substack - TL:DR (That's Long, DID Read)

…and hello 2026

I intend to write something substantial for the site every month this year, but it’s nearly midnight on the 31st of January and nothing is finished for January, so here are some disparate notes and thoughts instead.

Despite the non-appearance of the big January post I’ve actually written quite a lot this January – 22, 546 words (not including these ones) in fact; that’s about half a novel, length-wise, but it was split between ten reviews, five articles of various types for my substack and, more unusually for me, a little bit of fiction.

In January I also enjoyed various things, so here are a few of them; I suppose you could think of them as recommendations, so the heading shall be…

Recommendations

I read several good books in January. One of them was Ramsey Campbell’s Scared Stiff, a collection of sex-themed short horror stories from the 80s. You may have come across some of my thoughts on Campbell before. The short version is; I want to like his work a little bit more than I generally do. He is I think the most critically acclaimed British horror author of his generation (unless you count Clive Barker, who was born just six years later but who seems to belong to a slightly younger generation. Maybe best to say that Campbell is the most acclaimed author of straightforward horror fiction of his generation, since at this point Barker’s reputation is based more on his imaginative/fantastical writing than his early horror work.) But anyway; Campbell is an acclaimed author and while I think that’s nice and I’m glad about it, more often than not I find there’s a surprisingly unremarked-on awkwardness to Campbell’s prose that mars it for me. Having said that, Scared Stiff included some of the best stories I’ve read by him and if it was a slightly mixed bag, it was a very enjoyable and genuinely chilling one, though I never really need to read the word ‘dwindled’ again.

I also read and enjoyed (in translation, naturally) Monsieur Proust by Céleste Albaret, which was fascinating and enlightening and occasionally (not Madame Albaret’s fault) a little disappointing. I’m very glad to have read it even though a little part of me preferred the Marcel I had imagined from reading his work to the more mundane but also much more rounded and believable human being that came across in Monsieur Proust. Almost the exact opposite happened when I read Andrew Graham-Dixon’s revelatory biography Vermeer – a Life Lost and Found, in which the mysterious and opaque Vermeer of the imagination. As Jonathan Richman sang in No One Was Like Vermeer (2008):

Vermeer was eerie
Vermeer was strange
He had a more modern colour range
As if born in another age
Like maybe a hundred or so years ago

What’s this? A ghost in the gallery?
Great Scot! The Martians are here!
These strange little paintings next to the others
No-one was like Vermeer

Unexpectedly, to me at least, Andrew Graham-Dixon dispels much of the mystery, without undoing any of the magic; the Vermeer he describes is a man very specifically of his time and milieu, but ultimately to me that makes his particular kind of alchemy more rather than less extraordinary; maybe it’s just because I’m lacking in ‘negative capability,’ but for me knowing that the Girl With the Pearl Earring and the rest have a meaning and function that was highly specific to 17th century Delft, but which still communicate their human quality of warmth, empathy and connection down the ages is the miracle of art.

I also watched some good films this January, most recently, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023), which I had seen before, but watched two nights in a row, utterly hypnotised by it, just like the first time. By now it’s already a cliché to use the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ – but it also feels slightly wrong. In a way it’s the banality of the characters itself, especially Hedwig and Rudolf Höss, brilliantly played by Sandra Hüller and Christian Friedel – but also their children and the assorted businessmen and soldiers – that is what’s evil about them. At first it seems that to Rudolf Auschwitz is just his job, and to Hedwig it’s just her husband’s job – which is bad enough. But the genius of the film is the way that Glazer undercuts their blasé attitude by showing that they do understand not just the reality but the implications of what’s going on in the camp and that it’s not some kind of inexplicable mass hysteria; Hedwig’s own mother, though presumably just as unthinkingly loyal to her homeland and its government as her daughter is almost immediately struck by the utter wrongness of Auschwitz; Rudolf and Hedwig get it too; they just don’t mind.

The feeling of being hypnotised by a film is a rare one for me, but coincidentally(?) I watched two of the very few others that have that effect on me this January too. I watched Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003) several times last year and then watched it twice in January too. The first time the feeling is all about the suspense of not knowing how events will unfold, but obviously that can’t be true when rewatching it. And yet for me it remains just as appallingly gripping and sad every time, The same is true in a very different way of Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2004 film Der Untergang. I watched that in January too, only once, but for the third or fourth time in the past few years. Key to its hypnotic quality is the great Bruno Ganz, but also the brilliant pacing, editing and performances of the whole cast. It feels like a thriller, even though it’s mostly people squabbling in a bunker.

New to me though, was a film I’ve wanted to see since 1988 when I first read about it in (I’m fairly sure) FEAR magazine; a confusing memory because I clearly remember the picture of Anthony Edwards below (though in black and white), which is a still from the film. And I remember the headline was ‘Miner Miracles‘ and part of the article related to Steve Miner. But as far as I can see, Steve Miner (director of the great Warlock (1989) has nothing whatever to do with Miracle Mile, which was written and directed by Steve De Jarnatt. So maybe it was a general film roundup that mentioned both Miracle Mile and Warlock, which was definitely promoted in/by FEAR.

Anyway, I loved Miracle Mile and found it completely gripping and kind of sweet and heartbreaking and in a weird way nostalgic for the expected nuclear holocaust of my childhood. Partly it was nostalgic because it was like a cross between two different things from the 80s, both of which I love. Firstly, the kind of teen romance movie most associated with John Hughes (Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful etc) and secondly Jimmy Murakami’s adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ cosily apocalyptic comicbook When the Wind Blows. I loved the glossy, 80s way it was filmed (especially the opening, idyllic shots of Miracle Mile itself) and its goofy humour and especially the two leads. I knew Anthony Edwards from a few things (though not his 80s work, oddly. I never liked and barely remember Revenge of the Nerds and I’ve never seen Top Gun) but I thought he was perfect in this; likeably dorky but also sincere – and I love Mare Winningham. She’ll always be Wendy from St Elmo’s Fire (1985 – one of my favourite 80s teen movies) to me, so it was strange at first, seeing her as cool-quirky rather than nerd-quirky. Anyway, loved it (and watched it three times). I’m glad/surprised the studio didn’t chicken out on the perfect ending. Oh. and it had the great Brian Thompson (Kabal from Doctor Mordrid) in a small but vital role; it couldn’t be more 80s and yet less typical of 80s Hollywood at the same time. Great Tangerine Dream soundtrack too.

Blot – but will it be as good as I remember?

Music-wise I heard a lot of things but especially liked a vast (101 track) compilation of bands associated with the legendary New York club CBGB, ranging from the obvious (Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith) to 70s oddballs like the Dictators and the Harlots of 42nd Street to classic 80s hardcore like Bad Brains and the early Beastie Boys. I’m cautiously excited about a reissue of Mactatus’s 1997 album Blot but haven’t gotten round to listening to it yet so don’t know if it’s retained it’s old potency. And I still haven’t listened to the new Ulver album, so there’s that.

Anyway; I’ll try to get at least one of those more substantial things finished and posted in February.

as the first quarter of the century draws to a close…

…it’s time for another annual roundup. Participating in end of year ‘best of’ lists is fun, but as my previous few ‘albums of the year’ features for this site (each probably more perfunctory than the last) and this essay on my substack illustrate, over time I’ve found the idea of the best [thing] of the year less and less relevant, not because the things aren’t good but because it doesn’t really matter that they came out this year. There’s a reasonable chance that I haven’t even heard my favourite album of last year, or of 2015 or of 1981 yet. My most listened-to artist of 2025 was probably Kevin Ayers, dead for over a decade now, and my most watched films and TV shows and most read books even more zeitgeist-resistant.

But here are a few things and thoughts anyway. My favourite new albums of the year included several I reviewed for Spectrum Culture, including:

a cover as horrible as the album is pleasant

David Byrne’s Who is the Sky? More modest, more personal and more enjoyable to me than American Utopia, though I understand that it seems less ambitious and therefore less impressive in a way.

Claire Rousay – a little death – sometimes blurring the boundaries between music and just sound, I thought this was really arresting and intimate and moving but hard (as you see) to write about well.

Suede – Antidepressants – Suede in 2025 are not central to my musical life like they were in 1993 and therefore Antidepressants did not have the impact that Suede did (or at least that I expected it to; in fact I only loved about half of it), but it’s is probably a better, deeper and more rounded – and certainly a more consistent album than Suede was, even if the high points are less iconic

Bootsy Collins – Album of the Year #1 Funkateer – this was sprawlingly creative, fun and of course funky. The P-funk style that made Booty’s name seems fundamentally 70s but here he slips it over the top of the idioms of the 2020s and it fits like a glove with no hint of ‘retro’

I didn’t write about these next ones for Spectrum Culture, but they are up there with my favourites of the year too:

Ghost World – Armadillo Café – So far Ghost World haven’t (for me) surpassed the music of their first two albums, Ghost World and Spin, but repeatedly putting on Armadillo Café while consciously ignoring the fact that it’s a concept album about a café, it turns out to be another collection of idiosyncratic and loveable indie pop songs. The concept is fun but detracts from rather than strengthens the quality of the individual songs.

Anna Von Hausswolff – Iconoclasts. I wouldn’t say Anna Von Hausswolff goes from strength to strength; she’s always been great – but her work remains consistently interesting, challenging and gripping and Iconoclasts pretty much picks up where 2018’s Dead Magic left off, but absorbing rather than sidestepping the sombre majesty of her 2020 instrumental album All Thoughts Fly. Basically, she makes the kind of music you’d hope someone with the name Von Hausswolff would make.

Draugveil – Cruel World of Dreams & Fears – I haven’t had to listen to a lot of black metal for work this year, which ended up rekindling my love for the genre and especially its typical, rather than outstanding or experimental adherents. The promotional material for the latest release by Ukrainian one-man project Draugveil release promised “A new era of romanticism, love and death…” and the album artwork shows him resplendent/despondent in corpsepaint and armour – the exact kind of objectively absurd thing that invites mockery from both inside and outside of the metal world; and I love it. Keats wrote that he was “half in love with easeful death…” but the romanticism of death that was such a notable part of the culture of the 16th, 17th and19th centuries lost its traditional allure post-World War One and at some point in the intervening years has become seen as kind of an adolescent trope, but why not? The songs on Cruel World of Dreams & Fears have titles like “Beneath the Armor I Rot”, “Wolves Feast on Forgotten Dreams” and “My Sword Points to the Past”* – and the tunes are likewise a mixture of yearningly romantic and crushingly doomladen and anguished. I have the feeling that, like the Smiths, but to the power of ten, this is the kind of thing that people either just respond to or really don’t. “Beneath the Armor I Rot” is the “Girlfriend in a Coma” of black metal; possibly immature, patently ridiculous, but irresistible, if it happens to be your cup of tea.

Interesting side note: some genius has perfectly gauged the kind of fanbase Draugveil is likely to appeal to and produced an action figure. Too pricey for me but entirely desirable.

* these titles make me think of an old Fry & Laurie sketch where a teenager writes a poem called “Inked Ravens of Despair Claw Holes in the Arse of the World’s Mind” – which kind of proves my point about the adolescent-ness of thanatophilia(?maybe the right word?) but I’ve remembered that title since I was at high school, which probably means something too.

Honourable mentions that I like almost as much as the above but have run out of the will to write about include Kariti’s lovely album Still Life, the beautiful and deeply enigmatic album The Fold by Antinoë, which I’d recommend to anyone who likes the Anna von Hausswolff record and Sargeist’s Flame Within Flame, which is black metal with much of the absurdity drained out and replaced with venomous energy.

One of the discoveries of the year for me was podcasts – obviously I knew they existed, but I’d rarely been tempted to check them out. It turns out that mostly they aren’t for me, but there are a few I really like and one I love. That one is Origin Story, which I came to because I loved Ian Dunt’s brilliant 2021 book How to be a Liberal. The point of Origin Story, a podcast by Dunt & Dorian Lynskey (more below) is to “explore the hidden histories of the concepts you thought you knew.” It’s general focus is socio-political I suppose, but it takes in subjects as varied as zombies, comics, George Orwell, economics, history, etc etc (the latest season was a history of socialism) which you might think could be quite dry, but in fact is exciting, funny and entertaining; love it. Other favourites are Katie Hessel’s The Great Women Artists, Mark Kermode’s Kermode on Film and the Time Team podcast

With books – unless, presumably, one is a publisher or a more than occasional book reviewer, the ‘of the year’ part is even less relevant. As it happens, I did read one book published this year that I thought was outstanding – Dorian Lynskey’s Everything Must Go – The Stories We Tell About the End of the World which I reviewed here and chose here, but I read many other books whose publication dates I’d have to look up. Most recently, I loved Nothing to be Rescued, a collection of sad and bitter short stories by Ásta Sigurðardóttir, a 2025 discovery for me, but Ásta died in 1971 and most of the stories pre-date her death by a decade. Even this collection, translated into suitably stark but beautifully readable English by Meg Matich, and which features Ásta’s own illustrations, is a couple of years old already. But just as the music that sounds best this year will sound the same next year, these stories, which have already outlived their author by more than half a century will continue to feel just as vivid and alive…

Onwards! because where else is there to go?