Sigh, I guess I should explain the rules again? To be honest, if this is one of your first times reading The Most Trusted Voice in Music then you really should start with the first post from December 1st 2014 and then read through the next 791 entries (or “chapters”, as I like to think of them) until you’re ready to read this post. Necessary Evil might be oversimply referred to as a ‘Blog’, but it’s actually more of an epic tale – a poem, really – that only sampling parts of risks lessoning its artistic impact. What’s happened to this generation’s attention spans?
OK, the criteria for qualifying for the Necessary Hall of Fame as a Gold Star Artist:
- At least three albums
- All albums featured on the Necessary Evil best of year countdown since 2007
There were three new Legit Bosses crowned on the the 2024 list, and here’s my ranking of their three albums so far, which will soon be added to the ongoing Hall of Fame.
And, excitingly, for the first time this year we have two artists that have brought great shame on their careers, their legacies, and their entire families by dropping out of the Gold Star Artist Hall of Fame. Both (predictably) Soccer Mommy and (perhaps surprisingly) Illuminati Hotties released records in 2024 that weren’t considered good enough for the end of year lists, so they are forever banished to the dreaded Ex-Gold Star Graveyard. There, they are both feted to rot for eternity. A ridiculously harsh ‘punishment’ for the supposed crime of releasing a record that I didn’t think was quite as good as their previous three+? Especially tough considering Soccer Mommy’s previous three albums were all released before the list shortened to 40 albums and all finished outside the top 40, so could arguably be being punished for remaining as good as they ever were?
Yes.
Sorry, SJW cuck snowflakes, take your woke ideas of fairness and ‘not treating people like shit’ back to Libtardia. This is Necessary Evil. We hit harder here.
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 