The 2018 Ho Media Awards
[I'll never figure out why scheduled posts don't work for me. This should have posted on NYD. Sorry.]
I honestly didn't think I'd be able to name ten albums that I listened to this year. If last year was mostly pleasant surprises, this year was mostly bland disappointments from established favorites. Discovery artists carried the year.
Animal Spirits
Vide Noir
Post Traumatic
I'll Be Your Girl
Always Ascending
Wildness
High as Hope
Square 1
Wrong Creatures
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
The Other Side of Blue
Delta
Come Tomorrow
Thank You For Today
Simulation Theory
Love is a Basic Need
My New Moon
Although it doesn't quite match the start-to-finish awe of Strange Trails (but really, I doubt they'll be able to capture that lightning in a bottle again), Lord Huron's Vide Noir gets the nod for Album of the Year. It rocks harder than we're used to hearing these boys rock, and "Never Ever" comes maybe too soon in the tracklist, but everything otherwise lands really well. It was a narrow run-off between this and The Decemberists' I'll Be Your Girl. At first IBYG was a tough sell. Lyrically it's a lot of repetition, especially disappointing for a band with a penchant for using archaic words and telling epic seven minute yarns. But once I settled in to the groove that they were shooting for, I started enjoying it a lot more. And I can't say I didn't get an epic yarn - "Rusalka, Rusalka / The Wild Rushes" cracks the eight minute mark and keeps going!
The groupings above go like this. First group, great, you should listen to it whoever you are. Second group, pretty good, should appeal to you if you're a fan of each artist's genre. Third group might be good, but both played it too safe and ended up coming across as dull. Fourth group is so safe it's borderline bad. Fifth group, what the fuck guys, come on.
Song of the Year go to "Secret of Life" off of Vide Noir. It's just the right sonic bridge from the last album to this one, with a killer baseline and their trademark obsession with death.
I mentioned that new artists brought some of the best tunes I've heard this year earlier. Part of this comes from giving Google Play radio stations a shot while exercising. Fort Frances, Bronze Radio Return, The Apache Relay, Kopecky Family Band, Agesandages - I've heard so many new interesting sounds that I haven't been able to get to more than one album a piece on most of them.
But the best new things I heard this year came courtesy of my trip to Montana. I was enjoying a pizza at North Fork Pizza in Columbia Falls when this song came on the overhead radio. It was probably a whole combination of positive factors blending into the bliss of that moment, but damn if it wasn't the perfect fit. The whole album is this good too. Deep Sea Diver, I'm pleased to award you Discovery Artist of the Year. Don't spend the award money all at once.
As I did last year, I've been mostly trying to knock out the backlog of books on my shelves or my Kindle that I haven't gotten around to yet. The only two books I made exceptions for were both knock-outs. Redick's Master Assassins was a very enjoyable desert fantasy romp (not a sentence you get to say every day) and opens a very promising series. There's a bit in there - so brief you could almost miss it - that really turns the whole thing on its head and promises something well outside of your standard quasi-medieval setup. just around the corner in the next volume. Zafon closed his Cemetery of Lost Books quartet with the English translation of The Labyrinth of the Spirits - my pick for Book of the Year 2018. Creepy, heart-breaking, and as always, immaculately crafted, I had to put it down a few times to absorb the import of what I'd just read. The Sempere's story is given the most fitting conclusion imaginable.
I should also mention V.E. Schwab's "Shades of Magic" trilogy. I read these books at lunch over a period of a couple of months when the third book came out and enjoyed them quite a bit. Lila is a fabulous example of a female protagonist that avoids the modern "I'm a ninja killer badass but I'm also hopelessly in love with someone who's categorically better at everything than me" trope.
James Islington's The Shadow of What Was Lost was really good too, but I haven't read the second book that came out this year yet. I'll probably wait until the third book comes out about a year from now (already preordered!) just because it's pretty dense and will definitely require rereads to get characters and plans lined up again in my head.
Seeing a movie originally released in 1986 with your son when he's just as excited as you to see it would have scored a Movie of the Year even if it wasn't Transformers. But it was, so it wins the first and probably only (Movie of the Year)^2 award. Congratulations to all of the surviving Autobots.
Staying on this theme, Website of the Year goes to seibertron.com for keeping my TF addiction satisfied throughout the year.
I have almost no friggin' clue what comes out next year. Doves just announced a return from their hiatus for a few shows; maybe an album will follow? Islington's closing volume of the Licanius trilogy is roughly penciled in for December of 2019. The Thorn of Emberlain...who knows?
Whatever you find, however you find it, treat yo'self to something good in 2019!
I honestly didn't think I'd be able to name ten albums that I listened to this year. If last year was mostly pleasant surprises, this year was mostly bland disappointments from established favorites. Discovery artists carried the year.
Animal Spirits
Vide Noir
Post Traumatic
I'll Be Your Girl
Always Ascending
Wildness
High as Hope
Square 1
Wrong Creatures
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
The Other Side of Blue
Delta
Come Tomorrow
Thank You For Today
Simulation Theory
Love is a Basic Need
My New Moon
The groupings above go like this. First group, great, you should listen to it whoever you are. Second group, pretty good, should appeal to you if you're a fan of each artist's genre. Third group might be good, but both played it too safe and ended up coming across as dull. Fourth group is so safe it's borderline bad. Fifth group, what the fuck guys, come on.
Song of the Year go to "Secret of Life" off of Vide Noir. It's just the right sonic bridge from the last album to this one, with a killer baseline and their trademark obsession with death.
I mentioned that new artists brought some of the best tunes I've heard this year earlier. Part of this comes from giving Google Play radio stations a shot while exercising. Fort Frances, Bronze Radio Return, The Apache Relay, Kopecky Family Band, Agesandages - I've heard so many new interesting sounds that I haven't been able to get to more than one album a piece on most of them.
But the best new things I heard this year came courtesy of my trip to Montana. I was enjoying a pizza at North Fork Pizza in Columbia Falls when this song came on the overhead radio. It was probably a whole combination of positive factors blending into the bliss of that moment, but damn if it wasn't the perfect fit. The whole album is this good too. Deep Sea Diver, I'm pleased to award you Discovery Artist of the Year. Don't spend the award money all at once.
I should also mention V.E. Schwab's "Shades of Magic" trilogy. I read these books at lunch over a period of a couple of months when the third book came out and enjoyed them quite a bit. Lila is a fabulous example of a female protagonist that avoids the modern "I'm a ninja killer badass but I'm also hopelessly in love with someone who's categorically better at everything than me" trope.
James Islington's The Shadow of What Was Lost was really good too, but I haven't read the second book that came out this year yet. I'll probably wait until the third book comes out about a year from now (already preordered!) just because it's pretty dense and will definitely require rereads to get characters and plans lined up again in my head.
Seeing a movie originally released in 1986 with your son when he's just as excited as you to see it would have scored a Movie of the Year even if it wasn't Transformers. But it was, so it wins the first and probably only (Movie of the Year)^2 award. Congratulations to all of the surviving Autobots.
Staying on this theme, Website of the Year goes to seibertron.com for keeping my TF addiction satisfied throughout the year.
I have almost no friggin' clue what comes out next year. Doves just announced a return from their hiatus for a few shows; maybe an album will follow? Islington's closing volume of the Licanius trilogy is roughly penciled in for December of 2019. The Thorn of Emberlain...who knows?
Whatever you find, however you find it, treat yo'self to something good in 2019!
Comments