Jon Richardson is leaving 6Music – sad to hear it

At the end of his 6Music show this morning, Jon Richardson announced that when he leaves these shores for the Melbourne Comedy Festival in a few weeks’ time, he will have broadcast his final show on 6Music and will not be returning. This was a bit of a shock – he’d mentioned the festival in passing before, but I’d presumed (or at least hoped) that there would be a stand-in for a few shows, and then he’d be back.

Richardson’s show, and before it the show he co-presented with Russell Howard, has been appointment radio for me since soon after it started. Howard was brought into 6Music as a replacement for Russell Brand, who had just moved to Radio 2 (the rest of that story, you know), and initially had two co-presenters: Jon, and Sam Thomas (curious they all had first names as, or in, their surnames), but soon they settled down into a duo. Their arrival coincided almost to the week with me moving into my own flat for the first time, and also buying my first digital radio. The show was the first I really latched on to, particularly for Jon: as a pedantic, sarcastic man from the North West of England he inexplicably struck some sort of chord with me. I must have listened to the show on the majority of Sunday mornings since.

It’s often said that the trick of presenting radio is to speak as if you’re talking to one person, not many; Jon seems to be able to do that fairly instinctively, and whenever he would get into an argument with Russell, it always felt as though he and the listeners were – in the nicest way possible – ganging up on Mr Howard. As well as a fairly reasonable pedantry, Jon also showcased his other traits to good effect: a love of cooking, delight in small pleasures such as Dyson Airblades, and significant but endearing social awkwardness.

He also comes across as a man who in many respects is pretty sorted and comfortable with himself, and has a good perspective on the world: his “good deeds” feature sprung out of his own propensity for doing small but helpful deeds, and he can regularly be heard giving gifts to guests and colleagues on the show. I still have one of his dictums as a favourite quote on my Facebook profile: “When the lights go off and you’re on your own, that’s who you are.” Far from being the pedantic misanthrope Russell Howard would occasionally – jokingly – paint him as, he seems like a genuinely nice bloke who would be deeply embarrassed to read or hear anything of the sort being said about him.

Jon’s now been presenting the show on his own for well over 18 months, since Russell moved on, albeit with support each week from Matt Forde. So after three and a half years in total, it’s understandable that he has decided to move on and do other things – much as I’d have liked to have a few more years of shows to look forward to, I can certainly understand the decision. Perhaps the sitcom he was writing has been picked up – certainly his career trajectory has been going the right way, with appearances on Buzzcocks and Have I Got News For You last year, a regular slot as a team captain on Radio 4 quiz Act Your Age, plus a nomination for the used-to-be-the-Perrier award in Edinburgh.

Whatever he does, I hope he has some channel available for us to keep in touch with him. It’s always a pleasure to spend a few hours in his company on a Sunday morning, and I’ll miss hearing what’s been going on in his world. Moreover, if he’s looking at things from a career perspective, I hope he’ll see value in maintaining a line of communication with his existing fan-base, rather than allowing the support he’s deservedly gathered on 6Music to wither and fade. He has resisted having a website or blog up to now, and left both MySpace and Twitter after short spells on each.

So I wish him well in whatever he does next, look forward to the remaining shows he has on 6Music, and hope that in some form or other he’ll stay in touch.

Blair, Chilcot, the Establishment and God

Following the total non-shock of Tony Blair’s non-apology at the Chilcot Inquiry, some of the volumes of comment made beforehand look a little odd. It seems certain that the spectacle of the evidence sessions, and the attention they have generated, will mean that even if Chilcot’s panel produce a whitewashed report, people will be able to make their own minds up – much of the evidence has been dynamite. In that sense, the final report, and Blair’s steadfastness in his views, are irrelevant.

One curious feature of many strands of comment have related to “the Establishent” and the idea that Chilcot is somehow an “Establishment figure” and therefore predisposed to find in favour of the Government. Armando Ianucci’s article in The Independent rests firmly on this proposition, for instance. Indeed, it seems to be a stock accusation to level at sometimes very balanced arguments: “that’s the Establishment view, of course…”

This construct of “the Establishment” is largely nonsensical, and a hindrance to clear insight. It is a phrase in which certain assumptions are bundled, as with “the Powers That Be” or, say, “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Those who wish to can, if they desire, play on the differences between those assumptions and the truth: for instance, the phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction” might be taken by the reader to mean nuclear bombs or inter-continental ballistic missiles, even if the actual weapons being referred to are, say, battlefield munitions such as artillery shells – someone misusing the phrase in this way might protest that even they are pretty massively destructive if you’re on the receiving end, and on a semantic level it’s hard to tell them they’re wrong…  These phrases can be used to do the audience’s thinking for them: referring to Saddam Hussein as “Saddam” served to hide the real figure under a demonised persona created by his enemies for their own ends – it might not have been a wholly inaccurate persona, but it put the emphasis on the monstrous and morally offensive rather than on, say, his position at the head of a sovereign state of the sort that ought not to be invaded without the strongest possible justification. Any use of cliche or stock phrases should make the cautious reader alarmed.

And so it is with “the Establishment”. Who are these people? Generally well-educated and materially comfortable people, often those who have served at a high level in the public sector in some sort of influential role. At most, it can be extended to those who are materially wealthy or who are in some other way influential. But does that mean they are somehow a different breed of person? Of course not: among whatever definition of “the Establishment” you choose to settle on, you will find the good and the bad in more or less the same quantities as in any other arbitrarily-selected portion of the population. You will certainly find, among the “Establishment” likes of John Chilcot, people who have much the same concerns as any other human being and who will do their best to do the right thing as far as they are able. Writing such figures off as part of “the Establishment” is not only to do them an injustice, but likely to make the observer draw some deeply wonky conclusions.

But why is the “Establishment” view so appealing? It seems to be the same human instinct that drives people to see the world in terms of a quasi-mythical “Establishment” as drives them to believe in God. It’s an odd combination of the desire for an explanation and an unwillingness to accept that that explanation can truly be known to us. We often seem to need to believe that there is something more: more than we can see with our own eyes; more than we are ever told about; more than we can ever know. An all-embracing explanation that makes everything seem ordered, logical and sensible is appealing, but seemingly tantalisingly out of reach: if only we understood the mysteries of creation, everything would make rational sense, but alas God moves in mysterious ways; if only we were in on the machinations of the “Establishment” then the events that led us to invade Iraq would become readily explicable, but alas we’ll never get to the bottom of it all…

The allure of this idea of an unknowable explanation is especially potent when the real explanations are discernable, but only with difficulty. We are able to explain creation, up to a point, with the Big Bang theory, and science is taking us closer to even greater knowledge: while we might not have got there yet, it seems overwhelmingly likely that existence is susceptible of a scientific explanation. Snag is, such science is very difficult to understand. Similarly with Iraq: the exact reasons for why we went to war are hard to pin down. Was it just to do with oil? That doesn’t quite explain the timing (the US seemed to be driven by a post-9/11 momentum, which wouldn’t have mattered if oil had been the sole motive); was it simply a desire for revenge on Saddam Hussein following the restitution of the Republican regime under Bush II? Well, surely wars are not waged for such petty reasons? Indeed, it seems hard to accept that the UK’s involvement arose purely because one man had his head turned by proximity to power… yet it’s quite possible that Blair’s actions stemmed from no better cause than that. Either way, it seems that most of the facts needed to explain what happened are already known to us; but putting them together coherently is no more easy than understanding the finer points of the physics behind the Big Bang Theory. Most people cannot do it; of those who can, many have better things to do with their time than devote it to such a challenging and ultimately academic task.

So an explanation of unknowable magic still has some appeal: the impulse that drives people to believe in the “Establishment” as a meaningful way of understanding anything is the same impulse that leads some people to believe in God – on close inspection it makes very little sense and there’s very little evidence for it, but in the immediate term it provides a superficially attractive and neat explanation. And, I suppose, if you find that satisfying than good for you – it must make life feel a lot more comfortable.

F1 2010: anticipation is half the fun

This is one of the best times of year to be interested in F1. OK, sometimes the racing can be good, but as I often say on here, the main appeal is the long-game aspect of it all – the long-runnoing storylines that play out over months and years, that give added significance to the on-track events. Which is just as well, as the on-track action can be very dull – so many pundits seem to be saying the racing last year was exciting to an unprecedented extent, but to me it didn’t come close to topping 2008, and was often quite pedestrian.

Still, the pundits’ conventional wisdom that 2010 looks ‘mouth-watering’ is hard to argue with. Next week the teams start unveiling their cars, and the following week testing starts – testing times always allow us, at best, to see through a glass darkly, but it’s always exciting to try and figure out who’s quick and who’s not.

On paper, there are four teams who should be mounting title challenges this year, which makes it an unusually open season. But let’s sound a note of caution here: designing F1 cars is a tricky business, and even top teams are prone to slipping up between seasons. McLaren and Ferrari both did it last year, although they had a change of technical regulations to contend with; but look at Honda’s regression between 2006 and 2007 despite stable regs, or Renault’s at the same time – just because Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull should in theory be title challengers doesn’t mean they will. Chances are at least one will produce a car that falls short; it could even be that one produces a car significantly faster than the rest and dominate sthe championship as Brawn did last year. Although this might take the edge off the contest, the exciting thing at the moment is that we don’t know whether one or more teams will slip up, or which ones they might be.

But apart from these four teams, the grid is likely to be more strung-out than last year, and I’m not convinced this is a good thing. Partly this is because of the introduction of four new teams (assuming they all make the grid – rumours persist about most of them, but particularly American outfit USF1) – inevitably they will be at the back of the grid. Toro Rosso are also likely to be some way back, as they are returning to full manufacturer status, having previously got designs off Red Bull – though presumably they will have the IP of last year’s Red Bull car at their disposal, so they shouldn’t be straight back to Minardi-style slowness. But last year’s situation, in which every team could mount credible challenges for top ten grid slots and podium finishes (only Toro Rosso didn’t feature on the podium, in fact) will not be repeated.

A more clearly-identifiable mid-grid pack is likely to form, partly as a result of the exodus of manufacturers from F1. Toyota are gone entirely, but BMW Sauber remain, back in Peter Sauber’s ownership. Renault too have been sold (75% of them, anyway). Both have been strong in recent years, so you never know – they could spring a surprise and be front-runners. But more likely the various upheavals that afflicted them last year will have limited them to credible mid-paced cars. Likewise Williams have seemed to be on the verge of a return to the front for many years – but one can’t help but think that if it was going to happen, it would have happened by now. Perhaps their traditional leanness as an outfit will allow them to function better than other teams that have had to shed staff in order to cut costs… but another upper-midfield season surely looks more likely. And having put in a very creditable development performance last year, Force India could end up anywhere on the grid this year.

There are also many interesting stories among the drivers. Michael Schumacher is risking his health and reputation to return to F1… but assuming Mercedes deliver a decent car, would you seriously bet against him for a title challenge? And while it might look like bad news for team-mate Nico Rosberg, ultimately he has nothing to lose – there will be no disgrace in coming a close second to Schumacher, surely? At Ferrari, will Massa and Alonso be able to compete together constructively, or will Alonso’s ferocious competitive instincts destroy the team from within as they did at McLaren? Will Button really get wiped out by Hamilton at McLaren as everyone expects? Will Mark Webber, free of injury unlike in 2009, be able to overcome Sebastian Vettel at Red Bull – surely his last best chance for a title tilt before Vettel becomes unstoppable? Will veterans Trulli and Kovaleinen drive new team Lotus up the grid, or have a torrid time of it? Can Barrichello prolong the Indian summer of his career at Williams? Will Kubica’s move to Renault pay off for him? Will Heidfeld will get a seat at all this year?

As ever in F1, the answers to some of these questions will be fascinating… the others less so. Some of the answers will start to emerge, tentatively, with pre-season testing:

February 1st – 3rd – Valencia, Spain
February 10th – 13th – Jerez, Spain
February 17th – 20th – Jerez, Spain
February 25th – 28th – Circuit de Catalunya, Spain.

The Lost BSB Archive – programmes nobody watched

The BFI’s annual Missing Believed Wiped Event took place at the National Film Theatre last night – somewhat belatedly as this was really 2009’s event. The phenomenon of lost television is rather fascinating: as well as the tantalising fascination of things that were once in existence and are now lost, the business of any missing cultural artefact provides an interesting insight into the values of the people who made and destroyed them, and the institutions and processes around this. There’s also something fascinating about misjudgment and error – and there’s plenty of those in this particular story.

We’re all familiar with the story of missing television from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, right? Until the late 1950s it wasn’t really practical to record television programmes at all, and between then and the late ’70s the BBC and the ITV companies had no real archive policies. Most programmes that survived were through copies made for foreign sales, and by the late ’70s many such copies were being routinely destroyed – they were expensive to store and of apparently no further commercial value. Some programmes survived through token efforts at archive preservation, and others still through more haphazard routes. A growing appreciation of television as an important cultural form rather than something ephemeral and worthless, plus the prospect of home video giving new value to old shows, meant that by the late 1970s sensible retention and archiving policies generally existed in the major national broadcasters.

All was not rosy in the garden of television archiving, however. It’s worth remembering that it’s still hard to re-live television output from past times even in the era of surviving shows, as continuity material was not (possibly still is not) routinely kept for the archive for many years. This means that programmes from the 1980s and even 1990s like (I think) Pebble Mill At One and the Children’s BBC Broom Cupboard segments are largely absent from the archive. In the early 1990s the old problem of storage space reared its head within the BBC again, which opted to junk all bar a few samples of the masters of many children’s shows, most famously Rentaghost. Happily the error was soon realised and copies were returned to the archive from UK Gold. And I won’t even mention The Adventure Game or Play School.

Home video and the proliferation of television channels have, to some extent, mitigated against further catastrophic archive losses. But not entirely: although terrestrial television was reasonably well-served by its archive policies from the late ’70s onwards, the emergent satellite broadcasters in the late 1980s and early 1990s had no such safeguards. This was therefore one of the most fascinating aspects of the Missing Believed Wiped event: while previously lost TV appearances by The Who, Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd and Procul Harum, the newly-recovered sole surviving episode of Ronnie Barker’s sitcom His Lordship Entertains and a previously lost Til Death Do Us Part were all well worth the price of admission, the less well-known story of what happened to the archive of British Satellite Broadcasting was particularly fascinating.

I just about remember the original advertising for BSB and its ’squarials’ (was the slogan “it’s fair to be square” or something like that?) – I’d have been eight at the time. There was never any question of us getting satellite TV -in fact I didn’t live in a multi-channel household until 2006 – so the whole thing was mysterious and unknown to me. BSB’s story was arguably one of complacency and poor management: they spent far more than Sky when setting up, launched later, and arguably produced better programmes. But when the market did its usual thing and produced a monopoly instead of competition, it was largely to Sky’s benefit, despite Murdoch’s organisation also being on the brink of financial collapse. The BSB operation was largely shut down and its staff made redundant; most of its archive rested with the production companies, perhaps most notably Noel Gay and John Gau.

Exactly what then happened to the material is far from clear, and even Ian Greaves’ presentation at the MBW event was unable to go into much detail. Noel Gay certainly claim that their archive has all been wiped, although reports persist of copies of programmes being made available on specific request. Either way, the BFI’s line (taking its cue from Kaleidoscope, the TV preservation organisation) is that the archive is believed to have been junked; certainly they have not been able to catalogue or recover any of it.

Well, so what? BSB was broadcasting for all of nine months in 1990 – surely very little programming was actually made, even less of it of any merit? And effecdtively these must have been programmes seen on their transmission by, well, basically nobody – how important can they be? Well, yes and no: BSB was making about five hours of material a day, and over nine months that adds up. Some of what was made, particularly in the arena of comedy, was rather significant however: it included the first TV work of Armando Ianucci and Chris Morris, as well as shows from Keith Allen, performances from the likes of John Hegley and the controversial (and mostly un-broadcast) sitcom Heil Honey, I’m Home. Such an archive would have a certain amount of commercial value today. Indeed one of the chief reasons for its loss may be that it was never catalogued by performer, so someone looking for clips of, say, early Chris Morris, would not have been able to find then with any great ease.

The one major exception is the sci-fi soap Jupiter Moon, which not only survives intact but is available on DVD. It was intended as BSB’s evening soap, and 150 episodes were made (only about 75% aired before the merger with Sky): if you can see past the staid sets, variable acting and dubious production values, the storytelling is actually rather good. I’m still resisting the temptation to buy all the DVD sets and watch the 120 episodes I’ve yet to see – trouble is I’d never get anything done if I did.

Beyond this overview, I really need to defer to people more expert, of whom there are many. A recovery exercise to reconstruct the archive as far as possible is underway. Artists and producers are being contacted to ask if they have their own copies of shows, and an appeal for surviving home recordings has been launched.  Frustratingly, I cannot find one single web resource that outlines what’s missing, who made it and where it might still exist. A list of recoveries in 2008-9 is available on page 5 of this document but it’s the sort of thing you’d think would benefit from a blog or other small site. If you do happen to have any material, Ian Greaves is the person to contact via bsb at kaleidoscopepublishing co uk. Although satellite TV material from 1990 might seem fairly recent and modern, it’s worth reflecting it’s now twenty years old – older than many of the lost 1960s material was when it was discovered to have been destroyed in the mid-70s. I hope more material from this archive emerges during its twentieth anniversary year, and might even find its way to DVD.

Doctor Who: The End of Time was rubbish

This post will be a highly critical review of Russell T Davies’ final two episodes of Doctor Who. I will try to be as balanced as possible, but it is still going to be negative: I believe that’s a fair judgment to arrive at, that the bad in the episodes outweighed the good by a considerable margin and that the problems arose solely from the scripts. But I want to put it in the context of two things.

The first of these is Russell T Davies’ enormous contribution to television drama generally and Doctor Who in particular. Focusing on the latter, it was his clear vision that prompted the BBC to bring it back at all, and probably only his vision that could have made such a colossal success of it. Could any other writer so deftly have taken the strengths of a much-loved but often creaky old programme and melded them with fast-moving modern story-telling and character development? It’s hard to say, but quite possibly not: it seems clear that Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who will involve tweaks to the RTD pattern, but not the wholesale reinvention and re-selling that Davies had to engineer. I’m quite content to say that Davies’ contribution to the show is greater than that of any other individual.

And secondly: who am I to say his last two episodes weren’t any good? Danny Stack wrote a blog post a little while ago arguing strongly against any writer or would-be writer criticising the efforts of those who have made it. And while I take the points he makes in their own context, it seems to me that those of us who like to think we might be able to write a bit (either now or with a few years’ practice) cannot be denied the same voice as any other viewer – when a work has been put into the public domain it’s entirely legitimate for anyone to express a view about it. And knowing what you like to watch, and why, is the prerequisite for knowing what you want to write. And, dare I say it, perhaps if you know a bit about the process of writing TV drama, your criticism might be a bit better-informed and worthwhile than that of those who don’t? So I’m not trying to claim I could write anything even as good as this (which wasn’t very good). Although I’d hope that if I had twenty years’ experience as a professional writer behind me I could indeed have done better.

And that leads me to a third thing: one of the reasons I most resent these episodes – and specifically these scripts, as that’s where the problems lie, not with any other aspect of the production – is that it’s turned me into one of the internet moaning minnies that RTD so rightly (usually) dismisses. I find myself cheek-by-jowl with the RTD haters, and it’s not company I much care for. But as a blogger and a viewer, all I have to offer is my opinion – and here’s what it is.

Part One was in many ways quite enjoyable, and I wouldn’t criticise it too heavily. The scenes between Tennant and Cribbins were beautifully played, and the brutal, feral Master was compelling. The climax of the Master turning humanity into himself was extremely funny – so much so, in fact, that the idea that it was somehow a calamity or atrocity didn’t really come across. And for all the “the human race ceased to exist” stuff, humanity was restored with the wave of an arm within half an hour of screen time, as it always looked like it would. Trouble was, this left the whole thing feeling a bit undramatic and insubstantial: where was the threat, the excitement? It was in the form of the Time Lords… who didn’t actually do anything. We were told about them at the end of the episode, and that was the cliffhanger. But there’s a reason why script readers and editors and teachers repeat the mantra “show, don’t tell”: by simply telling us of their existence via voice-over and cutaway, the script did not imbue them with any significance in the whole of Part One – as far as we could see, they had no bearing on the story, and the Doctor remained ignorant of their return for another half hour of the following episode. For such a momentous event, it was unforgivably uneventful, and the hour’s drama leading up to it seemed oddly meandering and pointless.

Now, a lot of this was redressed in Part Two: the drumbeat inside the Master’s head was quite cleverly used as the hook on which the Time Lords’ return was hung. Of course, it was all technobabble, and this is something RTD is often criticised for: meaningless unscientific plot devices. Now, science is always a double-edged sword for Doctor Who and all science fiction: if you get hung up on technicalities of real-life science it can quickly make your drama tedious and introverted, and striving for scientific realism in what is ultimately scientifically impossible fantasy fiction tends be a bit pointless and ridiculous; but giving up on any sort of realism and simply using blatant nonsense can risk the drama lacking any sort of rationale or sense of cause and effect. On this occasion, I would argue the use of this device to explain the whole of the Master’s character was extremely effective, and possibly the strongest aspect of the story – many elements of what we had seen before were bent to a new purpose. It also provided an excellent character-driven rationale for the Master’s decision to turn on the Time Lords at the end. RTD’s technical skill as a screenwriter was also evident in the presence of the Vinvotchi (sp?) – in Part One they were apparently there for some light relief, but their purpose as non-human allies for the Doctor and Wilf was vital to the story in Part Two.

It was only after the link to the Master had brought the Time Lords back that the script really disintegrated. It was simply unclear what was happening, or indeed whether the events depicted made any sort of coherent sense at all. Worse still, it seems quite possible that they did not. What exactly were the Time Lords going to do to ‘end time’? What did this mean, what would it entail? OK, it explained the Doctor’s decision to annihilate them at the end of the Time War, but for the purposes of this episode, what exactly was the threat? If the viewer can’t understand the threat, why should the viewer care about whether it is averted, or how?

And how was the threat averted? The Doctor shooting the Master would have done it, but he chose not to. The Doctor shooting the President wouldn’t have made any difference (would it?) but he threateneed to do it… for no readily apparent reason. And in the end he shot… some machinery? Or something. And it did… something? And then the Master got all vengeful and drove the Time Lords back into the Time War and oblivion… somehow. It simply made no sense.

Now, I’m not demanding a coherent scientific explanation for any of that – of course not, that would be preposterous. But it should have been explained in terms that at least made sense in the context of the Doctor Who universe and the rules it operates by. The Doctor’s fall from the spacecraft also fell foul of this: how the hell did the Doctor survive that? His regeneration from Tom Baker into Peter Davison was triggered by a much shorter fall than that, after all. And it’s not as if it’s impossible to find a way for the Doctor to survive a fall from great height: see Lance Parkin’s marvellous depiction of just such an event in the mid-90s novel The Dying Days (pages 15 to 19 of this extract). So why does this script simply not bother to depict events in a way that makes any sort of sense?

As an aside, the Time Lords’ return was disappointing: they actually did very little other than stand there (we were told they posed a threat, but not shown it by anything that actually happened), and it seems to have closed off any easy storytelling route to bringing them back in the future, should Moffat or a subsequent producer wish to do so. The Master’s apparent demise at the end is similarly problematic: any return for the character will require him to perform another escape from certain death like he used to do in his 1980s appearances. How tiresome. And who was the woman who appeared to Wilf? It’s fortunate I don’t really care, I suppose – but if the script had been doing its job properly, not only would I care but I would be able to tell you.

The saving grace of this horrific mess of a script was that it was at least exciting up to that point: we knew the Doctor’s regeneration was on its way, and that at some point he would somehow fail. With that possibility in the viewer’s mind, the confrontation between the various Time Lords was extremely exciting, and I’ll happily admit my heart was pounding throughout.

But what came next was awful. In some ways, the Doctor’s self-sacrifice for Wilf was perfect: the numerous scenes between them up to that point made it deeply poignant; of course the Doctor would sacrifice himself to save a single human life – it’s deeply indicative of his character (the fifth Doctor made exactly the same sacrifice for his companion at the end of his life, as RTD no doubt had in mind; and of course, the ninth did the same for Rose); the Doctor’s raging at the unfairness of it all was wonderful. The nature of the one-in-one-out booth had been set up in the previous episode (though the nuclear threat was thrown in very quickly in Part Two), and although you could argue it was another Davies Ex Machina, the point about it was the Doctor’s choice, not the precise mechanics of how he had to come to make it. The fact that it was Wilf who knocked four times – for something as trivial as to be let out – was ultimately rather delightful and sad.

But the subsequent twenty minutes had no place in the script and simply should not have been made. My criticism is not simply that they were self-indulgence by RTD: it is that they were fundamentally undramatic. The jeopardy was over: there was no threat, there was no conflict and therefore there was no drama. The whole sequence was fundamentally boring. The Doctor’s ‘reward’ was to see the same people he had seen only three episodes previously: I had thought that the ‘RTD’s greatest hits’ bit had been got out of the way at the end of series four, but no – we had to see it all again. The vignettes themselves were a mixed bag: the Rose one was pleasant, and if it had been the only one could have worked quite well; the scene with Jessica Hynes was lovely; the one with Martha and Mickey was stupid (Martha and Mickey make a living going round shooting things, and the Doctor wishes them well – oh, and they’re married despite Martha’s earlier engagement to someone else); the one with Luke and Sarah-Jane made Luke look like an idiot who can’t cross the road.

Donna’s return, both in the final sequence and in the main body of the episode, was pointless and disappointing. She did not do anything that advanced the story: her flight from the legion of Masters ultimately made no difference at all. I had thought maybe she would be reunited with the Doctor and Wilf, and that somehow this would trigger the regeneration – but no. The final sequence was very odd: it seems out of character for the Doctor’s gift to Donna to be millions of pounds. I had thought perhaps it was going to be a letter to her from her late father – a nice nod to the late Howard Attfield, whose death ultimately led to Bernard Cribbins’ expanded role in the series. But for the un-materialistic Doctor to give a gift of a winning lottery ticket seems wrong somehow. The performances of Tennant and Cribbins gave a fig-leaf of watchability to it all, but overall I was bored and uninvolved for the final twenty minutes; when the regeneration finally came, I felt like I was being put out of my misery. There was absolutely no dramatic reason why it could not have happened immediately after the Doctor was doused in radiation.

I will be interested to read the expanded version of RTD’s excellent book The Writer’s Tale, to see how he was allowed to produce three mediocre-to-poor scripts for the four specials without someone stepping in and insisting on some sort of quality control. There is a deep irony in Davies, who insisted that Doctor Who adventures could be told in only 45 minutes (in the face of the BBC initially insisting that all stories should consist of two episodes), having produced a finale that had roughly the same duration as one of the old series’ serials of six twenty-five minute episodes. Even back in 1980, then-producer John Nathan-Turner made the decision not to do six-parters any more, on the basis that they were usually over-long, slow and flabby. JNT made a lot of poor decisions as producer of Doctor Who in the 1980s; how bizarre that his more sure-footed successor should ultimately have proved him right about at least one thing.

For this was a flabby and messy script. Joss Whedon once memorably advised new writers that if they felt their script wasn’t working, they should cut their favourite thing in it – they would probably then find it worked much better. One can’t help but think that The End of Time could have been rendered as a flawed but effective 90-minute, or even 60-minute, single episode by taking this approach. Cutting Donna (bar her initial cameo outside the cafe, which was fair enough), the Ood, the Silver Web and the final twenty minutes, and tightening some of the talky scenes, could have produced a decent enough story. The problems around the Time Lords’ return and defeat would have remained, but perhaps would have been less obvious as they would at least have seemed less peripheral. But how such a bloated mess of a script was allowed into production should surely be a matter for examination within the BBC. Davies’ habit of producing his scripts very late, too close to production to allow significant re-writes, must surely be a large part of the explanation.

If I was a studio boss, having read The Writer’s Tale and seen these episodes, I probably wouldn’t hire Russell T Davies to write for me: I could not feel confident that he would deliver the scripts either remotely on time or to a high standard. And for a writer as brilliant as RTD, who has such a wonderful body of work behind him, that’s a terrible indictment. I hope, for his sake, that he has not diminished his reputation in others’ eyes as much as he has in mine. [Edit: that sounds rather pompous, sorry - his standing in my eyes doesn't matter, after all. But you see my point - these scripts reflect badly on RTD, which is a tremendous shame.]

2009, 2010, all that sort of thing

I always approach January with a bit of foreboding, as it entails a return to work after the Christmas break, only to remember once I get there that I quite like this time of year. After a bit of time out, starting the cycle of the year afresh and having a clear sense of things to look forward to is rather enjoyable. And there’s the promise of spring only ten weeks or so away.

So this post if for a bit of a reflect and a bit of a look forward. After all, it’s a new decade. And let’s not have any of this nonsense that somehow the decade doesn’t change until next year: decades work according to the first three digits in the date, they’re not like centuries. The last year of the 1980s was 1989, not 1990 – plainly. Although I’m always a bit sad that the real end of the twentieth century (that is, the end of the 2000th year after the year 1AD – there was no year zero, so it was the end of 2000) went largely unmarked as anything other than a ‘normal’ new year. But back to decades: what we call this decade seems to be a hot topic of conversation. It will be ‘the 2010s’ – the ‘teenies’ won’t last. Though I did quite like Matt Crosby’s suggestion that the years 2016 to 2019 should be called the ‘barely legals’.

It’s hard for me to reflect on the noughties meaningfully. When they started I was still in the sixth form, and their first half was made up of A-levels, then university, then 18 months after graduating, before I moved to London neatly enough at the very end of 2004 and lived there for the second half of the decade. The journey from one end of the decade to the other was every bit as much of a massive change as you’d expect. The next ten years will take me from 27 to 37, and I’m fairly relaxed about that – everyone I know in their 30s seems to be having a pretty jolly time of it and to be happy with their lot.

So, what of 2009 – the good and the bad? Well, there was an ample sufficiency of the good. I changed job, which has so far gone very happily and certainly resolved the uncertainty with which I’d greeted the previous two new years. I also moved flat, which wasn’t fun but is now over and seems to have been worth doing. Another good thing about 2009 was finding the Off The Page writers group (actually I found it at the end of 2008, but first went along last January), which has given me the motivation to keep writing, feedback and input to improve, and introductions to a lot of really worthwhile people and opportunities. But perhaps the biggest single Big New Thing of 2009, for me and many others, was Twitter (again, I started using it in 2008, but it was last year when it took off), which has enhanced and contributed to nearly all the other things I just mentioned: I found my new job via a website I’d discovered via Twitter; and it has been a great way of getting pointers on all sorts of writer-y things. Could it even be said it has proved to be a binding glue for the plethora of blogs, Facebook accounts and so on that emerged as Web 2.0? There’s certainly now little excuse for using one of those things without plugging it into Twitter. The bad of 2009? Moving flat is high on the list – did I mention it wasn’t fun? But beyond that it’s small stuff and largely sins of omission rather than commission – and I’m not going to start using this blog as a therapy session.

So, that’s 2009 out of the way – what about 2010? I never make resolutions as such, but there are certainly some things I want to do: if it’s held again this year (which seemed to be in doubt last I heard) I definitely want to go to the Screenwriters Festival, which also means I need to get some more writing under my belt – and I’ve got numerous things lined up to work on, both on my own and collaboratively. I also want to go to a proper camping-in-a-field festival, as by this summer it will be nine years since I last did; based on rave reviews from numerous people whose judgment I trust, Indietracks is the leading contender. And finally, having followed Formula 1 closely for well over a decade now, I really should go and watch a grand prix – not necessarily the British one, though I’d be tempted.

Things I’m looking forward to in 2010: the new, Steven Moffat-authored series of Doctor Who (and other telly – new series of Being Human and Shameless look set to be among the highlights of the first part of the year); a fascinating-looking season of Formula 1; and music. I already know there are new albums on the way from Kathryn Calder (the tracks currently on her Myspace are superb – already a contender for best album of the year?), The Pipettes,  Hot Chip, Laura Veirs and Thomas Tantrum. Still, there’s some serious stuff to contemplate as well. In particular, it’s a general election year and that means a year of hard work ahead. I’m looking forward to it – although I wouldn’t say no to a few more days off first, but still…

Top 100 albums: full list

For ease, here’s a full run-down of my top 100 albums of the decade.

1    Songs:Ohia – Magnolia Electric Co    -2003
2    Erin McKeown – Grand    -2003
3    Frankie Machine – Francis Albert Machine and Friends    -2002
4    Junior Boys – So This Is Goodbye    -2006
5    Sleater-Kinney – The Woods    -2005
6    Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Out of This Country    -2006
7    Elvis Costello and the Metropole Orkest – My Flame Burns Blue    -2006
8    Arcade Fire – Funeral    -2004
9    M Ward – Transistor Radio    -2005
10    The Crimea – Tragedy Rocks    -2004
11    Half Man Half Biscuit – Trouble Over Bridgwater    -2000
12    Amy Winehouse – Back to Black    -2006
13    Immaculate Machine – Ones and Zeros    -2005
14    MJ Hibbett and the Validators – Regardez, Ecoutez et Repetez    -2009
15    The Broken Family Band – Balls     -2006
16    The Pipettes – We Are The Pipettes    -2006
17    Doves – Last Broadcast    -2002
18    The New Pornographers – Electric Version    -2003
19    Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes    -2008
20    Murry the Hump – Songs of Ignorance    -2001
21    Morrissey – Morrissey, You Are The Quarry    -2004
22    Sylvie Lewis  – Tangos and Tantrums    -2004
23    Neko Case – The Tigers have Spoken    -2004
24    I Am Kloot  – Gods and Monsters    -2005
25    Super Furry Animals – Hey Venus!    -2007
26    Hefner  – We Love The City    -2000
27    Tender Trap – Film Molecules (2002)
28    Alfie – Crying at Teatime    -2005
29    Laura Cantrell  – Not the Tremblin’ Kind    -2000
30    Calexico / Iron and Wine – In The Reins    -2005
31    The Hidden Cameras – Awoo    -2006
32    Elbow – Asleep in the Back    -2001
33    Grandaddy – The Sophtware Slump    -2000
34    Life Without Buildings – Any Other City    -2000
35    McLusky – McLusky Do Dallas    -2002
36    J Xaverre – These Acid Stars    -2003
37    Yeah Yeah Yeahs  – Show Your Bones    -2006
38    Ron Sexsmith – Retriever    -2004
39    Shivaree  – Rough Dreams    -2002
40    The Maccabees – Wall of Arms    -2009
41    At The Drive-In – Relationship of Command    -2000
42    Badly-Drawn Boy – The Hour of the Bewilderbeast    -2000
43    Paul Burch – Fool for Love    -2003
44    Le Tigre – This Island    -2004
45    Thomas Tantrum – Thomas Tantrum    -2008
46    Lambchop – Is A Woman and Nixon    -2002
47    Gillian Welch – Time the Revelator    -2001
48    The Long Blondes – Someone to Drive You Home    -2006
49    Piney Gir – Peakahokahoo and Hold Yer Horses    -2004
50    The Coral – The Coral    -2002
51    The White Stripes – Elephant     -2003
52    Hefner  – Dead Media    -2001
53    Pet Shop Boys – Yes    -2009
54    Flipron – Biscuits for Cerberus    -2006
55    Misty’s Big Adventure – Misty’s Big Adventure and their place in the Solar Hi-Fi System    -2004
56    British Sea Power – The Decline of British Sea Power    -2003
57    My Morning Jacket – It Still Moves    -2003
58    The Handsome Family – Last Days of Wonder    -2006
59    Santogold – Santogold    -2008
60    Gorillaz – Demon Days    -2005
61    Steve Earle – Jerusalem    -2002
62    Black Box Recorder – The Facts of Life    -2000
63    Elvis Costello and the Imposters – The Delivery Man    -2004
64    Blue Roses – Blue Roses    -2009
65    The Frightened Prisoners of the Kraken – Man Car Plane    -2001
66    The Raveonettes – Pretty In Black    -2005
67    Laura Veirs – Saltbreakers    -2007
68    Calexico – Carried to Dust    -2008
69    Gossip     – Standing in the Way of Control    -2006
70    Super Furry Animals  – Mwng    -2000
71    Feist  – The Reminder    -2007
72    Hot Chip – The Warning     -2006
73    Radiohead – Kid A    -2000
74    The Knife – Silent Shout    -2006
75    Beirut – Gulag Orkestar    -2006
76    Magnet – On Your Side    -2003
77    Old Crow Medicine Show – Big Iron World    -2006
78    Chris T-T – The 253    -2001
79    Ryan Adams – Demolition    -2002
80    The Futureheads – The Futureheads    -2004
81    The Bluetones – Science and Nature    -2000
82    Emmy the Great – First Love    -2009
83    Sergeant Buzfuz – Fire Horse    -2004
84    Destroyer – Trouble In Dreams    -2008
85    Stephen Malkmus  – Stephen Malkmus    -2001
86    Stephin Merrit – Showtunes    -2006
87    The Libertines – Up the Bracket    -2002
88    System of a Down – Toxicity    -2001
89    Yo La Tengo – And then nothing turned itself inside out    -2000
90    Emma Pollock – Watch the Fireworks    -2007
91    Dave Tyack    Rip Van Winkle    -2002
92    Blur     Think Tank    -2003
93    Cerys Matthews    Don’t Look Down    -2009
94    Charlotte Hatherley    Grey Will Fade    -2004
95    Loretta Lynn    Van Lear Rose    -2004
96    Shy Child    Noise Won’t Stop    -2007
97    Rilo Kiley    Under the Blacklight    -2007
98    Red Hot Chili Peppers    By The Way    -2002
99    Bis    Return to Central    -2001
100    Mark Knopfler    The Ragpicker’s Dream    -2002

Top 100 albums: 10-1

10    The Crimea – Tragedy Rocks    (2004)
This album was released in two different versions: the first, in 2004, was home recorded (to a high standard) and self-released by the band;  the 2005 version was a major label effort, with half a dozen of the same songs. This only tells half the story of the complications around this band and album. Some of the tracks on it were first performed by predecessor outfit The Crocketts (who I saw by chance at Leeds festival in 2001 and perhaps unfairly dismissed as shouty rubbish); singles Lottery Winners on Acid, White Russian Galaxy and Baby Boom were released in 2002-3, and the middle of those was released for the third time (I think – I lost track a bit) in 2005. Overall, the band spent a massive amount of time flogging this record, to very little effect. Which was indeed a tragedy: in both editions, it is crammed with brilliant pop songs, quirky and memorable lyrics from Davey MacManus and straightforward but brilliantly effective playing. It’s easily one of the best indie pop albums of the decade, and if its lack of success at the time was sad, the band’s fortunes subsequently were deeply so. Follow-up album Secrets of the Witching Hour was released online for free, but it simply didn’t have the tunes, and if the band hoped to make money from gigs, their attendances seemed to be dropping off. Myspace evidence suggests Macmanus’s mental condition is deteriorating; assuming it’s not a purely cynical schtick, his “problems” seem to be going beyond the point of artistic usefulness. A new album was reported to be in the can at the time of writing – much as I’d love it to be a brilliant record that catapults the band to well-deserved success, it doesn’t look likely. Tragedy Rocks looks like proving to be a brief glimpse of what might have been – if you don’t own it, track it down.

9    M Ward – Transistor Radio    (2005)
M Ward is one of a few artists on this list whose music has been on a journey during the decade, but was at its best at the turning-point from one style to another. Earlier records were acoustic in style, driven by Ward’s finger-picking guitar; latterly a slightly broader production pallette and the same laconic Americana have made for an intermittently enjoyable combination. But in 2005 Ward struck a brilliant balance of mid-twentieth century American musical styles, with some brilliantly simple (and at times a bit similar) pop tunes, rounded out by some brilliantly warm, fluid and twangy guitar. Almost the only album of American music you’ll ever need.

8    Arcade Fire – Funeral    (2004)
This is perhaps an obvious choice, but it’s one of the few albums that married critical success with good sales, while at the same time being good as far as I’m concerned too. I was aware of it very early on thanks to Dan Paton, who was recommended it on import in a shop in 2004 (hence I’m counting its 2004 North American release for a date, not its 2005 UK issue); the following spring, we saw the band’s first show outside North America. In that sense, it soundtracked my move to London, both in terms of listening to it on numerous train journeys between Manchester and London, and with that gig representing the sort of opportunity that’s available in London and nowhere else in the UK. As for the album itself, is there much more to say? The band wrung great music from grief to tremendous effect – it seems to be one of those albums that could only have been made by exactly those people at that time, as the mixed nature of follow-up Neon Bible seemed to demonstrate (its good reviews were mostly really reviews of this record by journalists who were slow to catch on first time round). Whether or not the band goes on to greater success, Funeral deserves to be remembered for many years as a truly great record.

7    Elvis Costello and the Metropole Orkest – My Flame Burns Blue    (2006)
Costello is one of the few artists whose output is so diverse that I felt I could justify giving him multiple entries in this list. This album in particular is so strong because it showcases much of that diversity in a coherent form on one disc. It’s a live recording of Costello performing with the Metropole Orkest, taking in a range of his older songs, his dabblings with jazz and lounge, plus some less obvious choices from his back catalogue. The whole thing is accessible and vibrant, and is the perfect overview of Costello’s “non-guitar” work. Almost needless to say, this superb record received virtually no attention on its release and sank without trace. Scandalous.

6    Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Out of This Country    (2006)
Camera Obscura are a band of the noughties and no mistake: the first album emerged in 2000, and new instalments have followed at regular three-year intervals. If the first album seemed to be a good stab at the Belle and Sebastian sound, they developed massively with the next two: 2003’s Underachievers Please Try Harder was full of gorgeous lovelorn ballads, mostly in the best indie tradition but occasionally straying into doo-wop and Leonard Cohen. Its successor is, to my mind, the band’s masterpiece: ten tracks, all flawless. The production is lusher than ever, and for once this really serves the songs: string arrangements are put to just the right use, the songs are upbeat in feel and heartbreaking in detail. Closing track Razzle Dazzle Rose is one of the greatest final tracks to an album I’ve ever heard. The band were reliably excellent live throughout the decade too. Much as 2009’s My Maudlin Career is a gorgeous sounding record, the band’s musical journey seems to have finished, as stylistically it is a retread of Let’s Get Out, which surely stands as one of the great indie albums of the decade.

5    Sleater-Kinney – The Woods    (2005)
Sleater-Kinney started the decade apparently threatening to go in ever-decreasing circles: after their outing with Roger Moutenot in 1999’s The Hot Rock, they returned to previous producer John Goodmanson for the more stripped-down All Hands On The Bad One in 2000, rounding off a trilogy of three superb albums in three years. But 2002’s One Beat, much as I enjoyed it, seemed to be the same thing with a few superficial bells and whistles added to the production. What an impressive relief it was, then, that the next album marked a raising of the band’s game and a concerted effort to take the sound to a new place, with Dave Fridmann at the production helm. The record erupted with Janet’s drums more furious than ever and feedback squalling everywhere. Bar the prog segue towards the end it was perfection, and captured the band’s reliable ferocity live. Sleater-Kinney albums always contained a bucket of good songs, but with this they made a truly great album as a whole for the first time. Then they split up. Tsk.

4    Junior Boys – So This Is Goodbye    (2006)
Hard to explain my love for this record: techno, electronica, hip-hop and whatever else this might get bracketed with are not usually up my musical street – the hard, clipped and artificial sounds turn me off, and even when that’s not a problem the tunes are lacking. But here is electronic music with warmth and atmosphere: the synth sounds offer a seductive late-night atmosphere, and the songs and vocals are compellingly melancholy. It has become one of the records I keep turning back to when I can’t decide what else to listen to.

3    Frankie Machine – Francis Albert Machine and Friends    (2002)
Frankie Machine, aka Rob Fleay, late of White Town and and erstwhile Validators bassist, released three utterly brilliant albums in the first half of the decade; any of them could have sat here credibly. For some reason, the name suggested noisy indie verging on metal to me, so I was utterly blown away by the delicate, acoustic vignettes of heartbreak and misery – in the best possible way. These songs aren’t ballads, they don’t sound much like The Smiths and they’re certainly not folk; rather, Rob has carved out a fabulous niche of acoustic indie. I’d like to hear Rob producing some other acts as well (further to his Validators production duties), as there’s a wealth of great detail on here – lovely arrangements, samples, guest instrumentation, all sorts. I’ve selected the first of the three albums for the list, as it works so well as a unit overall:essentially it’s a sequence of “proper” songs interspersed alternately with shorter, often highly, inventive numbers – it’s brilliant. Follow-up I Love You And I don’t Want You To Die compiles singles, B-sides and tracks from compilations, and works much better as an album than most compilations of this sort usually do; 2004’s Re-Unmelt My Heart was a more expansive effort that also gave me a huge amount of pleasure. Unfortunately for us, Rob seems to have cheered up a lot since then, and a further album is not on the horizon as far as I’m aware. I hope there will be another in the future.

2    Erin McKeown – Grand    (2003)
I had owned this record for probably over a year before finding out it was a concept piece about the life of Judy Garland – if I do have a gay side, I suppose it must be deeply buried. Perhaps I was distracted by the comparisons between McKeown and Elvis Costello. In truth they are a bit dubious: musically they are perhaps not that close together, but they do have a couple of things in common; they both write top-quality songs, and both resist the temptation to repeat themselves. Grand was an altogether more lush and varied affair than McKeown’s debut proper, the alt-country-ish Distillation, and 2005’s follow-up We Will Become Like Birds was different again, showcasing a more ‘live’ rock band sound. An album of showtunes followed in 2006, and a (slightly disappointing) live album in 2007, before Erin finally released a new album of original material with 2009’s Hundreds of Lions – sadly it turned out to be disappointingly boring, which is deeply unusual for her. I’m happy to treat it as a blip. It’s hard to say whether Erin is getting appropriate recognition in her native USA for this remarkably diverse and accomplished body of work, but she sure as hell isn’t getting it in the UK. Back on the subject of Grand, I’m not sure I need to say much more: if you’ve waded through the rest of this top 100, you’ll have an idea by now of what I enjoy in a record, and this one has those qualities in abundance. It’s a record of well-crafted songs with great lyrics and great tunes that doesn’t put a foot wrong; while it might take La Garland as its starting-point, in truth it has resonance much beyond this theme, and its war references seemed particularly striking after the invasion of Iraq. In that sense, this is a record that was at ease in its times, but will stand as a great achievement even when separated from this context for decades to come.

1    Songs: Ohia – Magnolia Electric Co    (2003)
Listening to this record is like taking a bath in warm, dusty melancholy. I’m not normally prone to dubious similes like that. But this record demands it. I’d hesitate to pin the ‘alt-country’ and ‘Americana’ labels on it, as they don’t do it justice; but you could apply both fairly accurately. Jason Molina put together an ensemble for this record that included some of the most melodic and atmospheric pedal steel and fiddle playing you’ll ever hear, along with some guest vocalists to add variety to the songs. They adorn his aching and bittersweet lyrics perfectly, and the result is a perfect set of eight songs. Curiously, I’m much more ambivalent about much of the rest of Molina’s canon: this record came after a period of making more sparse acoustic recordings, and was followed by a period of more chugging aggressive country-rock that lacked the depth and finesse on display here – even though he adopted this record’s title as the new name of his recording and touring band. Magnolia Electric Co finally produced a record of similar dexterity with 2009’s Josephine, although some of the themes and imagery were by now a tad well-worn – I love a song about ghosts and midnight, but you can have too much of a good thing. This 2003 outing remains, for my money, his definitive work, and is one of those records I keep going back to. A perfectly judged record.

Top 100 albums: 20-11

20    Murry the Hump – Songs of Ignorance    (2001)
Ah, Murry the Hump. They could have been the Welsh Bluetones – and I mean that in a very good way. The ground for jangly guitar indie was not fertile in 2001, and MTH didn’t get any further than being Peel and possibly Evening Session favourites (they did a split single with Hefner, fact fans). The songs were deeply tuneful tales of smoking weed in the Welsh Valleys, and occasionally getting laid. Thrown Like A Stone, The House That Used To Be A Ship, Cracking Up… these should be remembered as indie classics… No justice, eh? I returned to this record in a big way in 2009 and enjoyed it even more than I did at the time (when I bought it on gorgeous thick white vinyl – curiously featuring a track running order totally different to that on the CD). What a shame they didn’t include EP track (and eventual B-side) Kebab or Shag. I remember discovering a new student friend had also bought their Colouring Book EP in 1999, and enjoying playing the singles on student radio when they were released in 2001 – cracking. The band re-emerged as The Keys in 2003, and are apparently still going, but sounding alternately more twangy and more noisy. If you prefer a quirky indie jangle, look no further than this record.

19    Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes    (2008)
There’s not much folk or roots type music on this list: while I like a good bit of twangy country music, acoustic folky type stuff is too often over-earnest and lacking in tunes for my liking. Fleet Foxes’ triumphant achievement is to marry those rootsy sensibilities and traditions with an overpowering sense of melody; the gorgeous four-part harmonies simply deliver the knock-out blow. It can be hard to judge recent records without having much perspective on them in terms of time elapsed; but it seems uncontroversial to have this record high on the list.

18    The New Pornographers – Electric Version    (2003)
The New Pornographers are somewhat open to the charge that they just make the same record over and over again; but even if you go along with that critique, you’d have to admit their saving grace is that it’s a very very good record. In fact, it’s a slightly unfair accusation. The band is built around main songwriter AC Newman, with a few contributions per album from Dan Bejar and maybe Neko Case. Newman’s songs are in some ways perfect pop… but very convoluted pop, taking all sorts of unconventional melodic twists and turns. Debut record Mass Romantic grew out of some side-projectesque larking about, and presented Newman’s songs with a dense, aggressive musical backing. By the end of the decade, and their fourth album, the sound had become more mid-paced and clattery, with all sorts of more acousticy instruments thrown into the mix. For my money, their best outing was their sophomore effort, which took the template of the first album and gave it extra pace and sheen: the hook-filled melodies and Beach Boys harmonies really came to life with an urgency that seemed to get a bit lost on subsequent records. Newman himself has also put out a couple of solo albums, on which the songs are recognisable and the backing subtly different. You can credibly start with any of these albums for an idea of what he and the band are about; but Electric Version has a bit of an edge in my view.

17    Doves – Last Broadcast    (2002)
Who would have predicted that a band like Doves would emerge from Sub Sub? Although they are a grand and melancholy indie three-piece, perhaps the jump isn’t quite so stark. Doves are, after all, a band whose music inspires feeling more than thought; it is emotionally epic, without necessarily offering the most incisive lyrics. Another key trait is that the band seem to use the studio like another instrument; there is always interesting stuff going on if you want to listen out for it. The Last Broadcast showcases the best of all of this, with riff-laden and anthemic songs like Pounding and Words that seem even stronger now than they did at the time. At the time, of course, the uplifting There Goes The Fear was clearly the centrepiece of the album. But overall it’s maybe unfair to single out individual tracks; The Last Broadcast undeniably works across its full length, and remains probably the definitive Doves album.

16    The Pipettes – We Are The Pipettes    (2006)
The Pipettes were one of the first bands I discovered after I moved to London, in a support slot for Quasi in April 2005. To me, their unabashed project to harness the strengths of the classic girl group sound, for no other reason than that it’s Bloody Good and has never stopped being Bloody Good, was utterly irresistible. And what’s more, they did a bloody good job of it: Pull Shapes, Why did You Stay?, Tell Me What You Want, It’s Not Love (But It’s Still A Feeling), and many more, were all joyously brilliant pop songs – there are no pretensions to anything other than good times and girl harmonies here. The album duly delivered in 2006, capturing the band’s sound perfectly, and taking them to headline slots at very respectable sizes of venue like Koko and the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. And then it all fell apart, with line-up changes and false starts to the next chapter in the group’s story. The line-up that briefly emerged in autumn 2008 had a battery of excellent new songs, perhaps moving on slightly from the 50s and 60s to the 70s and 80s, and impressively so – nothing would have disappointed more than a plain repeat of the first album. But more turmoil ensued, and it looks like it will be four years from the release of We Are The Pipettes until its follow-up hits the shelves. But I’m looking forward to that record, and still enjoy this one – win-win, really.

15    The Broken Family Band – Balls     (2006)
I first encountered the BFB as a support act for Chris T-T at a small gig in the Champion of the Thames in Cambridge, in earlier 2003. Only when they played a storming set at that year’s Strawberry Fair did I realise that’s who it had been. From then on, they became the live act I’ve seen more than any other bar MJ Hibbett (I think). The last of these occasions came in October 2009, after they had announced their imminent split. They are therefore a band that to alarge extent defines my musical listening over the decade, and their demise represented the death of another link with my time as a student. As you might infer, they were a tremendous live proposition, thanks not only to utterly committed playing from all band members, but also to Steve Adams’ sardonic, comic and often grotesquely rude onstage presence; undoubtedly he is one of the best frontmen of any British band of recent years. And also one of the best songwriters – while it’s hard to pin down any central theme to the BFB’s songs, ups and downs of relationships are prominently in there, and unpicked in a brutal and often unexpected way. Then again, drugs, robots and religion seemed to keep cropping up as well. Initially the band were known for a rough alt-country schtick, but they eventually evolved a sound that was superficially more of a straight indie-rock effort… but it was still unmistakably the Broken Family Band. This album, their third (coming in a run of three albums and two mini-albums from 2002 to 2007, before a final LP in 2009), catches them on the cusp of the transition, with the superb opening trio of You’re Like A Woman, It’s All Over and I See How You Are straying a long way from the world of country. The Americana returns elsewhere on the record, not least in the hilariously bile-filled (but ultimately slightly misogynistic) ballad Alone In the Make-Out Room, a duet with Piney Gir. Other BFB records tended to be a mix of superb songs and Merely Very Good ones (and don’t get me wrong – these are Very Good Songs of the type that most bands would kill for), but every cut on here is absolutely top-drawer. If you only buy one Broken Family Band record, make it this one. But really you should buy them all.

14    MJ Hibbett and the Validators – Regardez, Ecoutez et Repetez    (2009)
Hm, where to start with this? I reviewed this record more extensively than I do with most when it was released, and have probably written at greater length about it than any of the others on this list. So I’m going to cheat and refer you to that review. Well, I reckon that’s at least regardez-ing and repetez-ing, innit?

13    Immaculate Machine – Ones and Zeros    (2005)
One of the best examples of finding a favourite band through a support slot: Immaculate Machine were the support act for the New Pornographers’ first ever show in London, in 2005 – Dan Paton and I both thoroughly enjoyed their set, despite not knowing any of the songs or anything about the band. They were at this point a three-piece, comprised of drums, guitar and keyboards (also supplying basslines), with all three on vocals – though principally the songs were led either by guitarist Brooke or keyboardist Kathryn. The energetic, clattery and tuneful set reproduced, it turned out, the band’s albums to that point. Subsequent album Fables presented a tighter, more concise sound, and perhaps slightly less interesting; by 2009, the line-up had changed at least once into a more conventional five-piece, and at the time of writing still seemed to be somewhat in flux. Still, Ones and Zeros stands as probably the most compelling record from the band – top-quality songs played with fabulous skill and conviction, it’s another one of those pesky albums from Canada that nobody in this country seems to know about.

12    Amy Winehouse – Back to Black    (2006)
The distasteful circus that Amy Winehouse’s life became in 2007 and 2008 shouldn’t be allowed to detract from the achievement that this record represents. Half its strength lies in its production, for which Mark Ronson perhaps deserves all the credit, but the songs are devastatingly well-written, and perfectly suit Ronson’s treatment of them in producing an old-fashioned no-nonsense soul record. The fact that the love triangle detailed in its lyrics eventually resolved itself with Amy marrying and divorcing the ‘ex’ figure here perhaps robs the record of a bit of its sharpness… But it shouldn’t. And Amy did, after all, tell us she was trouble… This is one of the few records that manages to live up to the hype borne of its critical acclaim, its commercial success and of course its extra-curricular promotion by its author in the tabloids. The trouble is that even a singer in good shape would struggle to top this; Back to Black may well stand as the high-water mark of Amy Winehouse’s creativity. But let’s hope not – if she can develop further from this record, imagine how good the next album could be.

11    Half Man Half Biscuit – Trouble Over Bridgwater    (2000)
Although they re-formed in the ’90s, this was the decade in which Half Man Half Biscuit finally seemed to find their feet, thanks to the internet. From playing the smaller student union venues in the late ’90s, they graduated to the likes of the Manchester Academy and Shepherds Bush Empire by the mid-2000s. This was the first of four excellent albums, any of which would have dignified this list with their presence. I’ve chosen this in preference to the others partly because it was the album that got me into HMHB, and partly for the bouncy chorus consisting purely of the line “I’ve been in a mental hospital” over and over again, which to me still represents unparallelled genius.

Top 100 albums: 30-21

30    Calexico / Iron and Wine – In The Reins    (2005)
Arguably this short album is the highlight of the careers to date of both sides of the collaboration: Sam Beam’s subtle and evocative lyrics and unerring melodies are backed up by Calexico with a wonderful sureness of touch. High-calibre songwriting; anyone with doubts about the alt-country tag could do a lot worse than start here. A real thoroughbred record.

29    Laura Cantrell  – Not the Tremblin’ Kind    (2000)
John Peel’s championing of this record was one of the things that ultimately interested me in country music during the first few years of the decade. Its great asset is Cantrell’s delightfully clear, controlled and sweet voice, not to mention good taste – she selected here, as on her subsequent two albums, a set of classy songs, mostly ballads, played with minimal fuss but still some lovely arrangements. To me, it’s more or less the quintessential country record; Somewhere, Some Night is certainly the textbook explanation of how to use a pedal steel guitar on a record. If you have your doubts about country music, start here.

28    Alfie – Crying at Teatime    (2005)
Back in 2000, five bands suddenly seemed to emerge from Manchester: Badly-Drawn Boy, Doves, Elbow, I Am Kloot and Alfie. Somehow Alfie, despite being a former BDB backing band like Doves, seemed to turn into the runt of the litter. Their initial output of plinky, folksy and scruffily twee indie somehow didn’t engage the critics in the same enduring way as the arguably more heavyweight – in different ways – material of the others. Which was a heck of a shame: after a first album that collated their initial EPs, and a debut proper in much the same vein, Alfie’s next two albums took an interesting turn. 2003’s Do You Imagine Things took on seventies influences, both pub and prog rock in places, while 2005’s Crying At Teatime was the real deal: n fully rounded-out, utterly lovely Alfie record, giving a wonky and endearing look at the world and its weird ways. It was a record with buckets of charm, and I was really struck by how well it stood up when I returned to it four years later. A fabulously shambolic and endearing set at the Scala in the autumn of 2005 seemed to confirm the band’s genius, but the fact that the venue was half-empty should have told me there was trouble on the way. The band announced their split shortly afterwards, mainly on the basis that nobody was especially interested – criminal.

27    Tender Trap – Film Molecules (2002)
Among the fanzine circles I inhabited in the late 1990s, just in time to see them before the internet rendered them extinct, Amelia Fletcher was still revered as a goddess. She had made a return with Marine Research – essentially Heavenly with DJ Downfall taking the place of her late brother Matthew on drums – and their smashing album Sounds from the Gulf Stream. Late one night in 2000, DJ Downfall began downloading one of my brother’s MP3s on Napster, and in the ensuing chat revealed that relationship trouble between the couples in the band meant they had split. La Fletcher returned in 2002, with Tallulah Gosh / Heavenly / Marine Research survivor Rob Pursey and DJ Downfall. The trio embraced technology as a way of adapting to reduced numbers, and the loops and samples used to create Film Molecules, along with some moments of more traditional guitar indie such as O Katrina, mark it out as possibly the best and most creative record from this particular stable. I’m not sure if it’s because my tolerance for twee has diminished in my 20s, but I’ve been less convinced by subsequent offerings from Tender Trap: 2006’s 6 Billion People was much more conventionally-recorded, and less interesting for it, while an expanded five (or six? I was drunk when I saw them, sorry) piece line-up seemed to be ploughing an already well-ploughed furrow to me. Still, it would be churlish to accuse Amelia Fletcher of being in any sense the emperor’s new clothes – you can’t deny the affection in which she’s held by (the now middle-aged sections of) the world of indie.

26    Hefner  – We Love The City    (2000)
Probably the definitive Hefner album; Darren Hayman’s songwriting seemed to strike a rich vein of form with these city-inspired tales of the sordid and sublime, while the dabs of orchestration gave it both colour and character. Hefner’s Maida Vale session for the Peel show was surely among the finest live sets he broadcast – check out the album of it that emerged in 2006 under the title Maida Vale for proof. Would it be going too far to suggest We Love The City represents the best and truest example of genuine indie? Probably the best and truest on this list, anyway. Its sequel Dead Media took such an unexpected and different direction for Hefner that both albums warrant inclusion on this list.

25    Super Furry Animals – Hey Venus!    (2007)
It’s been quite a decade for the Super Furries, and amid all the clamour to proclaim Radiohead the ‘band of the decade’, Gruff Rhys should perhaps get a nod both for being incredibly prolific and for the range of projects he has successfully pulled off, both solo and as half of Neon Neon. Among SFA albums, there is a lot of choice, but for the best overall it’s surely between this and 2003’s Phantom Power. Some of their output is long-winded and self-indulgent, and for all their good ideas and tunes, 2001’s Rings Around the World, 2005’s Love Kraft and 2009’s Dark Days / Light Years don’t hold my attention across their full length. The NME’s choice of Ring Around the World as the pick of the bunch is especially mystifying; the best explanation I can come up with is a young set of writers feeling nostalgia for their teens. Hey Venus, however, is the perfect Super Furries album: it doesn’t try to do anything too clever, but just dumps tune after tune, whimsy after whimsy, in a ruthlessly controlled and measured way. There’s no flab on this album, which is what I like about it, but there’s a richness to it at the same time that most bands can never deliver.

24    I Am Kloot  – Gods and Monsters    (2005)
When I did my final student radio show before graduating, a few people emailed in asking if I was going to play records by certain bands. Nobody said Elvis Costello or Sleater-Kinney, oddly, but a couple of people did as about I Am Kloot. I’d first encountered them at the same rainy D:Percussion festival in 2000 where I first saw Elbow, and championed them somewhat during my time on student radio. By the time I left in 2003, they were about to release their second album, and student stations had copies several months in advance (so I did play them on that show, of course). My pick of their four studio albums is the third, although any would be credible: what I particularly like about Gods and Monsters is the roughness of the recording, which captures the edge of menace that Kloot often put across in their consistently excellent live shows. Their debut album, produced by Elbow’s Guy Garvey and Craig Potter, seemed a bit muted in that regard – their fifth will have the same production team, so it will be interesting to see how that turns out. Albums two and four were rather more smoothly produced, and I very nearly put 2008’s Play Moulah Rouge on the list… But you’ve got to make a choice eventually, and if someone wanted to know what I Am Kloot are about, I’d tell them to listen to Gods and Monsters.

23 Sylvie Lewis  – Tangos and Tantrums    (2004)
Sylvie Lewis – daughter of newsreader Martyn, fact fans – put out a couple of smashing albums around the middle of the decade; nobody took much notice and last time I looked it was all quiet on the Sylvie front. Her PR portrayed her as a chanteuse in the best continental style, and deservedly so: both albums showcase her utterly beautiful and accomplished voice – it’s clear Sylvie is a singer who thinks hard about how she is going to sing a song, and knows how to get the best out of it. She also proved on both albums – this and 2007’s Translations – that she is a brilliant songwriter, capturing all shades of romance with a delightful finesse. This collection perhaps has the slight edge as far as I’m concerned because it contains slightly more of my personal favourites, not least All His Exes and Promises of Paris – I might be wrong, but Sylvie seems to write on both piano and guitar, and I prefer the piano compositions (if that’s what they are) slightly. I very much hope there is more music to come from Sylvie Lewis over the next decade.

22 Neko Case – The Tigers have Spoken    (2004)
I’ve really struggled to pick a single Neko Case record to include here. Over the course of the decade she has taken a journey from country balladry into country noir, and out the other side, into something rather more pastoral and optimistic. This album of live recordings, however, catches her more rollicking live form, taking in her own songs and numerous covers; as an overview of Case’s music it’s probably as good as you’ll get (if only someone would release her amazing Maida Vale live set for John Peel in 2000 – I’ve still got my home-taped recording of that, and it was truly astounding). Neko has established herself as one of the most distinctive and impressive voices – both literally and figuratively – in North American music, and no record collection can be taken entirely seriously without at least one of her albums.

21    Morrissey – Morrissey, You Are The Quarry    (2004)
By the time Morrissey released this album, he had gone for longer without releasing any new material than he had spent in the Smiths. It’s hard to forget now that it was a bit of a surprise he was releasing another record at all; his career really did look becalmed. But what a triumph the return was. Morrissey albums always seem to contain a mix of blindingly good songs and somewhat lesser ones, but this collection is probably the closest he’s got to an album that’s consistent all the way through. Among its highlights, however, were songs that instantly took their places alongside the highlights of his solo career to date, particularly Irish Blood, English Heart and First of the Gang To Die – I still remember being amazed that Irish Blood, in particular, heralded Moz’s comeback with such a confident, hard-edged and contemporary sound; it could, after all, have turned out to be embarrassing. He was still a bit prone to going on about the court case, but never mind; the whole comeback, both album and live shows, was done with such aplomb that you have to feel a bit sorry for him being denied number one in either the single or albums charts.