Tag: Best albums of 2017

43 Big Boi: BOOMIVERSE

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Listen, I spent two freaking days finishing my 2000 word Lil Yachty appraisal, so the next couple of entries are going to be a little shorter than usual

Boi Makes Pleasantly Big Bang

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Ah, Big Boi: what can you say about him that hasn’t already been said?

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You could say quite a lot, actually: you could say he was part pf the water polo team that won bronze in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics; you could say that he’s terrified of performing squats because he’s convinced the movement will force him to pass wind and he’d just die from the embarrassment; you could say that the only reason bananas no longer grow in Atlanta is because Bog Boi ate them all; you could say that he spells Ludacris’s name as ‘Ludicrous’ because he’s vehemently against using hip hop as an excuse to propagate incorrect spelling; there are loads of things that haven’t been said about Andre Patton before.

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I mean, I guess it’d be more difficult to say things that weren’t lies, but still…

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44 Lil Yachty: Teenage Emotion

~ Lex Leeson ~ 14 Comments

The Teens are Revolting

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A revolution doesn’t mean that things are being changed for the better. It just means that things are being changed

It’s for this reason that Donald Trump

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is probably the most revolutionary American President in generations.

Barack Obama certainly wasn’t revolutionary: he was a notable and genuinely inspiring representation of the progress made in perhaps considering the possibilities of equal opportunities in the country (and by extension the western world) but aside from the colour of his skin his rise to power (best at school – notable stint at very high paid but extremely dull job – moves into politics – doesn’t do anything horrendously embarrassing for about a decade – gets good at public speaking – becomes president) and pretty much the entirety of his term in office was generally a cut and paste job from near enough every democratic president in history (Republicans are nearly exactly the same, except they claim their family owned a farm, wear cowboy hats on distinctly more occasions, and actually talk about guns rather than change the subject in fear of losing votes). He was smart, he said the right things, he wore the right suits, he never slagged off Will.I.Am on Twitter for declining record sales after he stopped working with him. Hopefully Obama’s time in office will encourage far more non-white feasible presidential candidates in the future, but right now the most revolutionary thing to come out of his presidency may be the future popularity of drone strikes.

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45 And So I Watch You From Afar: The Endless Shimmering

~ Lex Leeson ~ 10 Comments

Seth Manchester: So Much To Answer For

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Now, if you read my rapturous praise of The Hotelier’s ‘Goodness‘ last year- which you didn’t, because you’ve only arrived at this entry by mistake (perhaps after punching ‘erotic fucking baboon*’ into Google, arriving here penis in hand and, if you’re being honest, desperately disappointed) and already can tell that the cheap and obnoxious work evident in both the cheap presentation and the nonsensical garbage written is hardly worth trawling through three months worth of posts in order to proper place this particular entry on a semi-obscure instrumental rock band from Belfast in its intended context- then you might remember- though even if you did read it, it’s far from certain that you’d remember a brief snippet of information lightly touched on during the piece, and are far more likely to be mentally scarred for life by the image of a pale fat guy dancing with his shirt off if the entry left any lasting impression on you at all- how much of the praise for the construction of such an unholy masterpiece of a record should lay at the feet of one ‘Seth Manchester’, who contributed some of the greatest rock production I could ever remember hearing.

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I’ve, erm, lost a lot of weight since those pictures, ladies…

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47 Big Thief: Capacity

~ Lex Leeson ~ 9 Comments

Sibling Thievery

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I’ve already mentioned how much I always appreciate recommendations and referrals, how I am always fascinated by what exact pieces of culture push different people’s buttons and charge up their dopamine. I am always intrigued by different people’s appreciations and infatuations, and am always eager to investigate them further if I have no working relationship with them.

(Once, back when I was drinking, drugging and fucking at university- believing I was living an impossibly cool Hunter S Thompson-like gonzo lifestyle while actually near irreparably fucking my life up for more than a decade- I was in a girl’s room the morning after a CONQUEST the night before- #LAD- and was perusing her CD collection. I laughingly put down the ridiculousness of much of her collection, explaining to her at length how fucking shit Jamiroquai, Sublime, The Mighty Bosstones etc were. She slapped me in the face. Like, hard. I immediately realised how much I deserved it, and changed my life accordingly. I later married that woman. True story)

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48 MUNA: About U

~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

(Never) Get Over Urself

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“Now I know I’m not so special/Cause I’m all dressed up/And you think that I’m beautiful/But it’s not enough”

At what age, on average, do you think your average adult comprehends that they’re not at all special? At what age would you expect a human would generally accept that their life is generally inconsequential to the universe’s relentless expansion and eventual disintegration?

Some scientists (bloody boffins! With their freaking glasses on and tweed sweaters! With their copies of the freakin’ Guardian tucked under their puny arms! Neeeeeeeeerds!!) suggest that this realisation comes when a young child looks into a mirror and first comprehends their own reflection, putting themselves for the first time as a small cog in the much wider spectacle of life, shattering the illusion that they were an omnipresent God overseeing random images flash by and gratefully being offered food and cleansing as thanks for God’s benevolent goodness. This is why, after first glimpsing themselves in the mirror, children immediately become calm, restrained and selfless members of the household, recognising how much more the family could achieve if they worked as a team. They’ll often start helping out with the dishes, and leaving positive Amazon reviews for baby wipes you purchased, believing that it’s the least they could do in 2018 to recognise such good value for money and outstandingly reliable delivery.

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52 Gorillaz: Humanz

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Great Artists Steal. So Does Damon Albarn

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Wow, well this is pretty shameless, isn’t it?

Damon Albarn and That Other One were obviously struggling for ideas for the band’s fourth (proper) album, evidenced by the seven years it took them to follow up 2010’s ‘Plastic Beach’ (an album I really loved for about four months then forgot all about), so were forced to instead crib inspiration from perhaps the most artistically provocative writers of their time.

(Do I need to say that it took seven years and then state further that ‘Plastic Beach’ was released in 2010? Seems like a waste of words. In fact, if you include this little parenthesised section here, the addition of the conformation of the year two thousand and ten has added an  entirely unnecessary one hundred and nine words to this piece!! In retrospect, probably unnecessary. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any way to remove or obliterate anything you’ve written- to ‘delete’ it, if you will- so it has to stay in. Let me know of any potential solutions in the comments. Should I write the whole entry again?)

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53 Tove Lo: Blue Lips (Lady Wood phase II)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

Not Fully Charged, Nipples not Hard, Not Ready to Go

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Mmmm….

Eeesh…

I…

Sigh…

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This isn’t a great album. Like, at all. It’s by no means a bad album, and Tove Lo is far too talented an artist to allow anything close to a duff be released under her name, but this ended up being one of the more sadly disappointing releases of (kayfabe) this year.

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54 Queens of the Stone Age: Villians

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

My Strawberry Bond

To be honest, QoTSA’s 267th album was very close to being shaved off this list, it was one of the many 2017 releases that I figured might not quite have enough legitimate quality and noteworthy talking points to justify a place on (kayfabe) this year’s list. I worried that there weren’t really a massive amount of memorable moments, or that its bracing voodoo rock might not have really stand up to the best moments of their (admittedly colossal) back catalogue. In the end though, I felt that I earned it to the band to award them an invite to the party, chiefly for one small and ever so slightly embarrassing reason:

Josh Homme is the world’s coolest ginger.

 

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