. As in, say, Anna & The Apocalypse, it was a small band of local teens who ended up as heroes, and consequently the dullest viewer would have sussed that this was intended as a satire of the way that the Brexit-voting, GB News-watching section of the oldster populace seem to hold the youth in a sort of jealous contempt - even if that includes their literal grandchildren. (It's worth noting that one care home resident, Robert Lindsay's Morgan, who has retained the countercultural attitudes of his youth and is friends with teenager Finn, staves off the effects of a zombie bite - using science, no less). Of the younger actors, it's Viola Prettejohn and Lewis Gribben who make the largest impression; the former imbues Finn with sufficient spiky intelligence and cynicism to evade the misifit outsider cliches which could have attached to her character, while the latter understands both the vulnerability and comic timing required to make even a nascent incel like Steff sympathetic (incidentally, if anybody ever reboots Trainspotting, Gribben would be a shoo-in for a young Spud). Not sure whether it's relevant, but the younger characters all have gender-neutral first names - maybe another subliminal refenrece to different cross-generational attitudes/flashpoints?
One more case of shit hitting the fan in a small town before we move on? HIGH COUNTRY was a drama involving missing persons in the Australian wilderness. In recent years, I've been impressed by Mystery Road, whose Aaron Pedersen shows up here, but it's a nice change to have an Aussie show set not in the outback, the big city or a sunny bay, but in a lush rural area. Anyway, Leah Purcell is excellent in the role of a senior police officer reassigned to perfectly-named small town Brokenridge, with a supporting cast including Ian McElhinney and, in a role that would have been perfect for our own Paul Ready, Henry Nixon. If High Country didn't do anything we haven't seen in plenty a Nordic Noir, it still proved a worthwile addition to the global stocks of mystery drama.
Staying Down Under, regular readers will probably be fed up of my annual advocating of BUMP as one of the finest shows of the decade. Heartwarming without being schmaltzy, with engaging characters who rarely appear anything less than three-dimensional, this comedy-drama (initially) about teens dealing with a surprise pregnancy hit its fourth season this year. With Oly and Santi now settled, much of the drama this time out came from the faltering relationship of the lead couple's best mates Reema and absolute sweetheart Vince, though as usual there was plenty of other stuff going on: Oly dealing with a nightmare boss, mum Angie throwing herself into eco-protest, Santi finding himself in the world of Furries through an art commission, bumbling dad Dom continiung to bumble... Apparently the next season will be the last, so maybe it's time to get stuck in if you haven't already?
I have to admit, I've only got round to the first couple episodes of the second series of Colin From Accounts, so while we're on a dramedy tip let's look instead at a couple from closer to home. BIG MOOD featured the formidable pairing of woman-of-the-moment Nicola Coughlan and Lydia West, but - while nowhere near as bad as last year's I Hate You, which it superficially resembled - somehow it didn't quite hit the mark for me. Coughlan's portrayal of the bipolar Maggie felt authentic, and West has probably never been better, but after Big Boys, the lurching between brash comedy and the more sensitive study of mental health disorders felt jarring. Mind you, it could be said that that was a perfect metaphor for the condition it sought to explore.
More successful, in my book if not in column inches, was WE MIGHT REGRET THIS, created by and starring Kyla Harris. I'll try and summarise the basic set-up: Harris stars as Freya, a tetraplegic Canadian artist who's moved to London to live with older boyfriend Abe (Darren Boyd); her best friend Jo (Elena Saurel) moves in as her carer, before surreptitiously beginning an affair with Abe's son Levi (Sex Education's Edward Bluemel, cornering the market for troubled but charismatic young men). The excellent Sally Phillips is also in it as Abe's wife Jane. If the laughter is often of the uncomfortable kind, this is one of those rare shows that makes you consider disability from different angles, including - most importantly - the perspective of the person in the wheelchair.
It's only been adapted twice now, but somehow the 2009 David Nicholls novel ONE DAY feels like a sort of modern classic already. This year's Netflix version was an astoundingly faithful reading of the original, with whole scenes appearing pretty much word-for-word from the book. There's something almost magical about the story of the intertwined lives of Emma Morley (Ambika Mod, really coming into her own here after This Is Going To Hurt) and Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall), with the conceit of dropping into their lives on St Swithin's Day each year far better suited to a 14-episode series than the film version. From the boozy excitement of graduation night onwards, both novel and series do a wondrous job of capturing the experience of growing up through your 20s and 30s - and specifically, through the late 80s to the '00s, the TV series including a number of signifiers which will resonate with a significant cohort very much including myself (I hadn't really considered before how much nostalgia can be triggered by a Suede song on a soundtrack). The notion of a 'will they/won't they' romance may have been done many times before, but compared to the slowly evolving nature of Dex and Emma's friendship, most previous examples have basically jumped into bed straight away. As I say, this is a modern classic so it's easy to forget that some people watching this won't be prepared for one of the biggest gut-punches in the 21st Century popular novel - no spoilers here exactly, but let's just say one of the performers here needs to play someone who gets a happy ending someday.
Netflix were all up in the adaptation game this year, but we haven't finished Ripley or The Decameron, or even started 100 Years Of Solitude, so let's head even further back for our source material and embrace KAOS. This bold reimagining of Greek mythology (particularly the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice and the Minotaur) was headlined byJeff Goldblum as a petulant, paranoid Zeus in tracksuit and dressing gown, but impressive performances abounded, including Nabhaan Rizwan (who we might have shared a lift with in a London tube station this summer) as Dionysus and Stephen Dillane as a wily, fourth wall-breaking Prometheus. While Mount Olympus was an oligarch's mansion, the humans of Kaos inhabited an alternative Crete, modern but with a vivid out-of-time quality reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann's 90s retelling of Romeo And Juliet. And then there was the Underworld, rendered in monochrome. This was big, bold storytelling, that didn't stint on the cruelty of gods - and also recognised that in these ancient tales, fluidity between both species and genders was not uncommon. God, the eighth century BC was so woke.
A very different literary adaptation came in the form of the BBC's MR LOVERMAN, based on the Bernardine Evaristo novel of the same name. Lennie James (aged up, as are other cast members, so as to be able to play younger versions in flashback) is Barry, a septuagenarian Antiguan who's lived in London for decades with wife Carmel (Sharon D. Clarke). Barry is a dapper rogue with a taste for boozy nights - and, so Carmel reckons, the ladies. In fact, he's lived his life in the closet while secretly maintaining a relationship with childhood friend Morris (Ariyon Bakare). All three of these actors are at the top of their game in a series which scrupulously shows things from all sides. If it's initially easy to be charmed by Barry, and to have sympathy for someone who's had to deny their sexuality for more than half a century, he's also shown to be selfish, and for the situation to be equally unfair on Carmel and Morris. Similarly, while Carmel first appears to be austere and overbearingly Christian, an episode soon comes along to focus on a younger version, torn between an unreliable husband and the possibility of a different, freer life. Throw in supporting turns from younger talent like Tamara Lawrance and Sharlene Whyte, and you have a series - like One Day, really - both vibrant and heartbreaking.
There's never a shortage of trad detective shows on British telly. The Death In Paradise behemoth continued to expand with a second spin-off show, the Aussie-set Return To Paradise. Grace continued to have engaging plots but a weirdly uncharismatic turn from John Simm in the title role; conversely, this year's Strike offered a ridiculously convoluted, unrealistic plot while remaining watchable thanks to the chemistry between leads Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger. Somewhat bizarrely, the most successful show of this kind, in terms of ratings and critical acclaim, turned out to be LUDWIG, starring David Mitchell as, well, as the exasperated, uncomfortable character he always plays. This time round he's an exasperated, uncomfortable puzzle-setter called John Taylor who - oh, Christ - ends up impersonating his missing twin, who happens to be a police detective, solving a series of murders-of-the-week while trying to get to the bottom of what happened to his brother. The ongoing conspiracy storyline is just about enough to distract from the largely unengaging murder plots (which mostly have the feel of a less satisfying Death In Paradise, set in Cambridge rather than the Caribbean), while the regular cast is packed with familiar faces - Dorothy Atkinson, Ralph Ineson, Sophie Willan, Izuka Hoyle, Dipo Ola and Anna Maxwell Martin, the latter's presence as Taylor's sister-in-law singlehandedly elevating proceedings.
It seems likely that Ludwig will return, but will it become a stalwart of the schedules like the last three shows we're going to look at? You can take all yer other gameshows, even the ones featuring David Mitchell as an exasperated, uncomfortable contestant/presenter, and none of them can match the endless regenerations of TASKMASTER, which this year aired its 17th and 18th series, as well as a New Year's epiosde, the third Champion Of Champions contest, and a kids-based spin-off. You would think the formula would be stretched thin by now, but getting to see (mostly) British comedians and actors act the giddy goat and reveal something of their true selves in the process continues to be a delight. There wasn't much to choose between this year's two main servings, but Series 18 maybe clinched it thanks to the unlikely rapport between Rosie Jones and Jack Dee, and Emma Sidi's unfeigned Home Counties weirdness.
Speaking of regenerations, DOCTOR WHO returned with, well, depending on how you count it, Series 40, 14 or 1. Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor was bold, brash and full of energy and emotion; even forgetting the obvious reasons some viewers might be unhappy with his casting, I can see how his portrayal doesn't chime with everybody's idea(l) of the character, but I think he's brilliant. As has been the case for most of the show's long history, not every episode worked for me, and the famously anticlimactic reveal of the identity of Ruby's mother was such an unforced error that I'm still baffled. However, 73 Yards was amongst the best of Nu-Who's standalone oddities, Dot And Bubble transcended its Black Mirror-lite elevator pitch with its potentially audience-shaming twist and (up until that fumbled ending) the Legend Of Ruby Sunday/Empire Of Death two-parter was an epic finale that pulled at threads from the show's history with panache.
And so we reach the final curtain - as did INSIDE NO. 9, with (of course) its ninth series. Once again, some episodes worked better than others - of my favourites, Boo To A Goose worked a brilliant cast and a claustrophobic situation to great effect, and Mulberry Close managed to tell an involving story of suburban suspicion through the medium of a fixed doorball camera. A fitting end came with Plodding On, set at the wrap party for the series and bringing back many alumni of earlier episodes, including wonderfully self-satirising turns from Katherine Parkinson, Tim Key and Amanda Abbington. While obviously meta (including a subplot about the never-filmed On The Buses spoof episode misleadingly trailed for the previous series), this also served as a genuine celebration of one of the most impressive creative partnerships of their generation. Thanks for everything, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith.
2008 was a pretty big year for me. Anna and I got on the property ladder by buying a flat in Vere Road, beginning a six year period when we would spend an awful lot of time in nearby pub The Signalman, mostly with our friends Emily and Burton. I joined Gorse, as discussed exhaustively in a previous chapter of this blog. And, of course, there was plenty of live music, including four festivals, as many trips to London and countless visits to venues both big and small in Brighton. Well, I say countless, but, as regular readers will know to expect, I'm about to recount as many as I can remember.
It started in mid-January with the first of the year's many evenings spent down at the Concorde2. This was a reviewing job to assess Surrey emo mob Hundred Reasons. Many years previously, I'd gone to see them as hotly-tipped up-and-comers plying their trade at Southampton's Joiners. They may have been in a much bigger room in January 2008, but it still felt like their career trajectory at this point was heading somewhat downwards. Mind you, literally on the day I originally wrote this sentence, the reformed Hundred Reasons, with a none-more-early-00s supporting line-up of Hell Is For Heroes and My Vitriol, announced a string of 2023 dates at decently-sized venues like Brixton Academy and Glasgow Barrowlands, so what did I know?* Anyway, back in '08 HR were certainly better than supports From Autumn To Ashes and Flood Of Red, though openers The XCerts were the most engaging band of the night.
*(And it's taken me so long to finish this chapter that they've since announced they'll be playing the Royal Albert Hall in 2025.)
A couple of weeks later and I was at The Pressure Point watching two outfits who'd emerged from recent-ish favourites of mine. Who Owns Death TV included in their ranks Julia Ruzicka and Tom Fowler out of the now-defunct Million Dead (and the latter also then on the Pale Horse payroll). With clear water between this enterprise and their former frontman Frank Turner's folk-punk direction, this lot played noise rock with hints of The Jesus Lizard, Shellac and Sonic Youth. Headliners Jubilee, meanwhile, featured Aaron North, a fellow I'd previously encountered as the six-string wild card in ace noiseniks The Icarus Line. Inbetween, he'd been a member of Nine Inch Nails, but Jubilee were as different from his previous endeavours as The Pressure Point would have been from the arenas he'd have played on NIN tours. Their sound was very indie, and British indie specifically, operating somewhere at the nexus of Britpop, baggy and shoegaze; it's not hard to imagine the name being selected by sticking a pin in Parklife's tracklisting, given that Blur's first three albums certainly incorporated all these sounds.
Sadly, neither band would last too long. Who Owns Death TV released one solitary 7"; Jubilee managed two EPs before Aaron North had a nervous breakdown after completion of a still-unreleased full-length. At the time of writing, he's never returned to music.
A sad note indeed, so it feels like a rather uncomfortable segueway into thrashcore buffoonery. February started with me going to see three cult American bands in four days at shortlived Brighton rock venue The Barfly (now The North Laine Brewhouse, unless that too has shuttered since I last took notice). The first of these, as those in the know may have surmised from the above description, was Municipal Waste. I arrived too late to see The Shitty Limits, sadly, though I'd catch them later in the year. They'd made enough of an impression on Waste mainman Tony Foresta for him to big them up onstage (though he couldn't remember their name). Local punks Abandon Ship played what, if I remember correctly, was their last show, sadly to a background chorus of the more knuckledragging members of the Waste fanbase chanting "Municipal Waste are gonna fuck you up!", which I didn't feel was in the spirit of the evening's admirably broad punk/metal crossover. Firmly in the latter category were Toxic Holocaust, whose set I remember being solid but a tad uninvolving. Municipal Waste were great, however, their crossover energy (think Nuclear Assault, DRI, Anthrax, etc) a good-natured blast to the faces of all involved.
The very next night I was back at the same venue for Baroness, Kylesa, Taint and local support The Plague Sermon. This was a strong line-up of exactly the sort of metal I was into at that point - sludgy but melodic, with roots in the punk scene and hints of hardcore and noise rock. It was great to see The Plague Sermon getting to play with bigger bands, all of whom crushed. After a night off, it was then back to the Barfly for a rather more measured affair.
Earth belong in a small private pantheon of bands who were, initially, just too much for me, before gradually becoming favourites. The first time I consciously heard them was on a Sub Pop compilation tape that came free with the short-lived Lime Lizard magazine back in the day. On the A-side were Velocity Girl, Pond, The Dwarves, The Walkabouts and The Fastbacks. One the B-side was just the one track: Seven Angels by Earth.
I wasn't put off by the fact that Seven Angels was evidently as long as five other bands' songs put together, but the way it consisted of nothing but heavily distorted guitar chords, played so slowly they could barely be decribed as riffs, was pretty discombobulating for eighteen-year-old me. I reckon I'd have heard Gluey Porch Treatments by Melvins before this point, but while there were sonic similarities with Earth, the majority of tunes on that record clocked in at less than three minutes, and had vocals. Somehow, it seemed as if there was nothing to what Earth did, and yet it was uncomfortably overwhelming at the same time. Anyway, because this is the sort of person I am, I would diligently listen to the Earth side as often as the far poppier A-side of this tape, and at some point Seven Angels clicked with me. The next time a band like Earth crossed my path it would be Sunn O))), and while it would be a lie to say that I loved them immediately, my earlier listening experiences certainly laid the groundwork for appreciating them.
It was no surprise that Earth never made it big, but they were ultimately derailed not by the fearsomely uncommerical nature of their oeuvre, but by mainman Dylan Calrson's struggles with addiction. When he resurrected the band in the 2000s, he retained certain aspects - the minimalism, the repetition - but turned down the distortion and incorporated more instruments, including drums and sometimes cello, piano, etc. The overall effect was of a sort of contemplative variant of country music, with something of Ennio Morricone or Ry Cooder's Paris Texas soundtrack. This was the arid desert sound they brought to Brighton on a February night, and it was remarkable. We'll be seeing Earth again in due course.
A couple of weeks later, I was invited to a gig at the Pressure Point by Ivano from the label Big Scary Monsters, who'd been e-mailing me about various bands. The BSM band were Chicago residents Anathallo, in the UK as tour support for Manchester Orchestra. They had something like seven members and unsurprisingly had some relatively unusual instrumentation, and I guess their sound fitted into that sort of indie/math sound that was prevalent at the time through bands like Broken Social Scene, Minus The Bear, Yeasayer, etc. Not the kind of thing I'd have naturally made a beeline for perhaps, but I enjoyed their set and thought they were more distinctive than the still extant and considerably more successful headliners.
The last week of February saw a run of three great shows in three nights. There was The Ghost Of A Thousand, supported by The Plight and Blackhole, at The Freebutt, followed by a tech-metal bonanza of The Dillinger Escape Plan and Between The Buried And Me at The Concorde2, and finally Fucked Up and The Dresdens at The Engine Room. I've written about the majority of these bands in the past (and will do again), but it's worth mentioning that the Fucked Up show was way better than their slightly underwhelming Brighton debut at the Freebutt, with Father Damian now an absolute banter machine. Talking about their recent tour supporting Gallows, he recalled "I decided there were enough kids for me to stage dive, like thousands of tiny ants holding up an elephant."
I had a couple of weeks off from gigs, possibly for a bit of a lie down, before being lured back to The Engine Room to see Discharge, with a supporting line-up of H8Ball, Insane Society and Constant State Of Terror. To be honest, I found the headliners a little disappointing, though this may have been in part due to the sky-high expectations associated with seeing such a legendary band, one of the few who could be said to have birthed an entire subgenre. They're still touring now, fifteen years later, so I should probably give them another go sometime.
A week later there were far more agreeable punk rock vibes at what I believe may have been the inaugural Ralf Fest. This was a birthday celebration for Brighton's favourite Dutch punk Ralf (natch) at the West Hill Hall, a community centre-type venue just round the corner from my then gaff, with lots of my own chums in attendance, including a contingent from Southampton that wasn't limited to the members of the bands I'm about to detail.. The first half of the bill was made up of local-ish mates: Screwed Up Flyer from Southampton, featuring Tony and Mike; B-town D-beaters Constant State Of Terror (with, amongst others, my old mucker Adam); and Whole In The Head, at the time officially recognised as Southampton's most raging. After that rabble came Geriatric Unit from Nottingham, a band with a pretty heavyweight line-up, featuring as they did members who'd done time in Heresy, Iron Monkey, Hard To Swallow, John Holmes, Wolves (Of Greece!), Endless Grinning Skulls and probably a dozen or so more noisy outfits. As well as having the best name for a bunch of aging punks (not sure how old they actually were at the time, but I suspect they were probably only around their early 40s), they played such a potent set of thrashy hardcore that, even though I never saw them play again, I greedily lapped up all the full-lengths they went on to produce.
Next up were Fix Me, a Spanish band who'd formed from the ashes of E-150. I'd never actually checked out the latter - and as I needed a break to go get some food by this point, I never checked out Fix Me either. I did make sure to get back to the West Hill Hall in time for the headliners though, as they were Ralf's legendary countrymen Seein' Red. This lot had formed (here's that phrase again) from the ashes of Larm, an even more legendary band who'd been making a similar racket to early Napalm Death before the Brummies had even released anything. Seein' Red had made their recorded debut in '89, and while they were marginally less full-on than Larm, with a style that was less proto-grind and more hardcore punk, this was a righteous racket to conclude the evening's celebrations.
The next day was Easter Sunday; what better occasion to head to the Engine Room for an international extreme metal gig? I think last time, I claimed to have seen local blasters Iceni once; well, it turns out I saw them a second time, as the opening act on a bill completed by Italian thrashers Methedras, blackened Poles Devilish Impressions and Swedeath survivors Dismember. The latter were second only to Entombed in their country's influential early '90s scene, and were still winningly brutal in 2008.
April seems to have been a fairly quiet month for me gigwise, and for some reason the next show I went to was The Presidents Of The United States Of America at the Concorde 2. I forget which of our friends was keen to see the two-hit wonder jokers, but this was one of those times I spent more time in the venue's front bar than actually watching the band...
The only other show I can recall from that month was Cursed at the Engine Room. I hadn't been able to get in when the excellent Canadian crustpunks played the Freebutt on their previous tour, so was well up for this one, and they didn't disappoint... although they would split at the end of the European leg of this tour, having been robbed in Germany and left understandably demoralised. Vocalist Chris Colohan went on to do another top band, Burning Love, and is currently in the sort-of supergroup SECT with dudes from Catharsis, Earth Crisis and, well, Fall Out Boy.
Ten or so days later I was back at the same venue to review a show which I described with the headline 'Cavalcade of one word name bands play to their mates'. The line-up in ascending order was Dascha, Pictures, Maths and Throats, a selection from which Maths stood out as obvious highlights - although what stands out most in my memory was their singer spilling my pint while doing one of those 'hardcore singer goes for a walkabout in the crowd' moves, and then finding me afterwards to apologise, buy me another pint and give me a CD. I didn't mention this in the review.
My excellent friend Ben had somehow ended up with two spare tickets to go and Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds at the Hammersmith Apollo a few days later, so Anna and I went up to enjoy a pretty great 20-track set that was only partly spoilt by a guy near us continually calling out for No Pussy Blues. We tried to explain that as that was a Grinderman song it probably wouldn't be making an appearance, but he persisted, to no avail. I would be hearing that song live before summer was out though...
The last time I'd heard No Pussy Blues had been at All Tomorrow's Parties in 2007, and fittingly the next item on our agenda was a trip back to Minehead for ATP 2008. The chalet crew this time was Anna and myself, along with Ben and, I think, Emma. This may have been the ATP where with our our extended crew - Emily, Burton, Luke, Brian, maybe Lex, Jamie, Nansi, Ben, Clare etc - we ended up staying up till daylight one night trying to construct human pyramids, watched by curious festival-goers and at least one small local boy on a bicycle. This would, in turn, explain why I seem to be able to remember less of the actual music than normal.
This particular edition of my favourite festival of the 00s was curated by Texan post-rockers Explosions In The Sky, a band who'd gone from Brighton's Freebutt to (admittedly niche) festival headliners in a few short years. While I suspect some viewed them as slightly too mainstream-aligned to be hip, their ATP bill included cult names like Eluvium and World's End Girlfriend amid better-known outfits and a smattering of hip hop. Of the latter, it was fun to see De La Soul nearly two decades after first being entranced by Me, Myself & I, while at the opposite end of some putative spectrum, Saul Williams physically threw himself into a set of visceral, rock-informed agit-rap. We also went to see Ghostface Killah, and encountered some of the issues around Wu-Tang live activities. So yeah, there was an element of Wu-aoke as Ghostface and Raekwon (himself performing the next day) dropped choruses from the wider Wu legacy. Of more concern was the way the MCs encouraged various girls onstage. That's cool, we thought. God knows you don't get much audience participation at a festival dominated by post-rock bands. That the song they were encouraged to dance to was called Greedy Bitches left something of a bad taste in the mouth, however. Now, apparently, this song is about a time Ghost's tourbus Oreos stash was consumed by some ladies while he was having a snooze. I'm sure every biscuit-lover can appreciate the man's frustration. But at ATP, it just seemed crass, like the female audience members were being encouraged to participate in their own mocking. Anna and Emma left, and I wasn't too far behind them.
I still listen to Ghostface Killah though, displaying the double standards of the white liberal hip hop fan to a tee.
Human pyramids and offensive hip hop aside, I remember seeing The National (who I thought sounded a bit like James), Jens Lekman (whose witty Swedish indie pop was rather charming), Battles doing their art-math-glam stomp... and, honestly not much else. I'll have more detailed recollections of ATP 2009, promise!
I only had a month until Download, and the two shows I went to in that time, both at the Concorde2, had a distinctly Downloady flavour to them. The first was Skindred, supported by Sad Season and Idiom. If the latter were exactly the sort of band you'd expect to support Skindred, the former, featuring ex-Sikth vocalist Mikee Goodman, were rather different, with a vaguely Bad Seeds quality to a sound I described as "dragged through a shipwreck backwards." Well, I know what I meant. I had high hopes for this lot and was rather disappointed they never really did anything.
Skindred, on the other hand, were already well on their way to becoming one of the most celebrated rock festival bands of the time. Their ragga metal hybrid really comes into its own as a live experience, and the sweltering temperature of that early summer night by the seaside did nothing to calm the crowd's spirits. After the show, I walked to a pub to catch up with Anna and my workmates. Skindred had left me such a sweaty mess that Anna genuinely thought I'd fallen in the sea on the way. I hadn't even been dancing all that much.
The heat remained very much on ten days later, when 36 Crazyfists and Exit Ten brought their numbers-orientated names to the C2. The latter were the sort of band people tended to enthuse about based on a supposedly unique selling point. In this instance, it was the powerfully melodic vocals of singer Ryan Redman, and the way they contrasted with the band's metalcore sound. (I'm not sure this would be such a big deal these days.) Anyway, on the night in question Redman was suffering from some sort of vocal-restricting condition, which rather blunted their desired effect.
No such issues for 36CF, even if their singer Brock Lindow described the onstage heat to me, in a brief post-gig interview, as "like a blowdryer in your mouth every time you took a breath". Well, they were from Alaska. I had a soft spot for their emo metal, and the crowd received them pretty rapturously. Managed to leave without looking like I'd taken a swim, so that was good.
That weekend, then, saw my first trip to Download alongside the Kerrang! crew, many of whom I was meeting for the first time. I'd go up on and off over the next few years and always had an absolute blast; whatever the quality of the bands you had to review, you could always count on fun, messy times back at the hotel bar afterwards.
Back in the early 90s, when Castle Donington's annual jamboree was a one day, one stage event called Monsters Of Rock, I'd written (to Kerrang!, natch) to complain about the festival's lack of diversity. At that point, it still cleaved to traditional metal and hard rock. Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax had all played in the 80s, but otherwise there was no sign of the changes to the rock landscape; you were more likely to get Thunder or The Black Crowes than anything remotely alternative, and up until '92 even Slayer seemed to have been considered rather too heavy to be invited, so the chances of any death metal or grindcore appearing was remote at the time. I also pointed out that, at that point, the only female artists who'd performed had been Doro Pesch out of Warlock and the woman tied to W.A.S.P's pretend torture rack.
After a year's break, the festival returned in 1994 with at least my earlier points addressed: now a two-stage event, the likes of Sepultura, Therapy?, The Wildhearts and Biohazard all appeared, and the next couple of years saw turns from White Zombie, Machine Head, Corrosion Of Conformity and Paradise Lost. I think Sean Yseult from White Zombie was the only other female to appear, mind. Anyway, 1996 was the last Monsters Of Rock held on Donington's hallowed turf.
By 2008, Download had been going for a few years and was now a three-stage event with oodles of the diversity I'd previously demanded. I suspect the first band I saw that year was Rolo Tomassi, and you can be sure that female-fronted, mathy synthgrind was not on the Monsters Of Rock menu back in the day. In a juxtaposition that sums up the variety on offer at the festival, the next band I watched were Euro power metal types Firewind.
This was my first outdoor, three-day festival since Glastonbury '99, and it was fun to explore a site I hadn't been to before. Mind you, I barely watched anyone on the main stage (where the headliners were Kiss, The Offspring and - erk - Lostprophets), as all my assignments were on the other two, and by the time I'd written them up and got myself suitably fed and watered, it was late in the day. Of the bands I reviewed playing the third, tent-based stage on the first day, High On Fire were the sublime, revelatory real deal. You will be forgiven for not remembering Blackhole, In Case Of Fire or Beat Union, who were the others. It was then back to the same venue to watch the reliably chaotic Dillinger Escape Plan headline. On the Saturday, I had the early shift on the second stage, which appeared to be essentially in a car park. On reflection, hard tarmac might not have been the most suitable surface on which to be watching Malefice or Annotations Of An Autopsy, whose aggro chunterings were followed by Alesana and The Devil Wears Prada. I think I made it back to that stage later on to watch Amon Amarth, before heading to the smallest stage to round out the day with three very different generations of heavy metal thunder courtesy of Johnny Truant, Saxon and Testament. On Sunday, I watched Invasion and Municipal Waste before going to work with Exit Ten, Canterbury, Ted Maul and Between The Buried & Me on the third stage. Due to the deadlines associated with the last day, I also wound up having to review a solo set from Jonathan Davis, which I was unfathomably kind about.
I was back on familar turf around ten days later with probably the only TST gig I attended at the Concorde, and what a joy to see Melt-Banana, Part Chimp and Comanechi on a big stage. A few days on and I was back there on another sweltering day to see ace post-metal types Cult Of Luna and less ace post-metal types Devil Sold His Soul.
Somewhat big news in Brighton (Hove, actually) next: at the beginning of July, Grinderman were playing a festival season warm-up show at the King Alfred, described by Wikipedia as "the largest wet and dry sport centre in the city." Needless to say, this was a venue unfamiliar with rock'n'roll in any form, let alone the peculiar variant played by Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds compadres, so there was a brilliant incongruity about it all that I hadn't experienced since Autechre got Coil and Sunn O))) to play at Pontins. Looking back, I feel incredibly lucky to have got tickets for this rare show, alongside a bunch of my work buddies (Anna was away, and I think is possibly still annoyed about this). Although (obviously) sold out, the number of tickets on offer was small enough that there was plenty of room, so this was as up close and personal to Cave as you're likely to get. And after a set of Grinderman tunes, the likes of Tupelo and The Mercy Seat got wheeled out for the encore, making this a properly special occasion. God knows what the older ladies working at the venue made of it all, though.
My old mucker Jimmy was back in town later in July with his excellent band Teeth Of The Sea, opening up for Wooden Shjips and The Heads. Gotta say, getting to see the latter was the evening's highlight; I'd first heard them on John Peel's show sometime in the 90s, but these legendary slackers rarely toured, so it was a treat indeed to finally experience their superfuzzy stoner freakouts in the flesh. By comparison, Wooden Shjips, though a band I dug on record, were just a tad underwhelming; I was aware that repetition was a large part of their vibe, but that night it just didn't drag me in like it should have.
The week after this, Anna and I moved into our new flat as mentioned way back in the first sentence of this entry, so our next excursion wasn't until a week or so into August. This was for a two-day festival at the Concorde called At Home By The Sea, which to be honest we only went to as they were offering two-for-one tickets. They somehow managed to cram four stages in by using different spaces of indoor and outside space as well as the normal stage, and the eclectic line-up might have been the reason tickets weren't flying. Alongside local types including Jacob's Stories and Peggy Sue, the obvious standout were Chrome Hoof, who had at least eight shiny robed members playing funk-doom-disco-psych, including Cathedral dude Leo Smee on bass. You can never have enough funk-doom-disco-psych in your life, as far as I'm concerned. I also want to say that one of them was on stilts, but that could just be the weird effect they had on me and my longterm memory.
Definitely no stilts on offer when A Storm Of Light played the Engine Room a couple of weeks later. Along with Latitudes and The Great Wave, ace Brighton doom duo Old Mayor played; in the year of writing this*, they reunited for the final TST weekender, reminding me just how powerful their ragged noise was all those years ago. A Storm Of Light featured former Neurosis/Red Sparowes type Josh Graham, and at the time I noted that their bleak sound ran the gamut "between sparse dirge and, er, full-on, punk-informed dirge".
*(this sentence, at least.)
Festival season wasn't done with me yet, and the middle weekend of September found me, Ben and a couple of his mates heading to Larmer Tree Gardens for End Of The Road. We thought this was more or less in Salisbury, though in practice a mixture of heavy traffic and uncertainty around directions meant that it felt like getting to the cathedral city was only about half the journey. Nevertheless, we made it, as did Ben's loose-belted trousers which were in very real danger of falling to his ankles as we walked to the campsite carrying our tents and beer. Someone camped near us kept playing Bon Jovi songs on an acoustic guitar.
To date, this was the last time I camped at a festival.
The weather had not been kind - if not at the same hellish level as Glastonbury '97, the site was unpleasantly muddy - but the rain did at least cease after Friday evening. The only two bands from that day I can recall both put in brilliant sets which, to some extent, captured what I described to Jimmy via email as "a vibe somewhere between Truck and ATP." The Dirty Three's evocative instrumentals were perfect for an early Autumn evening on the outdoor main stage, while Dead Meadow did their woozy stoner rock thing as headliners in the smallest space, The Tipi Tent. (Actually, I might have also caught a bit of Akron/Family on the Big Top stage, but I'm not sure.) The next day, we went to see folkpop lot Noah & The Whale be perfectly pleasant on the main stage, and I also took in post-rock types Revenge Of Shinobi in the tent. Ben wanted to check out onetime Ash guitarist Charlotte Hatherley play the tent later in the day, but her evident displeasure with playing a small stage at a small festival surrounded by mud meant she was rather hard to warm to. British Sea Power, by contrast, played a blinder on the main stage, with then new tracks Waving Flags and No Lucifer perfect festival anthems. Next up were Low. On the phone to Anna earlier in the day, she'd been dismissive of the prospect, saying "Low shows are always the same." She was proven wrong.
OK, renditions of timeless classics like Sunflower, Dinosaur Act etc were as powerful as ever. But something was evidently up with frontman Alan Sparhawk, sharing with the audience between songs an assertion that "All the people I love told me they hated me today." (His wife Mimi Parker replied, "Not all of them.") His fragile mental state didn't improve, and he ended the set by hurling his guitar full pelt into the crowd. Somehow he didn't kill anyone, and somebody in the crowd got an unexpected souvenir to take home.
After that, Mercury Rev's headlining set felt lacklustre. Look, I'm not saying I wanted more instruments thrown in rage and pain, but at this point Jonathan Donahue's stage patter just came across as insincere. "You have such a great scene going here," he maintained. Oh, fuck off. I think I went to see Two Gallants in the Big Top, but they were boring too.
Sunday found me taking in the widest range of entertainment. Brighton folkies Sons Of Noel And Adrian opened the main stage, while House Of Brothers, featuring Andrew Jackson from briefly-hip screamo types The Murder Of Rosa Luxemburg, played more austere tunes in the tent. Kimya Dawson showed up early for her main stage set, playing kid's tunes from the then-current Alphabutt record. Bob Log III did his super-entertaining one man band rock'n'roll ramalama in the Big Top, followed by Wild Billy Childish & The Musicians Of The British Empire. Think this might be the only time I've seen the legendary Mr Childish, and his no frills, back-to-basics tunes were a treat. The biggest treat of the whole weekend, however, were Constantines, whose late evening set in the tent proved a raucous revelation, complete with an unlikely cover of AC/DC's Thunderstruck. Then Brakes headlined the Big Top, tunes like All Night Disco Party helping instill some belated hedonism into proceedings. Avant-weirdos aPAtT and French electro types Zombie Zombie then played after hours sets. Sunday was a party!
Maybe that explains why my memory of a bunch of Brighton shows from that time is so muddy! I've identified from historical documents that I went to see Paint It Black, Boduf Songs, Selfish Cunt and Bela Emerson around this time, while Anna and I saw a few bands as part of Brighton Live - maybe The Drookit Dogs, Thieves By The Code... and surely some others? But apart from enjoying hanging out with Mat, Clive and Wes from Boduf, and support band The Guillotines absolutely smoking Selfish Cunt, details of any of these are not coming readily to mind just now.
September did end with a great show at The Hobgoblin, though. Opening were excellent punk combo The Sceptres, fronted by Bryony Benyon (later of Good Throb and a bunch of other short-lived outfits), alongside, if memory serves, members of The Shitty Limits. The always-enthralling You're Smiling Now... But We'll All Turn Into Demons were the garage-psych meat in the punk rock sandwich, before headliners Lovvers, the second band of the month to feature former Murder Of Rosa Luxemburg personnel, did the reverb punk thing popular at the time.
When somebody asks me which band I've seen live the most, the ...Demons are one of the leading contenders; their biggest rivals to this sought-after accolade are quite possibly Rolo Tomassi, and sure enough I spent another night in the latter's company down the Freebutt in early October. Locals Easy Hips and Throats provided ample support, but the headliners remained comfortably in another league.
Roots Manuva put on a much better hip hop show than Ghostface Killah at the Concorde, before Vessels did their mathrock thing at the Freebutt a couple of days later. Then it was back to the Concorde to see Funeral For A Friend, which I would only have gone to for one of two reasons: either I was reviewing it, or it was because ace Canadians Cancer Bats were supporting. Speaking of Canada, Ramones-style NoMeansNo side project The Hanson Brothers pitched up at the Albert in early November, with The Shitty Limits in tow.
November found me up in the smoke on two separate occasions to bear witness to Norwegian black metal survivors. Enslaved, by this point well into their proggier era, were excellent at the Scala, while Satyricon lorded it at ULU with what I described as "the direct-yet-grandiose, coldly sexual and knowingly camp sound of late 80s Sisters Of Mercy." And speaking of folk popular with goths, there was still time for one more encounter with Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds when they played soulless seafront space the Centre. The venue seemed a way off full capacity - it was a gloomy Sunday in November and I seem to recall some issues on the railways, which may have kept some potential revellers away - but once they got going, it was another fine set, mixing then-current Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! material with a healthy selection of old favourites - Tupelo, The Weeping Song, Red Right Hand, etc, with the show closing on the mighty Stagger Lee.
Still can't believe he didn't call the tour Gig, Lazarus, Gig!!! though.
You know what? I thought that was it, then I realised I'd been to so many gigs in 2008 that I'd had to write some on the reverse side of my (narrow-ruled!) side of A4 notes. The first of these was a rum do and no mistake. Blessed By A Broken Heart played a dreadful mixture of metalcore and 80s soundtrack rock which I'd call godforsaken if they weren't an actively Christian band. These days they're best known (in this country, at least) for once including future Eurovision star Sam Ryder in their ranks, but he wouldn't join until a few years after they appeared at the Concorde, so I didn't even get an amusing anecdote out of this experience.
Safer ground came in the shape of the last ever Johnny Truant show at the Engine Room, a sad farewell to a great Brighton band. And then all that was left of my 2008 gigging was two nights in the company of The Ghost Of A Thousand and Rolo Tomassi (told you I've seen them a lot): first at London's Borderline for reviewing purposes, then the following night back at the redoubtable Freebutt. You can take as read that both bands were on fine form; given that I'd already seen both bands play that selfsame venue earlier in the year, I clearly couldn't get enough of them.
Crikey, that took me a while. I might need to consider being slightly less exhaustive from now on, but rest assured that (whenever I actually get to it) 2009 will continue to be soundtracked by an absolute racket...
