6: John Grant: Grey Tickles, Black Pressure

Dec 11, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

John Grant is absolutely one of the finest things in the world, I love him more than that sculpture of John Goodman that I sculpted out of discarded peanut husks that I keep next to my bed so that I can lick it last thing at night for good luck. The consistent quality of his three albums to date is astonishing, and ‘Grey Tickles, Black Pressure’ (a combination of the literal English translations of the Icelandic for ‘mid life crisis’ and the Turkish for ‘nightmare’. John Grant is a bit of a polyglot, so why not show off a little here and there?) is just another one that at least enters into the argument of being his very best. What is beyond argument though is that Grant is absolutely the greatest lyricist working today, something he proves again and again and again (and again) here. If you entered the album unsure you would be confronted with the only artist in the world who would open an album (after a layered vocal quote a line from Corinthians 13) with the killer line “I did not think I was/The one being addressed/In haemorrhoid commercials/On the TV set” before the gorgeous and previously extremely radio friendly title track concerned with the importance of avoiding self-pity in the wake of his HIV diagnosis comes together masterfully with a chorus of “And there are children who have cancer/And so all bets are off/Cause I can’t compete with that”. To be honest, I’d be quite happy to spend many thousands of words here just picking out and highlighting my particular favourite lyrics, though I think that Courtney Barrett’s (who Grant outshines a thousandfold as a lyricist) album showed previously that a great way with words isn’t enough to propel an album to greatness. Thankfully the music on ‘Grey…’ is equally as magnificence and breathtaking, jumping from a different genre in each track though never sounding detached as Grant’s considerable presence always binds the songs together. Though as on his previous album the pure electronica such as ‘Snug Slacks‘ fails to work quite as well, it still serves as a great stage for the magnificence of his perhaps under-appreciated voice. At the end of the day Adele needs to have words with John Grant if she wants to learn a different yet no less emotionally affecting way to convey heartbreak.

‘Fun’ Fact: This still isn’t quite his best album, as it lacks a chorus quite as magnificent as ‘GMF‘

Polyglot? What difference does it make how many wives he has? You idiot, you’re getting mixed up with a polytheist. Or is it a polygon? Listen to ‘Down Here‘ while I try and think

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7: Tame Impala: Currents

Dec 11, 2015Dec 11, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

‘Currents’ is arguably the most joyous album ever released that’s mainly concerned with melancholy and isolation, at least since Scott Walker’s 1996 album ‘Get To Fuck You Complete Barms’, which contained the disco stomper ‘My Willy Hurts When I Pee‘ that really blew up in Ibiza that summer after it was remixed by Todd Terry. The Australian band’s (‘band’ is an extremely loose term when used in reference to Tame Impala, the ‘band’ is essentially Kevin Parker and whatever handful people he happened to bump into on the way to the Post Office that morning) is a blessed leap into fully synthesised pop music, with guitars ditched almost completely. The thrilling opening track ‘Let It Happen‘ could sit happily on Daft Punk’s last album (and be the best track) while you can quite easily imagine Justin Bieber taking on ‘The Moment‘ (but not owning the song anywhere near as beautifully as Parker does). I’ve little to say on this album, it’s near pure pop perfection, and the musical arrangements are just outrageously superb, as you move down the track listing it’s just one monumental achievement after the next.

‘Fun’ Fact: Kevin Parker claims in a period of writers’ block he wrote an entire album for Kylie Minogue. For fuck’s sake Kevin! You can’t tease us with that and then not set the collaboration up!

Surely ‘BB Talk‘ by Miley Cyrus is the best spoken word song of the year? I dunno, ‘Past Life‘ runs it pretty close

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Another important announcement

Dec 11, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

OK, we’re stepping it up a gear once again: From this point onward if you stated that any of the following 7 albums were the greatest album of the year you wouldn’t sound too ridiculous (although, the album at number one is so clearly the best that any other choice would still leave you open to certain ridicule)

8: Hannah Cohen: Pleasure Boy

Dec 11, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

There is no artist on this countdown- few on this Earth- with a greater disparity between the quality of their work and the level of their fame than Hannah Cohen. Cohen’s songs are so ridiculously fantastic that her music should be as inescapable as whatever nonsense John Lewis has squirted out as their latest Christmas add… no, wait, Hannah Cohen should be in the John Lewis advert, standing on the moon charming the entire Earth with a singing of ‘Keepsake‘ before eventually destroying the solar system with gamma rays shot from her very eyes as John Lewis reminds us that Acana Moth Control Trap is now half price.

I fear I may have gone off on a little bit of a tangent there…

‘Pleasure Boy’ is absolutely magnificent piece of work, an ingenious mix of synthesisers and jazz music but also much better than that sounds. Cohen had previously preferred to work with simple musical arrangements to reflect the simple and raw emotions she was attempting to convey, but on her second album a magnificent wall of sound powers the heartache to sheer celestial levels. I can imagine some people might consider the naked emotion on display here occasionally overbearing, but these people are obviously idiots and their opinion should be aggressively discounted: ‘Pleasure Boy’ simply makes you swoon as it veers from the exquisite to the exhilarating.

‘Fun’ Fact: The way ‘Watching You Fall‘ climaxes at 3:31 with ‘But you’re still my baby!’ is the greatest thing that’s ever happened.

So is this your pick of some obscure and unlistenable artist I’ve never heard of because you think it makes you sound cool? Not at all, listen to ‘Take The Rest‘ and tell me it’s in any way difficult to listen to

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9: Lupe Fiasco: Tetsuo & Youth

Dec 11, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

After a the polite introduction of a gorgeous little instrumental opener acts as a polite cough to ensure you’re listening Wasalu Jaco’s fifth album kicks into ‘Mural‘ and immediately sets out what to expect from the entire set. It’s one of three tracks here to pass eight minutes, yet like the other two- and indeed the album itself- not a second feels overlong or out of place, and there is little in the way of a hook or chorus, just Lupe shooting out rhymes and wordplay that sometimes sound like free association or just sometimes sheer nonsense (“I like my pancakes cut in swirls/Moroccan moles and undercover squirrels/I like cartoons, southern cities with large moons/Faith healers, ex-female drug dealers and art booms/Apologize for my weird mix/What taste like hot dogs and tear drips/And looks like pantomime and clear bricks/And smells like shotguns and deer piss”) that’s never less than absolutely thrilling to listen to. Fiasco is so obviously in deep love with the very craft of rapping, and ‘Tetsuo & Youth’ is essentially on long 78 minute example of just how thrilling and engrossing the art form can be. Aside from the extraordinary rhymes though, the reason ‘Tetsuo & Youth’ succeeds so comprehensively is because the songs are so dazzling and the production so rich, the album sounds almost aggressively focused and absolutely sure of itself and what it intends to achieve. Lupe’s lyrical concerns are not just gibberish though- you could spend days raking over every line of ‘Prisoner 1&2‘ (the second song to beak eight minutes) for just one example- and there is a overriding theme of the sad realities of black youths in America, though not without hope that the future could see change for the better. ‘Tetsuo & Youth’ constructs a thrilling and bewitching world both lyrically and musically that even after nearly an hour and a half rambling its hills you only want to spend more time within.

‘Fun’ Fact: You’ve no doubt heard all the rumours and assumed it was some kind of internet urban legend, but I can confirm that, yes, Lupe was born on the same day Agatha Barbara became the first female president of Malta

So what was it you said about CHVRCHES changing their name? Jesus, will you just leave it? Listen to ‘Deliver‘, isn’t that just one of the most perfect songs you’ve ever heard? Both lyrically and musically it blows my tiny mind.

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10: CHVRCHES: Every Open Eye

Dec 11, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

“We will take the best parts of ourselves/And make them gold”

I have to say it saves me a lot of time when artists include reviews of their own music within the album itself, if only the new Prince had a song with the chorus ‘This shit took my ten minutes/I wrote it between scratching my ass/To be honest you should just give it a pass’ or if the title track on Carly Rae Jepson’s latest was a sing-a-long of ‘Insert lyric here/Insert lyric here/The fact I lack personality is already clear/So please insert lyric here’ then it would act as a great help to reviewers (although to be fair Adele’s album does contain the line ‘This is never ending/We’ve been here before’). And CHVRCHES outline their modus operandi clearly on ‘Make Them Gold‘: they intend to affirm and accentuate the glistening qualities of 2013’s debut that first brought them to the brisk of massive popularity. It’s so refreshing to see a band pull an ‘anti-MGMT’: to embrace rather than shun their poppier qualities. Their second album is an astonishing collection of some of the year’s best pop music. CHVRCHES may have sanded some of the jagged edges off their sound slightly since their debut was equally as storming, but this is still an amazing synthesised sound collage that should start to see them universally accepted as one of Britain’s best bands. The first three tracks here are almost impossibly exciting, and while the album can’t possibly remain on quite the same level, it’s still a remarkably consistent collection of killer songs: even co-songwriter Martin Doherty’s attempt on the microphone is forgiveable (generally because the song’s so brilliant), as is their pilfering of the odd Depeche Mode synth line. Absolutely brilliant.

‘Fun’ Fact: While recording Doherty described ‘Every Open Eye’ as a ‘deep, thoughtful, dark’ album. The only way he could possibly consider this album ‘dark’ is if he were referring to the slightly shadowy cover art.

Why didn’t you use that fact about them putting a ‘v’ into ‘Churches’ to make the band easier to search for on Google? Because I already made a joke about that when I reviewed their debut album 2 years ago- a pretty damn good joke too- and even if no fucker read it I don’t want to repeat material, no matter how gold it it. Apropos of nothing ‘Empty Threat‘ is the best track after the initial three.

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11: Grimes: Art Angels

Dec 10, 2015Dec 10, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Claire Boucher is an absolute motherfucker, releasing her fourth album as Grimes in early November and forcing me to attempt to force feed the work into my brain, employing young Victorian urchins to shovel piles of it into my ears for 20 hours a day as I considered whether the work deserved a place on this list, the most desired attainment in the business.

…and it absolutely does, ‘Art Angels’ is an absolute masterpiece that I imagine will be regarded in the future as one of 2015’s most significant albums, maybe one of the decade’s. I have a feeling that if this were released in June it would be number 1 on this list, it demands infinitely more time poured into it than I have managed. Grimes possesses the astonishing ability to shine as both an experimental avant-garde art project and also retain the ability to craft absolutely irrefutable perfect pop. There are whole dissertations to be written on the way Grimes subverts and exposes sexist ideas and assumptions of females in pop music, but I feel after less than a month clutching this album close to my breast has afforded me time ‘only’ to marvel at the astonishing production, incredible ambition, and the songs themselves which are…

so…

fucking…

good…

In the future Grimes will be regarded as maybe the most critical and substantial artist of the 2010s, so you may as well get on board now.

‘Fun’ Fact: The online music magazine Pitchfork once described Grimes as a ‘human Tumblr’. Honestly, we should organise a boycott or something…

‘Human Tumblr’? What does that even mean?? I have no fucking idea, to be honest I’m not 100% sure what ‘Tumblr’ is. I’m also struggling to recommend just one song here, the album is just hit after hit, maybe just start with the single ‘Flesh Without Blood‘

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12: Young Fathers: White Men Are Black Men Too

Dec 10, 2015Dec 10, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Young Fathers have very quickly become one of British music’s stand out acts, mainly because of the fact they simply don’t sound remotely similar to anyone else (though there are occasional flashes of TV On the Radio). They’re usually (and lazily) referred to as rap, but their songs often lack any hip-hop production and the lyrics are delivered in a style more easily comparable to some sort of perverted gospel or even peculiar terrace chants. Their second album comes less than a year after their Mercury Prize winning debut and so predictably lacks some of that record’s impact, it’s more concerned with expertly honing their heavily individual sound right now rather than ripping everything up starting again. There’s a little more of a rock influence here than on their debut, while as the title suggests there are lyrics slightly more concerned with racial politics and identity (‘I’m tired of playing the good black/I’m tired of having to hold back…I’m tired of blaming the white man/His indiscretion don’t betray him…Some white men are black men too/Nigger to them, gentlemen to you’) but mostly 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.

‘Fun’ Fact: Young Fathers member Alloysious Massaquoi is the enemy of spellcheckers everywhere

Is it actually better than the first though? Whisper it, but it might be, though it could never possibly match the shock to the system when you first hear their music, as fantastic as tracks like ‘Rain or Shine‘ are

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13: Dan Deacon: Gliss Riffer

Dec 10, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Even if you didn’t love Deacon’s fourth album it’d still snuggle up close to you and embrace you in a strong bear hug you couldn’t escape from, it’d still brush your face tenderly and tell you how beautiful your eyes are, it’d listen to your opinion on why you don’t love it and still pay for your bar bill while you weren’t looking. Luckily this is all deeply hypothetical because there’s absolutely no freaking way on God damn Earth that you wouldn’t fucking adore this album. It’s batshit mental, but in a gloriously controlled and deliberate way, utilising such a rich musical palate that letting it wash through you is the lushest thing you’ve done to your ears since you decided to attach kittens to your ear buds when you last cleaned them out. DD seems to have discovered a special kingdom underneath the synth stabs and reverb that is sheer splendour to spend 44 minutes prancing around inside. He obviously can’t decide whether to be a portrayer of dance bangers or throw out arty minimalism more beloved by the intellectuals and so simply tries to do both, some of the songs here sound simply like the two approaches played on top of each other and it works magnificently. An utterly life-affirming experience.

‘Fun’ Fact: Deacon’s initials- DD- are also the name of a rather large bra-size

Wh… Really? That’s your fact? Ah come on, while listening to ‘Feel the Lightning‘ it’s impossible for either me to think straight or for you to stay angry

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14: Kendrick Lamarr: To Pimp a Butterfly

Dec 10, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 8 Comments

Jesus, where do you even start with this…?

I’m probably going to write 200 or so words here about Lamarr’s third album, but it’d be ridiculous to even attempt to dip my toes into the themes, the lyrics and the general commentary offered by a set that is so layered, complex and intelligent that it can be almost intimidating. I’d need far more space to even scratch the surface of this record, I’d need twenty big books to put them in, twenty pretty girls to carry them down and twenty deep holes to bury them in. This is an album that opens with a track that turns the story of Wesley Snipe’s incarceration on tax evasion charges into an operatic parable on how poor black males are never schooled in correct management of money and celebrity, and then never lets up. Bizarrely even at 78 minutes it doesn’t feel overlong. ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ is an insanely ambitious album, at once loose and intense, funny and deeply serious, unashamedly theatrical in places and absolutely chaotic throughout. If there’s one complaint it’s that Lamarr’s lyrics seem to often to be concerned with inner-improvement and self-belief rather than the angry commentary on wider society exhibited by D’Angelo (‘i’ sounded disappointingly prosaic as a lead single), but that’s just an idiotic complaint by a dumb guy who hasn’t delved near far enough into the record: if you were literally going to listen to one album this year it’d be this, as 365 bouts of 24 hour days would still feel like not enough time spent unravelling its many layers.

‘Fun’ Fact: ‘How Much a Dollar Cost’ is the second best song to sample Radiohead’s ‘Pyramid Song‘ ever, after Plan B’s original version of ‘Missing Links‘

OK, I’ll dedicate some time to this album, though certainly not an entire year, in fact right now I can only really spare three minutes and 55 seconds: Enough time to take a swing at ‘King Kunta‘ then. Coincidentally, ‘King Kunta’ was my nickname at school

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