Bobbysix.com's End of Year Review 2011 - Heidi Pett

We're just a couple of days away from the big announcement of Bobbysix.com's overall winner of best album, film, gig and song of 2011. Before that, Deputy Editor Heidi Pett talks us through her favourite things from this year:

You’ll note that these lists have not been numbered. That’s because I’ve been known to take days sweating over my Triple J Hottest 100 votes (should I vote for my personal favourite on the album, or the most popular single, propelling a worthy artist to a higher rank? Is that selling out? What about that little-known band who I love but that will never make it in, is that wasting my vote? And if I do that, will Art vs fucking Science achieve a better result than they would have if I’d voted for, say, The Grates instead?) etc, etc, until oblivion. And that’s an anonymous vote which doesn’t even have to be ordered. So in the interests of my continuing to exist as a functioning member of society, here are my top picks of 2011, in no particular order.

10 Albums/EPs
Bon Iver - BON IVER (pictured, above)
Crystal Theatre - BELLES WILL RING
Forever So - HUSKY
Carry On - PATRICK JAMES
The Josephine March - THE JOSEPHINE MARCH
Absence - SNOWMAN
Milk Annual - CAITLIN PARK
I Want That You Are Always Happy - THE MIDDLE EAST
Helplessness Blues - FLEET FOXES
Secret Rituals - THE GRATES

10 Songs 
History’s Door - HUSKY
Last Night I Heard Everything In Slow Motion - OLIVER TANK
Rose Coloured Glasses - THE JOSEPHINE MARCH
Falling Away - BIG SCARY
Wishingbone -WINTER PEOPLE
Warriors With Wild Hearts - CAITLIN PARK
Paper Thin - FLUME
Please You - PATRICK JAMES
Hector Myola - TIN SPARROW
Holocene - BON IVER

10 Music Videos 
Bizness - TUNE-YARDS
Aroused - TOM VEK
Awkward - SAN CISCO
Little Frog - SUI ZHEN
Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra) - GOTYE
Cameo Lover - KIMBRA

Featherstone - PAPER KITES

Fat Monk - RAT vs POSSUM

Holocene - BON IVER

Defeatist - CAMERAS

5 Gigs 

FLORENCE + THE MACHINE - Seymour Centre, Sydney

THE GRATES - The Metro, Sydney

SEEKER LOVER KEEPER - St Stephen’s Church, Sydney

PATRICK JAMES - Hibernian House, Sydney

HOWLING BELLS - The Standard, Sydney

5 Books

Eating Animals - JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

All That I Am - ANNA FUNDER

Tall Man - CHLOE HOOPER

You’ll Be Sorry When I’m Dead - MARIEKE HARDY

Penguin Plays Rough - VARIOUS

5 Festivals

Woodford Folk Festival

TiNA/Emerging Young Writers Festival

Jaipur Literature Festival

The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival

Changing Lanes Festival

10 Blogs/Websites

I spend a fairly embarrassing amount of time jaunting around the internet, getting inspired by people who are making and doing things. Often I’ll read the entire archives of a blog and then forget to bookmark it for later reference, so here are a few that I actually remember:

suizhen.tumblr.com/

palahniukandchocolate.tumblr.com

thespitpress.com

reasonsyouwillhateme.com

heathenscripture.wordpress.com

thehairpin.com

mimihlvst.blogspot.com

thingsmypretentiousfriendssay.tumblr.com

http://ausreleases.tumblr.com/

raddestrightnow.blogspot.com

2011 in words 

I started volunteering with FBi Radio in June and have finally found that community of beautiful, creative, interesting and interested people that I’ve been looking for in Sydney. Because, you know, I was starting to think this town was full of wankers and everybody was too cool for everything. These people give up their time and their skills out of love and passion and a desire to create, and it’s the best bullshit filter I’ve ever come across. What feels like forever ago, I spent two months sharing a backpack with my best friend as we travelled around India. Trains that were 19 hours late, colour and dust and beauty and heartbreak, escaping Darjeeling in the back of an army jeep, making dinosaur noises at leering men on train platforms, packing more books than clothes, dark green eyes and a hand on the small of my back. And the fact that when we got home we were too embarrassed to reach for the handles on the train, as we reeked of filthy Delhi bathrooms and four days of unwashed transit.

Heidi Pett - Deputy Editor
As well as being a fine writer, Heidi is an award-winning radio producer and presenter. She takes photographs through a plastic lens, drinks wine, listens to folk songs with gratuitous swears and can more often than not be found with her head buried in a book.

Getting To Know... Heidi Pett

Heidi Pett is Bobbysix.com's new Deputy Editor. Considering how you've shown her reviews a whole lotta love already, we thought it only polite to introduce her properly. Here she is, in her own words:

Writing is... something I do in my spare time, usually at around 3am when I should be doing writing of an entirely different kind. Hello, Development Studies essay looming up there in a tab I haven't opened for hours now.

I'd love to interview... Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer, because they write beautifully and with such imagination. Marieke Hardy. She inspires me to live deliberately, and write about it. Also, made-up swears and calling Amanda Vanstone a cunt. Vikram Seth, because he’s a genius and despite its length, I’ve read A Suitable Boy more times than I care to divulge. Patience Hodgson. Gemma Connell, because she’s up there on this enormous pedestal in my life. Do you really want the whole list? I could prattle on about this for almost forever.

Aside from writing... I spend vast tracts of time prancing around the internet getting inspired by what other people are creating, present Allnighters on FBi Radio, volunteer as the Venue Assistant at FBi Social and I’ve just started producing Arvos on FBi as well. I mess up my bedroom, read, make lists, dick around with my housemate, take road trips and study Arts/Law, something which I should probably devote more time to.

Sydney is... cliquey. I moved here last year and came to the entirely valid conclusion that I’m socially retarded after I made a total of two friends at uni, both of whom moved back to Perth. However since I’ve started volunteering at FBi I’ve found this wonderful community of like-minded, creative people who are all doing and making interesting things. A heads up for Macquarie University students: can’t find anybody to hang out with that’s not a stick-in-the-mud accounting student? They hide all the creative types way over across campus in Y3A, something I’ve only discovered after I met these elusive types at the station, a place which has become a sort of surrogate uni for me in many ways. I grew up listening to my Dad's stories of university and my parents' lives in Sydney and couldn't wait to move down to the city to meet people who'd want to get drunk, make music and talk about books. It's just taken me a while to find them.

 

I take inspiration from... a certain quality of light in the afternoons, trains, dumb conversations I have with my housemate, my travels and of course the writing of people I admire. Mostly though, a genre of music which my best friend and I have defined as ‘happysad’ - think Bon Iver, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, and Isbells - music that takes whatever mood you’re in and amplifies it, causes it to be beautiful. Makes you nostalgic for something that maybe never really was. It makes me spin circles in the street, laugh or cry for no particular reason and gives me not-quite-irresistible urges to jump on the first plane to anywhere, run away and become a poet. Or just to scribble down conversations, thoughts and images in a notebook that’s always in my bag, because sometimes that’s enough.

I am currently listening to... This very second? Wishingbone by Winter People. Caitlin Park, Oliver Tank, Howling Bells, Husky, Patrick James, Isbells and The Josephine March also feature pretty heavily on Wattle - my Spring playlist.

It might surprise people to learn that... At this point it would be normal for me to humble-brag and say “Oh, I’m into this really nerdy stuff and not actually as cool as you think I am,” but I’d say it’s fairly apparent from the moment you meet me that I’m a bonafide dork (Editor's note: this is an undeniably accurate self-assessment). I’m into politics, did debating and public speaking and played in the band all through high school, throw a Harry Potter party every year and take great pleasure in dancing around the kitchen to Billy Joel. I also have a Deathly Hallows tattoo. Oh, yeah.

Click out Heidi's own, beautiful, blog here. She tweets here.

Interview by Bobby Townsend