25 Phew: Our Likeness

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Do you feel like checking in on Phew? I feel like checking in on Phew.

Oh! Speak of the devil!

You know how I’ve been slowly chronicling Prince’s studio career album by album, year by year since 2018? Well, I never announced this before – or even ever consciously accepted that I was doing it before – but I’ve actually been doing something similar with one of the most exceptionally avant-garde musical artists of the last 40+ years: Hiromi Moritani AKA Phew formally known as Twitter.

IN THE BACK OF THE TAXI, SNIFFIN’ COCAINE

26 JPEGMAFIA x Danny Brown: SCARING THE HOES

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Yeah, that’s right, ALL CAPS. Because it’s been RAISED RIGHT. Can we please have a collaboration with awakebutstillinbed? Actually, I know I meant to clean up the capitalisation of ‘chaos take the wheel and i am the passenger‘, but can we just have that?? Honestly, use whatever grammar you want, call is ‘@wa[£b()$tIlInPEG’ for all I care. Can Peggy just produce?? JPEGMAFIA producing an emo album?? Nomnomnomnomnom! Give it to me now!!

Oh and apparently there was a different cover of this record?

Nah, Bandcamp one better lol

I DON’T TRUST ANY OF THESE BITCHES I’M WITH

27 Sharon van Etten: Tramp

~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

Sharon? Imma get to you in a minute, OK?

This going to be one of those narcissistic overshares that I occasionally dip into, so if you’re not interested in that maybe just skip to the end. And then tell all your friends and family how disappointed you are and make sure they all too click on the article and don’t read it. And get them all to subscribe as well. It’s the only way I’ll learn. I also accept how it heavily features somebody else as a main character, and though I’m going to obscure identities and nobody reads this blog, there’s always a chance that it will get back to them and they will recognise the situation being written about and find it triggering or traumatic. If that happens, I’ll just fucking delete it, whatever, it’s not worth causing someone else that kind of grief. This isn’t a blanket policy by the way: my ex-wife asked me to take down a post I wrote in 2021 and it’s still there, and this post is going to be way softer than that! Oh, and I should probably mention that they’ll be no suicidal ideations in this post. Sorry to disappoint you.

So anyway, it started with a photo:

still makes me laugh…🤦
IN THE BACK OF THE NIGHTCLUB, SIPPIN’ CHAMPAGNE

28 Efficax: Dissent, Penance, & Destroy

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

I mentioned the epic road in my awakebutstillinbed post. One of the most notable things about the eight minute soul cleanser is now it acts as an early and definitive primer on the wider themes of the whole album, and would likely have been the title track had the band not come up with the far more metal album name ‘chaos take the wheel and i am a passenger’. It’s all there: the anxious combination of living the life you’ve always dreamed of while still being dragged down by dejection and doubt, all backdropped by a tour bus hauling itself up highways on the endless cycle of boredom/validation/loss/boredom/validation/loss/boredom/validation/loss…

On what I guess would be the 20th track on ‘Dissent, Penance & Destroy’, my mate Efficax lays out a similar mission statement:

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

You told me,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Find out find out,

You told me,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

You told me,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Find out, find out.

fvckaround

And around they fuck, with great discoveries being made. They also fuck as well, you know? You get me? Like the songs fuck? Like there are songs here that just law out vinyl sheets to protect the furnishings, squirt baby oil over every surface and just get down to it, yeah? Are you following me? Do I need to draw a diagram? Because you know I will.

JUST A HEART BROKE BITCH, HIGH HEELS, SIX INCH

31 awakebutstillinbed: chaos take the wheel i am a passenger

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

Fucking yes! Fucking yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! Three and a half fucking years I’ve held on to this screenshot!

People laughed at me when I saved that Tweet from 2020. Laughed at me! Of course, back then it had only been two years since the release of their incredible debut album ‘what people call low self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way other people see you*’, a furious and intoxicating powder keg of intense self-hatred infectiously narrated. All us ‘Bedheads’ ate it the fuck up, because we are all reprehensible vultures. We had tasted the blood of Shannon Taylor as they eviscerated themselves for our entertainment, greedily sucking it down as they slit their wrists above our mouths and let it flow so beautifully down our gullets. Yum yum yum yum. Please, Mommy, can we have some more?

IN FACT, I DON’T WANNA FEEL, SO I STICK TO SIPPIN’

32, 33 The National: Laugh Track/First Two Pages of Frankenstein

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

There’s recently been a lot of talk over what jobs will be the first to be replaced by AI, as all of humanity furrows its brow in the staff break room after the massive buy out of the company by robots. Part of the reason behind the 2023 actors and writers strike was the studios admitting that with AI it now took them no talent at all to make movies, with one studio exec admitting that “Mate, I caught Taylor Lautner’s face in my dashcam* while driving through Hollywood last week, now I have enough footage to release a dozen more Twilight movies. Watch out for ‘Twilight 8: Imprinting on Elves‘ this Christmas! Does anyone have any cocaine? Don’t print that last part”.

are Mandy, Indiana the version of Anna Indiana that caught a computer virus?

(*he was asking to clean the exec’s windows at a traffic stop. Taylor Lautner is… not in a good place, man… Partially because of AI! But, yes, mostly because of the PCP)

The UK government has “pledged to ask responsibility” on AI weapons, with a government source quoted as saying that “We would never enact the use of our kick ass, super cool war robots with anything less than absolute seriousness”. The source then did a robot dance with a toy gun in each hand while making ‘P-choo! P-choo! P-choo!’ laser sounds, before stopping, putting the toy guns back in their briefcase, clearing their voice and announcing “So, yeah, that’s pretty much how it works”. The government pledging to ‘act responsibility’ in the production of autonomous weapon systems – widely known as ‘killer robots’ – is like your weird uncle Danny pledging to ‘drink responsibly’ after lining up a dozen Jägerbathbombs (like a standard Jägerbomb with a sprinkling of bath salts) on the bar in front of him.

AND I DON’T WANNA FEEL HOW MY HEART IS RIPPIN’

35 Sufjan Stevens: Javelin

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Ma dudes, of course it’s great. It’s Sufjan freaking Stevens, yo! This is only their second proper album since their magnum opus ‘Carrie & Lowell’, which I named best album of 2015 ahead of ‘To Pimp a Butterfly*’ and forever confirmed that I am, in fact, the softest of soft soyboys. But Sufjan’s creativity and genius is far from simply contained to their own albums: they’ve penetrated Necessary Evil with Lowell themselves, with fellow indie softbois Bryce Dessnar, Nico Muhly & James McAllister, and just with shit that didn’t fit on his magnum opus. They had two Necessary Evil entries in 2017 and in 2020. Mate, the Sufjan Stevens Blogging Universe (SSBU) is rich with lore.

(*as low as number 14! You’ll rarely see lists of best albums of all time where it’s listed that low! And I stand by it. Why? Because I’m a free thinker. A philosopher. A leader. And, yeah, also a soft soyboy)

And they almost had two entries on the 2023. The year also saw the 20th anniversary release of ‘Michigan‘, and if you haven’t heard that album, maybe… like… listen to it rather than ‘Javelin’? Like, seriously, it shits all over this album. I’m not one of those dedicated softbois who have followed Sufjan religiously since he was releasing electronic albums based around the animals of the Chinese Zodiac, and…

THE MAN I LOVE SAT ME DOWN LAST NIGHT