I’m always slightly unsure of my love for Alt-J, considering I joined their bandwagon very late on – this is only the second album of their’s I’ve heard – and way after their true critical peak.
#6 Alt-J: The Dream
#7 Prince Daddy & the Hyena: Prince Daddy & the Hyena
Ah shit, ma dudes, I won’t be able to argue my way out of this one. This is definitely emo.
And this isn’t just emo, it’s a concept album about the meaning of death itself. Ma dudes, have I just named ‘The Black Parade’ as the seventh best album of 2022?
POETRY THAT NEVER CLICKS WITH ME#8 Jeshi: Universal Credit
When I become in charge of the UK – I am more than happy to kill the 50.48million people ahead of me* in the line of succession to become king and then declare an absolute monarchy – I like to think I will be a fair and benevolent ruler to the 15 million or so remaining residents that I didn’t need to slaughter in order to become leader. The death penalty though? Yeah, bring that shit in straight away. Only for the most heinous crimes (parking on bike lanes for example), but chiefly for what my reign will consider the Original Sin: complaints about how ‘easy’ people on benefits have it. Yeah, any version of that and it’s Who Wants to be Beheaded?! live on ITV presented by Declan Donnelly (I can’t explain it, but I feel that Ant McPartlin will have been executed pretty early on).
(*yeah, worked it out. I accept that I’m pretty low down on the list, but I am white, so the Royal Family will still automatically choose me ahead of a certain section of the population. So there’s that.)
PAIN IN MY MIND, BRAIN, BACK, LOWER SPINE#9 Sharon van Etten: We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong
Ooooooh, that title is an open goal for renowned and celebrated political satirists such as myself, isn’t it?? ‘We’ve been going about this all wrong’, aye? What biting topical references could I make here??
OK, OK, let me just get my satire iron. I’m about to take you to a satire ground. Like higher ground, yeah? You got that? Allow me to put on my satirish dancing shoes and perform for you a satirish jig, Remember that Jim Carrey film, ”Satiar Liar’?? Well, that’s me.
THIS IS SOLID GOLD CONTENT#10 The Hotelier: It Never Goes Out
We leave our higher educations that we all ‘must’ get
Our Lives Would Make a Sad, Boring Movie
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
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
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)
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)
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)
Holy shit! Happy birthday ‘Electra Heart’!
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#15 Charli XCX: Crash
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