Stranger

Tom and I took our annual trip down to Welford Road today to watch Sale Sharks get beaten by the Tigers. A better performance, though, than last year, even if it didn't quite match the optimism we'd managed to whip up following fortune's changing (finally!) for Forest on Boxing Day. Plus, it was absolutely baltic in the uncovered middle-front of the Clubhouse Stand...! The girls, rather more sensibly, did the sales and then sat and watched 'Despicable Me 2' and ate all the pringles...

Today's picture is an homage to nostatic to mark the end the end of this whole 'Best of 2013' shenanigans (I hope he doesn't mind...)

#1 ‘Watching Dead Empires In Decay’ by The Stranger

It feels like it was November by now that I started this whole chart business but one album that kept on creeping up the rankings was this curiously compelling piece of work. It’s a slightly more straight-up electronic take on newly resurgent darkwave textures, stark in places to the extent of coming off almost like a Modern Classical piece, and the feel is less personal than with Tropic of Cancer and more societal (though perhaps it’s just that perennial European versus American sensibility.) The early creeping dread of the first few tracks - all eerie ambience, lurching bolero and tinkling temple bells - takes on a more sweeping vibe after the churning, relatively uptempo turning point that is ‘Where Are Our Monsters Now, Where Are Our Friends?’ leaving one with at least the suggestion that watching those empires might not be a wholly negative experience. Certainly this is dark and heady stuff but, taken as a whole, there’s more than a hint of a Godspeed-like take on Punk Rock tropes as well. Certainly I like to put it on loud when there’s no-one else in and let it creep through the house like a thrilling toxic cloud…