God this album irritates me so much.
WHEELS ON THE CURB SIDE, PUT IT IN SPEED DRIVE#15 Charli XCX: Crash
#16 Nwando Ebizie: The Swan
Ah fuck, this is jazz, isn’t it?
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)
(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
Troubled don’t count the ways I’m broken
Trouble
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
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
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#20 Spoon: Lucifer On The Sofa
#21 Rachika Nayar: Heaven Come Crashing
There is no quicker way to make me disregard a musician you’re recommending, no line to more immediately force me to role my eyes more comprehensively into the back of my head to the extent that they circle round to raise above my bottom eyelid with fresh knowledge of whether my frontal lobe should smile more, than to tell me that they’re a great guitarist.
This recommendation will come from people who would scoff at the volume of a bull elephant being neutered if you explained how some artist was worth listening to because they were a good singer or a great pianist or a extremely accomplished hydraulophone player. And, leaving the hairy old rock boi hypocrisy aside, they’d actually be right to. Just tone down the snark, OK lads? We’re all friends here.
(WE’RE NOT FRIENDS)#22 Denzel Curry: Melt My Eyez See Your Future
#23 Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul: Topical Dancer
Don’t say “Nice pair”
Esperanto
Say “I love the symmetry of you”
Don’t say
“But I’m allowed to say that
Because I grew up in a black neighbourhood”
Say “My n… eighbour”
Don’t say “You speak my language surprisingly well”
Say “Do you speak Esperanto?”
Don’t say “Only a man is fit for this job”
Say “At least you tried, Karen”
Don’t say “I would like a black Americano”
Say “I’ll have an African American please”
Don’t say “White people can’t dance”
Say “Tom marches to the beat of a different drum”
Don’t say “So you’re from China, do you know my friend Hiro?”
Say “You must be blind not to see the difference”
Don’t say “We need to build a wall”
Say “I’m a world citizen, I don’t believe in borders”
This album is a fucking riot and – considering that since March every single person on Earth has had an invitation – if you haven’t joined this party yet you need to have serious words with yourself. Serious words. No other album in the world could so easily combine the dankest beats and electronic dance music, with songs that combine tales of one member (Charlotte) being catcalled as a thirteen year old, but then also combined with another band member (Bolis) explaining their own sexual awakening by way of Acqua Di Gio perfume, but then moves on to Charlotte’s failed attempt to eat food sexually in order to attract a boy named Stéphane only “I couldn’t locate my mouth anymore/The nacho fell straight into my empty bra/Stéphane ended up with Nadia”. There’s a lot happening here! And, fuck Nadia, right? No! I didn’t mean it like that, I meant…
I LIKE THIS, GO ON#24 Destroyer: Labyrinthitis
Oh Aggie, your beating heart was a carriage made of gold
June
How the arithmetic of this guitar melts your heart is beyond me
And when I say beyond me, I mean beyond me
Love ya? I barely know you, it goes to show
Who really knows what love is?
The branches, the breeze, the roiling seas
None of it seems worth mentioning
Though I’m in the process of figuring it out
Even if it’s elementary
A scrapyard angel, wings of brass
Ash, a river called trash
And speaking of lifelike, this is what life’s like
You thread the needle, then the needle runs dry
You thread the needle, then the needle runs dry
“Inward Crackle,” says the fink to himself
Oh well, I wasn’t taught how to
Go off like a, go off like a, go off like a, go off like a
Go off like a hydrogen bomb
But I do radiate a certain glow
It flutters and fades, a Ferris wheel on the run from the snow
You have to look at it from all angles
Says the cubist judge from cubist jail
The sky glows, the heat is unbearable
Parrot weather
My decision is final, a crazy game
I traded in moonlight for the morning dew
I know dusk when I see one
I know rust when I see it
You come out swinging, but you go down swinging too
You pay good money for a million dollar view
Flipping the pages of Chatelaine
The rude empiricism of every troubled loser
Quote, unquote, unquote
A moment alone please
A moment alone please
A moment alone please
With this, with this
With this rhapsody
With this rhapsody
Vital information from where I’m standing
Low-born Madonna
With her typewriters in the rain
Clacking their misfortunes, speech, speech
A figure of light’s trapped inside your kimono
Absent friends, where’d you go?
And while we’re on the subject of psychotic passwords
Honing in on nothing
Everywhere Rome goes
Everybody wants her
Ah fuck, I feel like a discovery someone once saw
On a clear day
Dump him
Dan Bejar, ladies and gentlemen and others
WHOO! WORD COUNT!
Necessary Evil 