- At least three albums
- All albums featured on the Necessary Evil best of year countdown
I’ve been doing this dumb blog that nobody reads since my first post on the 1st December 2014 called the latest Pixies album an “especially grievous dirty protest”. 2024’s list was the tenth I’ve written in excruciating detail on the blog. The intelligent thing to do would be to call it a day after that. But then again the really intelligent thing to would have been to never start it in the first place. As a stupid person, I’m definitely conflicted. My (recorded) albums of the year go back to 2007. I’m not wanting to put too fine a point on it, nor am I at all pompous enough to ever overexaggerate my importance, but I think it’s fair to say that I am objectively the paramount and most respected voice on music of the last 15 years. And before that too, I just didn’t have a blog then.
But what about the artists themselves? They sometimes play a part in the psychosexual agitprop magic of this blog. We can obviously consider the artists whose work has appeared most in my year end lists, but that’s obviously going to be the Manics (eleven + one very decent JDB solo record and one dreadful Nick Wire one), Prince (eleven, and eventually all 42 of the fuckers) and Nick Cave (I think around eleven, over a variety of projects). Like, duh much? We can all agree without any argument at all that these are the three most important musical artists of all time. It’s like if someone says their favourite food is “crisps”. Like, of course it’s crisps. Crisps are amazing. Everyone loves crisps. But what does that tell you about them as a person?? No, we need a different gage to work out the real stars of Necessary Evil.
What about the artists so central to Necessary Evil’s ongoing success that they’ve not only had multiple albums on the year end list, but actually all of their albums make it?? The artists so integral to the science that every single album they’ve ever released has been good enough to be ranked among that year’s best? Obviously, there have been a fair few artists that have only released one album, so if that album is listed then the 100% record isn’t that impressive (not to take away from Sal Dulu’s 36th place in 2021). However, what if an artist has released at least three ALBUMS (I’ll get into this in a second) and all of them have made the Necessary Evil end of year list? “But Alex!”, I hear you crow in that obnoxious high pitch of yours as you struggle with the Sellotape holding your thick rimmed spectacles together, “That’s absurd! Surely barely any artists would be able to pass such high standards!”. Well, there’s 23 of the cunts. Don’t you feel stupid now? Why do you continue to question me despite all my past success? These are the Necessary Evil Gold Star Artists.
I’m going to both list these Gold Star Artists – these Gods amongst men, these princes of Maine, these kings of New England, these ideal musical bodies, you may not like it but this is what peak musical performance sounds like – and also rank their albums. More lists! Lists within lists! it’s like a Christopher Nolan film about lazy content! This post will also be continuously updated as more artists enter the club. And occasionally, some artists release duds that aren’t listed and lose their place. The Necessary Evil Ex-Gold Star Graveyard for them!! Cruel? Perhaps. Spiteful? Quite possibly. Arousing? Definitely. But nobody has ever claimed that Necessary Evil isn’t a cruel mistress.
There are also some harder to define rules, mainly to do with what I define as an ‘album’. Look at Dua Saleh, for example. Now, I love Dua Saleh, I think they’re one of the most exciting up and coming artists and their debut album in 2024 was a stone cold banger. However, it was still their debut album, and that means I can’t bring myself to consider their three previous entries into Necessary Evil (#75 in 2019, #57 in 2020, #34 in 2021). These are all EPs, kid, come back when you’ve released a couple more bloated 74 minute snoozefests that everyone hates but I’ll pretend to like because of all the stuff I’ve previously said in support of you. Then there’s FKA Twigs. Two incredible studio albums, both top ten at the end of the year. Both number seven at the end of the year, which has to mean something, no?? And then ‘Caprisongs’ (#34 in 2022), which… is kind of a mixtape…? Whatever, I didn’t count it. She released her third studio album in January of this year, and if – somehow – that record makes the best of 2025, then I’ll include all four of Twigs’s entries on the Gold Star Hall of Fame. Having three what I consider to be studio albums is the thing. Sorry, but some artists are just sad victims of my anal ways. Many people in my life have been victim to my anal ways.
Basically, what I say goes. Anyway, here they are in order of the time when they became officially Gold Star:
Fuck Buttons
One of the greatest electronic acts of all time, who released three (or maybe two point five. Two point seven five. Two point nine. Maybe three) of the greatest albums ever then just noped out, with their last incredible addition to the canon of twenty first century musical achievement released the year before this blog even started.
Their five year Godlike run began with the astonishing kick to the amygdala, ‘Street Horrssing’ (#16 in 2008). And like all the greatest art, I initially had no idea at all what to make of it (“Really, what the fuck is all this about? Is this actually the worst record I’ve ever heard? Or 48 minutes of twisted genius that comprise the most individualistic and groundbreaking debut album of the year? No, scrap that last statement, it really is awful. Or is it actually one of the best records I’ve ever heard?”) . But listening to it again recently with the added context of more than a decade getting my mind around and soul into the musical electroshock therapy that Fuck Buttons (and Benjamin John Power’s subsequent project Blanck Mass) deal in, it’s clear what an absolutely incredible debut album it is. They would obviously perfect the sound on later releases, but the incredible deftness in making impossibly beautiful music out of impossibly ugly soundscapes was apparent from the beginning. It was already clear that their dance music as noise metal sound would mark them out as one of their generations most unique voices. They just later developed the subtly to not have to resort to literal monkeys screaming to communicate their artistic stance.
Yeah, and then they just released one of the greatest albums ever made. No biggie.
Just a year later, ‘Tarot Sport’ was the #1 album of 2009, and if I ever get round to ranking the greatest albums of the 21st century it would rank pretty high. If anyone were to rank the best albums of all time, it should rank pretty high. It’s currently ranked at #2093 at besteverlbums.com, which just shows how few people have heard it. It might be the greatest collection of electronic music ever made. If AI ever makes an album as emotionally affecting, as artistically valid, as uniquely beautiful as this, then I for one welcome our robot overlords. Seriously, I’d be volunteering to spend my working life simply wiping refrigerator fans clean with my limp, wet dick as soon as my toaster gave me something like The Lisbon Maru. I can’t gush about it enough, going back to it has only strengthened by conviction, as it has aged like a fine wine. Only, not a wine, like one of those Mexican tequilas with a live scorpion brooding at the bottom of the bottle. Every sip you take could be your last and the thrill just makes your headiness all the better. I find it hard to compare this masterwork to anything that’s ever been released, before or after.
2013’s ‘Slow Focus’ (#10)was obviously going to struggle in comparison, and as I said at the time felt like ‘just’ more of the same old incomparable brilliance: “Compared to the light years of progress between their first and second record ‘Slow Focus’ is practically stepping sideways, and perhaps the familiarity removes any chance of the music really turning your stomach”. Erm, I meant ‘turning your stomach’ in a good way, as by that point Fuck Buttons were already alltimers when it came to dragging the listener through abject disgust to reach nirvana, like that unfortunate nausea you need to endure after first taking shrooms. It’s still an astonishingly great record though, just quite obviously the last, as the band realised that they had already done everything that was possible to achieve with their music (or any form of music) on their previous record, and so there were no more worlds to conquer.
I won’t write this much on the other 17, I promise, I just fucking love Fuck Buttons so fucking much.
Chvrches
One of the absolute greatest pop acts of the 21st century, with a backlog of singles that – if we were still in the days of officially released ‘best ofs’ – would guarantee a CD as big a fixture in your Ma’s car as ‘Carry On Up the Charts’ was in the 90s. The highs of the band’s decade long, four album Necessary Evil career are almost obnoxiously high, though revisiting their back catalogue for this post has also shown that they’ve never made an amazing record, just consistently amazing pop bangers surrounded by differing amounts of forgettable filler. Three top 15 albums but never getting higher than 2015’s #10 is testament to a career of consistent greatness without an album that’s truly top tier.
They started as they meant to go on in 2013, with their debut ‘The Bones of What You Believe’ being a collection of, yep, some absolutely incredible pop songs (Hi, Gun, anyone? No? We Sink then? Motherfucking Lies, motherfuckers??), but lacking much dynamism as a whole, not much ebb and flow, and contains [TWO] songs needlessly ruined by having the boring bloke sing. Number 13, everyone? Yeah, sounds right. One place below My Bloody Valentine, which is just weird.
Something happened in the video for Leave A Trace, the band’s first single to trail their second album ‘Every Open Eye’ (#10 in 2015). The vibe was different, the band no longer felt like indie pop upstarts who’d logged their synthesisers round every dive bar in Glasgow, they looked, sounded and felt big. Largely because Lauren Mayberry is the only one in the video, and there were no longer any slight shards of self-consciousness preventing her from being the absolute star that she is. At the time I said “It’s so refreshing to see a band pull an ‘anti-MGMT’: to embrace rather than shun their poppier qualities” (that was a really timely and astute reference at the time, honest), though looking back the second album is actually inferior to the debut, dropping off notably after the opening three barnstorming tracks and lacking the thrilling jankiness of their first album. However, the bloke only sings [ONE AND A HALF] songs, so that’s an improvement.
Then, for some reason, I really didn’t like their third album ‘Love is Dead’ (#58 in 2018). It’s almost definitely their weakest collection, but not that much worse than their second. Listening back, they both similarly struggle with the transition from being indie darlings to legitimate electropop stars, and I massively overrated one while massively underrating the other. ‘Love is Dead’ just feels that little bit smaller, while the big pops don’t quite pop as hard. It’s still a pretty great album though, and sees Mayberry further evolve as both a singer and a personality. And it also has My Enemy on it, which ropes in Matt Berninger for a career highlight (one of the many Chvrches songs that were victims of the ‘one per artist’ rule when I did my top 101 of the previous decade), so, like, fuck it, right? The bloke only sings [ONE] song, but it’s a song so awful that it basically counts as [FIVE].
I initially lauded their fourth album ‘Screen Violence’ (#14 in 2021) a huge return to form, which… OK, it kinda was, but not a huge one. And it was actually a return to the quality of their first album, not their second, as I might have been thinking at the time. It was also in that review that I first thought of a measure of quality that I wouldn’t truly explore until almost two years later: “I got the idea from that gross BBC article I wrote about, where they mentioned how that admitted sexual abuser Lily Cade refers to herself as a ‘Gold Star Lesbian’, because she has only ever had sex with women. Personally, I think that’s gatekeeping bullshit, and I don’t think being proud of not being open minded enough to only ever have sex with one gender is very 2021, but I liked the name. ‘Gold Star Artist’. It’s a thing.” And it is probably their best album, with Mayberry’s added consciousness of sexual politics adding an extra cherry on their well established sound. But they’re all good man, whatever, with the first and fourth being pretty great. I’ll be doing a top 10 or 20 Chvrches songs at some point.
Oh, and the bloke sings [ZERO] songs while Robert Smith sings [ONE]. It’s not hard to work out.
Young Fathers
Yars. Queen. Young Fathers are brilliant, and remain to be brilliant. They are also the first Gold Star Artist that we’re looking at to have released another album in 2023. So who knows, I may be adding another record to this list in a matter of months, or even liquidating them from the list entirely?? Anyway, my big surprise when revisiting these albums is that their groundbreaking and incredibly unique debut album ‘Dead’ (#2 in 2014) is actually – when the shock of the new context is removed – actually markedly inferior to the follow-up ‘White Men Are Black Men Too’ (#12 in 2015). I also had a weird and extraordinarily dull Mandela Effect when I could have sworn that classics like 27 and Shame were on their debut but, nope, second album highlights. I said (correctly) at the time that “it’s more about evolving an already spectacular sound before any serious ideas of revolution. Still, if they agree to release an album a year of a quality that’s this stunning then I’m definitely on board”. They’ve released two albums in the eight years since, with 2018’s ‘Cocoa Sugar’ (#17) probably falling in between the first two in terms of quality. So, wow, fuck that groundbreaking and astonishing debut album I guess??
2023 Update
Awwww, man. It’s so annoying when a band are as consistently brilliant as the Why Effs are. Of all the acts in the hall of fame, they’re probably the only one that you could make a legitimate argument for any of their records being their best and/or least amazing and not look like a complete fool.
Before 2023, I might have said that was the case for two artists. Nice of Janelle to clear the way.
Like… is 2023’s ‘Heavy Heavy‘ fourth on this list…? But it’s so good… I’d still put ‘White Men…’ top, but does it perhaps slot into second…? But if we do that… That incredible debut album is suddenly fourth…! That doesn’t seem right at all.
So, 2018’s ‘Cocoa Sugar’ now falls to fourth place, which seems cruel – because whichever album lands there would feel hard done by – but something has to take that place. And looking back over their career, ‘Cocoa Sugar’ does feel a little less incredible a pump to the guts as perhaps their other records. Perhaps. And the sheer, unforgettable shock of the new of their debut album probably deserves to be ranked that little higher.
Come their fifth album, everything will probably have to be rejigged again. Please, lads, give us a stinker. It feels bad to have to constantly list great albums last on the list.
Janelle Monae
OK, all of you wash you hands now, because we about to be dealing with our Nonbinary Mommy.
Mammy Monae feels like the central character of the Necessary Evil countdown. They’ve only released three proper albums* in the past 13 years, but two of those were in the top 2 and the other top ten. Of all the artists of the last fifteen years, they are the closest thing to guaranteed brilliance, everything they release seems not only to be an evolution in creativity and songcraft, but also a guaranteed central theme of that year’s list. Basically, ever since their truly spectacular debut album, I’ve always found myself thinking of reasons to not name every subsequent release album of the year**. One of the most intoxicating and furiously creative artists of the 21st century, with a pretty peerless album catalogue***. Black girl magic, y’all can’t stand it.
(*plus, like Young Fathers, a fourth in 2023 that will need to get added to this post sometime after Christmas. I don’t want to spoil how high it’s likely to feature on this year’s list (or if it’s even likely to finish at all) but… it won’t be her #1 album…
**not so hard to think of reasons in 2023
***at least until… No, I’ve said to much)
Chronologically though, we have to start with Suite I, their 2007 debut EP ‘Metropolis: The Chase Suite’ (#47 in 2020), a collection of songs released years before I was introduced to Mammy Monae through their incredible debut album, that I wouldn’t add to the Necessary Evil countdown until years later. It’s… good… Unfortunately it’s impossible for me to properly put myself in the headspace of someone lucky enough to be introduced to Monae fifteen years ago – back when I was still writing about how “The Kings of Leon have long been one of the most adored bands on the circuit” – and not already deeply aware of the ways Monae would perfect both the sound and the concept over their next two proper albums (I mean, Suites 2-5 have been spoiled for a start). Let’s go straight to Suites II & III then, and the astonishingly ambitious ‘The Archandroid’ (# freaking ONE in 2010) won me over completely: “Christ, where do you start? Has there been a more astonishing debut album than Janelle Monae’s released in the past 5 years? The past decade? It’s ‘Songs In the Key of Life’ meets ‘Ziggy Stardust’ with ten times more glamour and style than the former and twenty times more eclecticism and invention than the latter; it’s the second side suite of ‘Abbey Road’ recorded by ‘All Around The World In A Day’ era Prince; it’s… Erm… Elvis Presley… On acid… It’s bloody brilliant, basically”. And I stand by every one of those words (apart from maybe the pronouns, I guess). I can’t think of a debut record in the 13 years since that was anywhere near such a blast to the gut, anywhere near such an explosion of unique and ingenious creativity. Seriously, if someone says “100 gecs” right now I will punch you in the throat. However, within the context of a full and successful career, it really does sound like Mammy Monae’s debut, and has actually been built upon and improved since. It’s the only album of theirs – and perhaps the only album on this post considering how the music of hip hop/R&B updates and evolves at ten times the speed of other genres – that sounds a little dated.
That just happened to mean Mammy Monae true masterpiece would come with Suites IV & V 2013’s ‘The Electric Lady’ (#9 in 2013, their lowest ranked album ever because year end lists are nonsense), which manages to dive further into the same afrofuturistic dystopia of their debut, making a 19 track epic that feels far more like a proper concept album that anything else they’ve done, and also expanding their lyrical focus to have the confidence to explore the personal as well as the political. And how many actual Prince songs are better than Givin’ Em What They Love, which he guests on here?? Yeah, right, a couple of hundred. But only a couple of hundred! C’mon, man, this is Prince. Maybe I’m just making up reasons to list this album top. It’s got Primetime on it. Done.
Then, five years later, came ‘Dirty Computer’ (#2 in 2018), with no Suite attached to it at all (I thought we were getting seven parts?? We only reached Part V!! What happened to Cindy Mayweather?!) but still absolutely playing in the same theme park. Here we have instead have Jane 57821 trying to break free from the shackles of a future society that wants to silence her individuality, with each song acting as a revolutionary memory they’re attempting to erase from Jane’s mind. The obvious metaphor of ‘forbidden love’ is pushed more to the centre, and the narrative this time becoming so central that a 46 minute ’emotion picture’ was released. Perhaps this was another example of acting and the movies becoming a more pressing concern for Mammy Monae than their music* (she had started acting in movies including the Oscar winning ‘Moonlight’ – “Already got a Oscar for the casa” – since their last album), and the emotion picture version of ‘Dirty Computer’ is by far the best version of the record, as it omits several tracks from the record that it obviously knew were stinkers. ‘Dirty Computer’ is Monae’s least focused album, the least consistent, and maybe their worse… The thing is… if you were going to list Monae’s greatest ever songs… a lot of them would be from this album. Pynk, I Like That, Make Me Feel, the greatest song of 2018 and second best of the last decade… The highs on this record are so high that the album can’t help but make you love it through sheer force.
So, erm, yeah, fuck that groundbreaking and astonishing debut album I guess??
(*I’m currently about a week after writing this part of the post and just happened to listen to the Pitchfork podcast’s – yeah, I know, shut up – episode on Monae’s latest. The co-host is asked whether they think of Janelle as more of a musician or actor and answers “I think of her more of a world builder”. So now I hate Janelle Monae, music, and life in general. So much of their libbed up response to the album made me so mad for reason’s I’ll keep to myself until the year end review)
2023 Update
Remember when I was complaining how Young Father’s haven’t given us any rubbish albums, so it’s always going to be sad to name any of their brilliant record at the bottom of their list? Well, thankfully, our Nonbinary Mummy with the previously faultless back catalogue helped me out a lot in 2023 by both literally and figuratively showing their arse quite a bit. Yes, ‘The Age of Pleasure‘ was hardly a disaster, but for an artist who has an extremely good argument to be considered amongst the most wildly creative and artistically brazen voices of the 21st century it was a shallow and lifeless shrug of an album. Thematically, it perhaps works within the world of their previous records if you imagine Monae narrative the free love utopia that was eventually won by the struggles of Cindy Mayweather and Jane 57821. But there’s a reason that there wasn’t a sequel to ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ which was three hours of Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins enjoying the sun in Zihuatanejo: unbridled happiness with no jeopardy is artistically boring. To paraphrase, you can get busy dying or you can keep that shit to yourself.
‘The Age of Pleasure’ is infused with the wet, liberal, identity political belief that Monae’s own sexuality somehow makes her elongated sermons on how delectable her rectum is or how much she loves to jiggle vaginas (or whatever it is you’re supposed to do with a vagina) a political statement. Which is only true if you consider ‘politics’ to be ‘making Fox News angry’. I’m sorry, but the type of people who are going to get offended by pansexual paeans to genital smooching are going to get offended by any mention of sex. And in a world where Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion have moved Ben Shapiro to question if the singers have bacterial vaginosis, it all seems a little pointless and tame. Who is it for? It’s for people to imagine the straw men who are so offended by their impeccable liberalness and feel superior. It’s so dull. No war but class war.
Which would be fine if the songs were good. But they’re not. They’re perfectly serviceable. Float is brilliant, and it’s not a bad album at all. It’s just Monae’s worse by a considerable margin. Oh, and I forgot to list ‘Metropolis‘ last time. I’ve put it in this time just to further show the drop off after that amazing three album run.
Hinds
Ok, so we’ve had some of the most notable bands of the last decade or so, some artists who have been absolutely central to the history (and the unqualified success. Unqualified!) of the Necessary Evil blog and its year end list. But you don’t need to necessarily be a historically significant act to be a Gold Star Artist. You can just be consistently pretty freaking cool. You can just be Hinds, ma dudes.
It’s impossible not to love Hinds, even when – as was the case with 2016’s debut ‘Leave Me Alone’ (#90 in 2016. Fuck, the list was ridiculously big that year. They were two places below Culture Abuse. I honestly have no memory of who that is) – their irresistible charm and energy far outstripped their songwriting ability. “It’s fun and silly and obviously a riot to make, but there are no layers to it or much enjoyment to be had beside the shallow satisfaction their lo-fi, low-frills (albeit high-thrills) garage can provide”. I also went off on a tangent on transethnicity, which… OK, Alex, you do you Second album ‘I Don’t Run’ (#51 2018) was a significant improvement though, and 2020’s ‘The Prettiest Curse’ (#20) was just a goshdangit brilliant album: “Hinds released their 2016 debut as an amazing idea for a band but frustratingly without the tunes to back up their sizeable identities. Their second album […] was a welcome and marked leap up in quality, with the band obviously coming on leaps and bounds as songwriters and performers. This improvement has continued at such a pace that, with the release of their third album this year, they can legitimately now be considered one of the greatest indie rock bands in the world.”
And that evolving and constantly improving trilogy might be it for the version of Hinds that began in 2014. Just a couple of months ago the band announced that members that Ade Martin and Amber Grimbergen (basically, the two that don’t sing) had left the group last December. Hinds was actually initially just made up of guitarists/vocalists Carlotta Cosials and Ana García Perrote, so the core of the group still remains, but where the group go next might rest on how cool the new members are. Like, just a couple of boring normies in freaking Hinds?? Also, if the band is renamed and release a record that isn’t on the list, Hinds would retain their Gold Star status, but if Hinds‘ next record is a stinker, then they lose everything. Do you see how important their next move is??
2024 Update
Their next move was to decide to continue existing as a band, because viva motherfucking Hinds!! And, also ‘Viva Hinds‘ (#27 2024). I guess some suit forced them to take out the ‘motherfucking’ part. Fucking squares.
Now just comprised of Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote, the original sole members of the group going back to their early days as ‘Deer’, ‘Viva Hinds’ was the band’s most triumphant and celebratory album yet. The sheer joy at finding a way to continue as a band, finding a way to survive COVID when practically all the band’s income dried up (it’s the 2020s: unless you’re Taylor Swift the only way for musical artists to make money is through live gigs) is clearly evident in the record and easily spreads to the listener. Not quite their best – it’s going to take quite something to top ‘Prettiest Curse’s pop rock perfection – but absolutely in their top two, and a wonderful reason for the human race’s very existence.
And I am still searching for any good gossip relating to the band losing their entire rhythm section in December 2022. Help me out here: there has to be some juicy stuff?? Ade Martin is now releasing (very decent) music as Shanghai Baby, and their lyrics can be overanalysed till the Dears come home (“Its so goddamn easy to go back again/It feels so greasy so don’t let it stain/Fake it or make it is all i hear them say”). Also, I saw Hinds live for the first time in February (a damn near religious experience) and the band played Superstar as the emotional highpoint as their set, and were really keen to highlight the importance of the lyrics:
Your mum and dad are paying all your bills
None of your friends will tell you how they really feel
Your mum and dad are paying all your bills
No wonder why you treat me like you’re still a kidGood job
Now you’re a local superstar
That only hangs with superstars
Carrying the weight of all that fameOne tune to the people I thought I knew
Specially you
One tune to the people I thought I knew
Specially you
Yo, did shit get messy? I wanna know exactly how messy. If it got messy, you legally have to tell us.
Japanese Breakfast
Wow, some people really just snuck onto this list, huh?
I have no strong feelings towards Japanese Breakfast. I’ve kind of long thought that I should like them, but across their six year career I can honestly say that I’ve only really liked two of their songs. Their debut ‘Psychopomp’ (#57 in 2016) was kinda cute, and their third album ‘Jubilee’ (#71 in 2021) absolutely had its moments:
Listen, I love Michelle Zauner. I think she often makes wonderful music. I believe she honestly has one of my favourite singing voices. I just misspelt ‘singing’ as ‘songing’. That made me laugh, so also thanks to Ms Zauner for that. Her songing is also top notch. She strikes me as absolutely an alpha level giga chad, her favourite Manics song is Nostalgic Pushead and she seems to know exactly what’s up and how best to combat it. I would go as far as saying she may be one of the most important voices in modern culture. I never actually got around to reading her book, but I’m going to pretend I did and tell you all how awesome it is.
‘Jubilee’ is really the sound of Zauner clenching those brass rings with sharpened claws and… it just doesn’t quite make it. It sounds somewhat constrained and inhibited, and though its high point (like one of the year’s best singles that we’ll talk about later) are as god as anything released this year, the record too often falls back into a repetitive tone and singular mood that can sometimes drag.
A certified genius, 2021
That second album, ‘Soft Sounds From Another Planet’ (#51 in 2017, their highest ranked album ever because year end lists are nonsense) though? By God, that is weak. An absolute paint drying in dish water ‘ambient’ drone that must be by far the least effectual album I’ll mention in this entire post.
I’ll be honest, I kind of hope their next album is a stinker that doesn’t make the year end list so we can just forget that they were ever considered a Gold Star Artist.
Wednesday
OK, are you ready for some hot tea? Some spicy drama? Some smouldering controversy? You can handle a little controversy, right? You’re not scared? No, that isn’t a question: You’re not scared. Hold my hand, I’ll take you there.
Firstly, I think it’s widely accepted by now that I fucking discovered Wednesday. You might (might) find offhand mentions of the band in garbage local news and shit beforehand (might), but I don’t think any (other) major outlet picked them up before I reviewed and highlighted their debut record ‘Yep, Definitely’ (#48 in 2018). Want proof? Ha!
Shame I couldn’t think of much to say about the music aside from praising one of the best album covers of recent times.
The controversy is… does this even count as an album?? Scandalously, the band themselves don’t list it in their discography on their YouTube page. And it’s been taken off Spotify. And, though I confidently and obnoxiously claimed that the album was on Bandcamp in that video, I’ve just checked and motherfucker’s been taken down. What’s up with that, Wednesday? Have you worked out that, due to my massive influence in your early success, you would have to pay me significant royalties were ‘Yep, Definitely to be widely available? Is this a Dolly Parton/ Porter Wagoner situation? Is that really how ‘Porter Wagoner’ spells his name?? I think to both, most earnestly, is most definitely yes
But I will not allow such revisionism: ‘Yep, Definitely’ is ten brilliant tracks, almost half an hour, it’s most definitely an album and allows Wednesday entry into this elite circle. “But Alex”, you squeal at me without first finishing the slovenly bite of the Rustlers Microwave BBQ Rib that you just stuck into your fat mouth, spraying compressed detritus of processed pork entrails all over your laptop screen, “It wouldn’t really matter, as they still wouldn’t qualify seeing as 2022’s ‘Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ’em Up’ didn’t make the list. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell…
Firstly, ‘didn’t make the list’ is a tad glib – that album’s Perfect was proudly named the 147th best song of the year!
Secondly… erm…. covers records don’t count. If they make the list, sure, I’ll rank them, but they’re not a cabonical entry to an artist’s discography, so do not count toward their Gold Star status. Listen, I don’t make the rules, I just introduce and then enforce them.
Yeah, so anyway, ‘I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone‘ (#53 2020) and ‘Twin Plagues’ (#66 in 2021) earn their place.
More brilliance from Wednesday, who are lowkey one of my favourite bands and whose Karly Hartzman has one of the most interesting and rousing voices in modern garage rock music. That’s the good news. The bad(ish) news is that I think we’re still waiting for that absolutely groin-busting and era-demolishing record that the band are certainly capable of.
The Voice of the People, 2021
Is their 2023 album that record?? Well, I guess you’re going to have to stay tuned! Click click click click click, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Tiny spoiler though: so far each album has been better than the last.
2023 Update
A weird thing happened in 2023. ‘Rat Saw God‘ (#38 2023) was good. Again, better than the previous record, again, the best record they’ve released so far. I’m sure their fifth album will raise the bar even further, and be an even better collection of shoegaze infused alt-country. Slowdive-by-Truckers. Shit, that’s a fucking brilliant name for their music, and I worry that nobody will ever appreciate it. Like, nobody I know would understand the reference. If you’re reading this, tell all your friends that this blog spits bars.
The problem is I had a bit of an epiphany in 2023 while watching them play live for the first time. But, like, a bad epiphany. Is there a name for that?
The problem is I had a bit of an eshithany in 2023 while watching them play live for the first time. It happened to be the night after I’d seen Little Simz play live for the first time. The night before I’d had a near religious experience, I’d bore witness to a cosmic event gifted near human form in order to electrify a stage, I’d already promised my first born to the alter of Simz and imagined in detail how I would tear the baby’s body apart and daub the words ‘POINT AND KILL’ across my chest in my offspring’s blood. And there I was the next night watching some extremely proficient guitar band play polite songs about Greensboro delinquency. And I just thought “This doesn’t get much better than this. This might improve the this that it is, but it will always be this and not get much better than this. There’s a ceiling to how much Wednesday will ever excite or inspire me musically. They’re going to get closer and closer to that ceiling, they might even make that ceiling, and ‘Rat See God’ is the closest yet. But they’ll never surpass it. And I’m not sure that ceiling is good enough for me anymore. Even ‘Rat See God, despite it being their best album yet, was only included on Necessary Evil 2023 because I had less than 40 albums. Baring some small scale revolution, it might be their last entry.
Yeasayer
I’ve long been one of Yeasayer’s loudest, most committed, and all round most obnoxious cheerleaders. All five of their albums have appeared on NE year end countdowns, with me even making the effort to go back and include two of the ones I’d missed first time around to make sure the whole catalogue was represented. As I said in 2020: “I have long considered myself a dedicated and proud lover of one of possibly the the best and definitely the least adequately valued band of recent times. You can call me a… Yea… sayer… no, that’s the actual band name… I’m a proud and unashamed Yeasayersayer” “What about Yeasayer!?” I would frequently be heard bellowing while other people – usually, I’m proud to say, nonbinary people of colour – attempted to talk about dumb shit like Vampire Weekend or Kendrick Lamar or the situation in Palestine. I couldn’t believe that the Brooklyn threesome weren’t considered one of the greatest acts of their era. Listening back to their entire discography now… Yeah, OK, maybe they never were. Five albums, two pretty great ones. Not a mindblowing hit rate.
Their first album, 2007’s ‘All Hour Cymbals’ (which I got around to in 2021 and placed at #61: “I might do a ranking one day, but just to spoil it now, ‘Amen and Goodbye’ will almost definitely be top, but this album would absolutely be bottom, as good as it is. Seriously, I’ve listened to this album for 12 months and this is all I can think to say about it”) is a forgettable grasp at internationally conscious psychedelica. Their second album ‘Odd Blood’ (#15 in 2010), however – in what is turning out to be a running theme – was a huge leap forward. Thrillingly obtuse, creatively expansive, and the first real hint that just maybe Yeasayer would be doing something firmly of their own and better than anyone else. Through this lens, 2012’s ‘Fragrant World’ (#69… dude… in 2020) sounds like a slight step backwards. The songs are still great – extraordinarily so in cases – but the eclecticism and verified gonzoness just seemed that little bit more restrained than the previous record.
However, they would make up for any slight inadequacies on their next record, which would prove to be their masterpiece. ‘Amen & Goodbye’ (#11 in 2016) was the band working at full capacity, with their long proven experimentation and vast creative borders matched by the finest songwriting of their career, all bolstered by the music never sounding crisper and with its disparate parts never sounding more complementary. Who produced it? I dunno, who am I, Mr Research? An always at least constantly interesting musical career ended with ‘Erotic Reruns’ (#21 in 2019), which was a generally prosaic and disappointingly unimaginative album but also flickered with the occasional undeniably fabulous pop songs that it was actually impossible to dislike.
And maybe that’s what Yeasayer always were? It might be telling that their ‘masterpiece’ couldn’t even break the top ten albums of year, and yet some of the songs they produced I wouldn’t hesitate to call alltimers: Folk Hero Schtick, Madder Red, Silly Me, Deep Sea Scrolls, Uma, Crack a Smile, Let Me Listen In On You and – always and eternally – O.N.E, just a a quick primer. Perhaps Yeasayer are ‘only’ one of the greatest singles bands on the 21st century?? Isn’t that enough? I should do a blog post of their ten best… ah, shit, I can’t keep promising these things.
Whoops, kind of spoiled this a little back in 2021…
Big $ilky
No need to hang around here, the supergroup of Angel Davenport and Psalm One released ‘Vol.1’, ‘Vol.2’ (#26 & #27 in 2020) and ‘Vol.3’ (#35 in 2021) in quick succession a couple of years back. They’re all great, I feel I covered it all in that ‘Vol.3’ review, and the ranking could honestly change quite easily, it’s just that ‘Vol.1’ generally has the biggest bangers. Oh, and in that ‘Vol.3’ review I enthusiastically advocated for someone shooting Ted Cruz with a gun they bought legally in that country. I just want to make it clear, in case there are any lawyers reading, that I 100% stand by that and actually could list hundreds of other Americans that should be shot dead. Seriously, America, you can just buy guns there and you’ve barely shot and killed anyone of worth. It’s like finding out that a country has Hula Hoops but barely anyone has put them on their fingers. What a waste.
Lonelady
OK, more of a Necessary Evil legend here, which might mean more than 139 words. Audenshaw’s Julie Campbell may have only released three albums in the past 13 years, but on this blog (and perhaps, admittedly, this blog alone) each record feels like an event. Her 2010 debut ‘Nerve Up’ (#3) was the first introduction to the modus operandi: essentially with Campbell being the Strokes of 1980’s British New Wave: not necessarily reinventing the wheel musically or updating the sound to any revolutionary degree, just doing it far better than near enough anyone else – certainly at the time and possibly of all time. Her incredibly effective usage of as few musical components as were essentially needed, and her unmatched intensity of performance remains to mark her out as an absolutely unique artist even if the material isn’t always completely original. It took five years to release a follow-up, but it takes as long as it takes to craft a masterpiece like ‘Hinterland‘ (#20 in 2015). Her greatest album, and the one that is most undeniably a Lonelady record, less in thrall to the musical movements of the 1980s and more obviously one unique to herself. The basslines are, as always with Lonelady, Peter Hook as all hell, but the electronics and wider musical influences manage to both paint with a far larger palette than Campbell had done previously while still managing to lose none of the claustrophobia and military precision of her debut. Her next album, ‘Former Things‘ (#27 in 2021) was also incredible, but it seemed for the first time that perhaps the strength and centrality of the influences was perhaps starting to overhaul Campbell’s own musical voice. But then I said of her second album at the time “Is Julia Ann Campbell’s merely a pastiche of the greatest achievements of her home town of Manchester?” so, as always, is there the slightest chance that I just don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about? “The human frame was never built for such strength“.
Lorde
I’d personally say that Janelle Monae has been the central character of Necessary Evil, and probably the most influential Legit Boss in terms of how their insatiable pansexuality of genre and horizon chasing ingenuity was the first to really push the blog out into far less charted territory. But outside this blog? On the whole business of popular music as a whole. Or, perhaps the entire dang pop culture? Yeah, that’s obviously Lorde.
Before Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor released her debut album ‘Pure Heroine’ in 2013 (#16, which is scandalously low*) – ten years and three days ago! – at the age of 16, pop music was in a markedly different place in terms of both how it presented music by women and marketed music towards women. There had of course been endless individual examples of self-written and truly self-actualised female music over the previous fifty or so years, but it was still the exception to the general sausage party rules. These exceptions were still generally seen as being for men anyway, from the legacy likes of Kate Bush and their accepted muso appeal to beard strokers, or even worse (and more contemporary to Lorde) gross appeals to male fantasy like Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl. Pop music marketed to anybody (but chiefly and most financially lucratively to young girls) was still generally glittered explosions and megabudget paeans to nonspecific love most likely written by middle aged rapists. Pop music was still dumb because we all assumed young women were dumb. Sure, the Beyoncés, the Rihannas and the Taylor Swifts were still slogging on, but the (male lead) critical consensus (including even with the Most Trusted Voices in Music**) was still… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Nice enough for chick music I guess. They looked good though. So hot, ammi right? Beyoncé was number 19***, Taylor Swift 12 (“A commendable rating for Harry Styles’ 22-year-old ex“) and Rihanna number freaking two in FHM’s Sexiest Women in the World 2013, so don’t complain to us about representation!
(*it’s still possible that I had yet to let ‘The Lorde Effect’ more properly wash away decades of a casually misogynistic Male Glance idea that still wouldn’t allow me to consider work by young female artists as properly consequential. Mind you, I’d already given my soul to Janelle Monae by that point, so what more do these feminazi chicks want? Maybe I just hated young people? That makes sense. I still hate young people. “Oooh, I’ve got my whole life ahead of me so I have all the opportunities in the world to not continuously fuck my prospects and very existence up like Alex!!” Jeez, why even say that?? They’re obviously obsessed with me. Live in their head rent free, do I? Cry more)
**this blog
***a listing to which FHM responds by saying “Yeah, we can’t really see what the appeal is. Never have done”, which is an odd bit of editorialising that isn’t present for anyone else)
We now live in a post-Lorde world though. The utter critical and commercial success of her debut convinced record execs that – actually – women of any age could be trusted to actually just write about their personal truths that might not always involve dreaming of pathetic flaccid middle aged white cock, and, shit, women and people of all ages will – actually – appreciate not being fucking patronised and were smart enough to react to it. With their wallets. Let’s not pretend the change amounted to anything actual – this was a purely libtard revolution, solely about a change what the capitalist state now considered profitable. But it’s still interesting. Post-Lorde as well, the entire pop language changed for all genders – suddenly the landscape wasn’t about the biggest and most expensive dick swinging, but more about the legitimacy of what message was being communicated and the emotional integrity of the artist. I wouldn’t just argue that without Lorde’s success we wouldn’t have success of Halsey, Billie Eilish and (more recently and obviously) Olivia Rodrigo. but we might not even have a business that appreciates emotional honesty enough for the likes of Drake to go supernova. And Lorde also somehow made it acceptable for boring mainstream critics to validate pop music made by women again. Beyoncé, Rihanna and Taylor Swift would soon release the albums that got their first proper critical considerations. Yeah, you all gotta thank this young white girl for your music finally being taken seriously. Not you Taylor, the joke doesn’t work as well.
In my pathetically substandard review at the time, I said “It is rather depressing when popstars are no longer even too young to be your girlfriend but start being young enough to possibly be your daughter”, which is quite funny, as nowadays the majority of the Instagram models that I send thirsty DMs to are probably young enough to be Lorde’s daughter.
Of course, the fact that all us middle aged white guys were allowed to like her music by then meant that we were able to appreciate her second album and head and shoulders career best ‘Melodrama’ (#2 2017. Should have been #1. Damn me for pandering to The Gays ahead of The Girls) by the time it was released. That album is perfect and impossible to overrate. Her third album was ‘Solar Power’ (#11 2021) is a bit more of a struggle. Easily her weakest album, and maybe a bit… mid… at points… but also fucking exhilarating in places… Plus the opening line of the entire album is “Born in the age of oxycontin” which is pretty fuckin’ boss.
Ibeyi
Jesus Christ, ma dudes! I know they have three top thirty albums, but is there a chance I might have actually been sleeping on Ibeyi??
Like, we all should by now have already accepted that the French/Cuban/Yoroba twin daughters of some Buena Vista Social Club geezer, Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz, are the coolest sister act in music, but have we (I. Let’s not kid around here, you’ve probably never heard of them, you pathetic social fascist. Enjoy the new Olivia Rodrigo album! No, seriously, enjoy it. It’s really good) have let their general overwhelming coolness and – let’s be honest – their slight novelty factor blind us to the fact that they’ve actually been one of the greatest acts of the last decade?
Their self titled debut (#24 2015) was a gloriously sparse and ghostly apparition of a debut album, completely singular and amongst the most affecting debut releases of the last decade. It was on their next album though, ‘Ash’ (I’m embarrassed to say I listed it as low at #14 in 2018) where they delivered their masterpiece. Artistically conscious, as well as being creatively boundless, it contains some of the most transcendentally gorgeous songs of the last decade. And in the epic Transmission/Michealion it also contains one of the motherfucking best, the most shameful omission from the decade’s highlights. Seriously, since rediscovering the song for this blog, it’s become my go-to “Erm, actually, you might not have heard of this song, but it’s, erm, actually amazing. I am very smart, please have sex with me” track. Yeah, the Michelle Obama speech on No Man Is Big Enough for My Arms is so ‘mid 2010s libtard’ coded, but as a sole offense it can be forgiven. Last year’s ‘Spell 31’ (#26 2022) is probably their weakest, but then I just see any clip of the sisters performing Sister 2 Sister live and I’m just like fuck all y’all, I love this band.
Dancing in front of the mirror
Singing along to Shakira
Washing our shoes in the river
Washing our shoes in the riv-AH!
Was that hippo’s name Razorblade Beast? It’s been a long time since my best Manics songs list. Christ, the lore of this blog is so complicated.
Marina (and the Diamonds)
Marina is a fascinating case. Almost the Velvet Underground on 21st century pop. Most of the biggest and most notable female pop acts that would later gain success that Marina could never dream of would name her as one of their biggest inspirations*, yet Marina herself has never been more than a cult favourite. Initially too early and before her time to really have her (spit) pop music properly considered by the critical mainstream, and when she was later close to proper mainstream acceptance by the success of all the artists whose trail she blazed, she responds by releasing by far the worse music of her career. When artists like Billie Eilish made her style of music the biggest in the world Marina decided the smart way to capitalise would be to release an AOR collection that Shania Twain would probably want to add a bit more bite to. Put bluntly, her career has actually been one of missed opportunities and potential never quite realised. Apart from on Tumblr, of course. It’s just a shame that it would eventually be more important to be big on 4Chan. I’m obsessed with the mess that’s America…
(*I was extremely surprised to see Lorde not give her a shout out when she named her favourite ever songs this week. Even more surprised that she did name Yeasayer! Also, Dancing on my Own? Basic much? And 1975? #Cancelled)
This all means that, despite my continued love for Marina, her debut ‘The Family Jewels’ (#8 2010) would be her only ever top ten entry, and still her best work, despite the quality of her next two releases. If the record was released post the Lorde reappraisal, it would have received far more attention and commercial success for such a singular and interesting focus. Or, and also for the fact that this album is just banger after banger after motherfucking banger. “With slightly better self-control her second album has the potential to be a classic” I said at the time, unaware that Marina would soon achieve her closest brush with proper success by going even more mental, by deciding to live by her own creed that it’s better to be hated than love, love, loved for what you’re not. And her next album definitely was a classic, but not in any sort of way we could predict.
2012’s ‘Elektra Heart’ (#14 when I finally got round to it in 2022) sold roughly 147 copies worldwide, but its affect on the subculture is difficult to overstate. Critics hated it, but the fans who discovered it really loved it, until the album’s whole ‘tragicomic suicidal housewife’ aesthetic basically dressed an entire generation (with support from Lana Del Rey). Classics like Primadonna or Teen Idle may not have bothered any charts, but they are the founding texts for a whole lot of queer adjacent misfits. Artistically, the album pales alongside the albums either side of it, but culturally this was Marina’s moment that she would then spend her career trying to recapture.
2015’s ‘Froot’ (a ridiculously low #37) was actually a far better album artistically, but Marina’s decision to focus more on the music rather than the amazingly creative world building that she had shown herself adept at lead to her moment not properly being seized upon. This was all the way back in 2015: female singers weren’t yet allowed to be visually inventive and artistically viable. Lana tried, and everyone fucking hated her! Then, this desire to be soehow legitimate pushed Marina over the edge. She dropped the Diamonds for ‘Love + Hate’ (#79 in 2019), an absolute wet fart of an album, and she was open about the mental struggles that the response played a part in aggravating. I probably gave Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land’ (#24 2021) a bit too much love at the time simply because it most definitely was not ‘Love + Fear’, but whatever. Marina was apparently diagnosed with ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’ this year, which… OK, sounds like something me and literally every person I know has, but whatever, I just hope she’s well. That next album doesn’t even need to happen if she doesn’t want to. She’s never quite made the big leagues, but she has at least secured an interesting place in cultural history.
Saba
OK, I didn’t realise that Saba was Legit until today, but I wanna finish this post sometime this decade so going to blast through this a bit. Debut ‘Bucket List Project’ (#69, dude, 2016) was an intriguing debut from an obviously singular voice, but ‘Care for Me’ (#32 2018) was the masterpiece, suggesting that Tahj Malik Chandler was capable of crafting amazingly thoughtful and intelligent art projects. Unfortunately, ‘Few Good Things’ (#35 2022) had the temerity to just be an incredible album, but we now know his talent for playing to both crowds and his next project will be fascinating.
Let’s Eat Grandma
One of the biggest ‘reappraisals’ (of sorts) to happen during this period of re-evaluation. I loved the Norwich duo’s debut ‘I, Gemini’ (#3 2016) so much for its untrained and unruled creativity that I initially considered the follow-up ‘I’m All Ears’ (#7 2018) as something of a disappointment! Five years on, it’s clear that the audio spectacular is their greatest work, and even to these EARS (geddit?) the best work of the the sadly departed (but immensely influential) producer SOPHIE. There haven’t been many pop songs released this century so gloriously and infectiously without boundaries as the likes of It’s Not Just Me and Falling Into Me, and there’s a reason that Donnie Darko is now considered something of a theme tune for the band. But, yeah, lowest ranked album. But then also, yeah, number 7 though?? The band tend to do alright. ‘Two Ribbons’ (#3 – again – 2022) wasn’t quote as sonically groundbreaking, but the songcraft had improved again and – bah gahd! – it’s one of the most emotionally devastating albums you’re ever likely to here. This band are the real fucking deal.
So, erm, yeah, fuck that groundbreaking and astonishing debut album I guess??
The Hotelier
OK, I’m going to finish up this year’s edition of the Gold Star Artists with a cop out. I can’t decide between 2011’s ‘It Never Goes Out’ (#10 in 2022), 2014’s ‘Home Like Noplace There Is’ (#13 2018) o3 2016’s ‘Goodness’ (#4 2016) . I love them all. Maybe I’ll come back and work it out scientifically when I’ve ranked all of their songs some time in 2024.
Yeah, they don’t look too pleased about it either.
2023 Edit
Yeah, I actually ranked all Hotelier’s songs in a brilliant list you should read now and then tell all your friends about, and I did the maths. Putting the debut album equal to the other two was actually a microaggression.
Even with the scientific data though… I still kinda want to put ‘Goodness’ first… When they finally release their fourth album maybe we can look at it again.
Lykke Li
Bit weird that I decide to include Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson’s extraordinarily accomplished 2011 album ‘Wounded Rhymes‘ on the 2023 countdown, wasn’t it?? You must have been like “Yo, this boujee stan finna be high key random“, or similar.
I would like to remind you that, whilst there is often madness in my methods, there is always method to my madness. Like Marina and the Diamonds, Lykke Li was a victim of China Syndrome, releasing their second album during that awkward time when my status of being quasi Chinese and quasi happy lead to me not bothering to make an albums of the year countdown. So while Marina Diamandis’s circle was squared (or was their square circled? Genuine question for the mathematicians in the audience) with the impossibly influential ‘Electra Heart’ being ranked in 2022, Li’s placing last year meant that one of my favourite artists over the past decade and a half is finally given the respect they deserve.
It was love at first sight between Lykke and I. Their high drama twinned with high pop sensibilities, their ability to unlock almost the Gothic elements of sexual discourse, the unparalleled bop/beauty ratio: they fast became one of my favourite things. So much so that they have never bettered the #3 placing that their debut album ‘Youth Novels’ achieved in 2008.
How Lykke Li must curse MGMT, as if it weren’t for them there’d be no-one else this year who could touch her run of singles quality-wise; Breaking it Up, I’m Good I’m Gone and Little Bit are classic twisted-pop, infectiously melodic but with a dark streak in them as long as a Swedish winter night
Yeah, an MGMT reference, because their debut record was #7 that year. Contemporaries, ma dudes! There are weirdos* who still follow MGMT’s dribbling career like they were the Beatles reformed with the resurrected bodies of Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin, but Lykke Li was allowed to continue to creatively grow and challenge herself and her audience positioned slightly more outside that glare.
(*no, there’s no use being polite, let’s call them what they are: perverts. Absolute artistic degenerates. People who really enjoyed Time to Pretend when they were kids so are now cursed to an adulthood of pretending that MGMT are still in any way close to being a valid act, or even that they ever were. The kind of people who would get really offended if you even suggested that MGMT wrote some great pop songs once. Because ‘pop’ is what girls like and MGMT fans all have strong opinions on the forced politicisation of video games. Just to be clear: nothing against MGMT, everyone is allowed to make crap music if they want to, it’s just their fans that are the scum of the Earth)
On that 2008 post, I also picked out exactly two of the album’s 12 tracks that seemed ever so superfluous. Lykke obviously listened, as no album she released afterwards would have more than ten tracks, and they would get shorter and more concise.
Starting with 2011’s ‘Wounded Rhymes’ (#21 in 2023) , two songs and two minutes shorter than her debut. Li’s second album is far darker, far more abrasive, far explicitly hornier than ‘Youth Novels’. Than anything else in their discography. ‘Wounded…’ is Li’s great outlier: it’s a comparatively simplistic set of songs, often aiming for the spleen rather than the heart, and has at its heart a great anger that isn’t so central in their other work. And, more superficially, there are frequent moments on ‘Wounded…’ where the production and instrumentation almost sounds intentionally cheap, obnoxious even. After 2011, you would never again hear abrasive synth stabs like the parped intro to Youth Knows No Pain in Li’s albums.
The album is darker, moodier, and the lyrics are heavier. There’s less atmosphere, more directness. I was 19 when I recorded my first album, and I’ve been exposed to many things during these last few years; all the baby fat is gone. I dove into the craziness and did things that maybe I would think twice about when I get older. And I’m a really restless person; I’m tired of the way I sounded or looked yesterday. So it’s hard to hang onto this image of me as this young Swedish female in this world. People comment on how you look, it’s so unnecessary. I just wanted people to listen to what I have to say instead of focusing on anything else. And, of course, there are a lot of things I’m angry about in the world.
Pitchfork 18/11/2010
The album might not have just been a response to how their debut was received in some quarters (“I just felt like I must be some kind of porn dream or something because all they seemed to listen to was my high-pitched voice.”*) but also perhaps to what was by far their most well known song at the time and almost definitely to this day: their contribution to the ‘The Twilight Saga: New Moon’ soundtrack, the almost painfully beautiful Possibility. By 2011, if you’re a 24 year old woman desperate to be thought of as a legitimate artist (“It seemed like people weren’t listening to what I had to say. And I feel like that’s probably just a [product of being a] female too, because a lot of the great men that I love suck at singing. I don’t think Neil Young has a beautiful voice but it’s something that grabs you and the songs are so good”) then ‘Twilight’ was absolutely the wrong brand to be associated with. It was perhaps the height of Twilight Hate, which generally went hand in hand with Girl Hate, and as a young female artist you wanted to distance yourself from that as much as you could. Thankfully, Li would make her peace with that, and Possibility along with the ‘Wounded Rhymes’ track I Know Places would actually point far more to the places they would take their music next.
(*hence “I’m your prostitute, you gon’ get some”)
If anything, Li massively overcorrected with ‘I Never Learn’ (#40 2014). Their most base level and amateur sounding record (intentionally so, I must add) was followed by a record so lush and expansive that it would rival the buzzing sounds that overwhelmed Phil Spector when he shot Lana Clarkson dead in 2003, probably after she spurned his sexual advances. And while ‘Wounded Rhymes’ was skittish, fevered and angry, ‘I Never Learn’ is slow, deliberate, and – mate – really sad. It’s also the first time in Li’s career that they could on occasion be quite fucking dull. Li claimed the first three albums were a trilogy that chronicled “a woman in her twenties and her search for love and herself”, which… OK… And was it always meant to be a trilogy or…? OK, “I signed a three-album [deal] when I was about 21. So I knew that I had embarked on this journey and that there was no turning around”. Sure. Bit weird that you never mentioned this in the previous six years, but cool, whatever.
At the time I said that it took “quite a lengthy time to really fully appreciate- for the first 5 or 10 or 1000 listens it sounds drab and uninspired, with Li merely moping around in a sad mood after a massive relationship breakup”. Now, ten years later, I’m not sure I would ever use the adjective ‘lengthy’ in that way again. I’m also as accustomed to this record as I’m likely to be, I can say that it is an incredibly well produced and ambitious record. While maybe not the “exemplary example… of the sheer, sumptuous beauty of the pain of heartbreak” that I would eventually describe it back in 2014, it’s an admirably expansive work. The songs themselves aren’t strong enough to not be overwhelmed by the ‘up to the eleven’ backing. It’s, also, frequently quite dull and I’m not sure I’d list any of the singular tracks amongst the nine tracks (one track fewer than the previous record, and eight minutes shorter) amongst the artist’s best.
Thankfully, four years later they’d return with their career best. And a shitload of entries onto their ‘best of’ list.
‘So Sad So Sexy’ (#10 2018) saw Lykke Li dye their hair blonde, incorporate trap and synth pop into their sound, rarely raise the tempo above ‘I Never Learn’s respectful intentionality but creates a more dynamic and essential sounding record by leagues of magnitude. It’s ten tracks, 34 minutes, and banger after banger after banger after banger. I said in 2018 that ‘SSSS’ was “Absolutely the best album of her career and, if I’m being brutally honest, the follow up to her incredible debut that I’ve always hoped she’d make, rather than taking off into more moody and retrospective places”, and I still stand my that. The songwriting and production is tighter than it had ever been, and the sheer hit rate of song quality is unmatched in Li’s career (or, for that matter, in few artist’s at all). It scales back the production overkill on ‘I Never Learn’ and marries it with the infectious pop ability that Li showcased on their first two albums. The songs here are also often fucking heartbreaking and – fuck all y’all – would fit perfectly onto any motherfucking Twilight film, because the sheer emotion being portrayed here is box office, ma dudes. Also, let’s face it, those piece of shit movies need all the help they can get. If Lykke’s second album tried its best to detach the artist from beauty, and the third was overloaded signifiers of what beauty is while lacking understanding of how best to convey it, ‘SSSS’ is an absolute goldmine of beautiful moments and melodies that understand how love and longing should sound. Jagu-wars in the ai-yer, jagu-wars in the ai-yer, ai-yer…
And then, sigh, there’s ‘Eyeye’ (#56 2022), which I struggled to think of much to say about at the time, and still struggle two years later. Taking four years to follow up their career best with a seven track nothingness is… an achievement of sorts, I guess? A bit of a waste of time, and so lacking in dynamism and song quality that the one strong feeling it inspires is one of crushing disappointment. Can I just do the ranking now?
metagirl (FKA aqua girl)
I could lie and say every year I never change but my
Poetry gets increasingly loose and my love
Is expanding by the day to include
People I don’t even like
Naughton My Watch (My Love Is Expanding)
This entry won’t be as long, I promise.
I honestly can’t remember quite what it was that first alerted me to ‘Stereologue’ (#19 2018), the debut album from then then aqua girl. It certainly wasn’t the misuse of capitalisation. I was on a big Z Tapes kick in 2018, the resolutely independent independent record label based in Slovakia that introduced me to similarly homemade magic such as Govier, Pickle Darling and Helltown (later known as Efficax), which Elora Driver was a artist on. Don’t look for Z Tapes, it’s not there anymore, but their founder Filip Zemčík now runs the Start-Track label, which very much continues the former label’s good work in collecting wonderful independent music on essential periodic compilations, so get onto that. I can still feel what first attracted me to them though: the songs are outstandingly stripped back, often just Elora and an acoustic guitar, yet the production is clear enough for the preem songcraft to come through clearly without much adornments. Driver also communicated the fears and anxieties of gong through transition better than anyone I’d previously heard in a libbed up culture that often framed (and frames) it as an overwhelmingly positive ‘girl power’ journey of simple empowerment. And the charm! By Gods the charm! There are few artists working today that are as uncommonly charismatic as Driver, and on their debut that charm makes up a far larger part of their music’s appeal than it would later need to. I admitted at the time that it was “maybe it’s not subjectively the 19th greatest album of 2018″, but Elora’s charm would often fill in any gaps (and there honestly aren’t that many) in the songwriting. And then they’ll drop a line like “Sometimes you need to hear your jokes are funny” and just melt you.
This charm was still very much present on ‘The Woods’ (#21 2020). The name wasn’t, as Elora was going by ‘metagirl’ by this point. Elora might argue about the name, but the charm wasn’t as essential this time around, as ‘The Woods’ is simply an honest to goodness brilliant album. The songwriting had matured, not a single note sounded in any way homemade or slightly amateurish, and in No Medicine (#74 on the 2020 Legit Bosses) and Anam Cara (#85) contains Driver’s first certified bops! “Aqua/Meta’s main calling card is her ability to communicate unbelievably raw, tender and honest lyrics in the style of a waiter politely reading you today’s specials but not being so loud as to interrupt the phone call of the other person on the table. ‘the woods’ manages to reinforce the abilities that Aqua/Meta showcased on her debut, but add further elements to her sound and widen the palate of influences”. metagirl’s evolution has continued with the same forward momentum on last year’s ‘(22) I FEEL YOU EVERYWHERE‘ (actually #22 in 2023), which again outstripped the achievements of its predecessor and offered more undeniable evidence of their artistic legitimacy. There are numerous Gold Star Artists who are in real danger of dropping off the list with a future release that I can’t bring myself to care about. Elora Driver is definitely not on that list, and it’s fascinating which direction they will evolve into next.
Jamila Woods
Hey, a meme that’s as true today as it was when I made it for my 2016 review.
Woke up this morning with my mind set on loving me
With my mind set on loving me
Woke up this morning with my mind set on loving me
With my mind set on loving meI’m not lonely, I’m alone
Holy
And I’m holy by my own
I’m not lonely, I’m alone
And I’m holy by my own
Yeah, not gonna NGL, Jamila Woods can be pretty cringe, bro.
Her heart’s often in the right place, don’t get me wrong, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with highlighting past important (and frequently class conscious) activists and artists such as Stanley Baldwin. Though it has to be noted that, though she occasionally sings about extremely worthwhile current activist groups like Assata’s Daughters, Woods largely skews toward the liberal thinking that past battles are the only ones worth supporting. Woods’s frequent issue is that she looks as these past class battles between the oppressed and the oppressor and, rather than agitating for more class upheaval, they come to the conclusion that “Wow, black people must me magic or some shit?? Which means that I – me! – must be super magic!!”. It’s such overwhelmingly liberal, identity politics coded nonsense that it can make a dedicated Communist such as myself find it difficult to make it through either of her first two albums with their eyes resolutely unrolled.
That freaking charm again though?! The debut album ‘HEAVN’ (#49 2016) just wins you over by quite how openly it couldn’t give a shiny shite about what you think. Interpolating Just Like Heaven by The Cure? Is that deemed sacrilegious or just really dumb? How about both? And how about it sounding amazing? A whole song based around the clapping game ‘Mary Mack’?? No sane person would do that, surely?? Well fuck all y’all, here’s VRY BLK. Oh, and it features Noname, so maybe remember that name. OK, how about quoting the fucking Dawson’s Creek theme song?? No, Jamila, don’t… Ah shit, they’ve actually done it. Yeah yeah, I know, fuck what I think… Despite the occasionally weighty topics, there was an undeniable sense of fun on Jamila’s debut record. Possibly because, due to her ultra liberal identity politics, because of what she is (rather than who) Jamila believes they’re always amazing, so why wouldn’t things be fun?
The second album ‘LEGACY! LEGACY!’ (#58 2019) didn’t want this ‘fun’ of which you speak. It was framed as a motherfucking important album, with important references and intended to have an important impact. However… this ‘importance’ is so studied and intentional. All it actually does is reference notable artists such as Zora Neale Hurston, Octavia Butler and Nikki Giovani, but does little more than conduct a quick Cliff’s Notes to their work without adding anything. And the album is far less concerned with contemporary activism than Woods’s debut, often even glossing over these namechecked figures’ personal struggles and how they would relate to modern battles. Jamila adores the aesthetics of activism, but on their second album too often feels like Kendall Jenner handing the oppressors a Pepsi.
Most importantly though, the songs themselves largely aren’t there on ‘L!L!’, at least in comparison to Jamila’s debut.
However, the third album ‘Water Made Us’ (#14 2023) was an absolute triumph. On it, Jamila changes her focus from the ‘political’ (ie: libbed up nonsense) to the personal, which is all liberal politics are about anyway so the removal of the façade is very welcome. Their poetic talents can be better appreciated when they’re instead focused on love and the give and take of adult relationships, as these are topics that Jamila understands better than near enough anyone and can really exhibit her lyrical strengths. Jamila’s third shows them understanding their talents and finally presenting them in their strongest light. Plus, it includes Tiny Garden, which might actually be the greatest thing ever.
Noname
OK, I don’t want to start on a sizzling Hot Take so burning and concise that it’s likely to slice through your tiny mind like the finest Valyrian Steel…
Ah shit, yeah, I forgot: nobody remembers that show.
Anyway, as I was saying: Noname has often been pretty fucking dull.
I’m sorry, but it’s true. And kind of reflected in her early album’s placings. Their debut, ‘Telephone’ (#94… ninety fucking four?! This list has been ridiculous at times… 2016) was absolutely admirable. Well done, Noname, yay for you. But it’s also extremely light, both in content and in musical ambition. The songs are airy and inoffensive, and the album is obviously designed to be as bright and unobtrusive as possible, Noname’s lyrical writing is the central star. Which is great. Again, Noname, yay for you. Though it’s interesting to look back now and find the artist so concerned with the very 2016 liberal concerns of identity and self adulation (Noname fit so easily onto Jamila Woods’s debut). The socialist allusions and paeans to community are not yet there.
Also:
“Admittedly, the relentless polish of the record can occasionally render the tracks somewhat homogeneous, and there’s a nagging feeling that the record exists to satisfy the people who find Chance the Rapper a little too abrasive”
That’s perfect, No notes.
The second album, ‘Room 25’ (#69, dude, in 2018), was a vast improvement, that I may have underrated slightly with that placement. The songs are closer to songs now, and the continued jazz influence no longer means being completely tied to loose and ill-defined noodlings. There’s also far more of a political conscience than on their debut, which is important as that conscience would soon become a central part of Noname’s identity.
But… yeah… A lot of it is still pretty fucking dull. And still largely imbued with the flighty ideology that self-love and positivity were the most important things rather than extended questioning or protest.
After ‘Room 25, Fatimah Warner took an extended break. From music, that is. They started the ‘Noname Book Club’ in 2019. They seemed to become slightly more class conscious alongside their usual identity-focused liberalism. The George Floyd murder moved them to angrily accuse the World’s biggest/richest black rappers of being cynically silent on real issues whilst basing their whole cultural identity on black struggle. That Tweet actually inspired a now historically hilarious piece of mealy-mouthed tone policing by J.Cole on the song Snow on tha Bluff: “But shit, it’s something about the queen tone that’s botherin’ me… Just ’cause you woke and I’m not, that shit ain’t no reason to talk like you better than me”.
Initially, the best reaction went to Rolling Stone’s Charles Holmes:
Cole makes a litany of excuses. Despite going to college, he suggests, he’s not as deep or intellectual as everyone thinks he is. Being rich is actually hard, because he feels guilty that he’s not doing enough with his wealth. Then the kicker arrives at the song’s climax: ‘If I could make one more suggestion respectfully / I would say it’s more effective to treat people like children’. At 35 years old, J. Cole is upset that a woman didn’t expend enough energy and sympathy to teach and critique him as if he were a child…
In essence, Cole would like Noname to be nicer to him and his black celebrity ilk when voicing her legitimate concerns about the failure of capitalism and the state. Additionally, he’d like us to consider the possibility that expecting famous men to read (or perhaps even join a book club) before voicing their opinions is just too much to ask for. Someone needs to hold Cole’s hand through the revolution
J. Cole Walks Back His (Possible) Noname Tone Shame — But Still Wants Her to Teach Him (Rolling Stone 20/06/17)
…but then Noname themselves simply blew everyone involved out of the water with Song 33. Centring the conversation around real issues such as the epidemic of murdering trans people; the kidnapping, rape and murder of Black Lives Matter activist Oluwatoyin “Toyin” Salau; and attempts to ‘democratise Amazon’ (Amazon workers would finally get their first labour union two years after the song is releases), Noname doubles down on their original complaints. These multimillionaire rappers, who have exploited and commodified the black experience for their own profit, are fucking silent when that same community needs their support. Oh! But when an artist justifiably articulates the issues with your apathy? Then you speak up? Because they hurt your feelings?
But niggas in the back, quiet as a church mouse
Basement studio when duty calls to get the verse out
I guess the ego hurt now
It’s time to go to work, wow, look at him go
He really ’bout to write about me when the world is in smokes?
When it’s people in trees?
When George was beggin’ for his mother, saying he couldn’t breathe
You thought to write about me?
It was fire. It was angry, it was funny, it was energised. They would later apologise for the song –“I tried to use it as a moment to draw attention back to the issues I care about but I didn’t have to respond. My ego got the best of me” – but Noname must have felt a spark of something when rapping more explicitly about issues more related to her expressed socialism*. The follow-up to Room 25, ‘Factory Baby’, was actually announced way back in May 2019, but was canned at the end of 2021. Perhaps she just wasn’t the same artist anymore? Perhaps, as she suggested when she raised the possibility of retirement, she wasn’t any kind of artist anymore?
(*I address Noname’s ‘socialism’ in my last review. TLDR: yeah dunno bout dat)
As the about Insta suggested in 2022, Noname decided that perhaps they weren’t ready to give it all in quite yet, and considering quite how big an improvement ‘Sundial’ (#6 2023) was, I’d say they made the correct decision. Far, far, far more substantial, more focused, and more energised than anything they’ve done before. They’re no longer “smokin’ positivity like dust“, they’re engaging with actual wider issues rather than self-realisation, and yet now have the confidence to realise that joking about matters doesn’t mean you’re taking them any less seriously. An absolute triumph that leaves all of their previous work in the dust.
Fever Ray
OK, playtime is over kids. Mommy’s home.
I’m honestly not connected enough with the wider discourse these days. Is Karin Dreijer Andersson afforded the freaking respect they deserve? Despite taking nearly 15 years to release the required three albums that necessitate entry into this Hall of Fame, Fever Ray has towered over Necessary Evil since close to its inception as a central figure, as one of its cultural touchstones. They are one of the most important and most meaningful artists of the last 17 years. Of the 21st century. On this blog they’re near peerless. In this house we stan Fever Ray.
Maybe I’m being biased here based on current events. I went to see Fever Ray perform live a couple of nights ago at the Albert Hall, Manchester. I had tickets to see them play the Manchester International Festival back in 2018 while promoting their previous album ‘Plunge‘, before unfortunately their general anxiety (“a disorder that always lurks in the shadows that I have had to work carefully with and around”) meant they had to cancel the show “to take care of myself and restore my health“. I had waited a long time to pay my respects to such a seismic and vital artist, and the edging that they had been indulging in had been killing me.
And they were astonishing. One of the greatest gigs I’d ever been to*. The review I linked to sums it up well enough for me to not need to expand on it (though, seriously, who writes like that?? Music journalism is so dead), I’ll just focus on the fact that Fever Ray are responsible for some of the most incredible music released during my lifetime. I work out that their entire back catalogue consists of barely 35 songs in 17 years. But the percentage of them that are incredible is close to 95%**.
(*admittedly, a large number of the gigs I’ve been to were when I was an alcoholic, and done so while indulging heavily in the pastime. The gigs I remember most are the ones where I was abusing drugs at the time instead. Lesson to be learned: do drugs, kids, stay away from alcohol. Don’t allow the respective legality to confuse you: alcohol fuck you up and some laws are worth breaking
**Do I rank them all one day…? Shit, I have to do that Hotelier countdown first, don’t I?)
And it started with a self-titled debut (#3 2009) that – ah shit – might still be the best thing they’ve ever done? I don’t like stating that an artist as successful as pushing music forward as Fever Ray peaked with their debut (especially after just naming their third album the best of the year) but… Fuck, ma dudes, this album is incredible. Album of the year in almost any other year, but unfortunate to come out in the same year as arguably the greatest album of the 21st century (Fuck Buttons would actually contribute remixes to the deluxe edition of the album) and the always celebrated occasion of the Manics actually releasing a good record, Fever Ray’s debut just happened to be released alongside other 21st century highlights. It’s a masterwork. Dark yet dreamy, evoking atmosphere like no other record in decades has done.
The dark synthesized drone that underlies much of the album- coupled with Andersson frequently distorting and deforming her voice to the point where it begins to sound like a David Lynch attempt to rewrite Cher’s ‘Believe’- is at times jarring and even slightly nauseating for the listener, but this only adds to the effectiveness of a record designed to take you out of your comfort zone…
Fever Ray is a brilliantly idiosyncratic piece of work, not to mention the always welcome sound of an artist making no concessions on their individuality and yet still making music that is gloriously listenable
I used to able to write one time…
It was such an emotional heft of a record that it took eight years for Fever Ray to release the follow-up ‘Plunge’ (#6 2017), another masterpiece which nonetheless feels like the one Fever Ray album that feels slightly inferior. I mean, for fuck’s sake, it finished outside the top five?? Embarrassing for them. It’s fucking amazing, of course – every little thing they do is magic! – but I feel that back when it was released I incessantly willed for it to be the year’s best and it wasn’t quite there, which has always lead to me unfairly resenting it slightly. But, fuck me, it’s absolutely criminal that To The Moon And Back wasn’t included in my top 101 of the last 10 years list. And it should have charted high! Unfortunately, I wanted to make A Statement and make sure at least one song from the current year was included. At that point, Shiver was the best I’d heard, one song per artist, so fuck off one of the greatest insane pop songs I’d ever heard! Your lips. So warm and fuzzy. I want to run my fingers up your pussy.
Oh, yeah, about Shiver. That album, ‘Radical Romantics’ (#1 2023) was the best album of last year. No arguments. But… not quite their best ever. Maybe that will change with the unfair benefit of nostalgia.
serpentwithfeet
We may disagree on proper grammar and the correct use of capitalisation, but otherwise Baltimore’s Josiah Wise is my absolute boy. Wise’s first three albums have all taken a near drastic step stylistically from the previous one, yet the artist always manages to create music that is always undeniably serpentwithfeet. One of the most underrated and undervalued artists working today, who is always challenging themselves (and the listener to a point) with ambitious musical goals. They’re good shit, is what I’m saying.
And it all started with the spooky wooky ‘soil’ (#28 in 2018), with Wise introducing himself to the (cooler parts of) the world as a truly demonic force, huge septum piercing and hair bunched up to resemble horns, and an album full of darkly satanic pleas for understanding. An absolute tour de force of gothic self-actualisation. Although the music was often dark and foreboding, Wise spends the album reflecting on their experience as a queer black man – playing on parts of their identity that have often been considered ‘satanic’ by some – and questioning why there seems to rarely be a place for him.
I’m constantly talking about how black men are always manspreading and pushed to be these super masculine, bovine – seven foot niggas. For a long time I was interested in what would happen if we rebelled against that and we were small. I was into the minutiae and then I realized I wanted to take up space again.
It was an arresting, unique, and irresistible introduction. I didn’t give much thought to my review at the time, because I assumed that something this bracing and singular was a once in a lifetime lightning in a bottle, so obviously a one album wonder, as there was no way that Johah could repeat this shock of the new.
serpentwithfeet haven’t tasted the shame of landing outside the top ten since.
Three years later came the spectacular ‘DEACON’ (#4 in 2021), which not only saw serpentwithfeet overcompensate slightly for lack of capital letters in the past, but included the best song of 2021 and 33rd best of the Disability Decade. It wills also “will make you hold your friends and lovers tighter and it is 2021’s greatest paean to the overwhelming power of love“. In my house, we call this a fucking triumph. Wise’s sexuality was no longer something they analysed and debated the shame of, it was something to embrace and fucking enjoy. It’s not some empty, liberal “My identity makes me cool” style ‘celebration’ of sexuality ala Janelle Monae’s ‘The Age of Pleasure’, it’s a poetic and devoted gospel to romance that will stir the soul regardless of what you identify as.
I’m worried how Wise is supposed to follow up ‘GRIP’ (#10 in 2024) though. The album’s embrace and celebration of queer black club culture seems like such a perfect end to a trilogy of albums chronicling Jonah Wise defining their own identity. First there was confusion and shame, then there was true acceptance and salvation, and the finale sees them put on their black Air Force Nikes, head to the club and put a fucking donk on it. But I’ve doubted the longevity of serpentwithfeet before, and look forward to being made look like a fucking dickhead again.
The Smile
Yadayadayada Radiohead side project yadayadayada first album #60 in 2022 yadayadayada kinda speedran a Gold Star Artist nomination in 2024 yadayadayada #37 and #9 yadayadayada 50’000 murdered Palestinians as of today yadayadayada seriously, fuck Radiohead yadayadayada done.
Zeal & Ardor
OK, full disclosure, I could have sworn that one of Switzerland’s greatest Negro Spiritual influenced Doom Metal band were already inducted, so didn’t include them when I initially wrote this post a couple of weeks ago. Turns out they were another victim of my anal ways: sure, they’d had four previous entries on Necessary Evil, but because I considered two of those to be EPs, they didn’t qualify until 2024’s third studio album. Mind you, Wikipedia describes that 2016 EP as the band’s “debut studio album”, so maybe they should have been inducted back in 2022. Mate, ‘Devil is Fine‘ (#84 in 2016, in the most ridiculously low placing in the history of this blog) is twenty five minutes long. Don’t we have laws about these kind of things?
To be brutally honest, ever since being introduced to them via that incendiary debut album/EP, I’ve been following the band closely since always chasing the same rush of wonder and amazement that first record gave me, and always unfortunately failing. Failing to different degrees, and the band have often taken me close to replicating the buzz of that first high, but failing all the same. I remember the first time that I took multiple doses of gabapentin at the same time, or the feeling of the entire world suddenly making sense (while shitting my intestines out, admittedly) the first time I tripped on Morning Glory seeds. The amount of times I’ve chased that same feeling now must be close to four figures, and every time I try I have a great time, but the rush is never quite the same as that first time. That’s the case with Zeal and Ardor. Also with heroin, oxycodone and fentanyl. But that doesn’t mean you just stop consuming these things! have fun!
That first album/EP though, was one of the most comprehensive and exhilarating shocks of the new that I’ve ever experienced while writing this blog. The insane/genius idea to combine avant garde metal with the spirituals sung by the victims of the transatlantic slave trade (“Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains… Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds” – Frederick Douglass) sounded to me now a completely new and potentially important genre created and near perfected in front of my ears. And, yeah, the fact that aside from the mixed race Manuel Gagneux on vocals the band is just a bunch of white Swiss dudes makes it potentially problematic as fuck, but we’ll deal with all that come the revolution!
I think it’s not even just music. If you would expand that idea to science, why shouldn’t an Asian scientist be able to use, say, an Indian method or an American method in his work? It’s a point of cultural stagnation. If you isolate yourself, reject other ideas, and prohibit your own ideas from being incorporated in other countries’ works or in other cultures’ works, that’s just a silly thing to do… I think since music and culture is global and universal, I should be able to incorporate elements from everywhere
Manuel Gagneux answering questions on ‘cultural appropriation’ in 2019
The problem is: what the fuck do you do when you’ve created a new genre? As Z&A showed: you struggle a bit. And perhaps you’re fated to never quite live up to the expectations that you built yourself.
They probably went closest with 2018’s debut album proper ‘Stranger Fruit‘ (#18 in 2018, and read that review if you want all the ‘cultural appropriation discourse), which at least opened and closed with perhaps the two greatest songs they’ve ever done to this day (including the 80th best song of the Disability Decade). The record had some extraordinary moments, but was essentially a lowkey failure of an attempt to elongate the ‘Devil Is Fine’ magic over 47 minutes. And that attempt was really the last time the band ever properly utilised that genre they had created. The amazing ‘Wake of a Nation‘ EP in 2019 (#22) stripped the sound back completely for a raw and bracing 17 minutes that suggested the band were far more suited to shorter, more concise statements of intent with a thrill that struggles to last the length of an album. This seemed to be confirmed to a point with 2022 second/third album ‘Zeal and Ardor‘ (#46), with the caveat that the band didn’t seem to have any statement to say at all at that point. It’s an extremely good heavy rock album, but so bereft of experimentation and fresh ideas that the band seemed to have completely extinguished whatever spark was lit with ‘Devil is Fine’.
But 2024’s ‘Greif‘ (#22 – again. And ‘sic’, honest! it’s German or some shit) at least seemed to see the band recognise their lack of direction and attempt to rectify that. It’s an absolute fucking mess, don’t get me wrong, but it’s such a fascinating example of an artist throwing shit at a kitchen sink, not really concerned with whether or not it sticks and then just smashing the sink to pieces at every song’s end. I love it, and it’s an exhilarating exhibition of an artist attempting to find their mojo and creating such glorious mess on the search.
And revisiting this back catalogue… this band have released a lot of great music. Even their bad album is probably only ‘bad’ in comparison to the rest of the discography. The band are incapable of ever dropping below 7/10, and more frequently live in the 8s and 9s. They might not have changed music, and they likely don’t want to, and to be honest if it weren’t for the unrealised promise of that debut album/EP, they might be one of my absolute favourite bands, with a pretty much spotless roster of songs. Unfortunately, they will always be the band that were never as good as I decided they would be.
070 Shake
The Big One.
Danielle Balbuena has kind of fucked up the Necessary Evil end of year list. Sixteen times it’s been done, spread over 18 years, and has included some of the most well regarded and important artists of the 21st century – of all time. Including my personal favourite artists of all time, those people who have meant most to me over the past (cough) 29 years, artists who have influenced and changed my very life and personality. The Manics, Nick Cave and Prince have each made the list eleven separate times, thirteen for the Manics if you count the two solo albums by JDB and Nicky Wire. Modern greats such as Janelle Monae, Sufjan Stevens, Beyoncé, Low, and Charli XCX have all finished top of the list, along with – yes – Nick Cave and the Manics themselves. Prince has never had an album named best of the year, the fucking wastrel. But none of these artists have ever been named album of the year twice. It was a record that I was extremely protective of, expecting one of these artists to have to produce some extraordinary late career highlight in order to even be considered.
Then 070 Shake wins album of the year in 2020 and 2022. With their first two albums. So fucking annoying.
As infuriating as it is to delegitimise the arduous near impossibility of topping the most prestigious list in the game, listening to those first two records again I still regret nothing. ‘Modus Vivendi‘ (#1 2020) was and is an absolutely beguilingly spectacular debut, which didn’t just mark out Shake as a formidable new force in the ‘Post Kanye Pathetic Midlife Breakdown’ era of experimental hip-hop/electronica, but immediately raised them to the top of the game.
‘Modus Vivendi’ is an addicting, an irrepressible, a seducing album composed of Shake’s utterly masterful knowledge of hooks. All underlined with that voice, a hypnotic and soothing drawl that seems to mispronounce words and barely register consonants in other cases. Shake’s personality would have been enough to carry a lesser album to great heights, but instead it’s all so perfectly pitched and produced to complete an absolutely perfect whole.
Going back to it now though… I realised that I’d forgotten just how outstanding this album is. As incredible and mindblowing as any debut album you can care to mention, it’s astonishing how complete and overwhelming the whole Shake experience came straight out of the box. Looking back, I think I just started to mentally retcon how much I loved this album simply because their second album was so spectacular. They can’t have always been this good, surely? It can’t be possible to make two albums this amazing consecutively?
Don’t wanna fuck it up, let’s get it right
Don’t wanna fuck it up, let’s get it right
‘You Can’t Kill Me‘ (#1 2022) is quite simply it. A simply jaw dropping audio journey through every emotion yet discovered by human science, and several new ones that you will encounter over the album’s 48 minutes. Genuinely one of the absolute best musical achievements that has been ever featured on this stupid blog that nobody reads*. One of the best albums I’ve ever heard**. And listening to it again now, I can understand exactly why I’ve kind of forgotten how good ‘Modus Vivendi’ was: this album makes it sound like a piece of fucking shit in comparison. Fuck that album, who cares? This is where it’s fucking at! If Pink Floyd followed ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ with ‘You Can’t Kill Me’ these days people would be like “What? That album with the dumb prism on the cover and the song with cash registers on it? Cringe”. If Beach Boys followed ‘Pet Sounds’ with ‘You Can’t Kill Me’ then Brian Wilson would have accepted that he’d reached the apex of music and sorted himself out proper. He’d be the Head of Sanitation at Hawthorne County Council right now, and be feelin, fine***. The rest of the Beach Boys? Jail. You know the farm animals on the cover of ‘Pet Sounds’? They were all fucking those animals. Like, for decades. They were rearing and imprisoning these animals solely for the purpose of populating the band members’ sick bestiality sex dungeon. The media called it one of the most disgusting operations ever when it was finally uncovered by the LAPD in 1994. Mark Fuhrman was the lead on that case, funnily enough, which meant that he was unavailable to appear at the OJ Simpson trial that year and… I’m getting off track here, just remember that the whole ‘butterfly’s wing’ effort with respect to changing the past and alternat timelines is very real and can take you to some weird places. The best album of the 2020s so far. Up there with the best albums of the 21st century. Up there as one of the best albums of all time. And I plan to bang this drum until the whole world finally chooses to recognise what they’ve all been blind to. Also contains Skin and Bones, the ninth best song of the Disability Decade of 2013-2023, and the second best song of 2022, basically because I’m a coward. And, just for completionists’ sake, Shake featured on the best song of 2023.
(*if I ever do that list, know that it’s because I’ve decided to stop writing on this dumb piece of shit
**if I ever do that list, know that it’s because I’ve run out of ideas and might be planning to kill myself
***even among calls for the 82 year old to retire. What can you do though? You know how disgustingly old American politicians are, plus SpaceX is based in Hawthorne and Wilson is mates with Elon Musk after sharing a pretty gross meme with him, so…)
‘Petrichor‘ (#3 2024) was obviously never going to be able to live up to all that, and was clearly Shake’s weakest album. However, few artists ever had to live up to an opening duo of albums as insanely strong as Shake, and while ‘Petrichor’ doesn’t live up to them, not many albums ever do, and Shake’s worst is still comfortably better than 99% of artist’s best (or indeed all but two of every album released in 2024). Another incredible record though, please remember that as I proceed to outline all the reasons that it isn’t as good as two of the greatest albums released during mine and your lifetime.
Shake is obviously deeply in love with the elite level Nepo Baby Lily-Rose Depp, which, y’know, good for her (great for Lily-Rose Depp, just try to make sure your dad doesn’t take Shake to court multiple times and ignite the manosphere) but perhaps a little diminishing to Shake’s wider perception. OK, cool, here’s a song about being in love. And another one. And another one. The songs are definitely Shake interpretations of love, so we get promised of “I can be your elephant, I remember everything” and “If I die, I want you to be the one to kill me” and “I want to inhale your life in my lungs“. But the slight monopolisation of Shake’s emotions means the record isn’t close to being such a kaleidoscopic encompassing of emotion as ‘You Can’t Kill Me’. Also, Elephant is just a Depeche Mode song, and that’s a bit shameless. It’s hardly some sort of muted and commercialised cash grab to attempt to benefit off the newfound mini-fame afforded to Shake after the Depp adjacency: it’s probably Shake’s weirdest album yet. Releasing the bizarre Winter Baby/New Jersey Blues as the lead single was the first clue, and the album features a cover of Song to the cocking Siren featuring Courtney fucking Love.
Shake is as experimental and as audacious as they ever were, and ‘Petrichor’ was absolutely considered for 2024’s best. Their creative spark remains, and to be honest they’re probably more likely to get their hat trick of albums of the year than any other artist is of getting their second. And, mate, that will really fuck everything up!
Necessary Evil 
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