The Big End Of Year Roundup Post

 

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

The clocks have gone back, the weather is terrible, and it barely seems worth opening the curtains...

Which means it must be time for The Big End of Year Roundup Post!

2023 has been a fairly apocalyptic year all round - very much the natural successor to 2022. But there have been some good moments alongside the bad, and there has been some great artistic content out there. Which I do intend to share with you now.

Gigs

I only attended two gigs this year but, my God, they were brilliant.

I had the long awaited pleasure of seeing Florence + The Machine at Manchester Arena in February, which was amazing. I had been down to review the original November 2022 Manchester date of the Dance Fever tour only Louder Than War didn't get press/photographer accreditation and then Florence Welch broke her foot and the date got moved to February so I didn't review it in the end. I think LTW probably concluded that it wasn't worth applying for accreditation again for February, which suited me because - in the end - there was so much going on at the gig, and in the section of the crowd where I was that it would have been incredibly hard for me to review in a sensible fashion that didn't involve loads of detail of what was going on in the crowd as well as onstage. I did put out some overexcited posts on Twitter afterwards but said posts were essentially about the off the scale energy of the gig and fevered/feral nature of the crowd, oh, and the bit where I ended up on the floor and had to be pulled up again by three people. On reflection, the falling over bit feels more like something that should have happened (and often did) at an Automatic gig at the Night & Day in 1997, possibly after dancing on the amps, rather than in the standing section of the Arena in 2023. Let's just say that the Dance Fever tour very much lived up to its name, and that - having been deprived on Florence + The Machine live since 2019 - the crowd were extremely up for it. NME (who presumably did get accreditation for the February Manchester date) described the show as "cathartic and euphoric", so it wasn't just me.

The second gig was October's double bill of two incredibly exciting up and coming bands at the Academy 2 in Manchester: The Last Dinner Party and Picture Parlour. I'd booked my ticket for this back in the summer (£15 for two bands? bargain these days...) after The Last Dinner Party's summer gig at the Deaf Institute sold out before I could book a ticket. The show at the Academy 2 sold out too, and I fully expect that the next round of shows (in bigger venues) will sell out as well: The Last Dinner Party are that kind of band, basically. 

I did review the Academy 2 show, which was just as electric - in its own way - as the Florence + The Machine show in February, and had a great time. 

12 Albums and EP's of the year

I've made the decision to start including EP's from this year because it feels like where an EP ends and an album begins is becoming increasingly blurred: there are some decidedly short albums and some rather long EP's being released. As such, it seems easier to consider them together.

12) Samantha Urbani, Showing Up

11) Kali Uchis, Red Moon In Venus

10) Sweeping Promises, Good Living Is Coming For You

9) Lana Del Rey, Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd?

8) Jorja Smith, falling or flying

7) Jayda G, Guy

6) Jess Williamson, Time Ain't Accidental

5) Indigo De Souza, All of This Will End

4) Overcoats, Winner

3) Mandy, Indiana, i've seen a way

2) Mary Lattimore, Goodbye, Hotel Arkada

1) Hemlocke Springs, Going... Going... GONE!

12 books I've read and loved this year

Ben MacIntyre, Colditz: prisoners of the castle

Helena Kelly, Jane Austen, the secret radical

Helena Merriman, Tunnel 29: love, espionage and betrayal: the true story of an extraordinary escape beneath the Berlin Wall

Daisy Buchanan, Careering

Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Rahaf Mohammed, Rebel: my escape from Saudi Arabia to freedom

Kiran Millwood Hargrave, The dance tree

Celia Brayfield, Rebel Writers: the accidental feminists

Helen Lewsis, Difficult Women: a history of feminism in 11 fights

Caroline Young, Kitted Out: style and youth culture in the Second World War

Pauline Murray, Life's A Gamble: Penetration, the Invisible Girls and other stories

Ed Gillett, Party Lines: Dance Music and the Making of Modern Britain

Podcasts and radio from 2023

The year in radio started with the incredibly brave experiment that was Jake Yapp's Unwinding. I am, needless to say, still fervently hoping for a new run of the month long series for January 2024. In the meantime, here's a list of some choice moments.

Other radio highlights this year have included some really good Archive on Four episodes, including Archive on Four: Powell and Pressburger: Poetic Patriotism in which Carol Morley takes a detailed look at the career of film makers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, famous for WWII films such as A Matter Of Life And Death and - Post War - The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus. As the documentary reveals, their WWII work was not straightforward propaganda but something much more lyrical, complex and sophisticated. Which was not always appreciated by Britain's wartime leaders. You can watch a selection of Powell and Pressburger films through the BFI Player. 

File on Four also contributed the extremely timely (in retrospect) episode How The Yom Kippur War Changed Everything, For Everyone which was first broadcast on the 30th September. I suspect that the programme was originally commissioned to mark the fifty year anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, and also to tie in with the release of the film Golda, which I assume was also commissioned and released to mark the same anniversary. The programme went out about a week before the current war began.

The episode prior to that, a celebration of the annual Funny Women festival, was also extremely compelling. Albeit for very different reasons. 

At the podcast end of things, the BBC's deep dive into Mad Cow Disease (the oddly titled The Cows Are Mad) proved strangely riveting and had a weirdly addictive theme tune. On an entirely different note, I remain optimistic about the prospect of a new series of Victoriocity. I've also been pleased to see Page 94, The Private Eye podcast getting a new lease of life this year. 

Articles I've found interesting/enjoyable this year

'This is where I draw the line': when stan accounts turn against their idols (Alaina Demopoulos, The Guardian)

Influencer Parents and The Kids Who Had Their Childhood Made Into Content (Fortesa Latifi, TeenVogue)

How hip-hop came out (Gavin Haines, Positive News)

Glastonbury's all-male headliners reveal a UK music industry in crisis (Roisin O'Connor, The Independent)

'I Found Out About it from Ravers': The UK's Favourite New Afterparty Venue (Chiara Wilkinson, Vice)

Megan Bhari: Her illness fooled celebs. The truth may be even darker (Jamie Bartlett and Ruth Mayer, BBC)

The Invisible Work of Mothers in Music (Allison Hussey, Pitchfork)

Succession is filmed before a live studio audience... Why the best television drama ever ever ever (etc) is a sitcom (Joel Morris, I can't help thinking... [Substack])

Should Journalists Work For Free To Get Experience? (Karen Edwards, Journo Resources)

He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy: Boris Johnson is not an electoral asset (Rob Ford, The Swingometer [Substack])

The social experiment: Our student life in the pandemic (Libby Elliott, Maisie Outhart and Ella Robinson, The Mill)

From prawn kidnappings to breast-milk raves: are festival crowds more unhinged than ever? (Henrietta Taylor, Time Out)

"We won't stop 'til we win" - UoM rent strike supported by over 10,000 students after occupation eviction (Eddie Toomer-McAlpine, The Meteor)

'Treat workers fairly and they'll return' (Nina Pullman, Wicked Leeks)

The Thick of It's Ian Martin on the trouble with Starmer (Ian Martin guest post for The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything [Substack])

Is Bandcamp as We Know It Over? (Philip Sherburne, Pitchfork)

What if we're thinking about productivity all wrong? (Jonn Elledge, The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything [Substack])

Songs of the year will begin on the 3rd December. The link to the Spotify playlist, which will be updated in real time, is here. Disclaimer: A lot of the songs this year are very sweary. I'm not doing content warnings on songs, but it does feel fair to mark what's obviously a trend.