I’m turning 50 soon. The last time we recorded something as Les Savy Fav, I was about 40. Around that time, I had a serious mental health crisis – I got diagnosed with bipolar and had been manic for a long time, then went very depressed. Getting out of that took a couple of years and was really dramatic for me and my family. I’ve always identified with a Peter Pan type universe, so I was trying to figure out how to square the person you see on stage, which is core to who I am, with the person that wants to be able to afford pants…
I then got laid off from my job and that was super stressful. Turns out I hated that job. I hadn’t really thought about it, but all of a sudden I realised I had spent so much energy annoyed by this thing, that when it went away, it was like clarity. I was writing music, I was writing lyrics, and it wasn’t just because I had more free time. It was about mental space and realising how much energy it takes to grind an axe. I think that’s where so many people get stuck.
Les Savy motherfucking Sav, bitches!
Les Savy Fav last made this list when they were ranked number seven in 2007, on the oldest of these lists that I’ve ever been able to track down and post online. Anthony Kliedis’s girlfriend wasn’t even born when this band last (and first) made the Necessary Evil countdown. And even seventeen years ago, I was laughably late to the party. Gimme a break though: I was a married, fuckable 23 year old with a social life, easy access to drugs, and functioning alcoholism, so I was kinda busy, yeah?? LSF had been a going concern since 1995 and had released their debut single in 1997. Those who knew about them were instant converts – here’s a Pitchfork piece from 1998 describing the band playing to a one person crowd and the writer still being won over – but for the first decade or so of their career despite inspiring devotion from those lucky enough to experience them, even freaking Jesus had more disciples than these guys. Yeah, I realise that Jesus is a pretty big deal these days, but to have only twelve disciples in his own lifetime is pretty pathetic, guy just wasn’t a draw. I’m not denying Jesus’s influence! Just that he was more like the Velvet Underground: only twelve people followed him at the time but each one wrote a book about him.
But 2007’s fourth album ‘Let’s Stay Friends‘ was their Big Breakthrough™. Yes, I know that I repeatedly said that it was their sixth album back in that 2007 review, but I’ve no fucking idea where that number came from, and don’t forget all those drugs I mentioned. And I say ‘Big Breakthrough™’ in the sense that Q Magazine reviewed it and it would eventually have a song featured on the GTA V soundtrack. Oh, and they managed to get booked to perform Patty Lee (one of the greatest guitar songs of the 21st century) on Conan O’Brien, which has to mean something. I’ve heard of him! He wrote Marge vs. the Monorail! I should have really christened it their ‘Big (Relative( Breakthrough™’, as the album still didn’t chart anywhere and basically sold dick all. But NME named it their fifth best album of the year!! Admittedly, that was the year that NME gave both album and single of the year to the fucking Klaxons, so whatever validity that paper’s opinion had was obviously well past being spent, but the point is that LSF were finally being recognised!
Why do they never play Les Savy Fav on the Radio?
The only punk band left in America
The sweat is still droppin’
The beard is still rockin’
The band just keep choppin’
Telepathically
Jetplane Landing – Why Do They Never Play Les Savy Fav on the Radio (2007)
And yet, after being joyously introduced the band, I then neglect to revisit them on the Necessary Evil list for another seventeen fucking years?? Wha’ happen?! To make things worse, not only did LSF not get any NE entries (my abbreviation game is on point) in the next nearly two decades, but I haven’t even listened to any of the intervening albums! Seventeen whole years of hot, sweaty LSF action just completely passing me by! This is, obviously, unacceptable, and the least I can do now is list all of the albums that LSD have released since 2007 so that other people don’t make the same mistakes that I did and lose track of this truly incredible band:
Wh…? That’s it?
You’ve released one album in the past seventeen years, and that was fourteen years ago? Guys, I love you, and I am sorry I missed that one album you released just after I moved to China, but come on, you’ve got to meet me halfway here!
Whatever, I still feel guilty every time I listen to the incredible sixth album ‘OUI, LSF’, which is French for ‘Yes, LSF’. From the opening 90’s Big Beat adjacent literal siren screams that open the first track Guzzle Blood this is a record that grabs you by the shoulders and shakes with one hand while repeatedly and justifiably slapping you across the face with its other hand: “WHY HAVEN;T YOU GIVEN THIS INSANELY UNIQUE BAND MORE CREDIT?!” And the enraged but devilishly witty art punk highlights are so frequent as to be near absolute; What We Don’t Don’t Want (“We drank like fountain pens/Wrote poems in our piss”); Legendary Tippers (“Nuns have their habits but I have none/Nobody gets how I get things done/Delete my inbox cos it′s just no fun/I count on fetishes and superstition”); Oi! Division (“A hundred dead dogs, one napping cat/Now tell me if you think that the cat did that?”) – which obviously also wins pun points as well; Nihilists (“Nihilists cry less/Nihilists have fun/Nihilists are hated by nearly everyone”)…
And then, just when you think you’ve got your head around the band’s high energy and disarmingly complex, sardonic brand of cerebral punk, near the end of the album they hit you with Don’t Mind Me. And I mean hit, because out of nowhere the most beautifully emotionally vulnerable song of 2024 strikes you hard like a Rainmaker lariat. Straight into the feels. It’s an astonishingly effective naked and sparse thing of beauty quite unlike anything the band has ever done before.
I mean… at least I’ve read that it’s not like anything they’ve done before… I’ve only heard that one album…
And that’s where the guilt comes in. Why am I not far more knowledgeable about obviously one of the most distinctive and thrilling voices in the last three decades of art rock music? I read a few reviews of this album penned by people obviously more knowledgeable on the topic than I which were all “Meh, yeah it’s good, but doesn’t hold a candle to their early work”, so I was like “Holy shit, their early work must be amazing!”. But then one review likened the impact of the record to being like nothing since Pixies’ 1989 album ‘Dolittle‘, so I guess I’m kind of between those camps. This extraordinary act deserves far more of my attention, and I am officially announcing here that the band’s lauded 2004 singles collection ‘Inches’ will be in consideration for Necessary Evil 2025. It will be competing against ‘Parade’ by Prince – occasionally my favourite ever album of His – the new Manics album – which, honestly, I kind of expect to be rubbish – and ‘EUSEXUA’ by FKA Twigs – I don’t want to sound like the massive creep that I in fact am, but am I the only one who finds those protruding nipples are extremely distracting in Twigs’ latest videos? They’ll probably be some other albums, but right now I’m more than happy to keep it to a top four.
Album Title as AI Image
Really swung for the fences there, didn’t you, AI?
On the subject of AI art: I’d always presumed that the album’s (actual) cover of plants spelling out the title was artificially generated. Which is fine: I’m not one of those weirdos who’s against any sort of computer generated imagery, it can be a massive help to people (like me) who otherwise don’t possess the finances or the resources to just create whatever artistic imagery we want. But it’s actually legit! Grown in the attic of frontman Tim Harrington!
Necessary Evil 
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