Albums I've listened to this year

 

 

2017 - a year of consumption

Back at the end of November 2016 I decided to keep a list of much of the material that I read, or watched (i.e., books, films and TV series), or music that I listened to for the first time. The general aim was to reach a "target of consumption". I've only got a finite number of years left (as have we all, apart from my two demi-god immortal readers) so I would like to have a rough idea of how many films and books I get through in an "average" year.

My targets turned out in places to be way-too optmistic and in others to be reasonably accurate.

Albums:
I wanted to listen to 200 new albums; I managed 49.

Films:
I wanted to see 100 "new" films; I managed 48.
I set myself 50 Lovefilm rentals, and managed 42, 10 of them in the final month before Lovefilm shut down.
I wanted to watch 100 "recorded" movies from TV, but managed only 40.

On the books front:
20 non-fiction, and I exceeded this with 24.5 (I'm half-way through Paul Johnson's "The Birth Of The Modern"). Four of these were "doorstoppers". So I've done well there.
A target of 40 novels was missed by 8. However, of the 32 I read, three or four were rather long. I could have done better.

TV:
Finally, where I watched far more than I thought I would (at the expense of recorded movies) was TV series. The quality of television drama has improved, and some TV series are closer to "long films". I imagined that I would watch 10 series, and I ended up watching 28.

For films I managed 130 in total, while for books I managed 57. There were maybe three or four more "re-reads" on Kindle (Trollope, mainly).

So, for December. I thought I would do a little of my "best of 2017".

Albums:

Often my favourite album is the last one I listened to. Many of the albums date back decades (I note that the "mean" year is 2004).
So my favourite "oldies but newies" were:

1. A New World Record: ELO

2. Lodger: David Bowie

3: Heroes, David Bowie

4: Five Bridges, The Nice.

Of course I had heard all of these before, but I had not "possessed" them or listened to them all the way through for more than 20 years.

Disappointments were:
All The Young Dudes (Mott The Hoople),
Several other David Bowies
The Nice's Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack
Two early Fleetwood Mac albums.
None of these got many playings.

The best "new" (or newish) albums. Very hard to decide.

1. Planetarium, Sufjan Stevens

2. Public Service Broadcasting Live at Brixton Academy

3. Benjamin Clementine, I Tell A Fly

4. The Far Field, Future Islands

5. Pablo, Kanye West

6. Alone In The Universe, Jeff Lynne's ELO

7. Puberty 2, Mitski

Disappointments were:
Revolution Radio, Green Day;
I like it when you sleep, The 1975;
99%, Kaytranada;
You Want It Darker, Leonard Cohen;
Home Counties, Saint Ettienne;
The Bride, Bat For Lashes;
Sleep Well Beast, The National;
Goths, The Mountain Goats;
A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead;
Skeleton Crew, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds.

Once again, none of them were awful, but they have't got many multiple plays.

Honourable mentions for "neither old nor really new".
The Origin Of Love, Mika;
Random Access Memories, Daft Punk. Both wonderful.

Public Service Broadcasting and Benjamin Clementine dominate my modern music listening at the moment. But "Planetarium", every time I play it, leaves me aghast at how good Sufjan Stevens can be.

Next blog: Movies, old and new.