Year End Charts

Okay, so this might be controversial but I'm pretty sure that there've been no good albums out this year. Been scoruing (that was supposed to be scouring, but somehow scoruing seems to sound more thorough) those year end charts, thinking that there must be something tucked away somewhere; somewhere, I dunno, in the early-twenties of the Piccadilly Records chart. But no.  That's not to say that everything (in the early twenties of the Piccadilly Records chart) was bad. Pale Green Ghosts was good, but not as good as Queen of Denmark. Push the Sky Away was good but not as good as Abattoir Blues.  Basically I've become a grumpy old man and have spent the year moaning that nothing sounds fresh anymore.

Even the best new thing I've heard this year isn't fresh. Turns out that the Horse Head song was doing the rounds as long ago as 2009.  That's nearly half a decade ago. To be fair I wasn't paying all that much attention to Youtube in 2009, as longterm readers (both of you) will know (if you missed 2009, here's a recap). 

So, aside from out-of-date (but ace) antifolk, what else have I enjoyed? Theatre. I've been to the theatre a lot.  If you count stand up too (it's on a stage. Sometimes) it must be the other side of fifty times. Which is obscene by any standards.

Disappointments:
When A Star Danced - amdram at its most amateur; very much not the incisive comedy that the flier had led me to believe.
Beard Envy - bad enough to put anything that wasn't great at Edinburgh into context.
King Lear at the Globe - I should have loved this.  I didn't.
Hot House - I don't get Pinter.  By no means in the bottom five of things I saw this year, but something that I had way, way too high expectations for.
Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic - The best thing about it was that it was almost an hour shorter than the last time I saw MAAN.

Particular Applauses:
Sophia Blackwell - okay, so it was performance poetry, but it counts because it's my list.  So there.
Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night Time - not having the balcony collapse on me is pretty celebration-worth.  Confetti.
Book of Mormon - A lot of fun, but probably not as funny as...
Peter Pan Goes Wrong - A late contender. I went to this with trepidation and have since hyped it to everyone.  Everyone. Which means no one is going to enjoy it as much as I did.  But hey.  It's still on.  Go and get tickets.
Chimerica - I don't think I could do justice to this.  If you saw it you know how good it was. If you didn't then you probably missed out.