And here we are in limbo. One year nearly gone; one not yet started.

It seems as good a time as any to do one of those ‘Best of...' things. Except this one isn't. I waxed eloquent about the futility of ‘Best of...' lists recently and I still feel the same.

I can't claim any of these to be the best. But for 2014 they were my favourites. And since this is –albeit nominally sometimes – a music column, let's start with music.

My favourite album from 2014 was by someone I'd never heard of before, part of my resolution to hunt down a new (to me) artist for each week of the year.

Sun Kil Moon is a band named after a Korean boxer but it is really just a nom de plume for Mark Kozolek, who has a prodigious output and writes songs so confessional that they could be diary entries. He backs them largely with sophisticated classical-style acoustic guitar reminiscent of early Leonard Cohen.

His 2014 album was ‘Benji', a rumination of mortality and family, taking its start from the coincidental deaths of two family members in fires and expanding to cover the world's rich and tragic randomness.

What seems loosely unstructured slowly reveals itself to be sad, ironic, wise and strangely moving. Not music for everyone but a man daring to dig deep who exposes profound truths through accumulation of mundane detail.

Other albums popping my cork included Aussie electronica exponent Chet Faker's ‘Built on Glass', Damon Albarn's ‘Everyday Robots', Jack White's second solo outing ‘Lazaretto', New Orleans group Hurray For The Riff Raff's Americana exploration ‘Small Town Heroes', and Wilko Johnson's R&B collaboration with Roger Daltrey, ‘Going Back Home'.

On the local front I enjoyed Silver Scroll winner Tami Neilson's ‘Dynamite', but my favourite Kiwi album and pretty much favourite overall album was the self-titled debut from Auckland indie-pop outfit Model Train Wreck.

There is literally nothing I don't like about this CD and its 11 songs. The four-piece band mix spooky rockabilly with jazz chops and great pop sensibility to produce music that is smart, funny and engaging, complicated enough to still reveal new layers after multiple listenings yet catchy enough to have immediate appeal.

Aside from the muscularly cool rockabilly guitar there's a dynamic rhythm section and a guy who doubles on keyboards and horns and is fantastic on both. The production is also excellent.

I could rave about this album for a long time. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Chris Howard creates dazzling songs that are as sophisticated lyrically as they are musically. He has an impressively relaxed tenor voice with a vast range. The opener knowingly revels in Beach Boys' harmonies (presumably to reflect a lyric mentioning ‘vibrations'), the second song is an ode to Twin Peaks' Laura Palmer, while Port Chalmers gets an amusing name-check as the setting for ‘Port Chalmers Murder Ballad'. Every song is a winner.

Told you, I could go on and on about them. There's video online and if you can find the album, snap it up – physical copies are via the band's Facebook page or there's iTunes – a future classic in the making.

Okay. Enough music. Other bits ‘n' bobs.

My favourite film was ‘Grand Hotel Budapest', with a cast of thousands, over-the-top production design and director Wes Anderson controlling everything with the greatest of skill.

This seems a natural culmination of his work so far, building on last year's ‘Moonrise Kingdom' and even incorporating some of the animation from ‘The Fantastic Mr Fox'. Very cool.

TV series? Damn, I seem to have watched so much television this year, particularly on Soho and Sky's new sci-fi channel The Zone. ‘Game of Thrones' seems so long ago. ‘Homeland' is still going strong. But my favourite for the year was the brilliantly left-field TV re-imagining of the Coen brothers' ‘Fargo'. Martin Freeman looking confused, Billy Bob Thornton as the devil in disguise, bodies all round and bucketloads of black laughs. I loved it. (Kudos also to ‘True Detective' and ‘Broadchurch').

So we're out of space. If I had to pick one book it would be James Ellroy's ‘Perfidia', since I'm only three chapters into the new Chuck Palahniuk,
‘Beautiful You'.

And I'm always on the lookout for new stuff or things I missed.

Email watusi@thesun.co.nz with any of your recommendations.