And so it goes on
WHY ISN’T THIS BLOG MORE RESPECTED?#20 Spoon: Lucifer On The Sofa
Tag: 2022 best albums
#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!#25 Kendrick Lamar: Mr Morale & the Big Steppers
Fuck, dudes, I don’t fucking know.
I’m always wary of reacting to a Kendrick Lamar release. I’m far more scared of sharing my views on Mr Lamar than I am doing so with Taylor Swift (and even Pusha T), as I’m far more anxious about the Kendrickers than I am of the Swifties. And definitely more scared of them than I am of the Pushas, as that fangroup ain’t shit! Your hero calls me out (by, cough, ahem, misunderstanding the article and proving my point) and I don’t get one death threat or doxxing attempt?? We have a word for you around the Necessary Evil household: S… A… W… F… T… SAWFT! You casuals’ arms ain’t long enough to box with God. Hell, your arms ain’t long enough to wash my balls.
#DISS#26 Ibeyi: Spell 31
OK, so Sister 2 Sister is track four and it just sends me, knowarra mean? When that chorus hits and it’s all like:
Dancing in front of the mirror
Singing along with Shakira
Already I love, love, love love it. What an adorably succinct and heartwarming depiction of sisterly love. And ‘sisterly’ love doesn’t need to refer to literal siblings (even if it might do originally for Ibeyi’s twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz), but that sorority that can exist between friends. I mean, I guess. I grew up with two brothers and all my friends at school were boys (I was terrified of girls until…
SLOW DOWN, NOW WE’VE GROWN, LeT’S START ANEW#27 Shamir: Heterosexuality
You wanna kill me? Well, here’s your chance
I can barely get around now as it fucking stands
You wanna see me, but you just can’t get passed
How I look or talk or think or walk, and it’s fucking sadI don’t know what I can do
To make you comfortable
With what you see before you
So let me let you know thatI’m not cisgender, I’m not binary, trans
Cisgender
I don’t wanna be a girl, I don’t wanna be a man
I’m just existing on this God-forsaken land
And you can take it or leave it
Or you can just stay back, stay back
Heeeeey, you know what the world needs more of? Straight, cis, old, fat, white guys judging the scorched soul searching of young black queer people! Yeah yeah, Shamir, boohoo for you, tissues for your issues, but allow me to state the proper reaction to your inner trauma. “I’m just a faggot, who lives like a maggot”?? Hey! That’s our word for making fun of you people! So now we’re allowed to call you lot ‘queer’ and you get to use the F word?? And yet when I use the N word as a joke at my job I’m suspended from teaching primary school PE for a whole two weeks?! No fair! Where’s my artistic communication of hopelessness in a world that’s still depressingly oppressed against me?? I just wanna use the N word and bully queer people online!! Truly, we are the lost generation. Thank God that comedy is now legal on Twitter, because I’ve got some bangers.
UP YOURS, WOKE MORALISTS#28 Psalm One X Custom Made: Bigg Perm
What I do this shit for
Why I get so passionate
Never been in pitchfork
Nighas know I’m talented
Know they always watchin
Even when you feel obscure
You should know you poppin
I’m that bitch and yeah I’m sure
Pitchfork Score
Never been in Pitchfork?? That can’t be right, those motherfuckers review everything. When I released my first mixtape, ‘Phish Pale’, back in 2011, they even reviewed that piece of shit and gave it a respectable 6.8. I get it, that line is obviously meant to emphasise how bafflingly obscure she remains despite being consistently responsible for some of the greatest hip-hop of the past decade, but it’s not meant to be taken literally. Let’s just search the Pitchfork site:
See! She got one mention when she released a new track once! In October 2022. One month after this album was released.
Dang!
THE OSTRACISATION IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE#29 Anna von Hausswolff: Live at Montreux Jazz Festival
Bwa-haha! Yes! Yes! I know it was all I needed, I know that all it would take to lift me out of my stupor was a visit from my old friend, the big man downstairs, lord fire and brimstone, Georgia’s best fiddler (in every sense! Bwa-haha!), The Big D with the Big D, the Antipope, Red (Dante’s version), I Love Lucifer, Orbital’s 1996 number 3 hit, Mr Rin Tin Sin, The Devil himself!
Or herself. I’d like to think we’ve reached a stage now where we#re comfortable with the devil being a woman. If you met my ex-wife, you definitely agree.
OOOOOOOOOOH! #CANCELLED
Necessary Evil 