It's Christmas at Casa Del Calamari, so I've finally had the time to take some photos of miniatures I finished this year. Starting with these Ultramarine Terminators, which represent the completion of the Imperial half of "Assault On Black Reach".
I've also been busy painting up some Orks from that same box set, in the hopes that 2021 is the year in which I finally finish painting the GW box sets I bought before 2010. Will I make it? It seems desperately unlikely!
Dec 19th: Wilkins & Sons Rhubarb0/10
Dec 20th: Sweet Potato Raspberry Gin Liqueur
Aha! More like it, Advent Calendar Of Booze! You have pleased me.
Not really sure if there's much to be said about this one. The raspberry works really well, balancing the sweet and tart you expect from the aforementioned cluster of juice-globes. Just a really tasty gin.
8/10
Dec 21st: Poetic License Fireside Gin
Eh, I don't think mulled gin really works. At least, it certainly doesn't work cold. You need some warmth to bring out the flavours of your chosen mulling agents - this is like drinking Gordons over a Sainsbury's spice-aisle spillage.
I mean, you could heat it, I guess. That's not what the website recommends, though, and in any case, we already have mulled wine, and mulled cider, and hot chocolate with Baileys or Kahlua or Tia Maria. Or even egg-nog, apparently, though I've never actually come across it, and half-suspect it to be some kind of cross-Atlantic practical joke.
4/10
Dec 22nd: Malfy Gin Rosa Sicilian Pink Grapefruit
That took longer to type than to drink. Which is a good sign, I grant you. The grapefruit hits you before you even open your mouth, starting surprisingly sweet before reverting to type. Ah, grapefruit. Don't ever change.
8/10
Dec 23rd: Edinburgh Gin Plum And Vanilla
Piss OFF.
0/10
Dec 24th: Poetic License Fireside Gin
Dec 13th: 6 'o Clock Sloe Gin
Oh, that's weird. Inadvertently, we're immediately returning to the idea of how quickly I can get sick of a particular flavour of gin. Turns out, sloes don't bother me as much in consecutive slots as strawberries do with a week between them.
Is this an uncanny valley type thing? Like, give me a month between flavours and I'll have happily reset, and give me a day between flavours and I can determine the subtle distinctions between them. Stick 'em a week apart, and all I remember is my own review from the last time round.
Whatever the answer, this is sweeter than yesterday's sloe gin, and I appreciate the difference. After laughing maniacally at the deaths of doznes of berries, callously murdered so I could be faintly sarcastic about the aftertaste their broken, pulped bodies left in my mouth, I felt a tiny bit guilty. The sweetness of this gin lets me know the sloes got it. It's all good. It was a privilege for them to serve.
7/10
Dec 14th: Wilkin & Sons Rhubarb
This is a bit disappointing. I usually love rhubarb gin, but while you can definitely taste that flavour here, it's too far down in the mix. It's like you stirred a Gordons with a stick of rhubarb before tossing it away, mumbling about overdoses and poison and triangles. It's not bad, by any means, but it really should be better.
6/10
Dec 15th: The Lakes Sloe Gin Liqueur
Okay, this is maybe starting to feel a tiny bit lazy? Slow it down with all these sloes, I say, so very wittily.
I mean, it's not actually bad. I still can't tell the difference between a sloe gin and a sloe gin liqueur, but it tastes nice, and has a stronger mouthfeel than the last two sloe-related beverages.
I'm just starting to wonder whether it's been worth all the red juice on our hands.
7/10
Dec 16th: Edinburgh Gin Rhubarb And Ginger
I've had this before, I think? Not that it matters, because it's gorgeous. The rhubarb is just at the right height in the mix, slow-dancing with the juniper, rather than either cowering terrified in the corner of the disco or scaling the decks, demanding the DJ play a CD of their own mixes brought along from home. The ginger is more subtle, but lingers, warming you long after the initial burn of the alcohol has passed.
The perfect drink for winter, then. Or for people who don't hate pleasure. Either way.
9/10
Dec 17th: Sweet Potato Lavender Gin
DAMN. I know lavender gin isn't for everyone. I know some people feel like they're sucking on alcoholic Palma Violets. Those people are wrong and are to be pitied, obviously, but they don't have to worry in any case. This is far sweeter than you'd expect form a lavender gin, with the floral elements quite far down in the mix. You feel less like you've raided a lush's candy store, and more like a honey bee with a taste for cocktails.
And who could resist feeling like that?
9/10
Dec 18th: Mason's Dry Yorksihe Gin: Tea Edition
Gin and tea: not just a terrible pun. I should work in advertising. You know, except for having a soul.
ANYWAY. The taste of this gin. No idea why this works, but it does. The tea in this is ludicrously powerful - you can smell it in the shot before it's gotten anywhere near your lips. And I guess you need that cut through something as powerful as gin is. Whatever the alchemy involved, it tastes great, and further links the gin and tonic to its heritage in British India.
Which arguably just means this is just an artefact of British Imperialism flavoured with cultural appropriation but, y'know. Still fucking tasty.
8/10
Dec 7th: 6 o' Clock Damson Gin6 o' Clock behind door number 7. See what they did there? I'm tempted to knock a point off on general principle. Any shitty jokes around here better be mine,
That'd be unfair, though. 6 o' Clock isn't a gin to set the boozer's world on fire, but it's pretty nice. Could do with more damson, I think, but I guess it isn't the distiller's fault that I haven't the slightest interest in subtlety. 7/10
Dec 8th: English Drinks Company Cucumber Gin
Sweet Bacchus, no. No, I cannot sign off on this. A slice of cucumber in a glass of Hendricks and tonic, that works. That's lovely. That's subtle. This is like drinking Gordon's from a hollowed-out cucumber, that is then hammered into my face by a mallet made of frozen cucumber which is then also hammered into my face.
To reiterate: no. 4/10
Dec 9th: Edinburgh Gin Plum and Vanilla
This is more like it! Not sure I've ever combined plum and vanilla before, even before you get to the juniper and ethanol, but it works beautifully - the kind of fuck-it-let's-have-pudding-AND-another-drink concoction that makes cocktails so satisfying. Nice colour, too.
8/10
Dec 10th: Whitley Neill Quince Gin
Confession time: I don't even know what quince is. I mean, I realise Google exists. I just prefer the mystery,
Whatever it is - I want so say some kind of pureed rodent organ? - it's very tasty. It's somewhat hard to discuss, though, since I've had this gin before, and also it tastes like nothing else that exists. Um... It's good? Yeah, that will do. Accuracy in reviews is important. DRINK THIS GIN. THIS GIN IS GOOD. REVIEW CONCLUDED.
7/10
Dec 11th: Poetic License Picnic Gin
Apparently, this is supposed to taste like peaches and cream. I could only taste the strawberries, which as previously mentioned already mixes with juniper and alcohol to taste like an energy drink for high-functioning alcoholics.
And I've done that once this Christmas already. I guess I'm like those film reviewers who knock a star off every time they see a car chase. I've drunk so much gin that what's nice is starting to mean what's original. Which I guess is a little depressing, but ultimately I can't get too worked up about the idea that I'm starting to not appreciat drinks that taste like vodka and Red Bull at seven times the price.
6/10
Dec 12th: Bramley & Gage Organic Sloe Gin
On the other hand, sloe gins still seem to be going down quit nicely, so I'm not sure what's going on. I guess it helps that this one is a little more tart than usual, like the berries involved resent you murdering them for their pulp just that little bit more. That's it, delicious juice-stuffed globes. Resent me as I consume you!
7/10
And since I'm drinking a gin a night, I ifgured I might as well do some reviews.
Dec 1st: Wilkin & Sons Raspberry Gin
Man, with the mouth-feel and everything? Also, raspberries, which are a fruit. Already a contender for best gin of the festive seaon. 8/10
Dec 2nd: Malfey's Blood Orange GnThis is less of a drink than a magic trick. It starts off tasting like citrus and victory, but halfway through you glance at what you're drinking, and it turns into dentist's mouthwash. Senses are weird, right? I am not a fan. 7/10
Dec 3rd: Lavender Gin
I mean, OK? I can believe it tastes like lavender. I definitely needed to be hold, though. F, meanwhile, hates the taste of lavender, and says this tastes OK to her. Which I guess is a kind of a success. When the best you can say about a flavoured gin is that it isn't even flavoured enough to piss off people who explicitly dislike that particular taste, though, I'd argue there's something of an issue. 5/10
Dec 4th: Wilkin & Sons English Strawberry Gin
Whereas with this one, even the label is no help in trying to figure out what it actually tastes like. I *think* it most resembles an energy drink diluted with soda water. Which it turns out to not be an unpleasant experience, but still one that disappoints. 6/10
Dec 5th: Sweet Potato Orange Gin Liqueur
Dec 6th: Wilkin & Sons English Strawberry GinUm, fuck you? 0/10
Fuck Ryan Adams.
The problem with the things that shape your past is that the past can't be
reforged. It can only be burned away out from under you.
"Nuclear" is almost certainly the first Adams song I ever heard,
one of the tracks of a "Best Of 2002" CD that came free with the NME.
It was, and remains, special to me. The lyrics about the burned, radioactive remains
of a once glorious relationship that exploded with blinding force chimed
perfectly with the kind of callow youth who saw nothing inappropriate about
comparing the atrocity of nuclear weapons with how much is sucks to get dumped.
(If indeed that's what's happening here. Maybe Adams is singing about the
arrival of a new love laying waste to his current relationship. Of lying awake
at night, trying to tell himself to be content with what he has rather than go
rushing after something new and thrilling, all the while knowing that all
that really matters is whether she'll say "yes".)
If the lyrics have faded in importance, though, the music still
stands up - a glorious waltz of slide guitar over crunching rock chords, the
epitome of "alt-country" that the hot new things were hyping as The
Hot New Thing for all of seven minutes back in the day. The restrained, steely bassline. The gradual collapse into near-howls of anguish. A "Dear John" letter, either read or written in hell.
I loved the track so much that, off the back of it and NME's review of
"Love Is Hell", I bought both CDs of the latter, and - up until
recently - never looked back. Things changed as time drifted onward. NME soured
on alt-country as it looked for something new to sink its pre-hate prep into,
and I soured on the NME, as I recognised what I’d mistaken for a music magazine
was a oblique series of lonely hearts ads, penned by men convinced rock would get
them fucked if they could just have enough OPINIONS about it.
Adams, though, stayed. The returns diminished, yes, though on a trajectory
more akin to a fairground buzzer game than a ski slope. But that call-back to my
youth – one not so much wasted as chronically under-appreciated – never completely
lost its energy. The flare of fission had flattened into the background radiation
of my life. My Geiger counter still
twitches, from time to time, as my eye passes across his albums in my collection.
These songs wind like arteries through my history, personal, romantic, and musical; though the whole point of NAFTIR is that those are distinctions without a difference in any case. As Craig Finn put it, certain songs get scratched into your soul. You can't fill those grooves back in, even if you never sing - or speak of - those songs again.
And why should I? Haven't Adams' own actions burned away enough fo what I've built myself on? Do I have to knock out the struts that remain, blackened and warped, but still standing? There's nothing to replace them with - the lumber from which I built myself upwards out of my youth is a resource long since lost to me.
Does any of that justify me reminding you all that Adams exists, though? That these tales of heartbreak and longing only take the forms they do because he was savy enough to realise setting lists of the women whose careers he tried derailing to music probably wouldn't shift quite so many discs?
I don't know. I hope so? I hope I can talk about the music who made me the person I am without endorsing or lingering on the flaws of the people who made the music who made me the person I am. For better or worse, "Nuclear"'s fire burns within me still.
All that said? Fuck Ryan Adams.
(Adams-free B-side)
