This week: our final new albums of 2019 courtesy Alabama Shakes' Brittany Howard and Welsh noisemakings' Pretty Vicious. Also: what firetwirlers do in a total fire ban, boring end-of-decade arguments, did imaginary dragons write this list, guest host Flipper, making a Foo Fighters album, college sports should be cancelled, college rock may well have been, Georgia v Alabama, the colour and the sound, heavy foreshadowing, things you might have missed, 81 not out, stealing sunshine, the best Christmas movie, the Ringer occasionally gets it, Not Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Soderbergh is washed, best year of the decade, the Sad Indie 500, High Fidelity II: Fidelity Higher (yeah yeah the original was set in Chicago), Beeso’s midlife crisis year and life advice for 2020.

Have a great end of year break - we're back in mid-Jan with our Album Of The Year Special for 2019. You can find review albums from recent eps on our album review playlist on Spotify, where you'll also find our full archive playlist of all our review albums from 2019 and our 2019 After Dark Mixtape of our favourite tracks from albums reviewed this year. Our full list of review albums 2015-19 and Beeso's kids playlist are also available elsewhere on the internet. Get more BALLS and After Dark in your ears via Omny Studio, Spotify and Apple Podcasts (please subscribe, rate and review), and feel free to hurl your reckons at us via Twitter, Facebook and email.