Coping Without Lossless
35 Arca: Arca
Author: Lex Leeson
Unrecognised genius, or maybe pathetic pleas for validation, or perhaps even both
36 Ghostpoet: Dark Days + Canapes
But He Doesn’t Ghostknowit
Imagine being the actual ghost of a poet? It’d be a rather unfortunately ironic existence by my thinking: you’d be overloaded with material to be all poetic about- your odes on the loneliness of death and the unease inspired looming threat of being ghostbusted at any time would be stone cold classics– yet you’d be unable to broadcast your genius to the wider world!!
Sure, you can chuck a verse or two Derek Acorah’s way, but he’s far too much of a egotist to give you proper credit when he broadcasts your work, and he’ll most likely claim that he wrote most of the best stuff himself. You’d be screaming your lungs out accusing him of plagiarism, and the only person who can hear you is Derek! What a palaver!!
37 Arcade Fire: Everything Now
A Decent Amount of Things Now
“God make me famous/If you can’t, just make it painless”
When I was younger- and older. And recently. And presently. And probably tomorrow, because changing one’s opinion is one of the hardest thing for a person to do, despite my pontification on the previous entry– I never used to understand why famous people committed suicide.
I mean, I would consider suicide on a near daily basis sometimes, and often attempted it*, but of course I would: I was a useless and completely inadequate human being that nobody loved. But these people, these people were stars! Everybody loved them! Even if you were as ugly or as ginger as I was, if you were a freakin’ celebrity girls will throw your wet knickers at you and tattoo your name on their vaginal lips with a rusty nail and a broken biro**.
38 Sufjan Stevens: The Greatest Gift
All of Me Still Wants All of This
Why do we humanoids place so much value in stubbornness? Why are the people who never change their beliefs or conduct the most respected?
You should always be changing your mind: the world is forever changing, more facts are constantly being uncovered, scientific breakthroughs are continually reversing long held beliefs. If you’re a fully aware human being, you probably shouldn’t believe the same things and hold the same opinions today that you did yesterday. If you believe the same things and hold the same opinions that you did ten years ago, you are an absolutely worthless entity and hold no value as a human. You are probably a very successful Member of Parliament.
People who change their minds are the worst. Like, slightly more respected than ISIS members, but far more hated than the IRA, who are viewed with a bit of nostalgic wistfulness these days.
39 ANOHNI: Paradise
Distant Wonder Rumbles
This mini-album is a threat. It’s an aggressive and intimidating declaration of intentions. It’s subtle, but there are people (or perhaps just ‘person’: me) smart enough to decipher it. Like when Donald Trump
visits Kim Jong Un for a state banquet, and Jongy spends the entire meal flicking peas directly into Trump’s mashed potatoes, particularly around the east side of the plate. Trump won’t understand the suggestion, of course, because [DONALD TRUMP IS STUPID JOKE] and the fat fuck is just happy that he’s getting a little extra food. But us smart people (yes, you. And you. And you! Not you though. You know why. You know why) will see the threat being made, we’ll know some pretty awesome shit’s about to go down!!
40 Lil Peep: Come Over When You’re Sober Pt.1
A Legacy of Obnoxious Beauty and Regrettable Tattoos
That’s true: I would have never even considered listening to some white (presumed) rapper with worse tattoos than Cheryl Cole and apparently popular with teenagers (who, as I’m sure you’re aware, are universally thick as soggy pig shit) unless his death made the (minor) headlines in November 2017. Alternatively, if I died from a suspected drugs overdose instead of Lil Peep, I would have also never had the chance to hear this record and most probably never write this post. Also, if I had no ears I would be categorically unable to listen to it. If I was an iguana rather than a human, I might possess the ability to literally listen to the album, but it’s highly unlilkely I would manage to collate my thoughts on it on a WordPress blog. It’s definitely true that if circumstances were different then things wouldn’t be the same, and you’re extremely clever for pointing that out.
Continue reading “40 Lil Peep: Come Over When You’re Sober Pt.1”
41 Shamir: Revelations
I Bet You Think This Album’s About You
On his second song from his second album* Shamir brilliantly showcases something quite perverse about the human psyche. Let’s imagine that I was once Shamir’s shitty ex-boyfriend: if I just left my clothes strewn across the hallway when getting undressed ready for bed; if I pretended to be, like, really into hip-hop as I felt it would somehow demonstrate affinity, and yet only ever listen to Lil Yachty on loop**; if every time I entered the house I’d bound over the sofa, snatch the remote from him and turn over from whatever faggy thing he was watching like ‘Narcos’ or ‘Gomorrah’ in order to immediately watch the highlights from last night’s WWE Raw (“No, Shammy***, you don’t understand! It’s being held in Chicago and, like, CM Punk is definitely going to make a comeback!”); whenever I’d finish the last of the milk I’d just put the carton back in the fridge; if I once acted surprised when he mentioned he’s black because I ‘Really, honestly don’t see colour’; if I said to friends that you ‘obviously’ didn’t vote for Trump; if I had an ‘All Lives Matter’ bumper sticker and don’t understand the problem with it; if I always had bad breath; if I was the absolute freaking worse. Then imagine if Shamir wrote a song outlining how big of a frickin’ arsewipe I was, basically just taking the 182 words above and making them rhyme (the fucking hack), and broadcast to all of his fans what a miserable waste of flabby-fucks-not-worth-giving I actually was. Have you ever thought how that would make me feel??
42 Pixx: The Age of Anxiety
Anxious Geography
“Here me/Hear me cry out/Everything is weird in/America”
America is a different country from Britain. Like, completely different: it has its own laws and everything, and is entirely full of people who are very different from the people in the UK. Not only is there a lot more of them but, let’s face it, a lot of them are probably a lot fatter, so their combined weight of humanity would be so much more that it would render Britain’s almost inconsequential.
43 Big Boi: BOOMIVERSE
Listen, I spent two freaking days finishing my 2000 word Lil Yachty appraisal, so the next couple of entries are going to be a little shorter than usual
Boi Makes Pleasantly Big Bang
Ah, Big Boi: what can you say about him that hasn’t already been said?
You could say quite a lot, actually: you could say he was part pf the water polo team that won bronze in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics; you could say that he’s terrified of performing squats because he’s convinced the movement will force him to pass wind and he’d just die from the embarrassment; you could say that the only reason bananas no longer grow in Atlanta is because Bog Boi ate them all; you could say that he spells Ludacris’s name as ‘Ludicrous’ because he’s vehemently against using hip hop as an excuse to propagate incorrect spelling; there are loads of things that haven’t been said about Andre Patton before.
I mean, I guess it’d be more difficult to say things that weren’t lies, but still…
44 Lil Yachty: Teenage Emotion
The Teens are Revolting
A revolution doesn’t mean that things are being changed for the better. It just means that things are being changed
It’s for this reason that Donald Trump
is probably the most revolutionary American President in generations.
Barack Obama certainly wasn’t revolutionary: he was a notable and genuinely inspiring representation of the progress made in perhaps considering the possibilities of equal opportunities in the country (and by extension the western world) but aside from the colour of his skin his rise to power (best at school – notable stint at very high paid but extremely dull job – moves into politics – doesn’t do anything horrendously embarrassing for about a decade – gets good at public speaking – becomes president) and pretty much the entirety of his term in office was generally a cut and paste job from near enough every democratic president in history (Republicans are nearly exactly the same, except they claim their family owned a farm, wear cowboy hats on distinctly more occasions, and actually talk about guns rather than change the subject in fear of losing votes). He was smart, he said the right things, he wore the right suits, he never slagged off Will.I.Am on Twitter for declining record sales after he stopped working with him. Hopefully Obama’s time in office will encourage far more non-white feasible presidential candidates in the future, but right now the most revolutionary thing to come out of his presidency may be the future popularity of drone strikes.
Necessary Evil 