My favourite things during 2022

Hello out there! Last year on this blog I posted a list of my favourite singles of 2021, but 2022 was such a crazy year that I've decided to make a list of pretty much everything but singles.  Lists of my favourite albums, films, TV series and books that I happened to experience over the course of the year, listed, for the most part, in no particular order because I didn't really feel like ranking anything.  Hope you enjoy.

ALBUMS (from 2022)

ANGEL OLSEN - BIG TIME

This is Angel Olsen's first full-on country album, but she fits into the genre extremely gracefully, with country ballads making a perfect conduit for her emotionally stirring songwriting. Her vocals are as expressive and beautiful as ever and the instrumentation is subtle yet gorgeous and surprisingly varied, ranging from traditional country stylings with syrupy steel guitar, as on the title track, to the lo-fi psychedelic blur supporting "All the Flowers", to "Right Now", which sounds like the Beatles' White Album crossed with Weyes Blood.  From start to finish, Big Time is the most gorgeously heartbreaking album of the year, pulled off with a plaintive sincerity that nobody sells quite like Angel Olsen.

NANORAY - DIGIMAIDEN

Digimaiden is a whimsical, vibrant and consistently exciting hardcore breaks album. I don't listen to Nanoray's music as often as perhaps I should, but whenever I do it's a delight; the melodies are pretty and the beats are punchy, without the slightest of lulls in the tracklist. I think I might even prefer Digimaiden to last year's excellent Zapper, which itself was a fantastic dance album. I look forward to going deeper into Nanoray's back catalogue if their other stuff is on this level.

WAWAWA - ILLSOML

illsoml owes a lot of its style to Goreshit's definitive 2009 album My Love Feels All Wrong, the influence of which even extends to the album cover.  Even in its heyday the genre of "lolicore" was mostly treated as a novelty, and has maintained a level of infamy over the years for its often gross aesthetics and reliance on shock value.  illsoml doesn't completely shy away from the standard aesthetics of the genre (with song titles such as "moe drill" and "chiyo torturing methods"), but musically it essentially incorporates only the elements of lolicore that have aged the best, resulting in an album chock full of the same things that made Goreshit's earlier material so great: kickass beats and infectious, unstoppable energy.  This album is a searing powerhouse of chaotic breakbeats and cathartic noise, making as strong a case as possible for the continued existence of this kind of music in 2022.

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD - MADE IN TIMELAND / LAMINATED DENIM

2022 was a great year for King Gizzard, who during the year released five studio albums, two live albums, a remix album and also a short collaborative EP with Tropical Fuck Storm (which I completely forgot came out). Nearly all of their 2022 material took a much more jammy approach than their earlier albums, and the results were generally good, if somewhat inconsistent.  Personally, the albums I loved the most from the Gizz this year were Made in Timeland and Laminated Denim, both of which consist of two 15-minute tracks and use the sound of a clock ticking away the seconds throughout. Made in Timeland is lush, eclectic and psychedelic, incorporating elements of myriad genres in a very creative and unmistakably Gizzard-y fashion; meanwhile Laminated Denim is more focused on lengthy, polyrhythmic compositions with traditional rock instrumentation. Both are excellent, and I'd honestly consider them to be the strongest King Gizzard albums of the past few years.

UNKNOWN CLASSICAL - (...)In the Form of a Grand Tribute Dedicated to Your Arena in the Great Void of Space (في شكل تكريم كبير مكرس للساحة الخاصة بك في الفراغ العظيم من الفضاء)

I spent a lot of the year listening to extremely long albums, and one of the longest was this staggering 53-hour opus.  I've struggled before to put into words my exact feelings towards this album, but nevertheless this is undeniably one of the most creative and ambitious projects I've had the pleasure of taking in this year.  Pulling from ambient and minimalism, amongst many other stylistic reference points, In the Form of a Grand Tribute... boasts an impressive number of distinct sections and evolutions, rarely staying in one place for too long, and is still remarkably consistent.  Though inherently a challenging listen due to its massive scope, this album is so endearing and comforting that it becomes remarkably easy to get sucked into its soundscapes for hours at a time. I've listened to the much shorter edit of the album a couple times, and both times the tracks (though really being average-length songs) felt like they absolutely flew by in no time.  Though it admittedly takes a lot of time and patience, this is an album that's doubtlessly best listened to in its complete, unabridged 53-hour form, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in a unique and spacey listening experience.

PATRICIA TAXXON - VISITING NARCISSA

I can always rely on Patricia Taxxon to release at least one of my favourite albums of the year, and in 2022 the project which stuck with me the most was Visiting Narcissa, Taxxon's longest album to date at over 87 minutes.  Almost entirely instrumental, this album explores in depth the signature style of IDM P.Tax has employed on previous albums such as Yes, And and Wax Under Wolcnum, with the extended structures of the latter combined with the breathtaking catchiness of the former.  Glitchy and abstract yet bright and melodic, Visiting Narcissa is an excellent showcase of Patricia Taxxon's strengths when it comes to instrumental compositions, with brain-tingling sound design and imaginative melodies coming together in an extremely well-paced and sequenced album, despite its more generous runtime.

OTOBOKE BEAVER - SUPER CHAMPON

I tried to keep my expectations reasonable going into Super Champon, because Otoboke Beaver's previous album, 2019's Itekoma Hits, is one of my top 5 favourite albums of all time ever, and I worried that any attempt to follow it up would feel somewhat disappointing by comparison.  Thankfully, although they haven't improved on perfection, the band has made an extremely worthy followup to Itekoma Hits, a blistering 21 minutes of frantic, intricately arranged punk chaos. Despite an average song length of just over 1 minute, each song manages to have approximately 50 alarmingly catchy sections, which all piece together into a fantastic, deftly composed whole.  Beyond the songwriting, Otoboke Beaver continue to show off some of the greatest musicianship in all of punk rock, blasting through each complex and furious number with unbelievable precision.  Every second of this album is used ridiculously well, maintaining all of the qualities that made their first album so special and ramping them up on this project, which is even shorter, denser and more off-the-wall, and though ultimately I think I still prefer their debut, this is just about as brilliant from start to finish.  Even in a year where multi-hour albums took up so much of my time and interest, my favourite album of 2022 still manages to be this brief yet ultra-powerful punk record.

NOIZ/AUDRY - BIRDWATCHER: APOPLOE VESRREAITAI

This year, I had the pleasure of participating in an online event called LIVE_JOURNAL which featured sets of original music from many talented experimental musicians, and while I loved much of what I heard during that event, the set that struck me the most was the 45-minute ever-evolving ambient glitch improvisation Birdwatcher: Apoploe Vesrreaitai.  Though created seemingly spontaneously, the structure nevertheless feels deliberate and engaging, and the piece itself is constructed beautifully out of rich and evocative samples and sound design, with watery instruments fluttering in the background and overcome by sharp glitches, metallic granules, radio noises, pulsing drones and other abstract textures which make my brain light up.  This is one of the more obscure gems on this list, but to me this innocuous piece could go toe to toe with the best of Jim O'Rourke's electroacoustic works, or really just about anything else in that field I've heard.  A really imaginative, beautiful, well-paced piece of experimental goodness.

MICHAEL ROBERTS - SYMPATHIZER

Michael Roberts has been making great music for a long time, with alt-country outfit Wooden Dinosaur and honky tonk band The Rear Defrosters, but my favourite work of his yet is the solo effort Sympathizer.  This album sees Roberts' austere country songwriting augmented with beautiful and creative arrangements, making great use of piano, double bass, pedal steel, and ARP Odyssey, which form a lush, warm bed of drones and harmonies and elevate the naturalistic and contemplative lyrics.  Several months after the album's release, I saw Roberts and co. perform several of the songs from this album live, and in between each song the musicians would spend around 5 minutes creating gorgeous ambient dronescapes (which would be worthy of their own album, certainly), which proved to me two things: there should be more ARP in country music, and there should be more pedal steel in ambient music.  Seriously check this one out, it deserves much more attention than it's gotten so far.

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS - BLEED OUT

John Darnielle has written great albums about countless topics, from methamphetamine addicts to goth culture to the Bible, and his latest album with the Mountain Goats is based around action and crime movies.  Lyrically, Bleed Out isn't too far off from 2015's professional wrestling-themed Beat the Champ, with its depictions of violence and revenge juxtaposed against Darnielle's thoughtful and somewhat literary tone, but the more cinematic bent given to the narratives here keeps the lyrics feeling as fresh and compelling as ever.  The music itself is also excellent in its own right, with the Mountain Goats' current four-piece lineup sounding as tight and forceful as ever, especially with some of the really punchy numbers in the first half of the album.

THE CHATS - GET FUCKED

I was introduced to the Chats the same way I imagine many people were, with their amazing music video for "Smoko", and soon after that I fell in love with their brand new (at the time) debut album High Risk Behaviour, one of the most hilarious and unapologetically snotty punk albums in a long time.  The band's aptly titled sophomore effort Get Fucked proves that, like many great punk bands, the Chats are able to just keep doing what they do best with great results; yeah, this album isn't much different from the previous one, but it's succinct, catchy and energetic enough that their schtick has yet to wear thin.  These blokes can rock, and I can't help but smile every time I put Get Fucked on.

PLAINS - I WALKED WITH YOU A WAYS

Katie Crutchfield, a.k.a. Waxahatchee, began adapting her songwriting into a more Americana and alt-country-influenced direction on her wonderful 2020 record Saint Cloud, and seems to be continuing even further in that vein with this new album, a collaboration with singer/songwriter Jess Williamson.  Crutchfield's voice and songwriting mesh perfectly with Williamson's, to the point where I'm shocked that this is their first album together; they just make for such a natural pairing.  And as a result this album is made up of great song after great song, with a beautiful simplicity that begs the listener (me) to relisten again and again. 

ROXY RADCLYFFE - META

2022 was a dizzyingly prolific year for experimental musician Roxy Radclyffe, who released several hundred albums and EPs under a number of aliases which has become worryingly large in an equally worryingly short period of time, so it's shocking that despite this quantity she's still releasing albums of this quality.  While this may not be my "album of the year" in the sense of being my favourite record released this year, I kind of think of it as the Album of the Year in the sense of being the album to most accurately capture the horrors of humanity, technology and internet culture unique to 2022.  Meta is a deeply discomforting album, chronicling everything from the transparent corporate evils looming over "web3" to internet mob mentality to the hot-button issue of reaction videos to the perpetual motion machine that is online content production/distribution to creators using the façade of humanitarianism as just another way to gain clout and engagement.  Meta exposes in abstract yet direct language the state of internet culture as we know it in its ugliest, most toxic form, poisoned by hypercapitalism and greed, a human-made yet inhuman creation, everything all the time, spiraling out of control.  This sensory overload culminates in the unbelievably magnificent wall of drones and glitching noises "Hellsite", a gorgeous climax to a punishingly bleak and repulsive yet surprisingly enticing album.  Meta isn't the album we need, but it's the album we deserve.  Listen, and despair.

VYLET PONY - CAN OPENER'S NOTEBOOK: FISH WHISPERER

Zelda Trixie Lulamoon (better known as Vylet Pony) blew me away with the electropop delight that was 2021's Cutiemarks (and the Things That Bind Us), but she impressed me even more with this year's Can Opener's Notebook, an album that I think proves Lulamoon as one of the greatest talents of the 2020s, an artist with enviable abilities as a songwriter, producer, and vocalist.  This album maintains a lot of the hooky pop songwriting of Cutiemarks but employs a much more atmospheric and lush sound palette, resulting in so many of the songs here being not merely catchy bops but incredibly beautiful music, which consistently hits me emotionally in ways Cutiemarks only did on occasion.  The melodies are sweet and infectious and the instrumentation and production makes for constant ear candy.  The run of tracks 9 through 12 is especially strong.  I really can't wait to see where Vylet Pony goes from here, because this album is nothing short of astounding.

CAITLIN ROSE - CAZIMI

I'm not yet fully familiar with the Caitlin Rose discographie, but every song of hers I've heard before this album I've loved, and this new album is really great as well!  CAZIMI was released nearly 10 years after her previous album for reasons I have yet to understand but even if I had been waiting for it with bated breath for that entire time, I still think I would be pretty happy with how it turned out.  "Getting It Right" and "Holdin'" are two of the big standouts for me, but this whole album is extremely solid, with great vocals and songwriting as well as really crisp and subtle yet effective production.  Caitlin Rose is an exceptional alt-country artist in my book even if it took such a long time for her to release a new project.

ARCHERS OF LOAF - REASON IN DECLINE

An artist that took even longer to release a new album was legendary indie rock band Archers of Loaf, who put out their first album in 24 years this year.  This was an album I was really excited for, with Archers' 2020 comeback single "Raleigh Days" remaining one of my favourite songs they ever recorded, and being a fan of all of Eric Bachmann's work both in and out of the band over the past few decades.  Reason in Decline operates in something of a middle ground between Archers' noisy, standoffish indie punk and Eric Bachmann's more singer-songwriter type recordings as a solo performer and with Crooked Fingers, but it strikes that balance very well, with a decidedly more mature and thoughtful approach to songwriting akin to Bachmann's past couple solo albums but with a distorted, hard-hitting edge specific to Archers of Loaf as a full band.  They're definitely a much different band now than the one that recorded Greatest of All Time and Icky Mettle, but I had a pretty good idea of what to expect and I wasn't disappointed one bit. 

THE BETHS - EXPERT IN A DYING FIELD

Expert in a Dying Field is one of the few albums where I really feel like every song could have been a single.  "Head in the Clouds", "I Told You I Was Afraid" and "When You Know You Know" would be obvious choices for singles on any other album, but in reality none of them were!  But it's understandable because this album maintains an admirable level of quality throughout, a collection of twelve brilliant and memorable power pop gems that feel so well crafted yet effortlessly so.  The title track especially stands out with some of my favourite lyrics of the year, using the titular phrase as a way of referring to having put so much work into getting to know and understand a person with whom you are no longer in a relationship.  I came to this album late in the year but I fell in love immediately and have become even more enamored with it since then.

RICHARD DAWSON - THE RUBY CORD

An album I got around to even later in the year (December 31, to be exact) was the new Richard Dawson album, which completes a trilogy with his previous (and equally amazing) efforts Peasant and 2020.  Whereas Peasant's narratives were set in the distant past and 2020 explored themes of present day, The Ruby Cord functions as a series of short stories imagining the world in the 26th century.  The lyrics are enthralling and very imaginative (I would argue this is perhaps the best album to read of the year) and, to my surprise, reminded me of the cartoon Adventure Time in the way Dawson's post-apocalyptic future combines both historical/ancient and futuristic/technological elements.  The music is very evocative as well, particularly on the 41-minute opener "The Hermit", which uses its lengthy runtime very well; often it will take several minutes for each section to unfold or build up in a way that feels very natural and like a single song despite being so long, sort of reminiscent of the opening section to the Flaming Lips' "7 Skies H3".  Richard Dawson is a unique and amazing musician and storyteller and listening to his trilogy of albums including The Ruby Cord was undoubtedly one of the highlights of my year.

ALVVAYS - BLUE REV

I fell deeply for Alvvays' second album Antisocialites shortly after its release in 2017, and they rapidly became one of my favourite indie rock bands. Unfortunately, 2017 was not the greatest time to become an Alvvays fan, because other than a six-minute-long tour-only EP the following year, it would be nearly five years before the release of any new Alvvays recordings.  Of course, it's something of a miracle Blue Rev even came out at all, with the album's production marred by numerous misfortunes, including demo tapes being stolen, the band's equipment being damaged in a flood, and of course the COVID-19 pandemic.  But while it was exciting enough that the band managed to put anything out at all, Blue Rev is also pretty consistently made up of Alvvays' strongest material to date. "After the Earthquake" and "Belinda Says" stand as a couple of the most dynamic songs in their catalogue, "Easy On Your Own?" and "Many Mirrors" rival the catchiest pop numbers from their previous efforts, and "Velveteen" and "Pharmacist" make great use of the wall of dreamy shoegaze guitars that loom over much of the album.  "Tom Verlaine" is my favourite song anyone put out in 2022, with achingly gorgeous vocals and beautifully crafted melodies shining through one of the gloomier and subtler tracks on the album.  Molly Rankin's vocals in general are stunning throughout the entire album, and much more emotionally direct than I think they've ever been before.  The album as a whole is really well paced and sequenced and, like Expert in a Dying Field, stands out as a thoroughly excellent indie rock record packed with melody and colour.

ALBUMS (not from 2022)

Other music which really caught my fancy over the course of 2022, but which came out before then.

BULL OF HEAVEN - WEED PROBLEM II-V (2014), etc.

I finally finished going through the entire Bull of Heaven discographie - through the end of the numerical series, that is - early on in 2022, which now feels like forever ago.  The most memorable and exciting experiences I had involving BoH during the year were interviewing surviving member Neil Keener, and finishing their two-month-long album 118: The Chosen Priest and Apostle of Infinite Space, but the album of theirs that I loved the most during the year was easily 301: Weed Problem II-V.  A two-hour opus comprising four mini-albums with a total of 15 distinct sections, this is one of the band's more accessible efforts, and explores a lot of the more hypnotic guitar-based music Bull of Heaven would continue to release through the end of the numerical series and beyond.  From what I can tell, this is essentially a solo effort from Keener and I think a lot of his best and most evocative work is on this album, from the dusty guitar drones of Weed Problem II to the atmospheric spoken-word pieces during Weed Problem IV.  The unique album structure and really smart sequencing makes the album an experience truly unlike any others in the Bull of Heaven canon.  Though by most artists' standards this is still a pretty lengthy and slow-paced album, it never so much as threatens to get boring and I think it works as a really good introduction to the less experimental and patience-testing side of the band's catalogue, as well as one of their best albums, period.

LES TÊTES BRULÉES - LES TÊTES BRULÉES (1990)

This was one of my favourite guitar albums from the first time I heard it.  Les Têtes Brulées seem to be the most famous band in the Cameroonian genre of bikutsi music, but both the band and the genre seem to be pretty obscure in North America, which is a shame, because this album is an absolute powerhouse.  The Montreal Gazette referred to the band as "Africa's answer to the Red Hot Chili Peppers" but I think that does them a major disservice; this album is ten times more melodic, infectious and euphoric than even the best RHCP songs.  And I really must emphasize just how fantastic the guitarwork is on this album.  I'm finding that more and more of my favourite guitar music as of late is coming from Western and Central Africa.

YUMI MATSUTOYA - TOKI NO NAI HOTEL (1980), etc.

One of my biggest musical obsessions of the year was Yumi Matsutoya.  I first got into her music in mid-2021 with her 1984 album No Side (which is still my favourite album I've heard from her) and since then she has become not just my favourite city pop musician but one of my favourite artists in general.  At the very beginning of the year I bought 13 of her records and was wowed by every single one, in particular the lush and aquatic Voyager (1983) and the synth-heavy pop masterpiece Before the Diamond Dust Fades... (1987); later on I also got her first two records and Misslim (1974) immediately became another one of my absolute favourites.  Her albums are very consistent in sound, but each still has a somewhat unique flavour, and the one that stood out the most to me over the course of the year was Toki no Nai Hotel, which has a bit more of a pop-rock and soft-rock sound than her other albums and leans very heavily on beautiful ballads.  There's a little bit of Carole King to the sound, a little bit Elton John and maybe a little bit of early Kate Bush as well, but the songwriting and melodies are unmistakably Yumi Matsutoya at her very best.  Despite the sometimes AOR-y instrumentation, it also has some of Yuming's artsiest material in places, including the almost proggy title track and the breathtaking "5cmの向う岸", as well as some of her prettiest songs, especially "よそゆき顔で" which is without a doubt one of my favourite songs I heard in 2022.

PHAROAH SANDERS - KARMA (1969)

Karma seems to be one of the most beloved jazz albums in online music circles, but growing up and learning about jazz I never heard about it or Pharoah Sanders in general until a few years ago when I was introduced to Alice Coltrane's Journey in Satchidananda album, on which Sanders performs.  His is still a discographie I need to go much further into, but in any case Karma absolutely blew my mind.  In addition to having one of the greatest grooves I've ever heard, the 33-minute song which dominates the album builds up into one of the most euphoric climaxes I've ever heard in a piece of music, bursting with light and colour in all directions.  The prolonged and emotional journey this track takes is unlike anything I've really heard in a piece of jazz music before, and I came away from it completely in awe. R.I.P. Pharoah Sanders.

MAX RICHTER - SLEEP (2015)

Admittedly, I did not listen to this album as it was intended (during sleep), but in any case this eight-and-a-half-hour ambient project was one of the most beautiful things I heard all year.  As one might expect, it's very slow-paced and repetitive, but the atmospheres, tones and occasional melodies are so soothing and captivating that they keep the music interesting and well-structured despite being consistently subdued enough to be good sleeping music.  Sleep is one of a great many several-hour-long albums I enjoyed over the course of the year, but while it wasn't one of the most unusual or experimental of the bunch, it still stood out due to just how well-executed and pretty the music is. 

AUTECHRE - NTS SESSIONS 1-4 (2018), etc.

Another eight-hour album, and one which impressed me even more, was Autechre's sprawling four-part masterpiece NTS Sessions.  Autechre's Confield (2001) and elseq 1-5 (2016) were already a couple of my favourite albums of all time prior to this year, but 2022 was the year in which I finally really became obsessed with the duo, and finished listening to their entire studio discographie.  While there were several albums I listened to during 2022 that could easily have made this list instead, such as Chiastic Slide (1997), Exai (2013) or Quaristice (2008) (or even Plus, which I listened to shortly after its release in 2020 but which grew on me like a fungus in 2022), none of them made nearly as much of an impact on me as NTS Sessions, which I listened to for the first time in summer of 2022 and which has since become probably one of my top 10 albums of all time.  Each individual session is amazing for its own unique reasons to the point where I don't think I could choose a favourite.  NTS Session 1 alone would be a good candidate for Autechre's best album, with brilliant sequencing that slowly builds up from a few slow, hypnotic numbers to some of their most intense and impressive music to date; NTS Session 2 has a frantic, pounding first half which gives way to a slower and more atmospheric second half; NTS Session 3 has several of the most mind-meltingly bizarre tracks Autechre have yet released; NTS Session 4 is by far the slowest, most ambient and most contemplative of the four sessions, and culminates in one of the most incredible final three-track runs on any album ever.  But they really work the best as a single 36-track album, because everything pieces together so well in the larger structure that it manages to feel like a perfectly coherent and focused unit, even though it's so long and so dense.  NTS Sessions feels like the culmination of Autechre's three decades of activity, taking everything they had learned and the musical language they had created and channeling everything into this endlessly mesmerizing opus.  A legitimately life-changing album.

N'DRAMAN BLINTCH - COSMIC SOUNDS (1980)

I love funk and disco music, but I don't often listen to as much of it as I would like.  Luckily, this album caught my eye early in the year and quickly became a mild obsession of mine for a while.  The first three of the four tracks on Cosmic Sounds are packed with great hooks and tight grooves, while the closer is a slower, pretty waltz.  One of the biggest highlights of 2022 for me was the eleven-minute title track from this album, which practically forces me to sing and dance along every time I hear it.  Even when the music is about the atrocities of war, as on the first track, Cosmic Sounds is a blast to listen to.

KUNIKO - DRUMMING (2018)

A recording of the iconic and foundational Steve Reich piece Drumming.  This recording sounds very good and is performed expertly, but what sets this version apart is how percussionist KUNIKO performs all thirteen parts herself, overdubbed to create an ensemble of one.  I have never performed a Reich piece myself, but I have seen them performed live and I have performed other works for a percussion ensemble, and I can only imagine how painstaking it must have been to complete this.  Of course, this album being performed by one person isn't really what makes it so great; what makes it so great is the pristine recording highlighting the nuances in the music and the precision with which KUNIKO locks its hypnotic, interlocking rhythms in with herself.  Drumming is an amazing piece of music and this performance really brings out the best in it.

HANNAH DIAMOND - REFLECTIONS (2019)

I had been a big fan of Hannah Diamond's singles for some time, but it wasn't until 2022 that I got around to her first and (as of this writing) only album, Reflections.  When I did finally listen to it, I was delighted to find that Diamond is hardly a singles artist; the deep cuts on this album are still some of the prettiest and most well-constructed pop songs of the 2010's, as far as I'm concerned.  As its name suggests, Reflections is a highly introspective and emotional album, but Diamond and her cohorts don't let that stand in the way of it also being really catchy and even danceable.  This is one of my favourite releases from the good people at PC Music (who were kind enough to send me the deluxe colour vinyl edition of Reflections even though I bought just the standard black vinyl edition, due to "technical issues".  Thanks guys!)

KOTRINGO - PICNIC ALBUM 1 (2010), etc. 

I first started to get into Kotringo's music in mid-2020 when I rewatched the heart-rending animated film In This Corner of the World, and noticed how unbearably beautiful the soundtrack for it was (I have yet to listen to the full soundtrack album without crying).  A year later, I listened to her cover album Picnic Album 2, from 2011, which didn't affect me quite as intensely but which featured some excellent renditions of songs by Anglophone artists ranging from Björk to the Jackson 5 (as well as possibly my favourite cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah").  It wasn't until July 2022 that I really sat down and went through the rest of Kotringo's discographie, but when I did I discovered there wasn't a single album in the bunch I didn't love.  One I particularly enjoyed was her first covers album (which, unlike its successor, consists of songs written by Japanese artists), which features some of her most beautiful vocal performances and arrangements that have her musical fingerprints all over them.  Although I'm unfamiliar with almost all of the original tunes (excepting Yumi Matsutoya's "No Side"), Kotringo's performances are so exquisite that, just like on Picnic Album 2, she really makes these songs her own and makes them feel just as important as her original material.

MERZBOW - HYBRID NOISEBLOOM (1997)

I've heard a decent number of Merzbow albums, enough to consider him one of my favourite experimental musicians, but there are a lot of his "classic" or fan-favourite albums I still haven't gotten to.  This was the case for Hybrid Noisebloom until December, when my friend and I traded lists of 15 album recommendations to each other to listen to over the course of the month, and this was sixth on his list for me.  Coincidentally, sixth on his list for me last year was another Merzalbum, 1996's Magnesia Nova, and while ultimately I think that one is still my favourite, Hybrid Noisebloom is currently sitting in a respectable second place.  I can definitely understand the great reputation this album has; though a bit more electronic and science-fiction-y, it's just as satisfying a barrage of stimuli as my other favourite Merzbow albums. 

IMPOSSIBLE NOTHING - LEXEMENOMICON (2017)

Another album recommended to me at the same time by the same friend.  This is the second of Impossible Nothing's "-nomicon" albums, each of which consist of twenty-six uncreatively titled, uniformly ten-minute-long tracks, excepting 2019's Numerinomicon, which consists of forty-eight uncreatively titled, uniformly ten-minute-long tracks.  I enjoyed the first album in the series, 2016's Phonemenomicon, which introduced me to IN's idiosyncratic approach to production, and which, though a bit inconsistent, had some phenomenomenal tracks throughout.  However, I personally was even more impressed by Lexemenomicon, which comparatively is much less eclectic but (to me) much more consistent, with great track after great track piling up into a very exciting four-and-a-half-hour monolith.  Similar to its predecessor, Lexemenomicon is made up of punchy hip-hop beats accompanied by a slew of warped and chopped-up samples, but it has a unique, fuzzy, analogue sound which persists throughout the entire album, particularly due to its usage of a lot of what sound to me like garage-rock and psych-rock samples at the foundation of several tracks.  Highlights for me included "Bb", "Gg", "Nn", and "Qq", although the album constantly operates at a very high level of quality and works best as a whole.  I really want to get around to completing the rest of these albums, as I'm sure untold riches await.

SUN RA - SPACE IS THE PLACE (1973)

Another artist I'd love to listen to more often is Sun Ra.  Before listening to Space is the Place, the only Sun Ra performances I had heard were "Rocket Number Nine" and the mind-bending performance the Arkestra did on Saturday Night Live in 1978.  (SNL got some pretty awesome musical guests in its early years!)  Space is the Place was everything I hoped a Sun Ra album might be; it's zany and bizarre but also full of some really thoughtful and creative jazz compositions.  The side-long title track is particularly exhilarating, at once totally avant-garde and really fun to sing along to.  Even in the more restrained and conventional second half, there's a really unique style to Sun Ra's compositions and performance that borders on, but never truly succumbs to, chaos and makes Space is the Place a fascinating listen.

OOIOO - GAMEL (2013), etc.

OOIOO's discographie was one that I completed in full over the course of the year and, as with Kotringo, I was thrilled that every single album they've released has been really great!  I could have put pretty much any of their albums here, and I almost went with 1999's Feather Float (probably their krautrock-iest album) but I had to go with Gamel as being the album that struck me the most, in part because of how unusual it is.  On this album, OOIOO's experimental, psychedelic rock compositions are combined with gamelan music, an influence I've never really heard in the world of psychedelia before but which fits like a glove with Yoshimi P-We's percussive, complex yet meditative songwriting.  The band sounds incredibly locked-in, too, making the music flow so precisely yet effortlessly.  OOIOO has quickly become one of my favourite rock bands, and I think they're certainly one of the most original and wonderfully weird bands of the century so far.  Though they have been around for almost three decades at this point, I think their last two albums, Gamel and nijimusi, are their most experimental, exciting and brilliant efforts yet, and I can't wait to hear what they do next.

CAROLE KING - TAPESTRY (1971)

Carole King is, in my mind, unquestionably one of the greatest and most important songwriters of all time.  At some point, it struck me that the early Yumi Matsutoya albums I had been obsessed with in early 2022 were clearly very heavily influenced by Carole King, which got me interested in listening to more of King's work as a solo artist.  In doing so, I was shocked by how many of the songs from Tapestry (as well as Pearls: Songs of Goffin and King) I was already familiar with in some capacity.  The number of classic songs on Tapestry would be pretty astonishing, except for the fact that King had already been one of the most established songwriters in the biz years before she even released her first solo album.  But in any case, this album really is a huge accomplishment, the quality of which is difficult to overstate; every song is meticulously written and beautifully sung.  This album really makes me appreciate how lucky we are that Carole King is one of the people who helped shape popular music throughout the 1960s and '70s.

JOANNA NEWSOM - HAVE ONE ON ME (2010)

Unlike the other albums on this list, Have One on Me is an album I had listened to on multiple occasions long before 2022.  When I was a kid, I didn't really like the music I had heard by Joanna Newsom (specifically her 2004 debut The Milk-Eyed Mender), but later on I heard songs like "'81" and "You Will Not Take My Heart Alive" which I loved and which caused me to change my feelings on her music, with Divers (2015) becoming a favourite album of mine in grade eleven.  During this time, I tried to get into her previous album, the two-hour oeuvre Have One on Me, but even though there were a few songs I fell hard for, especially "Baby Birch", the album was so compositionally and lyrically dense that I had trouble remembering most of it.  Returning to it at the tail end of 2021, Have One on Me became one of the albums I listened to the most during 2022, and as with NTS Sessions, it has recently clawed its way into my all-time top ten.  Listening to this album is pure bliss for me.  The first disc alone is flawless and would be one of the best albums ever made, but this album is three discs long and stays enchanting and beautiful and perfect the entire time.  (Not to mention that "Easy" and "Does Not Suffice" is one of the greatest sets of bookends to an album I've ever heard.)  Nobody writes music like Joanna Newsom and I certainly don't think there will be another album that quite captures the same magic that Have One on Me does.

KRYSTAL JESUS - FOR LIZA, BEYOND THE EVENT HORIZON. (2021)

For Liza, Beyond the Event Horizon by Krystal Jesus (better known as La Peste) is not an album that really presents itself as any sort of masterpiece.  From what I can tell, it was released exclusively on Soundcloud, with little to no promotion of any kind, under a silly alias name, with a not-particularly-good-or-fitting-to-the-music cover, to very little fanfare.  As a result, I could barely believe my ears when I put this album on and found it to be one of the most explosive, cathartic, spectacular pieces of experimental electronic music I've ever heard.  For Liza is a single, extremely dense 90-minute piece that constantly evolves from one ultra-detailed moment to the next, starting and ending relatively calm and rhythmically coherent but otherwise hyper-chaotic and turbulent and yet structured and methodical.  The sound design is top-notch and the piece as a whole is really well-paced and put together, violently emotional to what should be an exhausting extent but never truly is.  La Peste is truly a master of his craft and I'm infatuated with this album more than any of his other works I've heard, so I really hope that it gets the recognition it deserves one day.  This album must not languish in obscurity!  I forbid it!!

FILMS

MACGRUBER (2010)

As of this writing, MacGruber is the most recent feature film to be based on a Saturday Night Live sketch.  "MacGruber" may seem like a weird choice for a sketch to adapt into a movie; it's a silly semi-parody of MacGyver based around a very repetitive (if hilarious) joke: MacGruber (played by the wonderful Will Forte) and his cohorts are locked in a control room with a time bomb and he attempts to disarm the bomb with household items before his incompetence and propensity to be easily distracted by personal issues result in the gang being blown up.  However, MacGruber the movie fleshes out MacGruber's character in creative and side-splittingly funny ways, placing the character in a sort of pseudo-action/revenge film and sending him on a mission to stop his archnemesis Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer) from blowing up Congress with a nuclear warhead.  Due to MacGruber being a film rather than a bit on television, the humour is allowed to be a lot more crass and profane than in the sketches, but it only gets funnier as a result.  This movie is so, so stupid and so tasteless, yet it was made with such a clear love for the direction style of action movies that it doesn't merely feel like an extended pisstake.  And Will Forte's performance as MacGruber is unbelievable.  I mean, MacGruber is such a horrible and unlikeable protagonist and yet he's so fun to watch due to how perfectly Forte embodies his character in all its ridiculousness.  While the humour may have been too juvenile or caustic for this movie to be anything but a cult classic, there are few movies I've laughed at harder than MacGruber.

MYSTERY TRAIN (1989) / NIGHT ON EARTH (1991) / GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI (1999) / COFFEE AND CIGARETTES (2003)

I watched a lot of Jim Jarmusch movies this year, and they were all fantastic.  His films are generally paced very slowly and can be very mundane character pieces, but the atmosphere and dialogue are always on point and as a result it's astonishing how completely captivating the characters and events can be.  Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai is the only one of the four films listed here that has a single main character, and the dialogue is much sparser than in some of the others, but it's an enthralling story with a mostly very sombre and dramatic tone but also some of the most disarmingly funny moments in any of his movies.  Mystery Train, Night on Earth and Coffee and Cigarettes, on the other hand, all have several different narrative arcs.  Mystery Train shows the same span of roughly a day three times, each time following a different set of characters who all stay the night in the same disheveled hotel; Night on Earth similarly explores a single night through five casts of characters, though each section of the film is set in an entirely different city; Coffee and Cigarettes is comprised of eleven short films with a few recurring elements but the only true throughline being that the characters all are shown enjoying the titular vices.  One thing I appreciated about both Night on Earth and Coffee and Cigarettes is how both films are extremely well sequenced, starting with the sections that, though still pretty good, I found to be the weakest, and saving some of the most exciting material for near the end.  I look forward to watching all the remaining Jim Jarmusch films I haven't yet seen, because there's a certain je ne sais quoi to his writing and filmmaking style that I absolutely adore.

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU (2018)

One of the most instantly memorable movies I've ever seen.  Sorry to Bother You definitely deserves to go down as one of the greatest comedies of the century so far, I'd say; it's deeply funny and beautifully directed while also having a lot of the sharpest social commentary I've ever seen in a film, certainly in a comedy.  The satire in Sorry to Bother You touches on an impressive number of contemporary issues without ever feeling like it's incompletely addressing them or hamfisting them into a story that doesn't need them.  The story is also amazing; I went into this film without really knowing anything about it and watching the plot twist and unfold as much as it did for the first time was such an amazing experience.  Also, I watched Death on the Nile shortly before this film and seeing both led me to discover Armie Hammer is great at playing skeevy villain characters.  Who could have guessed?

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)

No sooner had I convinced myself that Sorry to Bother You would be dominating my thoughts for the next long while than Everything Everywhere All At Once abruptly took its place in my brain.  (And not just because it has even more prominent usage of the act of spinning a promotional sign on the side of the road.)  I saw this film once in a nearly empty theatre by myself and it rocked my world, but I had even more fun watching it a second time in the same theatre (this time a lot more full) with several friends who had never seen it before, and seeing them react and laugh and cry to this insane movie was so much fun.  And then, later in the year, I got the film on DVD and watched it with my parents, and being with them as they saw it for the first time was also amazing.  This is a movie unlike any other, one that seems to have blown the whole world away, and I'm glad it did because Everything Everywhere All At Once is a complete masterpiece from start to finish.  From the acting to the lighting to the choreography to the costume design to (especially) the editing, everything about this movie is so detailed and beautiful and clever and evocative and unforgettable.  It's a little over 2 hours long but it's such a dense, intricate sensory overload that it feels like 4 hours, in the best way imaginable.  It puts on display all of the love for the medium that the filmmakers had, but underneath all the mind-melting editing tricks and visual detail is a really potent and beautiful story told in a very creative and often extremely funny manner.  I would not be able to sum up in this paragraph all that I love about this movie, but suffice it to say, this is certainly my favourite film that came out in 2022 and possibly my favourite that I watched in 2022 from any year.

DICK (1999)

Now, Dick may not have the same life-changing masterpiece status as Everything Everywhere All At Once, but it was similarly a delight to watch.  Dick is a hilarious comedy set in an alternate history where two teenage girls (played by Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst), through a series of wacky events, become closely connected to the White House and President Nixon following Watergate and, after discovering how much of a scumbag he is, become informants to the press about the scandal, resulting in Nixon's resignation.  In my opinion, Watergate is an event with loads of comedic potential and Dick does a great job in highlighting the silliness behind such a shitty period for the United States, with killer performances by Williams and Dunst, as well as appearances from Harry Shearer, Will Ferrell, Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch and even a young Ryan Reynolds.  Dan Hedaya's Nixon is also really hilarious.  Despite the title suggesting Dick to be maybe just a dumb, lowbrow comedy, there's a lot of heart in this film and I laughed through the whole thing.

THE END OF THE TOUR (2015)

Jason Segel is easily one of my favourite actors, and he really does a phenomenal job playing David Foster Wallace in this recount of Wallace's book tour for Infinite Jest, with Jesse Eisenberg playing David Lipsky, a journalist and author who meets and accompanies Wallace on the tour.  The End of the Tour shows the two writers attempting to make conversation, explain themselves and understand each other during their long stretches of time spent together going to and coming from readings.  Equally important as the presence of Wallace and Lipsky is the everpresent and ever-fluctuating slight disconnect between the two, as they aren't really friends and are barely acquaintances; Lipsky is doing an extended interview of Wallace, and Wallace knows this and is reluctant to really fully open up to Lipsky.  The End of the Tour captures beautifully this complicated dance of interactions between these two disparate, real personalities in a way I've never seen in any other biopic and as a result it's shockingly poignant, even almost voyeuristic.  This movie depends so heavily on making the performances feel like the true conversations must have felt, and Segel and Eisenberg succeed spectacularly.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)

Surprisingly, this might have been the only Coen brothers movie I watched during 2022, but it was a doozy.  Probably the most grim and suspenseful film they've ever made, and perhaps the least humourous, I struggle to find really anything particularly interesting to write about this one since it seems to be pretty much universally adored.  As with all Coen films, even though it's an adaptation, No Country for Old Men has a really unique and fascinating, somewhat mysterious approach to characters and storytelling that keeps me on the edge of my seat.  Even in the slowest and quietest moments, the atmosphere is thick enough to cut with a knife.  I've never felt more tense in my life than during the coin toss scene.  Enough said.

SLACKER (1990)

Slacker is one of the foundational films to what is known as "hyperlink cinema", though I didn't know that when I started watching it, so I didn't really get it at first.  All the main characters in the first few scenes looked similar enough that I kind of assumed they were the same person and had trouble figuring out what exactly the plot was until everything fell into place and I realised I shouldn't really be looking for one, not in the conventional sense.  Slacker is comprised of little short vignettes and character pieces of Austin weirdos which seamlessly flow into one another, and though of course I wasn't around in Austin in the late '80s-early '90s, this movie perfectly captures the sort of bizarre somewhat aimless southern-U.S. energy I imagine it as having at the time (maybe even now, but I haven't looked into it).  Especially towards the halfway point of the movie, there are some scenes and characters I find so funny or so interesting, and the general aesthetic and construction of the film is so great, particularly as it only seems to gain momentum the closer it gets to the end.

ARABESQUE (1966)

Arabesque is director Stanley Donen's followup to 1963's Charade, which I saw many years ago and don't remember incredibly well but remember really liking.  Even so, I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed Arabesque, a sort of semi-comedic spy movie that goes all sorts of weird places (the weirdest including a really psychedelic scene set at a zoo at night).  I just found it to be a really well-put-together movie with some really excellent set design and entertaining characters, and some very creative directorial techniques that give the visuals a lovely and unique style which sets it apart from Hitchcock (to whom this film seems to be frequently compared).

TREMORS (1990)

Man, I love giant monster films.  Tremors is a particularly great entry in the genre, with just enough intentional campiness to be really fun to watch without risk of being cheesy or annoying.  The cast of characters is a pretty ragtag and often silly one (particularly the gun nuts played by Reba McEntire and Michael Gross) but nevertheless Tremors pulls off real suspense pretty well when it needs to.  As with most giant monster movies, this film takes a while to reveal the monsters, slowly building up mystery and tension over the course of the first act, and I really loved the way it was done here.  I'm also a sucker for films with middle-of-nowhere Hicksville USA settings, probably more than I appreciate places like that in real life.

WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY (2022)

This was the film I was by far most excited for in 2022.  (Except maybe The Northman, which you'll notice does not appear on this list.)  Having loved "Weird Al" Yankovic's music since childhood, as well as his 1989 cult-classic UHF, I couldn't wait to see Yankovic's trademark brand of absurdist comedy applied to the story of his own life, and Weird surpassed all expectations I had for it.  A sort of parody of music biopics, this movie was reportedly inspired by Yankovic watching Rocket Man and Bohemian Rhapsody and realizing how it isn't really necessary to, you know, tell the truth exactly while making one of these movies.  And thus, Weird: the Al Yankovic Story is a ludicrous rewrite of history in which Yankovic becomes the most important musician on the planet, romantically involved with Madonna, and a complete caricature of the rock star lifestyle.  The joke upon which the entire film hinges is a pretty simple one, but one which is so consistently hilarious to see play out, with excellent directing that perfectly emulates the genre it's parodying, just as Yankovic's music is known to do.  Evan Rachel Wood's Madonna impression is unbelievable, and the countless cameos from famous comedians and actors over the course of the film are consistently funny as well, particularly Will Forte and Yankovic himself as the Scotti Brothers (the real-life heads of "Weird Al"'s record label).  Oh, this reminds me, I also watched the similarly hilarious parody-music-biopic Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story in 2022, and almost forgot to write an entry for it. 

WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (2007)

Most of the general feelings I had towards Weird: the Al Yankovic Story apply to this movie, too, so I don't feel like I have too much to say about this one.  In lieu of a more thorough entry, here's a ridiculous scene in which Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman play the Beatles. 

Jack White as Elvis was also pretty hysterical.

THE BREADWINNER (2017)

I had seen this film several years ago, but revisiting it in late 2022 was something I'm really glad I did.  The Breadwinner is up there with In This Corner of the World as a couple of my favourite animated films ever, which are based on horrific tragedies.  Set in Kabul under the control of the Taliban in the late 1990s, this is a film that shows perseverance and hope on a relatively small scale in the face of devastating events, which I think is beautiful, as is the animation by the excellent Cartoon Saloon.  I saw this film screened at a local independent venue during an event set up by several Afghan refugees and according to them, despite being set decades ago this film is still extremely pertinent now, which is really unfortunate.  But hopefully that, in a way, speaks to its quality.

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981)

I had heard about this movie long before I ever saw it, so I was aware that I would be watching little more than a two-hour conversation.  But oh, what a riveting conversation it is!  I could have spent two hours after the film ended merely discussing its contents; there are so many fascinating and thought-provoking ideas explored over the course of My Dinner With Andre that it feels almost more like something to be read rather than watched, but it works surprisingly well in the medium of film in any case.  As it turns out, a great way to make a film that taps into the human psyche is just to allow the characters to freely talk to each other at length.  I'm surprised this hasn't been tried more often, although at a certain point I'm sure it would stray dangerously close to podcasting.

POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING (2016)

I have a soft spot bigger than a Great Lake for the Lonely Island; their songs and music videos are great but I especially love them as filmmakers.  Though the feature films they've worked on (Hot Rod, MacGruber, Popstar) have generally underperformed at the box office, those films have also all become sort of cult classics and for very good reason.  Samberg, Schaffer and Taccone do lowbrow comedy better than pretty much anyone and I'm frequently in awe of just how much hilarity they're able to cram into each new project.  Case in point, their 2016 mockumentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is an impressively intricate piece of comedy, with enough hilarious jokes, details and cutaway gags to fuel three films.  In concept, Popstar is sort of a rewrite of This is Spinal Tap for the mid-2010s, following Samberg as a pop-slash-hip-hop star on the decline, struggling with the failure of his highly anticipated new album and the deterioration of his personal and professional relationships.  As with MacGruber, Popstar is an incredibly silly film, with countless scenes, songs and jokes that I couldn't forget if I tried.  Nobody makes me laugh like the Lonely Island guys and Popstar may be my favourite project they've done yet. 

AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000)

I had heard too much about this movie for too long for me to not feel desperate to watch it, but it took me a while to actually be able to.  Fortunately, it was every bit as good as I had hoped.  Though often referred to as a black comedy, this movie isn't particularly laugh-out-loud funny most of the time, but a lot of the satire of 1980s corporate culture is really clever and well done.  The direction and editing are also great in the often subtle ways they portray an unreliable, inconsistent version of events, but the clear linchpin to the whole affair is Christian Bale's acting.  I've loved his work in everything I've seen him in, but American Psycho definitely is the performance of his career.  Wonderfully deranged.  I'm glad to have finally seen this classic.

PULP FICTION (1994)

An even bigger classic I'm equally happy to have finally experienced was Pulp Fiction.  I haven't seen any of Tarantino's other films or even been particularly interested in them, but I definitely believe the hype behind his work now that I've seen this.  Pulp Fiction makes possibly the best use of nonlinear storytelling I've ever seen, with the intertwining story fragments forming the perfect non-chronological sequence as events explain or foreshadow other events in a very meticulous way.  I mean, this film is so beloved and important that, as with No Country for Old Men, I don't feel I have anything especially interesting to say about it, merely that the last hour of this movie was so good that it recontextualized everything I was slightly less keen on about the earlier moments in the film and made everything make perfect sense.  It's just so well constructed, I have no choice but to be amazed.

AWESOME; I FUCKIN' SHOT THAT! (2006)

I watched this a few years ago but fell in love with it all over again in 2022.  This is a Beastie Boys concert film shot by fans on 50 camcorders and painstakingly edited together into a beautiful mosaic of grainy, shaky footage.  There's a case to be made that this is actually my favourite Beastie Boys release!  The music is so, so infectious and energetic, featuring everything from the Beasties' classic Licensed to Ill material to great songs from the woefully underrated To the 5 Boroughs to their more psychedelic and funky tracks from the 1990s (during the latter, the band dresses like a lounge group and plays on a smaller side-stage).  Watching Mix Master Mike scratch live is a wonder to behold, and seeing the B-Boys jumping around on stage is intensely fun.  The creative editing makes the generally poor-quality video end up looking amazing, and changes from song to song.  Despite a gimmick that would seemingly wear thin, Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! is a triumph that, in my opnion, rivals Stop Making Sense as one of the greatest concert films in existence.

THE WRONG GUY (1997)

This is another one I saw several years ago, but fell back in love with during 2022.  This was the year I got really into the Kids in the Hall (see below), and enjoying Dave Foley's work on that TV show, I decided to return to the film which introduced me to his brand of comedy, the sadly semi-forgotten The Wrong Guy.  The premise to this film is itself outrageously funny: Foley plays Nelson Hibbert, a corporate stooge convinced he will be promoted to president of the corporation at which he works, only for his co-worker to be chosen instead; after he threatens his boss's life, he later tries to meet with his boss alone only to discover he (the boss) has been murdered; convinced he is now suspected of committing the murder, Hibbert goes on the lam despite security camera footage immediately revealing the identity of the actual killer to the police.  There are so many moments in this film I think are so ridiculous and so funny, particularly co-screenwriter David Anthony Higgins's role as one of the incompetent police officers.  The entire film has been uploaded to YouTube by multiple people, so be sure to check this one out; it's really, really hilarious.

TELEVISION

THE KIDS IN THE HALL (Seasons 1-5, 1989-1995)

I've been a fan of sketch comedy for many years now, particularly Saturday Night Live, which has been one of the only TV shows where I actually try to watch each episode when it airs.  However, after getting into the Kids in the Hall, SNL looks like a complete shambles by comparison; KITH's sketches are so consistent and so perfectly aligned with my taste in comedy.  In contrast to SNL or many other sketch shows of its ilk, The Kids in the Hall doesn't really have any parody material or spoofs of (then-)current events, instead focusing on sharply written, absurd premises and characters.  The show never really repeats ideas either; even when characters do recur, each sketch is still unique, no small feat considering the bulk of the show was written and performed by just five guys.  The Kids are frequently lauded for their ability to play female characters gracefully and without their crossdressing itself ever being the joke, as well for incorporating a lot of queer material on the show, with KITH member Scott Thompson and writer Paul Bellini both being openly gay.  Partially because of this, The Kids in the Hall is not just a show that withstands the test of time; it's a show that in many ways was actually ahead of its time.  In addition, all five members are really versatile and talented actors and comedians, each having their own unique and unmistakable voice and style they bring to the table.  I couldn't pick a favourite if my life depended on it.  Beyond watching the entire first five seasons (twice), I also watched their feature film Brain Candy (1996) and the mini-series Death Comes to Town (2010), and all of it was extremely funny and fun to watch.  I haven't yet watched the sixth season which just recently came out, because it's on Amazon Prime and I'm not giving Amazon my money, damn it!  Anyhow, the Kids in the Hall were easily one of my biggest obsessions of the year and I'm so happy to have finally enjoyed their works.

RESERVATION DOGS (Season 2, 2022)

The first season of Reservation Dogs was amazing, but this new season somehow outdid the first, in my opinion.  The show is set on a Native American reservation in Oklahoma, and is reportedly the first series ever to have an all-Indigenous writing and directing team, which alone makes it stand out among the endless sea of content being continually spewed out by streaming services, but it stands out even more on the merits of its writing, directing and acting, which are all top-notch.  Humourous, poignant and dramatic, often simultaneously, the story and the storytelling in this show are both expertly executed as well as unique.  Even if Reservation Dogs wasn't such an important show, it would still be a really impressive show on all fronts, with some of the most moving moments in television maybe ever, as well as some of the most howlingly funny.  The already very large cast of characters is also fantastic; several episodes feature few or even none of the four main characters, but this works perfectly well due to how nuanced and entertaining and engaging each character is, no matter how minor.  The first episode of this season was one of the most exciting first episodes of any season of TV I've ever seen, and I'm so excited to see where the show goes from here.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (Season 4, 2013)

I didn't watch this for the first time in 2022, but in 2022 I did come to realize this is, in fact, my favourite season of Arrested Development (and if you're familiar with the show, I'm as shocked about it as you are).  The first of two revival seasons to the series (which was cancelled in 2006), Season 4 has proved polarizing to fans of the original three seasons, even after it was re-edited years later to more closely match the first few seasons' structure.  Originally released as 15 episodes ranging from about 30-45 minutes each, this season of Arrested Development had a unique composition in that roughly every episode takes place over the same period of time, each following a different character.  I rewatched both the re-edit (which cuts the show into 22 twenty-minute episodes) and the original edit this year, and I think both are absolutely brilliant.  The way each character's story intertwines and feeds each other character's story feels so deliberate and precise in all its complexity (despite many parts of the season apparently having been re-written up until the last minute and almost thrown together), and the jokes, meta-jokes, recurring bits and such are more convoluted, elaborate and numerous than in any other season of the show.  It brings back some classic Arrested Development running gags, but often the season shines best in its completely new material and new characters, including Terry Crews as conservative politician Herbert Love and Isla Fisher as actress Rebel Alley.  Another thing I think makes this season interesting (especially in the re-edit) is that since these episodes weren't written as traditional episodes, the little about the previous seasons of the show that resembled a traditional sitcom is completely absent from this season, making it completely unlike anything I've ever seen before.  And there are so many scenes of this show I think are just unbelievably funny, such as Ann tricking Gob and Tony Wonder into having sex with each other wearing masks of each other, or George Michael kicking his father out of his own college dorm, or Lindsay and Tobias buying a ludicrously lavish and expensive estate in a parody of the housing bubble, or Gob joining the entourage of young pop star Mark Cherry (formerly of the teen-oriented TV show Pop-a-R.O.T.C., one of my favourite cutaway gags in the whole show), or the low-security prison turning out to be in essence a luxurious country club, or... I have to stop now or I never will be able to.  Season Four deserves a much better reputation than it has, because seeing such a brilliant and ambitious piece of comedy be met with such general indifference is heartbreaking.

MACGRUBER (Season 1, 2021)

Eleven years after the MacGruber film flopped like a fish, the entire original cast and writing/directing team from the movie somehow came back together to release a sequel in the form of an eight-episode miniseries.  It is pretty amazing how perfectly the series recaptures the energy of the film and follows up its events with plenty more brash lunacy and wonderfully stupid humour, thankfully none of which has been compromised in response to the cold reception of the film.  This season features a star-studded cast including Billy Zane, Laurence Fishburne and Sam Elliott and their serious, dramatic deliveries work perfectly as a foil to the bonkers main character and his reluctant sidekicks.  The plot twists and turns much more in this series than in the movie, which provides new dramatic foundations for the laughs and the chaos that power the MacGruber franchise.  Once again, it seems like the future of MacGruber is in doubt, but I would love to see a Season 2 one day, even if it takes another eleven years.

FISHING WITH JOHN (Season 1, 1991)

Comfy yet surreal, Fishing With John is a six-episode series in which actor/musician John Lurie goes fishing, and is joined by a different famous friend in a different exotic locale each episode.  As a result, each episode has a somewhat different feel, but all are overall slow-paced and laid-back in tone with a tinge of absurdism.  This absurdism is largely a result of the subtly odd narration provided by Robb Webb, which is often mundanely descriptive but occasionally really funny and bizarre.  My two favourite episodes were the episode in Jamaica featuring a gruff-as-ever Tom Waits, and the episode where Lurie and Willem Dafoe appear to starve and/or freeze to death while ice fishing in Maine.  The understated nature of the show is a big part of what makes it so endearing to me, and the locations are also very beautiful.  The soundtrack is great too.

THE WHITE LOTUS (Season 1, 2021)

I didn't really know anything about this show or the overwhelmingly positive reception it's had before watching it, but I was excited to see it anyway because I knew Mike White (writer for Freaks and Geeks and School of Rock!) was the writer/director/creator behind it.  And he did an unbelievable job on this show, as did everyone else involved.  The White Lotus is unlike any other show I've ever seen, allowing the viewer to become intimately acquainted with a host of deeply flawed and often miserable characters who, despite being on vacation at a picturesque resort, are incapable of keeping their intra- and interpersonal tensions from bubbling to the surface and causing all sorts of problems.  As with Reservation Dogs, each character feels so nuanced and, for lack of a better word, real; the writing and acting are both outstanding.  The White Lotus has frequently been called a satire, but I don't really see it that way; though there is plenty of humour and social commentary, there isn't really any true exaggeration to the show, and the story is far too dramatic and layered for it to really succeed as a satire in my opinion.  It's its own thing, and it's all the better for it.  It's a fascinating and uncomfortable yet humourous peek at many difficult aspects of humanity and the nightmarish world that is the hospitality industry.  I've since watched the second season and it's just as good if not maybe slightly better, and I eagerly await the third.  This show deserves every bit of praise it's received.

BOOKS

I used to spend a lot of time reading, and in the past few years I've lamented my deteriorating ability to finish books in a reasonable amount of time.  Fortunately, towards the end of 2022 I found myself with renewed interest in reading, and read some pretty fantastic books.  I hope to read even more in 2023.

I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED (2022) by Jennette McCurdy

This has been one of the most acclaimed and buzzed-about books of the past few years, as far as I can tell, which is great.  I'm Glad My Mom Died is a devastating memoir by former child actress Jennette McCurdy in which she recounts all the traumas and abuse she suffered as a result of her overbearing and manipulative mother and a career she never chose for herself.  McCurdy does a magnificent job of placing the reader inside her head throughout these frequently horrifying tales of mental illness, alcoholism, eating disorders, and losing the mother who had always been a guiding presence throughout her life up until that point.  Despite how dark and heartbreaking this book often is, though, there is a sick humour to it as well, which seems to often be the object of the most critical praise.  One of the pivotal moments in the book for me in that regard was the part where McCurdy's mother, losing her battle with cancer, forces McCurdy to practice, for days, the song she will sing at her mother's funeral.  Moments like that in this book are some of the most perversely funny things I've ever read.  But more than anything, this is a book filled with hope, knowing that McCurdy has since overcome a lot of the most destructive struggles detailed in the memoirs, and has gained control of her own life.  Seeing the mass success this book has received feels really nice, and it's easily one of the best autobiographies I've ever read.

MY SQUIRREL DAYS (2018) by Ellie Kemper

A less heavy but equally enjoyable autobiography was My Squirrel Days, which is structured as a series of short and comedic essays about various points in comedian/actress Ellie Kemper (of The Office and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt fame)'s life.  This was a blast to read.  Kemper has such a sharp and clever sense of humour, and is seemingly able to write hilarious and engaging pieces on any given event in her history, the same way I feel about David Sedaris' autobiographical collections.  A quick and fun read; I don't really have much to say about it other than that.

BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN (1999) by David Foster Wallace

Unfortunately, this is the only piece of fiction on the list; for the past few years I felt a bit distant from fiction and instead chose to focus on biographies and such when reading.  However, after being blown away by Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, I'm much more interested in re-entering the world of fiction.  This is a collection of short stories, diverse both in content and in style.  Some stories, like "The Depressed Person", will have pages of footnotes (and even sub-footnotes); some stories, like "Adult World II" and "Datum Centurio", play excessively with structure; "Death is Not the End" consists of one three-page run-on sentence.  The centrepieces of the book are the titular interviews, which are interesting in that they omit the questions, and presumably entire portions of the conversations, leaving only a series of lengthy answers from a variety of nameless characters.  Partially due to these gimmicks, each story felt entirely unique and remains very memorable.  Sometimes Wallace's experimental writing can be difficult to sit through, as in the near-incomprehensible postmodernist myth "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko", but more often that not I find it to be pretty brilliant, particularly in "Octet", which reminded me of some of Bo Burnham's recent work in the way it starts relatively simple before tearing itself apart and destroying its own premise in an act of metafictional self-sabotage.  The titular pieces are also some of the strongest in the book, which I read as something of a self-critique as well as a deconstruction of misogyny and male society.  The characters and scenarios in this book are consistently vivid and evocative if often obliquely written and I found myself engaged with these stories more than pretty much anything I've read in years.  

GET TUSKED (2019) by Ken Caillat and Hernan Rojas

I've read a lot of nonfiction books about music, biographies and the like, but none of them have been nearly this comprehensive.  Get Tusked is a nearly excessively detailed book; written by two of the producers for Fleetwood Mac's 1979 album Tusk, it is the story of everything from the recording process to these producers' personal lives at the time.  At first I wasn't certain how I felt about how much of this book is focused on things other than the music itself, but soon I became enthralled by this window into the completely different world that the music industry was in the late '70s, specifically in Los Angeles.  It was a world of coke- and alcohol-fueled excess, partying, expensive cars, and whatnot.  At a certain point the way Caillat describes his own life and that of his peers feels no different than yuppie culture; it's gross and excessive and I'm sure I probably would not have been able to stand anyone involved with this recording process if this book is anything to go by.  However, it's such a far cry from any lifestyle I've ever known or had personal interest in that it's nonetheless really interesting to read about, especially when it's ultimately focused around Tusk, one of my all-time favourite albums.  For someone like myself who likes to be immersed in as much knowledge as possible about the music they like, Get Tusked is a really excellent read.

( ) (2014) by Ethan Hayden

As the 99th entry in the "33 1/3" series of books, this is, like Get Tusked, a nonfiction book about an album, but it couldn't be more different.  Based on Sigur Rós's legendary second (or third) album, this book is actually more about linguistics than music or recording.  The album is famous for having no titles or liner notes, and more crucially, lyrics in an entirely meaningless made-up language called "Vonlenska".  This book takes that idea and runs in every conceivable direction with it, discussing everything from other musicians that use made-up languages, such as the band Magma, to glossolalia, constructed languages, and dadaist poetry.  Writer Ethan Hayden even analyzes the different qualities Vonlenska has or does not have as a language, despite being meaningless, including syntax, lexicon, morphology, et cetera.  While I'm not nearly as much of a linguistics enthusiast as several of my friends are, I nonetheless found this to be a riveting book and quite the unique one in the 33 1/3 series as well.

HOW TO BE ACE (2020) by Rebecca Burgess

One very important event in my personal life in 2022 was the discovery that I fall somewhere on the ace spectrum.  Asexuality isn't something that seems to be discussed or represented much in entertainment and media, which to a degree is understandable in that it seems like a tricky thing to discuss.  It's like discussing the absence of something in a way, something very personal.  But I've now read a couple graphic novels that tackle the subject with a lot of grace, particularly this one, which is, like many queer graphic novels, an autobiographical account of the author's coming to understand and accept their own sexuality (or lack thereof); in this case, the story of growing up and living in a seemingly very sexual society and trying to navigate it while not sharing that interest with everyone else.  I read this while I was in the process of questioning whether or not I am, in fact, ace, and the insightful and informative way this book was written was very helpful for me to understand myself better.  I highly recommend this to anyone, ace or not, as I think it offers a great look into a sadly underexplored perspective, and I'm sure it's been very helpful for both ace and non-ace people to help explain what exactly asexuality is and what it can mean for a person.  It's a very thoughtful and readable graphic novel, and I'd say a very important one as well.

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So there you go!  That's the year in (positive) review.  Hopefully the list is twice as long next time.