Author: Lex Leeson

Unrecognised genius, or maybe pathetic pleas for validation, or perhaps even both

#10 The Hotelier: It Never Goes Out

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

We leave our higher educations that we all ‘must’ get
With a signature stamped paper and a mound of debt
The bank has got us by the throat and then we’re forced to settle
For the jobs we hate, 9 to 5, 40 hour, 40 years ’til the day
We are too weak to work, too frail to play
No friends or lovers because they all passed away
We’ve waited for this day all our lives long
And on our death bed the stereo plays our favorite teenage anthem song
And we sing along

Our Lives Would Make a Sad, Boring Movie

We into the top ten, God dammit! With, another album was wasn’t actually released this year: The Hotelier’s 2011 debut album that I just needed to complete my set.

I KEEP CHOKING ON MY FEARS

#11 Hatis Noit: Aura

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There was a movie released recently called ‘The Menu’. Did you see it? It was pretty great, a riotous ‘high concept’ comedy thriller, the kind of ‘middle class’ Hollywood film you don’t get enough of these days, where every movie is either a multi-squillion dollar ADHD nightmare where Marvel’s ‘Dr Thorcock‘ graphically violates DC’s ‘The Lib Pungent‘ in gold plated 4D, or a zero budget Slovakian mood piece shot on a Nokia 3320 that depicts a peasant girl attempting to collect enough dead rats to properly honour her village’s head priest who recently died of gout. Oh, and that priest is also a violent and sadomasochistic child abuser. Oh, and all these movies are 250 minutes long.

I’ll try not to spoil too much, but ‘The Menu’ (107 minutes) generally concerns a ‘menu’ that a chef is preparing for an extremely despicable clientele at his preposterously high end restaurant. A speech that the chef makes to all his diners before they sampled his creations really came back to me while listening to Hatis Noit’s debut album proper:

PROPER NAUGHTY

#12 Manic Street Preachers: Know Your Enemy (Deluxe Edition)

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Seriously? You freakzillas want more content from me about this album??

I gave all you cretins, like, a million words back when this astonishing reconceptualisation of the divisive 2001 release by Our Lord Jesus’s Favourite Band back when it was released in September! “But Alex!” I hear your dribbling mouths bray, “This isn’t even a proper anniversary! 2021 would have been the *actual* twentieth anniversary, so wouldn’t it make more sense to put it on last year’s list??”. To which I lower my voice to an angry whisper, pull your collar roughly forward so our foreheads clash, and say, through gritted teeth, You think I don’t know that?? This is a band that fucks everything up! And that’s part of the reason we love them!! Now sit down and enjoy your Epicentre!!

SEEMS LIKE THERE’S NO ESCAPE EXCEPT THROUGH MY HATE

#13 Hallelujah The Hills: No One Knows What Happens Next (2012)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Rerelease number two! By the way, I’ve also come to notice since I last wrote that Marina post signalling the Oncoming of the Rereleases, where I rather cerebrally and logically (some would say deeply sexually) explained how I’d been smart enough to collate the list’s three big rereleases all together just outside the top ten. Or maybe that was a complete accident. The point was: I’m a fucking critical genius. Well, afterwards, I realised that there were rereleases at numbers 14, 13, 12, then a completely valid 2022 record at #11… Then another ‘rerelease’ (not technically rereleased this year, but a ‘Legacy Release’ that I’d decided to include) at number ten. Honestly, I’ve no fucking idea what’s going on with this list. Or my life, for that matter. Please help me. Any clues on how to sort this shit out?

My life, I mean, I don’t want to hear about any perceived ‘improvements’ to this blog or the Necessary Evil year end list. Necessary Evil is a perfect little crystal and I’m very protective over it. My life? Meh, I’m not too fussed, so I’ll give everything a shot. Have I ever tried deeps sea crab fishing as a vocation, you ask? Why not!? Live out my days as a Dreamsexual?? That sounds pretty problematic these days. I’ll do it.

THERE’s NO USE PRETENDING THAT THIS LIFE IS UNENDING OR CRUEL

#14 Marina and the Diamonds: Electra Heart (Platinum Blonde)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Holy shit! Happy birthday ‘Electra Heart’!

Starburst? Yeah, fuck that kid

NE2022 enters into a strange ‘rerelease zone’ for these next three entries. I can’t remember if I did this intentionally. It’s difficult to consider ‘classic’ albums alongside newer material. You need to balance out any nostalgia and the unfair ten year start that some records have had to burrow into your subconscious. Yet you don’t want to go too far the other way, and fail to remember the original spark and energy that was originally locked within a song you’ve heard fifteen thousand fucking times already. You can’t give too much weight to cultural importance… but you certainly can’t just blindly ignore it. It’s an extremely complicated equation that I honestly don’t believe anyone reading this will be intelligent enough to fully grasp. Or, I just realised there were a lot of amazing rereleases this year and didn’t want them all clogging up the top ten, so parked them all just outside. Two releases still escaped and made the top ten. There are five records in the top 15 that weren’t released in 2022. Shut up. Ah do warra want!

YOU DON’T LOVE ME? BIG FUCKING DEAL

#16 Nwando Ebizie: The Swan

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Ah fuck, this is jazz, isn’t it?

Aw man, I feel gross even referencing that storyline, And yet here I am. Am I really better than the rest of you. Yes. But perhaps not as much as I once believed… No. Still as much. I just checked. Phew

We’ve already learned what magic can be created by the combination of Los Angeles and Newcastle-upon-Tyne but, guess what? Yorkshire by way of the Nigerian Igbo ethnicity creates magic that’s just that little bit better! There is but one question on everyone’s lips though:

WHERE EXACTLY IS ‘TODMORDEN’?

#17 Young Jesus: Shepherd Head (+ love for a new century)

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(Firstly, this entry was originally just the outstanding LP ‘Shepherd Head’, until I remembered that the band also released a limited edition and equally fabulous EP ‘love for a new century‘, a one day BandCamp exclusive to raise funds for the Midwest Access Coalition, a charity providing funding for people who now -fucking ridiculously – are forced to travel to different states in the US as a woman’s right to her own body somehow went up for debate in that hellhole country in 2022. Didn’t buy it on May 7th?? Well sucks to be you. There’s nothing stopping you from just donating to that charity though, you lazy pricks)

Yeah, I know, it’s just ‘Bandcamp’, isn’t it? Not ‘BandCamp’ like it’s some internet 2.0 app allowing preteen marching band players share news about events (that later turned out to be a massive secret international pedophile ring), but I started calling it ‘BandCamp’ on the first sodding entry so now I have to either go back and change every entry – which will take, ugh, effort – or just continue doing so and hope nobody notices. I’ll change it in 2023, I promise. Resolution and shit, yeah?

#PROMISE

#18 Nilüfer Yanya: Painless

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Troubled don’t count the ways I’m broken
Your troubles won’t count, not once we’ve spoken
What troubles me now if I tear this open
Some people won’t have the faintest notion

Trouble

OK, seriously though, not being funny, yeah? But where the fuck did this come from?

Nilüfer’s 2019 debut ‘Miss Universe‘ was… pretty dang good. Like, decent little record that, lots of good fun. Some absolute guaranteed bops, trust me. The album itself didn’t make the Necessary Evil 2019 countdown, but I liked it enough to include opening track In Your Head at #79 in that year’s Legit Bosses, admitting that I should have invested more time in the album.

THERE ARE CURRENTLY 186 2022 LEGIT BOSSES. NEEDS TO BE TRIMMED

#19 Wilma Vritra: Grotto

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Fucking hell, Denzel Curry and Wilma Vritra? I really am a fucking insufferable BandCamp edgelord white boy, aren’t I? You’re all waiting for Earl Sweatshirt now, aren’t you? I’ve definitely have a ‘Die Lit’ poster above my breakfast bar, don’t I? Because I absolutely have a breakfast bar.

My husband and I wake up every morning and bring our coffee out to our ‘Die Lit’ breakfast bar and sit and talk for hours. Every morning. It never gets old and we never run out of things to talk. Love Playboi Carti him so much.

God, I fucking hate me.

MUTUAL