Tag: albums

Necessary Evil 2025: The Ragin’ Climax

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

The stage curtains open, revealing 40 lovely ladies in bathing suits, wearing sashes that denote which of 2025’s greatest albums they represent, blinding the front row with quite how dazzlingly white their full toothed grins are, in danger of taking someone’s fucking eye out with quite how resplendently squeezed tight their open cleavages are.

I come out through the floor on an elevating platform, full suit and bow tie, hair slicked back and microphone in my hand:

“There she iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis, Miss Necessary Eviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil…!”

“…and I said ‘Lady, that ain’t no gear stick!!!’ Seriously though, if you don’t let me videotape me pissing on you then I’ll eject you from the competition

Considering this will be the seventeenth time that I’ve collated the Scientifically Proven Best Albums of the Year™, I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing by this point, yeah? I had only just graduated from university when I started writing this dumb list that nobody reads, and I’ll be freaking forty two when I finish the 2025 vintage! Considering my physical health (which, in 2025, has definitely started to take on a whole ‘end of days’ start of feel), it’s looking more and more likely that I will die before I ever retire this list. Mate, I would love to stop, this is a massive pain in the arse that ruins Christmas and my birthday for me every year. But if I go, then who seriously is there to take my place?? Pitchfork?? Give me a break. Fantano?? Bald fraud. Smash Hits??? Mate, I don’t like having to break this to you, but Smash Hits Magazine shut down in 2006. To quote a far less talented (but bizarrely more feted, which is often how it goes) personality who has been able to actually retire this year: I’m still here because you can’t do your job!

the last time ISN’T now

2 Bon Iver: 22, A Million

~ Lex Leeson ~ 7 Comments

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first: I’ve always pronounced it ‘Bon Ivor’

+43

Because of this I set up a Google Alert to tell me when somebody finally made a ‘Bon Iver the Engine’ meme, as I truly believed that such a witty reference to both an ultra hipster musical act and an old children’s’ show would truly bring the world together in these troubled times

+23

No, but apparently he’s one of those ultra-hipster tossers who chooses to pretentiously pronounce his name the way it’s spelled, so the reference is lost

-3

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3 Let’s Eat Grandma: I, Gemini

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

‘I, Gemini’ is a perfect encapsulation of why it is I love music

+100

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Let’s Eat Grandma (great name +1) are two Norwich girls who…

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I think I’m allowed to refer to them as such, they were only 16 and 17 years old when they released this album

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No, honestly, and if they were in their 40s, or 30s, or even 20s they simply wouldn’t have been able to make an album as supernaturally beautiful as this

+100

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4 The Hotelier: Goodness

~ Lex Leeson ~ 23 Comments

‘Goodness’ starts with a fucking poem

-8

Picture the scene: you’ve returned home after a hard day investment banking and immediately retired to the smoking library. You’ve taken off your driving gloves, unclipped the ‘Shaguar’ cufflinks that were already painfully dated when your laundry maid got you them for Christmas years ago, thrown on your smoking jacket, lit up a Silver Vogue Lucky Strike and reclined in the leather push back ready to hear the new collection by young upstarts The Hotelier

+1

hotelier

(erm, that’s honestly the record cover, I’m not just being weird…)

You are greeted by a nerdy and presumably privileged white guy explaining to you how he deserves your pity and attention because he once fell in a pond when he was younger. In a fucking poem

-10

You are enveloped by dismay, the world is terrible, people are shit and make shit music, despair is the only feeling that washes over you

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Then the first song starts…

+1

 

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5 Kid Cudi: Passion, Pain and Dragon Slayin’

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

Last/this year, the DWP decided that I was no longer a disabled person, and I was moved off the ESA benefit and instead afforded the honour of beta testing Universal Credit and informed there were no barriers to me gaining employment

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I volunteer at a lot of immigration and refugee charities- because, ladies, I’m everything you’ve ever fucking dreamed of- and was sure to inform the Job Centre of my shifts, as I believed they were important in me gaining experience in both employment and immigration law, which I have decided is where my future lies

+18

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I was told to stop volunteering though, as it would interfere with me getting a proper job, as the welfare system in this country is solely based on stopping you being a parasite of state funds. So, I just stopped telling the Job Centre of my four days a week volunteering (God, I am such a fucking awesome person) and while I slowly (and thus far successfully) made my way toward earning the relevent qualifications I made sure to keep the JC happy by applying for one job a day that I has little intention or likelihood of getting

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=6 Jenny Hval: Blood Bitch

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

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Women are gross, aren’t they?

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I learned this week- from a mate who’s got a cousin whose mate swears he saw an internet video of it- that girls can actually bleed out of their noo-noo when the mood takes them!

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Daniel- who’s the mate who has a cousin who has a mate who reckons he’s actually seen it– says that they can only do it when the moon’s full, or summat. Fucking weird

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And yet still you have the existence of ‘menstrala’, crazy chicks actually making art out of their disgusting habit, like it’s something to be proud of!!

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8 Danny Brown: Atrocity Exhibition

~ Lex Leeson ~ 9 Comments

dan1

…and within the first minute of this masterpiece record you’re introduced pretty comprehensively to Mr Brown’s modus operandi: he’s crude, he’s explicit, he’s in pain resulting from his own excess, he’s a little bit funny, he’s a horrifying train wreck, he’s absolutely captivating

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‘Modus operandi’ is a Latin word literally meaning ‘the mode of the octopus’, as the ancient Romans believed the fact that the creature was able to manage with eight legs meant it must be an uncommonly focused animal

+62

danny brown

Not done one of those for a while, have I?

+52

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9 Against Me: Shape Shift With Me

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Honesty, this wasn’t intentional, it just so happens that music’s two most famous ‘chicks-with-dicks-or-maybe-not-we-don’t-know-and-why-is-it-considered-appropriate-to-debate-their-genitalia-it’s-not-like-Harrison-Ford-goes-on-Letterman-and-the-entire-interview-is-solely-based-on-the-precise-make-up-of-his-genitals-and…

Fucking hell… I’m starting this again, can you delete all that?

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Honestly, this wasn’t intentional, it just so happens that music’s two most famous transexuals ended up on this list together, I’m not operating some bizarre segregation, and if you look back at the list you won’t see that I’ve grouped all the Norwegians, all the Bronies, and all the Abecedarians together

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10 ANOHNI*: Hopelessness

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

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As a culture, we westerners are still not 100% ‘OK’ with transgendered people

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I mean, obviously: we’re not even close to 100% accepting homosexuality. We pat ourselves on the back every time a country legalises gay marriage, but it speaks volumes that every country bar Ireland didn’t dare put it to a vote, and you have to wonder how much bigger that 38% opposition would be if the people of Britain and America were polled

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11 Yeasayer: Amen and Goodbye

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

What’s the best song of the 10s?

+21

yeasayer

No, idiot, not the best songs of 10AD, as I think it’s universally accepted that the only music of that era that really holds up today is Ovid’s absolute banger Epistulae ex Ponto Bonko

+23

That’s where the term ‘put an Ex Ponto on it’ comes from, fact fans

+14

No, idiot, not the 1010s, though if we were then I would suggest Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau, though of course you could make a point for anything in the ‘Four Great Books of Song’

+32

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