I dragged my feet on a lot of cool games this year. I didn't play Smash Bros. until the last week of the year, and got round to Celeste on NYD 2019! Smash is an unremarkable triumph - it is exactly the game I expected, but it's so good and there's so much of it that it was easily the best Switch game this year. Celeste is more interesting; brutal, but kind to the player, with a cracking soundtrack and some magical design. It gains a lot of points for being aboutĀ something - that punishing difficulty makes you feel like youāre really climbing a mountain, and the frank way it discusses mental health is really phenomenal.
But Two Point Hospital - man! Like Sonic Mania last year, Two Point Hospital is a spiritual sequel to one of my favourite childhood games. Unlike Sonic Mania, it's not perfectly realised. I'm still not a big fan of the art-style, and there were some genuine balance / difficulty issues at launch affecting things like queue length and patient AI. That said, this game has had a ludicrous half life. I love the challenge, I love the mechanics, I love that it's easy to pick up but tricky to master. I love its tone, I love its sense of humour, and some 140 hours in I still don't feel like I'm done enjoying it. Just wonderful.
It's nice to have a new band in the top three; I'd never heard of Gesu no Kiwami Otome before this year, but their new album is great. It's even nicer that Muse's long-awaited new album is actually good! I pre-ordered it reluctantly, fully expecting it to be mediocre, but Simulation Theory is a dorky, retro joy. Best of all is that Gorillaz have released two albums-of-the-year in a row! The Now Now was a chilled out treat, the perfect record for a lazy summer evening. Or a winter evening. Or whenever, really. Just play it. Itās grand.
Other albums I liked: A Perfect Circle - Eat the Elephant, Kero Kero Bonito - Time 'n' Place, Polkadot Stingray - Ichidaiji
TV of the year:
James Acaster: Repertoire
Orange is the New Black
Aggretsuko
This year has been ridiculous for brilliant television, and there is so much that it's killing me not to include. Last year's winner Taskmaster aired one of its best ever series, but a more uneven run at the start of the year plus stiff competition kept it out of the top three. King of Bots is Chinese Robot Wars, it is berserk, and it has an even more berserk spin-off show - both of which Iāve omitted!
But, three shows that nailed it. Aggretsuko, with its charming characters and acerbic office satire. Orange is the New Black, which has no business being in such rude health after six seasons. James Acaster's four (four!) interlinked stand-up specials. Hard-earned!
Other shows I liked: Bojack Horseman, Derren Brown: The Jump, Disenchantment, Hilda, Inside No. 9, King of Bots, Taskmaster, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, The Horne Section Television Programme, The Mash Report, This is Fighting Robots, Who is America
Film of the year:
The Shape of Water
Isle of Dogs
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
I'm usually a bit sniffy about Oscar nominees - I always expect them to be worthy snorefests about how tragic life is. Maybe my tastes are changing, maybe I misjudged them - or maybe this year just happened to be a belter, but last year's Best Picture nominees were superb! I watched four out of the nine, and am gutted to have missed two more. Two of them were released this year in the UK, and are therefore eligible for this blog: The Shape of Water, which is beautiful, romantic, and turns the cold war into a romantic fantasy without sanding off its rough edges, and the morally grey but socially conscious Three Billboards.
Meanwhile, Isle of Dogs wasnāt nominated for any awards, but it was about some nice dogs, so thatās still good for second place.
Other films I liked: Mary and the Witch's Flower, Ready Player One
Podcasts of the year:
FiveThirtyEight Politics
Reply All
Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonalds?
Temptation is to try and make these lists different every year, but when Reply All and FiveThirtyEight keep nailing it, what else can you do? Reply All did have a slightly more muted year, mostly due to behind-the-scenes stuff, but earns its placement with The Snapchat Thief alone.
The sole newcomer in this list is Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonalds, an investigative journalism programme (or IJP) that isn't afraid to ask the big questions. Mainly, whatever happened to pizza at McDonalds?
Other podcasts I liked: Adam Buxton Podcast, All Killa No Filla, Everything is Alive, Hello Internet, Kermode & Mayo Film Review, Lovett or Leave It, My Dad Wrote a Porno, Oh No! Ross and Carrie, Off Menu, Pod Save America, Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, Secret Dinosaur Cult, So You Think You're Smart, The Horne Section Podcast
Gig of the year:
Gein's Family Giftshop, vol. III
I only went to a couple of gigs this year - all of which were good, but I wanted to give Gein's Family Giftshop a special mention.
GFG were already my favourite live comedy act - they perform as a three-person sketch group, a sublime blend of the crude, the audacious and nihilistic. They are fucking phenomenal; I've linked to one of their YouTube sketches above but it's only a tenth as good as the live show.
Anyway, when they played in Bristol, their third member had tonsillitis. Rather than cancel the show, Kath and Ed performed the whole show on their own, and stormed it! Live shows are always best when they feel spontaneous - the danger of knowing anything could go wrong (and to an extent already had!) adds an electricity to a room. Watching it all go right is even better! I laughed so much - one of those events where you just had to be there, and I'm so chuffed that I was.
Stuff of yesteryear:
Gesu no Kiwami Otome - Odorenai nara, Gesu ni Natte Shimae yo (album)
Arrival (film)
Nier: Automata (video game)
My annual category for āstuff that wasnāt released this year but I enjoyed checking out.ā Nier: Automata was the right kind of ludicrous - full of batshit ideas. Arrival was a more low-key brand of batshit, but still incredibly inventive and oddly optimistic - one of those films where you emerge from the cinema and the world feels a little bit different.
But only one of these moved me to blog. Click here to read me very excitedly discovering Gesu no Kiwami Otome, back in May. The listed EP is the best, but you canāt go wrong anywhere.
Other parties I enjoyed arriving late to:
Games: Bayonetta 2, Cities: Skylines, DmC: Devil May Cry, Dishonored 2, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, Overcooked, Superhot
Books: Everybody Lies, So Youāve Been Publicly Shamed, The Humans, The Signal and the Noise
Films: Ex Machina, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Kubo and the Two Strings
Bands: Polkadot Stingray
Single of the year:
Gorillaz - Tranz
Muse - Pressure
Gesu no Kiwami Otome - Onna wa Kawaru
I donāt really like this category because thereās a lot of crossover with album of the year, but itās a pretext to post the Pressure music video, so... shrug!
It also means I can give Dream Theater and The Constellations honourable mentions even though they didnāt release full albums this year. Well done Dream Theater and The Constellations. I liked your nice songs.
Other songs I liked: Dream Theater - Untethered Angel, Kero Kero Bonito - Make Believe, Kero Kero Bonito - Dreams of Oneonta
DLC of the year:
Octo Expansion
Bigfoot
Sonic Mania Plus
Considering it's been my favourite home console franchise since the day it was released, I have given Splatoon short shrift in end-of-year roundups, picking Fallout 4 as my number one game in 2015 and Sonic Mania in 2017.
I don't regret either of those picks, but I'm delighted that Splatoon finally gets to run away with a number one placing this year. The Octo Expansion is incredible value for money, a more-is-more single player campaign with playable octolings at the end - the team nailed it. Phenomenal stuff.
Person of the year:
I did this last year, right? But everyoneās been so terrible this year!
Who did I choose last year? Rilakkuma? Fine - keep the crown, RK. No public figure has been better than a lazy cartoon bear. Itās yours indefinitely, until the world gets good again.
Iāve been on a bit of a new music kick at the moment - by which I mean music that is anywhere from one-to-ten years old but Iām just discovering now.
A couple of reasons for this. First, Iām now allowed to listen to music at work, which means my usual rotation of three-or-four albums a month gets old more quickly than it used to, so itās easy to drift to the recommendations. Also, I love Splatoonās soundtrack and am certain there must be bands out there who inspired its tone, and I donāt know about them. So I have something Iām looking for and I have the time to find it.
Gesu no Kiwami Otome (Japanese forĀ āGirl at the Height of Rudenessā) arenāt quite the band I was looking for, but they are a band I am delighted to have found.
Gesu describe themselves as āhip-hop / progressive,ā which isnāt really accurate - theyāre basically a quirky rock band - but it nails what makes them a bit special. I found them through their track Killer Ball (above), which is just piano, bass and drums, very pacey and energetic - but then it stops in the middle for a Chopin piano solo before picking up where it left off.
The next track on the EP is called Mochi Girl (below), and is far more conventional (this one has a guitar in it!) but shows off the chops of all four band members, as well as their sense of humour.
None of this is totally unique, but itās a really cool fusion of what I love about some of my favourite bands. They have Dream Theaterās obscene talent, Museās audacity and interest in classical music, Gorillazās sheer cheek; theyāre great. I love the jazz influence, the dash of hip-hop - Iām a little bit obsessed right now, and I want to show everyone. Check them out!
01. Gorillaz - Humanz
02. Steven Wilson - To the Bone
03. Diablo Swing Orchestra - Pacifisticuffs
Most of my favourite bands seem to have taken this year off completely, and the ones who haven't have released good singles or middling records. All this makes releasing Humanz in 2017 the equivalent of turning up to a knife fight with a nuclear bomb.
What an incredible year to be a Gorillaz fan! A huge, diverse, creatively fertile album, with a bonus disc that's every bit as good, surprise single releases throughout the year, their own festival, loads of pro shot gigs, and next year they're going to do it all over again! To celebrate, please accept this video of Damien Allbran going fucking tonto as he sings Charger.
Other albums I liked: Not this year, friend. Not this year.
TV show of the year:
01. Taskmaster
02. Robot Wars
03. BoJack Horseman
A moment of appreciation for Taskmaster - 18 of its 34 episodes were released this year, and every episode was a goldmine - I canāt remember a comedy show being this funny, this consistent and this prolific since the Simpsons. Series 5 may be my favourite to date; Sally Phillips and Bob Mortimer in the same line-up... we were spoiled!
Robot Wars had a good year, too: two excellent series. My favourite bit was when Apex tried to kill that audience member.
Other shows I liked: Dave Gorman: Modern Life is Good-ish, Doctor Who, Inside No. 9, Rick & Morty, Stranger Things, The Apprentice, The League of Gentlemen, Uncle.
Podcast of the year:
01. All Killa No Filla
02. Reply All
03. FiveThirtyEight Politics
Despite the title, Rachel Fairburn and Kiri Pritchard-McLean's All Killa No Filla is only about 20% serial killersā life stories. The remaining 80% is frank, scathing anecdotes about the presenters' personal lives as they constantly get distracted by each other's company. At its best, AKNF feels like eavesdropping on a salacious conversation between two oversharing friends who've forgotten they left the mic on. Pray for Rachel's bumhole.
FiveThirtyEight Politics is a public good; a bastion of reason that has kept me clear-headed and well informed throughout the mayhem of Trumpās first year in office. Reply All, meanwhile, is seldom as grisly as the other two podcasts (in their different ways!) but comfortably the most gripping - the producers have a real nose for a premise thatāll hook me from the start. This year theyāve investigated mystery soundscape phone calls, phished their own colleagues, and spent several months calling up the same group of tech support scammers purely for the joy of harassing them. I am addicted.
(Also - it didnāt quite make the top three, but My Dad Wrote a PornoĀ kept me not only calm but laughing like a damned fool on a couple of long haul flights, which usually make me a bit nervous, so I wanted to give it an honorable mention.)
Other podcasts I liked: Hello Internet, Kermode & Mayoās Film Review, My Dad Wrote a Porno, No Such Thing as a Fish, Richard Herringās Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, S-Town, The Unmade Podcast, Trumpcast.
Film of the year:
01. Get Out
02. It
03. Baby Driver
I usually think of myself as more of a TV fan than a film fan - but good god, 2017! You know it's a good year when Studio Ghibli doesn't stand a chance. Not to mention the film that is literally an oil painting. Christ!
You wouldnāt guess from this yearās list, but I can usually take or leave horror; I certainly donāt seek it out. It happened to pique my interest, then scare me in just the right way. Like Stranger Things, Itās strength was making the fear part of a big adventure.
(Side note: I knew Pennywise was supposed to be āscary,ā but walking into the cinema, I didnāt truly believe I was going to be scared by the clown. I also did not know what happened in the first scene with Georgie and the boat. Reader, I was scared by the clown.)
Any one of these three could have been my top pick in another year, but in 2017 itās hard to compete with Get Out - cutting satire, grim psychological horror and hilarious comedy, united in a film that looked and felt like nothing else Iād ever seen in a cinema. Deservedly number one.
Other films I liked: Blade Runner 2059, Loving Vincent, The Death of Stalin.
Game of the year:
01. Sonic Mania
02. Splatoon 2
03. Super Mario Odyssey
Speaking of amazing years - did you see all the great games we got this year!?
Splatoon 2 was an incredible refinement of the already brilliant Splatoon, and Super Mario Odyssey is the most downright charming video game I've played in years, but heck. I'd been waiting for a game like Sonic Mania for the best part of twenty years, I reckon. When that game arrives, and it's perfect, I don't see that I have much choice but to rank it first.
Other games I liked: Arms, Cuphead, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, Slime Rancher, Steamworld Dig 2, Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Thimbleweed Park, Tumbleseed.
This categoryās not as relevant this year as it was in 2016 because Iāve spent too much time working through new stuff to dwell on my back catalogue all that much.
That said, I somehow missed Transcendence and Bonito GenerationĀ last year, which is a shame, because they would have easily knocked Dream Theaterās flabby concept album off the third spot.
I also finally watched Death NoteĀ this year; itās a really uneven piece of work that takes itself way too seriously, but a phenomenal central conceit and plenty of really solid twists kept it really engaging despite all the flaws. I very much enjoyed it, itās something Iād definitely come back to.
Other stuff I enjoyed catching up on: Civilization V (game).
Quickfire round:
Person of the year: 01. Rilakkuma / 02. Jeremy Corbyn / 03. Jodie Whittaker
Jodie Whittaker broke a glass ceiling on Doctor Who. JeremyĀ Corbyn defied ridiculous odds to make the UK left wing competitive for the first time certainly within my adult life, probably since I was born. Rilakkuma is just an adorable bear character with lots of nice pictures on Twitter - but in a year like 2017 thatās all you need.
Single of the year:Ā 01. Gorillaz - Sleeping Powder / 02. Muse - Dig Down / 03. Gorillaz - We Got the Power
A slightly redundant category, especially since Iāve already said Gorillaz won the year for me, I mostly just wanted to give Dig Down a shout-out. Stripped down, hypnotic, with an infusion of gospel. Low-key batshit. Loved it.
City of the year: 01. Tokyo / 02. Auckland / 03. Bristol
I feel bad putting Auckland in second place given it was my home for most of the year and I loved living there, but Tokyo was properly magical in a way few places truly are. I always wanted to go to Japan as a kid but always kind of suspected I'd never have the chance - turns out growing up has its perks. Itās early days for Bristol, but Iāve had a great time so far. Looking good for 2018!
Footenote - stuff Iāve probably missed:
I mean, Iāve probably missed shitloads of stuff. Iāve made no effort to work through the most popular films or the biggest games or anything like that - these are just my favourites of the things that happened to catch my eye.
That said, thereās stuff Iām gutted I didnāt get round to because I suspect it may have done reasonably well.
On the film side, I wanted to catch Daphne, I Am Not a WitchĀ and The Disaster Artist but I missed the first two in the cinema, and the latter came out a little close to Christmas, so Iāll need to check if itās still kicking about.
I wouldnāt be surprised if Black MirrorĀ displaces BoJack Horseman in the TV category once I get round to watching it, but it released literally two days shy of the end of the year, and Iām waiting for my girlfriend to get back before I put it on. (Who I havenāt nominated for Person of the Year only because I wanted to keep the category competitive.)
As for video games - Iāve omitted Cuphead from my rankings because Iāve bought it but barely touched it; I suspect itād make the top ten but probably not the top three. I donāt much fancy Metroid: Samus ReturnsāĀ chances of knocking Super Mario Odyssey in fourth, either, but I think Iād be a big fan.
Side note: Iām looking at the release schedule for 2017 right now, and between... (big gasp) Mass Effect, Splatoon, Zelda, Cuphead, Thimbleweed Park, Ever Oasis, Lady Layton, Sonic Mania, Fire Emblem Heroes and Yooka-Laylee (...!) I may never have to leave the house.Ā
TV show of the year:
01. Orange is the New Black
02. Taskmaster
03. Stranger Things
Orange is the New Black kicked it out of the park this year. Itās always been very solid television, but each series had been a little weaker than the last up until 2016, where it whipped up a perfect storm. The amazing, loathsome villain in C.O. Piscatella did well to kerb the showās increasing cosiness, and I have never known a show that empathises so well with villains without forgiving their actions or playing down the horror. A new high.
Meanwhile, Taskmaster has very quietly become the most reliably hilarious show on television, and treated us to not one but two full-length series. Itās not just that Taskmaster is reliably funny, itās that it makes me laugh until I hurt a little bit. The silliest and best show on UK television.
Other shows I liked: BoJack Horseman, Black Mirror, Dave Gormanās Modern Life is Good-ish, Designated Survivor, Dragonās Den, Penny Dreadful, Robot Wars, Siblings, The Apprentice, The O.A.
Ā Album of the year:
01. Frost* - Falling Satellites
02. The Heavy - Hurt & the Merciless
03. Dream Theater - The Astonishing
The HeavyĀ came to my attention more recently, and while Hurt & the MercilessĀ doesnāt rip up their rulebook it did produce a couple of their very catchiest songs ever. What Happened to the Love? was my most-listened track of the year, according to Last.FM. It may never leave my head.
Other albums I liked: Errrr...
Film of the year:
01. Your Name
02. 10 Cloverfield Lane
03. Deadpool
I cried. Not even embarrassed. Your NameĀ is gorgeous, and works best if you know as little about it as possible. Itās a body-swapping fantasy film, and itās mesmerising. I gather itās only just opening in the U.S. in 2017 - you are in for a treat.
10 Cloverfield LaneĀ was a brilliant film in its own right, and if tying it in with the Cloverfield universe was what it took to put my bum on that seat, fine. Besides which, I rather like the idea of sequels that arenāt sequels. I hate the idea that each film in a series needs to compete with its daddyās shadow, so I think itās quite neat that 10 Cloverfield Lane was an altogether different beast.
Other films I liked: Dr. Strange, Fantastic Beasts..., Finding Dory, Money Monster, Star Trek Beyond, The Jungle Book
Late discovery of the year:
01. Spirited Away (film)
02. Rick & Morty (TV)
03. Undertale (game)
Rick & Morty wasĀ the more immediately satisfying of the three. I love the loose, improvisational feel, and the focus on quantity over quality means I am not at all concerned about it exhausting itself the same way The Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy all eventually did (some sooner than others) - but weāll see how it goes.Ā
Undertale didnāt quite catch my imagination in quite the same way it did many others, but I love how much it makes the interface part of the story by revealing characters through its bullet-hell elements, and how playing as a pacifist isnāt boring - it doesnāt cheat you out of any gameplay. Smartly written.
Spirited Away was a funny one, because I didnāt immediately adore it. I enjoyed the film when I watched it, went away and thought, āOkay, thatās about a 7/10, 8/10,ā but it just sort of... played on my mind. Thereās something very special and haunting about it that goes far beyond the story itself - the world ensnared me. It stole my heart, a little bit, in a low-key way thatās very rare. I love it dearly.
Iāve had a couple of weeks to digest Dream Theaterās new album now, so while I was listening to itĀ I started jotting down a couple of thoughts about things I was starting to notice and appreciate. This mutated into a sort of review...ish thing. Except longer, and with no intro, and it wonāt make a lick of sense to anyone who hasnāt already heard it. Wheeeeeeee...!
HERE AM THING!
Although its story isn't particularly groundbreaking, one thing I do rather love about The Astonishing is that John Petrucci clearly cares deeply about his characters, and doesn't want to reduce them to any single attribute. A totalitarian emperor whose name is Nafaryus and who cackles out loud as he threatens to burn down the alliance village should, on paper, be a cardboard villain - a ludicrous plot device cum murdertron. But, actually, heās surprisingly three dimensional! I mean, heās not Severus Snape or nuffing, but he takes a moment in the middle of his villain song to gush about his beloved wife and daughter; when he turns up at Gabrielās concert heās genuinely moved by the music. He is human, and flawed, and actually pretty interesting for a bloke called Nafaryus. Likewise, his son Daryus doesn't kill Arhys because Daryus is the designated villain and therefore just loves killing, but because he's jealous of the affection his sister gets from olā papa. John Petrucci has been very careful to give each character a reason to do the things they do, and actually he's written empathetic villains; they're characters who love, and have a sliver of goodness in their hearts - and on the other side of the coin, the captain of the rebel militia considers betraying his brother to the tyrant Empire! That's more depth of character than I expect from any concept album, and I think it's somewhere Petrucci's story massively succeeds. It's not a cop-out when it turns out that Emperor Nafaryus was "good all along," because actually, the audience (and Faythe!) have seen right from the start that he has the capacity for goodness, a lapsed love of music, and the scope to both change and be changed. I also think Daryus becoming deaf is a fun and fitting karmic ending, so thatās a nice detail, too.
Also, this might seem like a silly thing, but I love that the two factions interact quite a lot throughout the narrative - and, indeed, the Empire makes its way to Ravenskill very early in the plot, so the heroes and the villains are constantly within arm's length of one another - Nafaryus isn't some distant emperor, he knows who Gabriel is, he could pick Arhys out of a lineup. The story is fundamentally about the characters, and the way they engage with one another feels more meaningful and consequential than anything in Scenes from a Memory. As cringey as the lyrics occasionally get ("Father, is it true? Bug was always you!!") I actually think the story is pretty solid, by concept album standards! Criticising the plot of a fantasy concept album for being cheesy and insubstantial would be a bit like criticising a motorbike cos itās not very seaworthy; I think The Astonishing is generally a very good example of the thing that itās trying to be. So if I were to change anything, I'd generally leave the story alone and instead make the album musically more varied.
Despite exploring an awful lot of genres that Dream Theater had previously tended to shy away from, The Astonishing reverts to a "soaringly epic" type every couple of minutes. Three Days is comfortably the best song on the album, by my money, and that's because it drips with character, culminating in that glorious but tantalisingly brief moment in the last ten seconds where it finally explodes into something absolutely berserk. Those ten seconds are as glorious as I'd hoped this album might be, but all too often an initially fascinating track ends up sounding like every other song on The Astonishing. Ravenskill starts off as a sumptuous, intriguing and mysterious "film noir" type thing, retains its unique character when it becomes heavy... and then loses its identity at the final hurdle! Likewise, Hymn of a Thousand Voices sounds nothing like any other Dream Theater song for the first half, and then sounds like every other Dream Theater song on the album by the very end. On a 50 minute album, that'd be frustrating but no big deal; on a 130 minute album, it's a key flaw, and makes the record absolutely exhausting to listen to all the way through.Ā
I get what they're doing, but if you compare it to an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical for example (since ALW was cited as an influence) the songs in Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat are all very distinct from each other. Even though there are recurring themes, Potiphar, Song of the King and Benjamin Calypso all sit in separate genres - just as Beyond This Life and Home were very distinct on Scenes from a Memory - and I wish Dream Theater had spent as much time on each individual song as they clearly did on the album as a whole. DT occasionally used to say that they used to jam out lots of unusual electronic things in the studio - and they'd have a lot of fun, but then shake their heads and say, "That's brilliant, the fans would never go for it," which I tended to find a little depressing. I hope that songs like Lord Nafaryus, Machine Chatter and HoaTV have smashed some of those ceilings wide open.
My take home message from The Astonishing is that Dream Theater are still every bit as creatively fertile as they've ever been. It doesn't rank among my favourite DT albums - it doesn't even rank among my favourites from the Roadrunner era - but it shows that they still care deeply about what they do, it shows that they're willing to break convention, and it shows that they still have a laudable sense of curiosity: an eagerness to make music in new shapes and interrogate exactly what an album has to be. Although it's an exhausting listen, I really like what The Astonishing says about Dream Theater as a band, and I'm delighted that they've written such a surprising and experimental record as far as 30 years into their careers. It's an insane undertaking, and one that is always going stand out amongst their body of work. The band are in enviable health right now, and I cannot begin to imagine how they might look to follow this record up. In ten years' time, new fans will be looking back at this album and going, "...Did that really happen?!" Whatever its strengths and weaknesses, even in the context of Dream Theater's already diverse discography, The Astonishing stands out as a weird-ass cheese dream, and I think that's kind of marvellous.
