94. Highlights of 2024
I. Music
- I stand by it: Fontaines D.C. is the most exciting band in years. Romance is the Irish band’s fourth studio album and their most accessible yet, with a sleeker production, more variety and a slightly less dark approach. That probably helped them sell out AFAS Live (twice), but it doesn’t mean Fontaines D.C. are suddenly making Top 40 music. They remain – thankfully – a band with an edge.
We can therefore see Romance as an evolution in their body of work, as far as I’m concerned. There are nothing but good tracks on it, but no one can ignore Starburster. It’s as if you’re being catapulted. It’s a punch in the gut, a track that could easily feature in Trainspotting and simply a feeling of momentary bliss. (Incidentally, singer Grian Chatten doesn’t like appearing in these kinds of top lists: “Winning awards and such sometimes worries me, because it robs me of the chance to stay on top. I don’t want anyone to see us as an established band.”)
-
Grace Cummings played at Best Kept Secret early on in a tent that still had room for a few more people, but I was there because I’d heard her album Ramona to death by then. The Australian has a voice and instrumental accompaniment that are simply stunning. What’s the right word for this? Captivating? Epic? The album title is a reference to Bob Dylan’s song ‘To Ramona’, and she also sprinkles in references to the work of Johnny Cash, Neil Young and George Harrison, among others. She stands on the shoulders of giants and makes it her own. I’m a fan, mind you.
-
You know it’s been an incredible year for music when The Smile release two albums. Wall of Eyes is my favourite of the two. In January, during a special evening at Eye, I let the new tracks wash over me in a packed cinema auditorium. Overwhelming, of course. After that, the album sank in more with every listen. The debut album was good, but it’s here that the pieces of the The Smile puzzle really fell into place. Wall of Eyes feels coherent, well thought-out and still wildly experimental. My favourite tracks are Teleharmonic and Bending Hectic. But actually, the whole thing is better than we deserve.
-
I started out a bit sceptical about Wild God by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I didn’t get on well with its predecessor Ghosteen. But on Wild God the sun is shining again. Cave sings it literally: “We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy”. I can hear that. And I saw it in September, when Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds (with Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood on bass) lifted the entire Ziggo Dome.
-
A great year for Dutch hip-hop too, I must say. Willem released Spuug van God, his second solo album. I think he’s better on his own than with The Opposites. He shows his vulnerability, making his songs personal. “Sometimes I forget to live,” he raps on the title track. “Today isn’t yesterday. I’ll never be as young as I am now, my heart beats heavily.”
-
Sticks also stays very true to himself on Zonneschijn. The final track Lentezon is a beautiful tribute to his late mother. Gratitude and love form the central theme of this album. “We’re doing well, we’re rich and we’re breathing,” you hear on Lastig. “When I wake up grumpy, I feel ashamed.” Sticks is proud of this album, he said on the radio programme Nooit meer slapen. “This is what we do, we write little poems.” It is actually a bit more than that.
-
After sixteen years, The Cure have released a new album, and it is a magnificent record. Songs of a Lost World has got so deep under my skin over the past few weeks that I can feel it gnawing at my bones. Robert Smith’s British band (now 65 years old, with a voice that has remained unchanged for decades) takes the time to explore its new work in depth. As a listener, you have to take that time too, but patience pays off
What a beautiful, bittersweet track And Nothing Is Forever is, for example. It’s about a promise Smith made to be present at the deathbed of a loved one – a promise he couldn’t keep. In English, there’s a fine word for this album: bleak. On the album’s final track, the overwhelming Endsong, the lights remain off. “It’s all gone,” sings Smith. “Left alone with nothing, nothing, nothing.”
- Christopher Owens’ I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair may not be the best album of the year, but it is a convincing comeback from an indie darling who lost everything and picked himself up again. I’ve written a lot about it already, but the fact that, fifteen years after Girls’ debut album, I was able to enjoy that sound again – myself a wealth of experience richer and with an extra layer in the music – is so marvellous that it simply cannot be left out.
-
This was truly the year of Iceland, so I could have put this under the ‘albums’ heading as well. But I’m spreading things out a bit. Abel and Sef at the Melkweg was, after all, a legendary show. They played their socially critical album for the last two times. You shouldn’t keep milking a product of its time. Exhausted after a festive weekend on Texel, my girlfriend and I drove straight on to Amsterdam for the late show (11.00 pm), where our energy levels were back through the roof in no time. A fiery tirade from two rappers holding up a mirror to this country, showing everything that’s going wrong (“With the borders closed, gourmet food tastes best anyway”), at its most infectious and rousing. Iceland!
-
Eefje de Visser released her album Heimwee and, as I’ve written before, listening to it feels like you’re floating. Heimwee is slightly less electronic than the equally brilliant *Bitterzoet, *and that immediately makes it a bit more intimate live. That could prove a tricky challenge on a larger stage such as the Grote Zaal at TivoliVredenburg, but she actually elevates her music further, with atmospheric lighting and choreographed dance. The fact that she’s one of the headliners at Best Kept Secret next year is not only a brilliant move but also well-deserved.
-
It never ceases to amaze me just how special Bob Dylan’s concerts are. I travelled to Düsseldorf in October to see him perform at the Mitsubishi Electric Halle. Phones in a sealed bag, conversations with fans you don’t know, and always that same sense of gratitude for being able to see him once more. The concerts are simply incomparable. The 83-year-old Dylan treated us to wonderful versions of Desolation Row, Key West, It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue and Every Grain of Sand. *And the harmonica made frequent appearances. That’s when I’m absolutely in my element.
-
PJ Harvey was stunningly good at Best Kept Secret, where the best acts were programmed alongside the headliners in the main tent. The audience held its breath as the mysterious singer performed her finest British folk tales with a gaze that kept everyone in the audience spellbound. She also played plenty of tracks from her beautiful album I Inside the Old Year Dying, which was released in 2023.
-
In The Zone of Interest, you follow the family of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, who literally live in the shadow of the concentration camp. They completely ignore the atrocities taking place behind the high walls next to their back garden – or perhaps they have simply become desensitised to them. The more the Höss family ignores the extermination camp, the more unsettling the film becomes. The award for the biggest punch in the gut of the year goes to this film.
-
The Holdovers was released in cinemas in the Netherlands in January, which is actually a shame, as this is the perfect film for the festive season. The incomparable Paul Giamatti plays a gruff headmaster who, during the Christmas holidays somewhere in the 1970s, has to look after a group of students who can’t go home. He forms a special bond with one of them, an intelligent troublemaker. A black comedy as only director Alexander Payne can make them. An instant classic.
-
In The Substance, an older actress isn’t getting as many film offers as she used to. A new generation is overtaking her, until she discovers a special substance that allows her to literally split herself in two. She gets a new, younger body, which helps her regain her place in the spotlight. There is only one rule: the substance only works if the old and new bodies are swapped every week. Naturally, this goes awry when the actress realises that her young body is far more successful. Ultimately, The Substance dares to go delightfully over the top, with gruesome body horror effects. It’s a treat to watch this film in a shuddering cinema.
-
After Call Me By Your Name and Suspiria, Challengers is, in my view, yet another bullseye from director Luca Guadagnino. A love triangle between professional tennis players is played out over a period of years. A sizzling film, thrilling, with an exciting soundtrack and a finale featuring the most mind-blowing tennis footage ever captured on film.
-
Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter in Poor Things, a deceased woman brought back to life by a mad scientist using the brain of her unborn baby. A completely mad premise for a completely mad film. Bella sets out in search of her identity and, unhindered by norms, values and prejudices, shapes her own world. Plenty of nudity and bizarre sets feature in this satire by Yorgos Lanthimos, which ultimately focuses on the shortcomings of men.
-
Evil Does Not Exist is the latest film by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, who previously directed Drive My Car. It tells the story of villagers just outside Tokyo, whose idyllic existence in harmony with nature is threatened when it emerges that a large corporation wants to set up a campsite there. Capitalism seeps out of the city and into the woods. The film and its characters are tranquil, slow-paced, almost meditative. But keep luring an innocent animal out of its den for long enough, and even it will eventually launch an attack.
-
Thomas Heerma van Voss wrote The Archive, about clinging to the familiar when you might be better off letting go. The protagonist’s world has (for years, as his mother says) had the world at his feet. Yet he prefers to cling to the familiar. Why should comfort stand in the way of ambition? The turning point only comes when his father is on his deathbed. A moving book that lingers for a long time in a tragicomic way, with a sting in the tail.
-
In her book Intermezzo, Sally Rooney writes about two brothers with a rather complicated relationship. Their bond becomes increasingly tangled, as I mentioned earlier. Love is complicated, after all, especially when you add shame, age differences and grief to the mix. Rooney writes with apparent ease, but slowly winds her readers round her little finger. Before you know it, a dialogue about nothing suddenly turns out to be about everything. Her best book to date.
-
Lessons by Ian McEwan tells the life story of Roland Baines. You meet him just as his wife vanishes without a trace, leaving him behind with a baby. The Chernobyl disaster has just happened and more misery looms. Baines still has a personal trauma to come to terms with, which occurred in his youth with his strict piano teacher. What on earth happened? Can all the missed opportunities in Baines’s life be explained? McEwan masterfully reveals how pebbles dropped into a pond continue to create ripples decades later.
-
My fascination with Japan only grew this year thanks to my trip to the country. Before the holiday, I read The Roads to Sata by Alan Booth. In 1977, he decided to walk ridiculous distances from north to south: 3,300 kilometres in 128 days. The result is a collection of little vignettes of repetitive walks and conversations with local Japanese people. Booth writes without labelling things, or as someone on Goodreads puts it: “The book is funny without jokes, sad without tragedy and beautiful without romance”.
-
The best graphic novel I read this year is The Beast, a two-part series by Frank Pé and Zidrou. This story is a tribute to the Marsupilami, the yellow fantasy creature with the long tail that André Franquin once brought to life in a Spirou and Fantasio adventure. The book is set in 1955 in Brussels, where the Marsupilami wanders around battered and bruised after escaping from poachers. A young animal lover finds the creature and hides him at home. All sorts of things happen (bullying, war trauma and loss), but there is plenty of humour and it ends heart-warmingly. A fantastic book, even better illustrated. A must-read, even for people who never read comics.
-
Another highly recommended read is Lucas Wars. In it, Renaud Roche and Laurent Hopman describe the period in which the young director George Lucas conceived Star Wars. Virtually no one had faith in his pulpy space epic, which is bursting with special effects. Even the film studio he partnered with wanted nothing to do with him. Lucas lived out his own heroic tale, as we now know. Fifty years on, Star Wars remains hugely popular. That makes this book a real treat, thanks in part to Roche’s stunning illustrations, which require just a few brushstrokes to bring the main characters to life.
-
In the Netherlands, we also have a leading figure when it comes to graphic novels: Aimée de Jongh. This year she released her comic adaptation of the classic Lord of the Flies. William Golding’s book is about a group of children who must try to survive on a desert island after a plane crash. They establish a miniature society, which initially appears to function democratically, until a rebellion breaks out. De Jongh adapts the story into a comic in an unparalleled way, with the drawings (and colours) becoming increasingly darker. With striking illustrations that perfectly capture the horror of a civilisation spiralling out of control.
-
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the best Indy film in years. And it’s playable too. This is an adventure game in the purest sense of the word. After a valuable statue disappears from the museum, Indiana Jones follows in the footsteps of the mysterious giant who took it. Generally speaking, this chase doesn’t involve shoot-outs and explosions. The gameplay focuses on stealth, puzzle-solving, keeping a close eye on your surroundings; exploration. One moment you’re walking through the Sistine Chapel dressed as a cardinal, the next you’re swinging from a zeppelin on your whip, and then you’re exploring pyramids in Egypt. You solve riddles in all sorts of tombs, chase away scorpions with a torch, sneak past Nazis or knock them on the head with a shovel. The cutscenes are often hilariously over the top, with action you’ll recognise from the films. This is a real treat.
-
For a while, I was hooked on Balatro, a card game where you earn points per round by playing poker hands. It only gets really fun when you start collecting jokers that multiply the value of certain hands or cards. Every round is different and with every mega-score, the dopamine rushes through your body. Just when I’d finally stopped playing it on the PlayStation 5, Balatro appeared on mobile. To quote Michael Corleone in The Godfather III: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”.
-
As the days get shorter, I always enjoy epic RPGs set in a fantasy world. So I was delighted with Dragon Age: The Veilguard, even though it’s far from a perfect game. It’s just nice to embark on a grand adventure with various characters who gradually become friends. The final hours of this Dragon Age are thoroughly gripping, leaving you feeling a bit adrift once the credits roll.
-
Still Wakes the Deep takes you to an oil rig in the North Sea. There, you play a swearing Scotsman on the run from the authorities. He swears even more when it turns out that the drill hits something strange on the seabed, triggering a series of disasters. A brilliant five-hour horror thriller, which at times feels like a rollercoaster ride but leaves you feeling subdued by the end.
VI. Acknowledgements
When I started blogging 94 weeks ago, I didn’t expect to keep it up for so long without a break. Some weeks are easier than others. It’s often more work than you think. A labour of love, as they say. Even during my trip through Japan, I was still typing away in my hotel room. I actually found it quite a romantic image.
Throughout the year, I regularly received lovely comments from readers. By email or in the comments section of the blogs. Many thanks for that. Although I write this digital log primarily for myself, it’s easier to keep things going when people are reading along. I hope you’ll continue to do so, that you’ll pick up some tips and that it inspires you to start blogging too. Claim your own little corner of the internet!
Have a wonderful New Year. Travel far, drink wine, reflect, laugh out loud, dive deep, come back. See you next year!
Have you subscribed yet?