The 2017 Ho Media Awards
New Year's Resolution 2018: Post more than I did in 2017. Sorry.
This year's eligible album list is:
Ah, The World! Oh, The World!
All This Life
As You Were
Who Built The Moon?
A Blaze of Feather
Blindfaller
Crack-Up
Everything Now
Little Fictions
One More Light
Lemon Cotton Candy Sunset
Pleasure
Red Pill Blues
Wonderful Wonderful
It's mostly a list of surprises. The Gallagher brothers both did the unexpected - Liam released something that sounds fresher and more genuine than anything he's sang in over a decade while Noel released a mostly upbeat album. The Killers almost did well enough on Wonderful Wonderful to make up for the atrocity that is Battle Born. I didn't know what to expect from Richard Edwards' solo album, but I was definitely pleasantly surprised. Tom McRae released an extremely chill and heartfelt album in a beautiful little red book; think Amnesiac with fewer minotaurs and more recipes for fish. Meanwhile, Feist, Maroon 5, A Blaze of Feather, and Fleet Foxes all marketed albums that were shockingly dull.
Tip o' the hat to Liam for narrowly edging out Richard for Album of the Year.
As killer as As You Were is, The Killers get the crown for Song of the Year with "The Man."
2017's Discovery Artist of the Year is The Frames. They've been on my meaning-to-check-out list for years and I finally decided to stream a couple of their albums on Amazon this summer and got hooked. I fell into Stereophonics the same way; Word Gets Around is another one of those albums from '97 that doesn't have a single throwaway track. Brown Bird sounds like it was a pretty amazing project before the lead vocalist and founding solo member passed away at a tragically young age. Atlas Genius is a group I've just started streaming this month, but I'm intrigued.
I've read almost nothing that came out this year. La Belle Sauvage, The Black Elfstone, Seventh Decimate, Skullsworn, Hymn - these are all sitting on the shelf waiting for me this winter. I've been trying to burn through some of the books I have had sitting on the shelf for a long time. Books like The Water Knife, which I was glad to finally read because now I know it isn't worth wasting precious shelf space on. Oathbringer was pretty good, but not my favorite in the SA series thus far (Dalinar's flashbacks were almost irritating; Sanderson takes "don't tell me, show me" a little too far at times). So while it wasn't published last year, the best thing I applied to my eyes this year was Christopher Priest's The Adjacent. It's typical Priest: time travel, parallel universes, and mysterious islands. It's also atypical Priest: [censored] (sorry, can't spoil the ending).
Last winter I also finally decided to branch out a little bit and picked up a series of Transformers comics in their hardcover collection volumes by IDW. As a kid, I never could get in to stories that were told 20 pages at a time, especially as expensive as they were. That dot matrix art style...ugh. But the hardcovers collected the stories into something more like a novel. Modern comics artists have come a long way from 50 dots per inch. Writers write dialog that doesn't make me cringe. And, you know, Transformers. It's been great. Yay for trying new things!
With all of that said, if you thought the Movie of the Year was going to be anything but Transformers: The Last Knight, we must not be friends or you're not great with foreshadowing.
Website of the Year is going to the National Park Service for their webcams in Glacier National Park. These are my windows out to the world outside the office from inside my otherwise windowless office.
I barely kept up with 2017, so I won't pretend I have many ideas about what's coming in 2018. Redick's first entry in his next series The Fire Sacraments is scheduled to drop in March and I'm excited for that. I reread The Chathrand Voyage during lunches over the last few months and I was struck again by how damn good it was (EXCEPT FOR THAT ENDING). The next Shannara book should be out mid-year; maybe I'll have the first one read by that time. Pullman has said that the next entry in The Book of Dust might be out next year, but there's no firm plan for that at this time.
May your media life in 2018 be free from disappointments in any and every category!
This year's eligible album list is:
Ah, The World! Oh, The World!
All This Life
As You Were
Who Built The Moon?
A Blaze of Feather
Blindfaller
Crack-Up
Everything Now
Little Fictions
One More Light
Lemon Cotton Candy Sunset
Pleasure
Red Pill Blues
Wonderful Wonderful
It's mostly a list of surprises. The Gallagher brothers both did the unexpected - Liam released something that sounds fresher and more genuine than anything he's sang in over a decade while Noel released a mostly upbeat album. The Killers almost did well enough on Wonderful Wonderful to make up for the atrocity that is Battle Born. I didn't know what to expect from Richard Edwards' solo album, but I was definitely pleasantly surprised. Tom McRae released an extremely chill and heartfelt album in a beautiful little red book; think Amnesiac with fewer minotaurs and more recipes for fish. Meanwhile, Feist, Maroon 5, A Blaze of Feather, and Fleet Foxes all marketed albums that were shockingly dull.Tip o' the hat to Liam for narrowly edging out Richard for Album of the Year.
As killer as As You Were is, The Killers get the crown for Song of the Year with "The Man."
2017's Discovery Artist of the Year is The Frames. They've been on my meaning-to-check-out list for years and I finally decided to stream a couple of their albums on Amazon this summer and got hooked. I fell into Stereophonics the same way; Word Gets Around is another one of those albums from '97 that doesn't have a single throwaway track. Brown Bird sounds like it was a pretty amazing project before the lead vocalist and founding solo member passed away at a tragically young age. Atlas Genius is a group I've just started streaming this month, but I'm intrigued.
I've read almost nothing that came out this year. La Belle Sauvage, The Black Elfstone, Seventh Decimate, Skullsworn, Hymn - these are all sitting on the shelf waiting for me this winter. I've been trying to burn through some of the books I have had sitting on the shelf for a long time. Books like The Water Knife, which I was glad to finally read because now I know it isn't worth wasting precious shelf space on. Oathbringer was pretty good, but not my favorite in the SA series thus far (Dalinar's flashbacks were almost irritating; Sanderson takes "don't tell me, show me" a little too far at times). So while it wasn't published last year, the best thing I applied to my eyes this year was Christopher Priest's The Adjacent. It's typical Priest: time travel, parallel universes, and mysterious islands. It's also atypical Priest: [censored] (sorry, can't spoil the ending).Last winter I also finally decided to branch out a little bit and picked up a series of Transformers comics in their hardcover collection volumes by IDW. As a kid, I never could get in to stories that were told 20 pages at a time, especially as expensive as they were. That dot matrix art style...ugh. But the hardcovers collected the stories into something more like a novel. Modern comics artists have come a long way from 50 dots per inch. Writers write dialog that doesn't make me cringe. And, you know, Transformers. It's been great. Yay for trying new things!
With all of that said, if you thought the Movie of the Year was going to be anything but Transformers: The Last Knight, we must not be friends or you're not great with foreshadowing.
Website of the Year is going to the National Park Service for their webcams in Glacier National Park. These are my windows out to the world outside the office from inside my otherwise windowless office.
I barely kept up with 2017, so I won't pretend I have many ideas about what's coming in 2018. Redick's first entry in his next series The Fire Sacraments is scheduled to drop in March and I'm excited for that. I reread The Chathrand Voyage during lunches over the last few months and I was struck again by how damn good it was (EXCEPT FOR THAT ENDING). The next Shannara book should be out mid-year; maybe I'll have the first one read by that time. Pullman has said that the next entry in The Book of Dust might be out next year, but there's no firm plan for that at this time.
May your media life in 2018 be free from disappointments in any and every category!
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