Itâs a common metaphor. A playful exaggeration of what happens when something goes beyond a mere
dopamine hit and passes into
complete shamanic bliss.
If most of the people in the crowd there with me had said that, they wouldnât have meant it
literally. Theyâre atheists. Christians. Muslims. âSpiritual, but not religiousâ. Either they see no
point in all this God-bothering, or their spiritual needs are well accounted for.
As for your correspondent? Well, loud, boisterious ecstasy is
exactly the type of old-time religion iâm after. Hundreds of sweating, screaming, beautiful humans,
swimming in the sea of each other, without a care in the world, freed, just for a moment, from the
stresses of their mundane daily life1 â and all led by a charismatic
preacher front man. What else could you call such a thing?
When youâre a shy bairn who follows a dead religion, you take what you can get.
Also⊠about halfway through the show, the band put up a big caption on the side screens
saying âguest starring Harry Stylesâ2 (greeted with rapturous applause).
They then proceeded to bring out Lewis âiwaÂgeddiÂcannaÂustiÂbeiÂsumÂwunÂyuÂluuuuuuhâ Capaldi
instead (greeted with considerably less rapturous applause), and have him sing the absolute holy
grail of 1975 concerts: âAntichristâ, a song from
their very first EP which the band have steadfastly refused to ever play
live. Masterful trolling.
Welcome, one and all, to the 2798th annual Horny Awards! Every year since humans figured
out how to count them, the Satyrsâ Forest has presented hand-made, custom trophies to the best works
of the year that was. Itâs an astoundingly long-lasting tradition, and definitely not something i
made up just now.
2022 was one of the years ever. Things, iâm told, occurred. People were born; people were taxed;
people died. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard released several albums. It will go down in the
history books as âthe year between 2021 and 2023â. On with our show.
Film
The Laurel Wreath Award for Annual Achievement in Film
Our first category marks all the wonderful movies that were made in this past year â which is quite
a lot, so my apologies to all those films who i either didnât mention or didnât have time to see!
There can only be one winner, but iâll start off with a lightning round of honourable mentions. Baz
Luhrmannâs
Elvis
was like being locked inside a room with an insane person for two and a half hours, and i loved
every ridiculous, extravagant, kinetic minute of it. Tom Georgeâs
See How They Run
and Rian Johnsonâs
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
were brilliant and funny throwback mysteries which really needed more time and appreciation in the
cinema. And i dearly hope David Letichâs
Bullet Train
becomes the new Fast and Furious â 2Bullet2Train!
Bullet Train 3: This Time itâs a Plane! Bullet ISS! The possibilities are endless.
An especially honourable mention goes to Luca Guadagninoâs Bones and All, a tender horror romance which almost made it to the main list before i realised that i hadnât
actually all that much to say on it. Itâs a metaphor for something, i tell ya hwatâŠ
It could have done with less of the hot-dog fingers, but anyone who would leave our first âofficialâ
runner-up off of their year-end list is a heartless bastard. On paper,
Everything Everywhere All at Once
is a recipe for everything everywhere to go totally wrong: a riff on The Matrix with a
tenth of the budget, directors whose last work was a movie where Daniel Radcliffe farts a lot, and a
sense of humour firmly dated to Reddit circa 2012. Yet it pulls it off.
This is a movie where people beat each other up with dildos, where a hallway of people literally
explodes into colour and light, and where the equivalent of the Death Star is an everything bagel.
It is also one of the only movies to have made me bawl like a baby in the cinema.
Everything Everywhere is an anti-cynical, anti-nihilistic manifesto for our time. Yes,
nothing matters! and yes, you might not write the next great American novel or paint a masterpiece!
but the world has so much joy and beauty, so many minuscule details that you pass by every day, so
for goodnessâ sake, even if youâre
just doing laundry and taxes, take your
time to enjoy the little things in life.
I need to go hug my mum.
Blockbusters arenât what they used to be, are they? Ever since Endgame, Marvel have been
running on autopilot, releasing a steady stream of snarky CGI sludge
made more out of obligation than passion. They donât even work as escapism anymore â the fantastical
isnât fantastic when every billion-dollar release is set in a world of superheroes and sci-fi.
Like Everything Everywhere, our other runner-up is a prime example of a movie that just
shouldnât work. Itâs a sequel to a 40-year-old film so mediocre i turned it off halfway through,
made as a cynical cash-grab recruitment ad for the navy, with a topic and plot designed to appeal
exclusively to Your Dad.1 Yet, through sheer dumb luck, Paramount hit the
jackpot on
Top Gun: Maverick.
Obviously, Tom Cruise is an absolute charisma magnet and the best part of every movie heâs ever been
in. But that seductive Scientologist smile only goes so far
(just look at The Mummy), and thatâs where
our director comes in. Joseph Kosinski doesnât have a particularly long track record; it would be
easy to mistake him for a typical director-for-hire. His dialogue scenes donât stand out from the
pack, and heâs not particularly creative with the camera, but that doesnât matter. What he excels at
is spectacle.
2010âs Tron: Legacy is a profoundly middling film in terms of its plot and characters, but
it gained a cult following thanks to the delicious combination of Daft Punkâs killer score with Mr
Kosinskiâs brilliant visuals and action. He took that computerised world of bits and bytes and gave
it stakes, weight, and a sense of scale, where a Marvel hack would have told the
VFX guy to just press render and go with whatever comes out.
So you take a director whose most known work is a spectacular
CG effects-fest and a lead actor famous for his insistence on doing all
of his own stunts, and what do you get? The best blockbuster film of the decade, thatâs what. The
original Top Gunâs plane scenes drag and drag with no real purpose; in Maverick,
every flight has something at stake, with non-stop action â but the film still knows when to pull
back and take a breather to give its characters heart. My icy, cynical heart knew that i
was being manipulated every step of the way, knew that every pull of the strings was
planned out in advance, knew that this film was made for money and nothing else⊠but iâll
be damned if i didnât start crying at that Val Kilmer cameo.
Go and see Top Gun: Maverick on the biggest screen you can, whether thatâs a 1080p computer
monitor or an Imax cinema. You wonât regret it.
Our two runners-up were films that i would recommend to anyone, anywhere, of any age, and at any
time. They have something for everyone. First place, on the other handâŠ
If you believe the lame-stream media, our winning film was the result of arthouse horror hero Robert
Eggers being given a blank check by Universal to make a big period action movie. This is false. It
was created by scientists in a lab in Durham to appeal to me and me specifically. (You can tell
because i was the only person who actually went out and watched it.)
Based on the Norse legend behind Shakespeareâs Hamlet,
The Northman is an epic following Large Scandinavian Man as the viking
Amleth, son of a deposed king, on his journey to avenge his father with the power of
Odin and testosterone2 on his side.
When i call Amleth a viking, i do not mean that all-too-common sanitised Hollywood depiction of a
20th-century Christian in pagan clothing. No; his society and its ways are portrayed as they were,
warts and all, regardless of what the audience might feel about it. The vikings of this film keep
slaves, burn down houses, consult witches (memorably played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, and
Björk, in decreasing order of screentime), mock Jesus, and pray to Gods as a fact of life. (The film
never particularly demeans them for the latter three, which i found a welcome reprieve from
paganismâs usual relegation to the villains of horror schlock.) The only concession to modern mores
is
the absence of polygamy, because splashing people with period blood and cutting off heads is okay but good heavens a
second wife?????
Mr Eggers and his crew schlepped all the way to Iceland for filming and made good bloody use of it.
Whether its long shots are focused on natureâs rolling fields and bursting volcanoes or humanityâs
flame-lit funerals and grimy oarsmen, the result is consistently one of the most beautiful things of
the year.
Itâs not for everyone. Itâs long, and those just there for the action will find themselves asking
when theyâre going to get to the fireworks factory. Itâs gory. Itâs grim. But itâs definitely for
me.
The Zoetrope Award for Classic Cinema
Hey, did you like the Matrix sequels? Do you want to watch a three-hour-long film where
every character is played by the same six actors? No? Well, too bad, because the best film i watched
in 2022 that wasnât released that year was the Wachowski sistersâ3Cloud Atlas.4
There was a point, about 60% of the way through this three-hour-long movie, where i started to
wonder if it was all worth it. Iâd seen Tom Hanks attempting a Cockney accent, Hugo Weaving in
unconvincing Asian prosthetics, and a lot of people saying âtru-truâ a lot of times. Surely it was
impossible to tie this all together into a satisfying conclusion.
I started having flashbacks to The Matrix Resurrections, an endlessly creative film plagued
by its own self-obsessions and Lana Wachowskiâs inability to not put the first thing that
came into her head into the script. Was this going to be the same? Are the sisters trapped in an
endless cycle of almost-but-not-quite?
And then there was a point, about 90% of the way through, where i started crying. Theyâd squared the
circle, tied all six stories up into a neat bow; an epic told on the scale of centuries, where
actors cross boundaries of time, nationality, race, and gender; a film that would be their
magnum opus were it not for the long shadow of The Matrix. I donât know how they
did it, but they did â and thus nudged their record of hits against misses slightly to the positive
side.
The Pebbledash Dildo Award for Cinematic Disappointment
2022 was a good year for bad movies. Moonfall was the peak of so-bad-itâs-good Emmerichian
excess. Morbius morbed all across the internet. And the usual Marvel schlock was even
shlockier than usual. But nobody thought those films would be any good anyway â itâs hard to be
disappointed when you donât have any expectations in the first place.
So, by God, was i disappointed in Nope. From Jordan Peele, criticsâ favourite rising star, this sci-fi Hollywood horror brims with so
many creative ideas and metaphors that they all boil over and donât go anywhere. I can only imagine
that a quarter of the script got sucked up into a UFO and they decided
to just keep shooting. There are so many great ideas in this film, and itâs a darned shame they
wound up such an anticlimax.
The Comfy Sofa Award for Peak Television
I donât actually watch much television; iâve always found it hard to get invested for the âlong
haulâ. Ben Stillerâs Severance, made for Appleâs floundering streaming service, is a slow
burner, the sort of thing i despise â but its slowness is methodical, carefully drip-feeding you
bits of information whilst never wasting its time on fluff and filler.
Itâs strange. Itâs puzzling. Itâs brilliant. And the final episode is some of the best
TV iâve ever seen. If i could, iâd sever myself â just to watch it all
over again.
Music
The Golden Lyre Award for Excellence in New Music
Itâs The 1975.
Well, no point in dragging that out. They may not be the best band in the world, but they are my
favourite band in the world; their eclectic pop-rock sensibilities are what got me into
music, and iâll always appreciate them for that.
This isnât just a sentimental pick.
Being Funny in a Foreign Language
sees the band trim away the fat and bloat of their previous works and hold back on the eclectic
experimentation of the Music for Cars era, settling on a distilled, refined version of the
sound that defined their first record. There are no bloated instrumentals, no experimental
noodlings; just, as their international tour proudly suggests, The 1975 At Their Very Best.
No album came close to blowing them out of the water â because iâm a soppish fanboy â but to whet
your appetite, here are some more of my favourite songs of 2022. (In no particular order.)
The Hurdy-Gurdy Award for Enduring Musical Resonance
It was with some trepidation that i typed the word âPaganâ into RateYourMusicâs charts function,
knowing the reputation that explicitly religious music has. The words âChristian rockâ have always
been accented with a sneer, and the most well-known Pagan musician of the modern age is an
unrepentant church-burning neo-nazi.
Right at the top, after iâd filtered out all of the metal (apologies, metalheads; it just isnât my
bag), sat XTCâs
Apple Venus Volume One. You wonât find it on streaming â frontman Andy Partridge has few kind words for the likes of
Spotify â but i made do with a pirate Youtube playlist until i tracked down a physical copy at the
shops.
Apple Venus is the groupâs penultimate album, and even knowing nothing about them, I could
tell. It drips with aching sincerity, the kind that dips into corny pastiche, in that particular way
that only happens when a band who have spent their whole career dripping with snark and cynicism
realise that theyâre getting too old for this shit.
And thatâs all i wrote.
Some other favourite old songs i discovered this year:
The Sad Trombone Award for Most Disappointing Music
Iâve been getting into post-rock recently, and there are a few albums which seem to be near and dear
to fansâ hearts. Sigur RĂłsâ ĂgĂŠtis byrjun, a surprisingly accessible masterclass.
Godspeed You Blank Emperorâs Lift Your Skinny Fists, the best soundtrack for a movie that
never existed. Talk Talkâs Spirit of Eden, a bit too jazzy for my tastes. A few more that
iâve yet to listen to.
Then thereâs The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place.
Explosions in the Skyâs third album is widely beloved. It tops lists with the big guns. It often
shows up on genre âstarter packâ lists. There is a teensy, tiny problem with this: itâs shite.
Well, alright, i thought, two tracks in. Maybe it picks up by the end? Everyone is raving about that
closing track, âYour Hand in Mineâ â and then that was shite too!
This is music for a car commercial. It is
the Imagine Dragons of post-rock. Itâs the sort of music a TV network
might play as inspirational backing for their Paralympic coverage. It is sappy, insipid, and
uninspired dross of the purest and vilest sort, and it boggles the mind to think how it ever got the
reputation it now has. See me after class.
The electronic arts
The Kingâs Dice Award for Interactive Entertainment
Just one game found its home amongst my digital shelves this years, and i have yet to find the
opportunity to complete it. Lucas Popeâs Return of the Obra Dinn wins by acclimation â so
far itâs stylish, intriguing, and fun to solve, but again, iâve not finished it! Weâll see if it
sticks the landing.
The Broken Link Award for Best Use of Hypertext
Homestuck isnât very good. It has an undeniably appealing cast of characters and charmingly
naĂŻve art â you donât get millions of fans without doing something right â that are sadly
weighed down by its authorâs baffling decision, faced with all the sprawling multi-media
possibilities of the web, to tell its story entirely in walls of unreadable monospaced text.
Wired Sound for Wired People isnât my thing. It
has undeniably mastered a medium: its flickering pink pixels and eerie soundscapes build an
unmistakable mix of intrigue and unease, beckoning you to follow it down the rabbit hole. But it
lacks a message to go with it â thereâs no story to speak of, just a collage of strange and trippy
scenes.
So what if someone were to combine the best bits of both, and undo their shortcomings?
Idiosyncratic, eerie audiovisuals, with relatable dramatis personĂŠ, and a
compelling story which uses the power of hypertext to its fullest?
Enter
Corru.observer. Linked to me by someone whose homepage iâd complimented â with no other comment than that it was
a friendâs âpersonal siteâ â Corru puts you in the seat of an archĂŠologist(?) some
decades(?) in the future(?), trying to piece together the memories of an alie⊠iâll let you find out
the rest. Thereâs only an âepisodeâ and a half out right now, and i canât wait to see where it goes.
The Fred Figglehorn Memorial Award for Online Video
But in the age of Tiktok and Vine, it pays to be succinct. Our winner by no means reaches the
six-second nirvana of those two platforms, but at 25 minutes, it would fit comfortably into a
half-hour broadcast slot on telly â not bad on a site increasingly dominated by 7-hour videos about
people watching sitcoms for children.
That winner is Michael Stevensâs video on
the origin of selfies. In it brief
runtime, it answers every question i never knew i had about the selfie, while spinning in a number
of fascinating tangents and eyebrow-raising questions (in the typical Vsauce house style). It even
got me to renovate the gallery just to add that photo by Anastasia. Cheese!
Affleckâs Palace is the beating heart of Mancunian counterculture; a labyrinthine
maze of shops which across their three floors sell everything from rose ice cream to bath bombs to
incense to Hatsune Mikuâthemed fizzy drinks⊠and i canât tell you any more than that, because i
havenât finished my post about it yet!
Really, though â Affleckâs has it all and more, and iâll be sure to stop by next time i go down
south.
The Hubert J. Farnsworth Award for Good News, Everyone!
Day in, day out, we are flooded with the latest news of disasters and terrors from around the globe.
It gets the views, it gets the hits, and it gets the clicks; itâs no wonder journos love to
accentuate the negative.
The Hubert J. Farnsworth Award is an antidote to doom and gloom, honouring the best thing
that happened in 2022. It was a late entry, but it could hardly be anything other thanâŠ
âŠThe National Ignition Facility, the U.S. government lab who reported that, for the
first time,
theyâd gotten more energy out than they put in via fusion power. There are hiccups, of course; the facilityâs magnets guzzled dozens of times more power than the
reactor itself. But every stepping stone has its imperfections, and this is the first great step to
a truly prosperous future â where energy is too cheap to meter, where power is so abundant that
there will be hardly a grain of economic sense in the idea of tapping any more of
GĂŠaâs precious little black gold.
Happy belated new year, everyone. And as always â may it be better than the last!
Hello. Iâve been to Manchester. I thought i might tell you about it. Wait no come back i promise
this isn't just showing you my holiday ph
The last time i went to that wonderful southern city, i was hardly ten years old, and hadnât much of
a chance to explore â a mistake i was itching to rectify this go around. Over the next few days iâll
be sharing some of the things i saw, heard, and third verb goes here.
First things first, our tripâs raison dâĂȘtre: Sigur RĂłs were on a world tour, and though
they might not have been schlepping up to Newcastle, i sure as hell wasnât going to miss the chance
to see them.
Sigur RĂłs are a post-rock band, and their gig made clear that itâs with a strong emphasis on the
âpost-â. It was an all-seated audience, with vanishingly little banter from the band (one has to
imagine theyâre not 100% confident in their English), excepting a brief pantomime bit at the end of
âAndvariâ. No complaints from me, though: a laid-back, almost classical atmosphere quite befits
their ĂŠtheral soundscapes. I mean, could you imagine people going wild in the pit to âVakaâ?
As âPopplagiĂ°â came to a close and everyone shuffled out the venueâs doors, i noticed a curious item
at the merch table: an officially licensed Sigur RĂłs tea and incense kit. What a world we live in.
(I didnât buy it â there was only one left, and i probably wouldnât be the one to make the most use
out of it.)
As an official, Lisa Nandyâcertified resident of a Townâą, i was left slightly dumbstruck and
intimidated by the dense forest of tall buildings that is Manchesterâs city centre. Sure, itâs not
like iâm a stranger to the idea of a city, but of the two big cities i have most haunted
over the years , Newcastle only has a stumpy luxury apartment and a few council houses strewn about
the suburbs, while Amsterdamâs skyscraper district is sectioned off behind the other side of a ring
road, far from the centre of town.
But Manchester? Nay â Manchester is Englandâs second city, and theyâll show it any way they like!
Dozens upon dozens of architectural phalli jut up from the ground in all directions, a veritable
orgy of capital. I pray thee, have we as a species learnt nothing from the tales of Icarus and the
Tower of Babel? Nothing✠This is hubris writ large, i tell you!
Or, you know, something like that. Their green spaces donât even have cows.
They both serve the same purpose, really, but i just want to rub in that where we up north has a
fully-fledged metro, Manchester merely has to do with trams. Sure, ours might be
delayed every five minutes, and theirs might be uber-reliable and extend throughout the urban area,
but whoâs really winning?
Manchester has no shortage of iconic residents â Morrissey, Danny Boyle, Burgess, Wanksy â but
Mancunians have taken it upon themselves to idolise two people above all else. Everywhere you look,
there are statues, plaques, and posters in their memory.
The first is Emmeline Pankhurst. An early leader of the suffragette movement, she and her allies
often used violent tactics to get their way, from breaking windows all the way up to arson. You can
see why the left-wing, industrial city, birthplace of the labour movement, would be proud to honour
her.
The other is Noel Gallagher.
Naturally.
Does anyone else think the guitar riff from â21 Gunsâ sounds like the Full House theme, or
am i just crazy?
Now playing:
(New posts eventuallyâą. Promise.)
Pleased to say that the new 1975 album is
indeed the greatest album ever made.
I have to say â thereâs something strangely haunting about this cover of âIdiotequeâ using just the
soundfont from Super Mario 64. Those marimbasâŠ
Finally listening to Björk at the repeated insistence of
a friend, and my word, i think
âHyperballadâ might be one of the best
songs iâve ever heard.
Look. Reader, youâre probably sick to death of âRunning up that Hillâ1 at
this point â itâs been everywhere for weeks. But iâm not, because itâs a bloody great song and i
neither listen to pop radio nor watch Stranger Things, so hereâs a brilliant, luscious
cover by the inexplicably non-Australian band2 the Wombats.
(P.S. â I still canât remember that post idea i had the other day, no matter how many bike
rides to the same place i run⊠was it a religious thing? Some meta-internet naff? Was i going to get
political? If someone has access to my brainâs Recycle Bin folder, please tell me.)
Alright, hear me out: Radioheadâs âCreepâ is about gender dysphoria.
This is a crackpot theory, of course â none of the members of the band have ever even suggested that
they might be transgendered, and if they did Jonny might have something to say about it.
But it just makes sliiightly too much sense.
The chorus is about ostracisation from society, and the feeling that one doesnât belong in spaces of
oneâs gender (take the whole bathroom debacle). There are more thematic hints in the first two
stanzas â âYouâre just like an angel / Your skin makes me cryâ â but the real smoking gun is the
third verse:
I donât care if it hurts I wanna have control I want a perfect body I want a
perfect soul
Do I even need to spell it out? âCreepâ is the trans anthem of the 1990s and noöne will ever
convince me otherwise.
I went to see everyoneâs favourite synth-pop act Chvrches a few nights back, and i must say they put
on a hell of a show. Even at the
City Hall â quite a stuffy venue by
most standards â the crowd went absolutely mental for âClearest Blueâ at the end! (I
barely know what came over me.)
Great staging, too â i counted three costume changes throughout the night, including a delectably
bloody âFINAL GIRLâ shirt for the encore. (Their latest album has a
horror-movie gimmick crafted entirely to let them swap remixes1 with John
Carpenter â not that iâm complaining.)
The opening act were an Ozzie band called HighSchool who, being brutally honest, should go back to
PrimarySchool. Theyâre one of those acts that basically only know how to write one song over and
over, and itâs alright at first, but by take number five of the same sludge youâre praying for it to
end, you know? (See also the inexplicably successful 1975 cover band Pale Waves.)
9/10, would stand in line for several hours again.
One of the more surprising results of the recent investigation into Big Borisâs lockdown conduct was
the unearthing of a playlist used to motivate employees during their completely ordinary work
events. Highlights include:
Miley Cyrus - Regular Work Event in the U.S.A.,
Vengaboys - We Like to Engage in Normal Work Proceedings,
Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want to Become Civil Servants,
Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Productive in the Office,
Avicii - Waiting For The Results Of The Independent Investigation And Report Conducted By Sue
Gray,
Walk the Moon - Dance then Shut Up, and, of course,
Shaggy - It Wasnât Me
This list of songs, no doubt, absolves the government of any kind of wrongdoing.
Spurred on by a brief shower thought, iâve tried my hand at making
a playlist âfor the bad daysâ: songs (mostly rock) with big, soaring crescendos that feel like an out-of-body experience. Your
âBitter Sweet Symphoniesâ, your âHoppĂpollasâ, your ââHeroesâ-esâ â the songs that make you have
faith in humanity, and make you not want to jump out of a thirtieth-storey window so badly.
Iâve been asking around for suggestions on the usual (Discord) channels, and have got some cracking
songs in return â so, do any of you want to try your hands at it? Iâd love to hear your ideas. :-)
Hereâs the current set of songs on the playlist, to give you an idea of the general âvibesâ â
exceptional examples are highlighted in bold.
The 1975, âI Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)â
Bleachers, âRollercoasterâ
Arcade Fire, âMy Body Is a Cageâ (thx, Pike)
David Bowie, ââHeroesââ
Kate Bush, âCloudbustingâ
Coldplay, âViva La Vidaâ
Daft Punk, âGiorgio by Moroderâ
Elbow, âOne Day Like Thisâ
Sam Fender, âThe Dying Lightâ
Fun; âSome Nightsâ
Keane, âSomewhere Only We Knowâ
LCD Soundsystem, âDance Yrself Cleanâ
The Naked and Famous, âHigherâ
Oasis, âDonât Look Back in Angerâ
Oasis, âChampagne Supernovaâ
Radiohead, âAll I Needâ
Radiohead, âVideotapeâ (live at Bonnaroo)
Porter Robinson, âUnfoldâ
Sigur RĂłs, âHoppĂpollaâ
Snow Patrol, âChasing Carsâ
Suede, âLife is Goldenâ (thx, Pike)
Tame Impala, âLet It Happenâ
The Verve, âBitter Sweet Symphonyâ
The War on Drugs, âI Donât Live Here Anymoreâ