It's Listmas Time!

Yes, we come to that time of year once again where we trawl through the cobwebbed recesses of our minds to name names and list out the highs and lows of the previous 12 months. All the newspapers and magazines have already started, I think Time hailed Bono and Bill Gates as their person(s) of the year. safe to say neither will be getting amention on my brief roll of honour. So without further ado...


12. White Stripes - Get behind me Satan
Every White Stripes' album comes along and I immediately begin my 'That's it, thats as much as they can possibly get out of two musicians'. Then they bring out a new one, that's bigger and better. "That's it, that's all they can get out of two musicians". Apparently this year I may have a point as rumour has it that a Detroit collaberation is on the cards between Jack White and my number 11...

11. Brendan Benson - Alternative to Love
After the breakthrough 'Lapalco' record, Benson has gone from strength to strength releasing a near perfect pop/rock/jingly jangly record that pushes all the right buttons. Great vocals, great production values and an all round great driving record.

10. Lucinda Williams - Live at The Fillmore
Lucinda 'Live'. At last. Take a deep breath and hear the beer soaked voice of THE first lady of whatever genre of country/folk/rock she is in. (I'm not that happy with genres, by the way). Top songs, culled from her most recent three studio albums that take a new life when played by the tightest rock 'n roll combo you'll hear playing in your living room this year.

9. The Eels - Blinking Lights and Other Revelations
Double album from the much underrated rockers. It's just I think their first really great record. I love the 'whatever happened to soy bomb' vocal delivery from Everett, I also think that 'Sweet Li'l thing' couldve been a hit if it was released as a single. A band that get's little or no recognition on this side of the world and who really should.

8. Illinoise - Sufjan Stevens
The record that has the dubious honour of being my first ever iTunes purchase. For those of you who don't know thi9s is part of a project to have an album for every state in the U.S. How old will he be when his final Hawaii album is being mixed? I agree, Illinoise is not for everyone, but it's a mixture of the weirdness, the long song titles, the lazy stony vocals, the subject matter (John Wayne Gacy, Jr. ??) and the cool tshirts that he sells at his shows that have jettisoned this record into the top 10.

7. Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous
"any asshole can open up a museuem". I love this line and the album has been a mainstay of the year. The LA four piece drift from country to folk rock to country folk to rockyrock to countryroots...aaaah whatever. It's an American record. they don't make records like this over here because they're not Americans. It sounds like America. It has lyrics that can only be sung by Americans, a great American record.

6. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning
Lovely record if not a little too 'early twenties'. Conor Oberst has a bit of a moany head on him for this offering but you can't doubt the beauty of the lyrics. Poetic, melodic and striking. Plus he isn't a half bad singer. It's also quite a funny record. Keep it up.

5. The Mendoza Line - Full of Light and Full of Fire
Sans Hoffman Mendoza Line is a lot more for being a lot less. It's more cohesive. In the past a Mendoza Line record could be like listening to three records in one. Peter Hoffmann is a fine songwriter and a great vocalist but his hiatus from The Mendoza Line has resulted in a major departure or the band. Now that there are only two main songwriters (Although Paul Deppler's 'Our Love is Like a Wire' is one of the albums highlights) and if you marry the two songwriters together and get one of them to sing the others song and have them work on a side project before the album (The Slow Dazzle Record is in the bubbling under section) it can only add to the intimacy. And this is an intimate record. Even though the subject matter can be a little disturbing (The oppression and physical abuse of Saudi women. Infanticide. Suicide. Paranoia) the sound and feel of the record is very intimate and personal. It's at times a hushed record (Settle Up, Zelda) and at times a sonic representation of cacophonous confusion (Morbid Craving). But I challenge you to find three better original compositions this year than "Catch a Collapsing Star", "Water Surrounds", and "Our Love is like a Wire" on the same record and written by three different people.

4. Arcade Fire - Funeral
Canada gave us Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and now Arcade Fire. It's a great record from a great band and we shall all wait with bated breath to see if they can repeat this stunning form with a follow up or will they go to the Mercury Rev zone. I hope they can do it, but I am a bit sceptical. I don't know why, let's just say I have a feeling. But enough of this pessimism, isn't it great to have a real guitar band back. A good old fashioned rock 'n roll band, not like U2 or all these other radio-easy-non confrontational, 'nice' bands. At last a band comes along that sounds like rock 'n roll and long may they continue.

3. Wilco - Kicking Television
This is easy. If you want a double live album of the best band in the world over the last ten years then go out, buy this record and throw all your U2 or whichever flavour of the month the radio is playing (Insert name of band) records on the fucking bonfire . U2 or (insert name of alternatively cheesy rock combo) are only the best band in the world because you haven't heard this yet. Without a shadow of a doubt, this ensemble of musicians Jeff Tweedy has put together are the best band in the world. I swear. Trust me.

2. My Morning jacket - Z
The keep on getting better. Swampier sound than before. Less of the anger and crashing cymbals and a lot more melody make this, far and away their best album to date. Vocalist Jim James has reinvented the band in a much more country tinged suit of clothes. It's hard to compare this with any of their other albums because it's such a different record. This is the band you should hear, think Dinosaur Junior crossed with Whiskeytown and The Flaming Lips and you get some idea.

1. Bob Dylan - No Direction Home
This had to be number one. It wasn't just an album, it was an event. A film, a book, a double album, a scrap book and a month of Bob Dylan in October. Martin Scorcese directed the four hour Bobathon that only took us up to 1966. It had everything. Interviews with himself, and those who were there, studio outtakes from the classic records, Bob Dylan's memories of arriving in New York, footage of him playing live at newport in the early sixties and that tour in 1966, in blazing technicolor too. We even had Bob doing an irish accent in attempting to mimic Liam Clancy.

It was a remarkable document and like all good Bob Dylan events it was part of a trilogy. Chronicles Part 1 was Dylan's autobiography, The soundtrack CD had all the studio outtakes and live performances, and then the DVD. Shown over two nights on BBC2. Television, for the first time in a decade meant something more than sports. It was the biggest musical and cultural event of this year and indeed any year. I'm sure the previous 11 entries on the list all saw it. I doubt Bob Dylan saw or heard the previous 11 entries. That's the difference.

Well that's almost it for another year. Those records that didn't quite make it onto the list were Slow Dazzle's - A View From The Floor, an offshoot from The Mendoza Line and a welcome departure courtesy of the Bracy's. Ryan Adam's 29. I've only listened twice and it seems Mister A is underachieving again, although I do have a soft spot for Cold Roses, which could have been a decent single album. Guero by Beck, which had the dust brothers' back but lacked the magic dust of Odelay etc. Prarie Wind by Neil Young was an vast improvement on Greendale and Silver and Gold but still left me reaching for On The Beach.

Sports wise, the high points were the United v Arsenal game at Highbury which was preceeded by the Keane-Viera-Neville 'tunnel of love' and the first half of the champions league final. The low point was the second half of the champions league final. Movies wise, I enjoyed Napoleon Dynamite, Garden state, Sin City, Batman Begins, The Motorcycle Diaries, Sideways and City of God. I hated War of the Worlds, and anything with Nicole Kidman or Jude Law in it.

So Happy Christmas to ye, that was my critical lookback at 2005, via whatever synapses survived the weekend.

Thank You Miss Cosmetics Girl

I, like all other heterosexual males of my generation, am completely unprepared for this time of year. Every Christmas Eve at noon I frantically run around department stores in Dublin city centre randomly hassling girls working on cosmetics counters, trying to control my annual bout of Toureets Syndrome and swearing blindly that it will be different next year. Well guess what? It's next year already and nothing has changed.

My brethren in th' USA have it worse. At least we get a week off work to recouperate from all of this. In the USA, people are back at their desks on the 26th. Over here, the 26th is reserved for fried breakfasts, a return to the pub, a full program of horse racing in Leopardstown and a full english premiership programme. We don't get back to work until the day after the day after New Years Day.

Next week at businesses accross the nation, employees turn into college students with money. Lunch starts at noon and rapidly descends into an alcoholic haze by the time you pay a taxi driver outside what you suspect is your house. This trend continues until you wake up Christmas eve and realise it's too late to order christmas presents online and have them delivered in 24 hours, so, it's you and two hundred thousand other poor schmucks hassling the cosmetics girls again.

And, at last, I come to the point. The Cosmetics Girls, all sweet smelling and smooth skinned, all friendly and smiley, even when confronted by an unshaven thirty something year old, still vaguely smelling of a mixture of toothpaste and Guinness, looking desperately forlorn through bloodshot eyes, deserve an award. No, they don't just deserve an award, I'd give 'em all freedom of the city if I was Mayor. They stand patiently while you dig through your pockets for crumpled 20 euro notes. They throw in free samples (usually male deodarant!). They explain the refund or exchange policy. They leave you feeling like they are there to help you through the most trying day of your life.

There are angels living amongst us and though they might sport the name of a multinational fashion house on their bosoms, that doesn't make them any less angelic.

Thank you, one and all...

Backtracks and Big Cracks (In the Midfield)

Here it is. The backtrack. United are out of Europe before Christmas. The long cold winter of our incompetence has begun. Then we play Everton and only manage a draw. Chelsea forge further ahead and now Liverpool are above us in the Premiership.

The huge Keane shaped hole in midfield is so so evident and the lacklustre team performances are stemming from a complete lack of organisation and leadership.

Enough! I can't talk about this right now. It's too upsetting.

Needless to say, disregard the entire last post, humble pie tastes just fine when taken with copious ammounts of Heineken

The Unthinkable

Manchester United, should they fail to win in Portugal tonight, will bow out of the Champions League in the group stages for the first time. Up to 12 months ago, this would haave been unthinkable, but as a wise man once said "things have changed".

The Manchester United of 2005 are distinctly lacking the polish of previous incarnations. Key players have not been replaced (Roy Keane, Jaap Stam, David Beckham, Denis Irwin) whilst others have been allowed play too far beyond their 'sell by' date (Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs) out of a mellowing sense of loyalty by a manager who, on the surface, would seem to have 'lost the plot'.

How else can you reconcile recent decisions. The sacking of his club captain and driving force behind the team. The stubborn refusal to revert to 4-4-2. The failure to secure the services of Michael Ballack in January. The plot is well and truly lost.

However, one of the problems of fandom is the optimistic demeanour that accompanies each new foray onto the pitch and tonight I'm seeing as a turning point in the fortunes of the new United. I'm predicting a convincing win with a performance to match the occasion. I think Wayne Rooney will, well and truly, arrive in Europe tonight. And furthermore, I think we'll win the competition.

Be sure to check back on these pages tomorrow to see me cleverly backtack from these schoolboy comments.