This grandma prop with the serious Halloweenish/creepy streak was at a Christmas shop the other day. Seems someone had knocked the J out of the Joy.
Kinda sums up the year! So, oi to the world. Surely humanity can do better than this?
Thankfully in music we had these:
* The Vaccines' English Graffiti (unexpected!). I adjusted a bit my summer holidays so I could catch them in Chicago (posted video on youtube). Luckily even had a lively chat with Freddie at the meet &greet. They knew a big chunk of their fans would not agree with the change of direction and still went ahead. "Couldn't keep doing 3 chord songs forever", "had been listening to new music we really liked"). Way to go.
* Tim Wheeler's Lost Domain. Takes a lot of courage to put out an album like this one and a lot of skill to balance it and come up with something this good.
* Quite good too Ryan Adams's take on Taylor Swift's 1989 (isn't it impressive what he's done with Blank Space?). Daring move.
* Marina & the diamonds' Froot, as bold as usual.
But also listened a lot to some tracks from end of last year's Adrien Gallo's Gemini and this year's Laura Marling, Lisa Ekdahl, Soko, Emika, Sara Lov, Natalia Lafourcade..
Personally it's been the best year ever, "only" because I'll just say that milk and eggs are no longer handled like cyanide in my kitchen and that a 10 yr old someone had his first donut, his first fried egg, his first proper pizza. After very tough years of not only not advancing but adding new allergies to the list (some remain), this is a reminder that there's always hope, even when. How cheesy is that!! (←double meaning!)
