After the gloom and horror of 2024’s year in politics Snapper decided to take some time off and gave me, loyal lieutenant, gopher and wing-man, the chance of writing an all singing, all dancing review of the musical year, so, without further ado, let’s begin. Taylor who? I prefer Billie Eilish and in Lunch she wrote and performed one of the very best songs of the year, “I could eat that girl for lunch, yeah, she dances on my tongue”. Indeed. (Ha! I’ve just noticed that The Crack has chosen ‘Lunch’ for their single of the year. See page XX. Great minds etc.) Eilish’s album, Hit Me Hard, Hit Me Soft packed a punch too. As did Romy’s Mid Air, a kind of concept album about the early years of her relationship with her wife and their adventures in the clubs. It’s packed full of absolute bangers, the lyrics a dissection of how love hits hard and what the attendant wave of discombobulation feels like, “I fell in love by the sea, oh, that girl had a power over me, my heart burned 1000 degrees”. My favourite album of the year by quite a few revolutions. Then there was Sour Widows’ Revival of a Friend whose duelling and interweaving guitars and vocals by Susanna Thomson and Maia Sinaiko cast a long spell and made me fall in love with a particular kind of deep American indie again. The strap line to their Instagram account: True Bay Area Alternative Rock. Oh yes. The late Jamie Branch’s final album Fly or Die provided an altogether different spin, her superb trumpet playing taking the album in all kinds of directions from jazz to folk and everything in between. The term ‘eclectic’ was invented for this kind of thing but that doesn’t do justice to how much energy and life affirming magic this album possessed. And let’s hear it for Yussef Dayes’ Black Classical Music, a gorgeous jazz infused trip around the head of the prodigiously talented Dayes - great stuff. It wouldn’t be a proper review of the year if there wasn’t an album of French pop and this year my fave was the Bibi Club’s Feu de Garde, packed full of great tunes and the kind of cool that seems effortless but almost certainly isn’t. Lead singer Adele Trottier-Rivard another French pop great. Nearer to home Du Blonde’s Sniff More Gritty proved that Beth Jeans Houghton’s penchant for ear-worm melodies and whip-smart lyrics remains absolutely undiminished and that her venture into playing, producing and releasing albums sans knobhead record companies is proving to be an excellent career move. Sniff More Gritty? Always! And, of course, it would be remiss of me to ignore the cinematic, musical and political earthquake that was Kneecap. Apparently, Snapper left the cinema after watching the Kneecap film, took on some UK racists, wrapped himself in a Palestinian flag and handcuffed himself to the Israeli embassy - Snapper’s whereabouts currently unknown - which, I now have to admit, is the reason he didn’t write this column. Have a great new year everyone and hopefully he’ll be back in 2025.