The 2017 Preview

[Mild applause]

Thank you, thank you. That was 2016. How will we ever forget? Do let the door hit you on the arse/ass on the way out, will you.

Phew. Still alive? Good. It's important to remember that January 1st to December 31st is only a year in the way that 1760 yards is a mile, it really doesn't matter where you place it, it's just a measurement of distance, if you look at time as a journey.

So... What can we expect from 2017 bearing in mind the odds for forecasting every single event in 2016 would have won you more money at the bookies than has ever existed or will exist until 2457. Had you been insane enough to have guessed just 200 of the celebrity deaths in a Yankee with Brexit, Donald Trump, Treeza May and Bruce Forsyth still being alive you could have bought earth and have the moon thrown in for good measure. You'd own everything, everyone, even wombats.

Applying a wee bit of logic, considerable amounts of drugs (mainly historical), and a kind of Salvador Dali procreates with Nigel Farage surrealism, here's 20 things that could happen in 2017:

1. 'Taking a Shitie' - The question on everyone's lips by the end of the summer will be 'What's your shit face like?' Take your picture while having a dump and then Instagram it. Crapper Snappers will be on the prowl and the name John-Henry will become the most popular name by December.

2. Staying on the anal theme; Kanye West's ego is lost down a rest room basin just outside Las Vegas. The 'rapper' blamed a taco he'd eaten earlier and would under no circumstances blame himself for eating it. President Trump has vowed to deploy many Mexicans to retrieve it from the shit mines of Iowa.

3. A photograph of Jamie Vardy will emerge at the end of May, shortly after Premier League Champions Leicester City are relegated, of the striker pissing on a photograph of the Arsenal team taken shortly after turning down the opportunity (in July) to play for a consistently average team rather than a bunch of one-season wonders. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, being French, just shrugged.

4. Kirk Douglas announces his wedding to Olivia de Havilland and the honeymoon will be two weeks at an S&M club in Deptford.

5. The government announces on the same day that ### ##### dies that due to a lack of money the NHS is being relabelled Virgin Health Service and it will only cost you £25 to see your GP.

6. A petition to have Jimmy Savile's remain dug up, desecrated and then thrown down a disused mine in Siberia is signed by over 10,000,000 people.

7. The Daily Express forecasts a ice age/heat wave this winter/summer with a likely apocalypse to follow if the immigrants and asylum seekers don't get you first.

8. Tim Peake is savagely attacked on Twitter and by media outlets for having a nice quiet two-week holiday with his family in the Algarve when he should have been appearing on television or radio at least once a week making a dick of himself.

9. Dolly Mixtures get a new name as not to offend people called Dolly or the odd sheep. The news is greeted by riots, social media outrage and the PM making a statement in the House. When the Daily Mail reports that the children's confectionery has been made with beef lard for the last 30 years the story dies overnight.

10. Rich people admit the 'trickle down effect' doesn't work because they only accrue money and never spend it. One multi-billionaire admitted to only eating $100 bills, sometimes with some egg mayonnaise.

11. Someone's arse explodes because of implants. Bits of gluteus maximus land in a woman's soy latte.

12. With a third of the world's best musicians dead, the other two-thirds refuse to leave their homes to record new music for fear of dying in some freak fan-related incident meaning for best part of the year nothing in the pop charts means anything to anyone over 30. New musical trends include DubChicken and Slime n Bass.

13. Slovenia elects a Toilet Duck as president.

14. The BBC offers to sell people the dates when Nigel Farage will not be appearing on their channels.

15. Donald Trump suggests that White American men should be allowed to have several wives and a small number of slaves to keep their plantations profitable and because most Americans are responsible people he disbands the police departments and allows the people of the USA to police themselves.

16. To be allowed to comment on or write letters to the Daily Mail you will first have to provide evidence that you are a vile scumbag - perhaps a photo of you beating a black dog or urinating in the doorway of a Polish deli or shitting on the face of a homeless person.

17. There will be more 'drama' in the USA as people begin to admit they only buy certain types of music because their 'homies' do and that 94.7% of Americans think most of the music they hear is shit. In the UK over 90% of people under the age of 18 go into a state of shock and delete all their dubstep mp3s.

18. After facing a third leadership election, Jeremy Corbyn wins both Strictly and I'm a Celebrity (his eating of an alligator penis pickled in Cameron jizz clinching it for him in the Bush Fucker Trial) and still the UK media think he's an old useless tool with a wonky handle. With Labour on 4% in the polls, Tom Watson makes a move to have Katie Hopkins elected as leader.

19. The Sun backs a campaign to make it legal to beat people of Eastern European origin if you think they stole someone's job.

20. The internet gets switched off.

Review: Sand - A Sleeper, Just Awake

Sand
A Sleeper, Just Awake
Vineland Music
Released - September 30

I feel both honoured and privileged to be given a preview copy of this new 'solo' album from North Atlantic Oscillation's Sam Healy. I suppose classing his debut eponymous Sand album as the best thing I've heard in the 21st century helps. I'm sure he'll be as pissed as hell at me telling you, he asked me to, you know, skip over it if I didn't like it... Yeah, like that's going to happen ... either way.

How do you follow up an album that I regard as the finest piece of music since 1999? By doing something familiarly different, that's how. But is it as good as 'Sand'? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm on listening #4 and what started as something considerably less welcoming than the debut is suddenly clicking into place. It's funny how music can do that.

On the first listening I got at least six moments where you get that chill running up your spine; the sensation that the lightning has been bottled again - and why not? I think Healy is a genius. It doesn't bother me a jot that I was listening to his contemporaries before his folks even thought of him, because his contemporaries don't have the 21st century to collect together half a century of song writing and condense it into something both completely modern and yet remarkably set in the kind of past you'd imagine in a Sinatra song.

Whereas Sand was a brilliant pop album; ASJA is anything but pop, yet it's splattered all over the record like it doesn't matter how hard he tries, Healy just can't shake a good riff. Plus, in many ways this is even more detracted from North Atlantic Oscillation, yet almost like stuff you'd imagine being done in the studio before Grappling Hooks came out. That's part of his brilliance - you know who he is even if he's wearing disguises.

Is it that awkward second album? It certainly is awkward at times, but not in a bad or negative way.

So, A Sleeper, Just Awake, what's it like?

Shall I get the awkward bit over and done with? I can see the influences and even if Sam disagreed with me, there are elements of Phil Collins (sounding like he really should have done more drugs when he was younger), as well as John Martyn, Steven Wilson and Guy Garvey. You can't help but draw parallels between this and especially the later Talk Talk albums because there's a 'jazz' sound at times - not jazz jazz but arrangement wise; like there was an element of sitting around the studio and seeing where something leads you. Despite what I'm about to say, the spirit of Mark Hollis is writ large here. I can also hear Scott Walker, 1980s electronica, Sam's Irish roots... but most of all I can't help but think of Peter Gabriel and the way Sam's voice contains that velvety smoothness that the likes of Art Garfunkel possessed and the former Genesis front man managed to make jagged and hard while never losing its warmth.

In many ways this album reminds me of Cardiacs. Not in the sound, they are almost diametrically opposite there, but in the simple fact that Healy, like Tim Smith, has more ideas in some songs than bands have in their entire careers. Layers of depth, sweeping crescendos, giant epic sounds mixed with quiet moments of contemplation - this is an album that is up and down - in tempo - like the Assyrian empire. If anything, I'd say Sam has tried just a bit too hard to come up with something different from both the debut album and anything N.A.O do, yet I can't help think that in years to come this might be looked at as something of a masterpiece. It begins with a track that sounds ever-so-slightly out of whack - modern prog as it should be - and ends with a slow exhale rather than a thudding crash. It's impressive. It is a bold statement not bound by convention. It gets better with each listen as more of it is uncovered.

I'm also glad that it's a grower rather than an instantaneous blast, because that proves to me that masses of thought has gone into this. I even spotted the turkeys. At the moment it isn't in the league of the first album (few albums can even lick its boots), but there's absolutely nothing to be bothered about, because it may end up being better.

Stand out tracks by the end of play #4: LBGT, Berceuse, Initial and Coward.

8 out of 10