Tag: best albums of 2021

Statatouille: Necessary Evil 2021 in numbers

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

This is it, boys and girls. Lock the doors, pull down the shutters, pour out the gasoline, throw the match, salt the Earth so that nothing here can ever grow again – 2021 is now officially over. Sure, if you’re into lame boomer ideas like the ‘calendar’, you might think that we’re already up to the twenty sixth of March 2022, but if you’re a proper gigachad you’ll know that a year doesn’t officially end until the scientifically proven best albums of that year have received a statistical breakdown. 2015 actually managed to end on the thirteenth of December that year, but 2016 didn’t end until the fourth November 2017, 2017 ended on the fourth April 2018, 2018 ended on October twentieth 2019, 2019 quickly ended on January eleventh 2020, and 2020 didn’t end until March thirty first last year. Years before 2015 just… didn’t end… And, yeah, I’m in danger of running out of ‘stat’ based puns at some point.

Feast your eyes, and feast your minds, yeah?

CHomp chomp

1 Low: HEY WHAT (Greatest Album of 2021)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

2018 #3

It’s probably too late now, isn’t it? For you, I mean. This is it in your life. How old are you? Older than those kids you see on YouTube and on TikTok. What are you even doing watching YouTube and TikTok?? Both of those things are full of vitality and with ruthless optimism! Neither of those things are for you. How old did you say you were, I must have missed that? 28? Nah, dude, you’ve just not been counting recently, because your life is now a dehumanising repetition of routines and obligations, you’re actually 32 now. Shit, no, because of your meaningless demands and crushing inevitabilities, you couldn’t find time to read that last sentence all at once, you’re now 44. Shit! You’re now in your fifties!

That’s you, that is

It’s over though, right? Seriously, if you haven’t worked out your entire life by aged 21 you’re too late, and whatever you’re doing now – whatever you are – is officially set for all time. The only ‘change’ that is now permitted is a occasional change in the brand of washing up liquid you buy. And is that even allowed?? What will people say?? That person who works at the checkout counter in Tesco, the one you now know by name, what will they say?? No, you’re too old to be doing shit like this, people will mock you behind your back, say that you don’t even realise how monstrously old and past your prime you are. Put the washing up liquid back, Thomas, say in your fucking lane. Your past the era of change now, this thing now, these cruxes you’ve built to support yourself, these crosses that you’ve accepted to bear, this is your everything and shall always be. This is your life.

WHEN YOU THINK YOU’VE SEEN EVERYTHING

2 SPELLLING: The Turning Wheel

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

2019 #10

Gee, thanks a lot Christmas Day…

Now I’ve got to start at the first day again! And finish, because it’s currently close to midnight on Boxing Day while I write this, and numbers two and one of this year’s list will be announced before many of the millions (and millions) of fans of this blog get out of bed. Isn’t it a damn shame that I had to stop at fifteen consecutive days though? I hear that when you reach twenty consecutive days you actually start earning money for writing. New York Times columnists get paid $350k a year, and you know how? They just never stop their daily streak! Charles Blow is currently on a 16,939 [SIXTEEN THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND THIRTY NINE] day streak! He started on his fifth birthday by harshly critiquing the level of presents that he was somehow expected to enjoy that year (“A Space Hopper, mother, really? And how, exactly, is one expected to improve one’s life by simply bouncing around on an inflated orange ball? What epiphanies is one expected to reach? Am I expected to gaze into that lifeless face and see myself reflected in his sad eyes? Perhaps this is intended to be Gerald Ford, whose ‘bouncing’ support is laughably intended to keep myself and others like me precociously and intermittently above the bottom line of the hard ground below us? And you said it talked. It definitely doesn’t talk, you fucking whore”. Yeah, some of Blow’s early work can seem a little problematic to modern sensibilities), and has just popped out another article every day since. Admittedly, he can sometimes obviously be struggling for material, His fourteen thousand eight hundred and seventy second article was just him ranking the different noises his chair makes when he sits down, his fifteen thousand and twelfth post was just the entire lyrics of Scatman’s World by Scatman John followed by the sentence “Is it not still the case? #ScatmanDidItFirst”, while his sixteen thousand four hundred and second post was just a piece of clickbait suggesting that Kylian Mbappe might be sighing for Liverpool. But you know what he did after writing each article? A spellcheck, yeah? To check the spelling? Or, perchance, the Spellling?? See, it all fits in, don’ tell me how to do my job.

I’LL BE RIGHT HERE, LITTLE DEER

3 Nick Cave & Warren Ellis: CARNAGE

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

2021 #46, 2021 #50, 2021 #63, 2020 #1!, 2016 #=6, 2014 #45, 2013 #22, 2008 #12 (with the Bad Seeds) 2021 #46 (with Nicholas Lens) 2010 #11, 2007 #13 (with Grinderman) (Nick Cave)

Nick Cave album number three and a half! Or is it just number three? Do the last two doublet albums instead just count for one whole one? Whatever, it’s Cave’s twelfth Necessary Evil ranking album that he’s featured on, which I’m going to assume is a record seeing as The Manics (his only feasible challengers) only have a pitiful nine. Yeah, he’s been sneakily boosting his stats this year with multiple albums, but then The Manics boosted their stats with rereleasing ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours‘ and ‘Gold Against the Soul‘, so no need to create a fuss, we’re all friends here. Warren. Warren! Put the knife down, yeah? It’s Christmas

Did you notice that thing that erupted in 2020? No, not Zandaya, though isn’t she just wonderful? Not Tiger King, no, come on, that meme’s been dead a long time. And, no, I am not about to make another Emily in Paris joke, I made one of those in my Big $ilky review and – honestly? – I feel that may already be too many. I mean the coronavirus, or COVID-19, the sickness so good they named it twice. Then kept naming it: Delta, Omicron, The Global Bastard, The Big Stink, The Worldwide Whoopsie, The Wuhan Cunt, and many more. Didn’t notice? Take a look out the window.It’s still happening. Haven’t seen Granny in a while? Yeah, because she’s dead, mate.Merry Christmas.

THROWING PENNIES OFF THE EDGE

4 serpentwithfeet: DEACON

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

2018 #28

Seriously, three years ago today for serpentwithfeet’s previous album. No, no, duuuuuude, I’m not even joking, Josiah Wise’s previous album – the dark and forbiddingly sensual ‘soil’ – reached #28 back in 2018, and I wrote the blog post about it on December 24th 2018!! Dude, don’t you realise?? Today’s December 24th 2021!! You telling me that’s just a coincidence??

Seriously? I thought there’d be way more wrestlers named ‘Derrick’ or ‘Derek’ or whatever. Who even is this guy?? Derick Neikirk?? I’ve never even heard of him before, and I’m a fucking geek!! Not much of a beard, either. This whole thing’s been an absolute sham.

Yes. That is just a coincidence. Do we need to go through this again? Coincidences happen and they don’t mean anything, Microsoft releasing a game called ‘Omikron’ does not prove that Bill Gates masterminded the COVID outbreak, the Democrats don’t feast on child’s blood in order to survive – they would never be able to sort out anything that complex and meaningful, Biden did actually win the election even if only the losing side seem to care that much about it, whatever Gods you believe in aren’t real, and all the people you believe love you actually don’t, or if they do they will soon die anyway. Such is life. Can we start the blog post now?

CHILE I GOT US SOME GOOD NEWS

5 Ultrasound: Everything Picture (Deluxe Edition)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

A synthesised orchestra bursts into life. And I mean bursts. If this were in a Disney movie and meant to signify the first buds of spring in some fantasy netherworld ruled by a giant and intimidatingly amiable field mouse, you’d still ask them to tone it down a bit. The orchestra repeats itself for a few bars, as if sweeping its arms across the landscape. Isn’t it beautiful?, it says, this world you believe to know? Isn’t life just idiotically charming when you don’t know any better?? Then, the orchestra stops, to be replaced by a single foreboding organ while the sounds behind it seem to be dripping out the last of their good will. Drip. Drip. Drop. Drip. The droplets seem to both become sparer and start to resemble a ticking clock, winding down to some unknown but anxiety inducing conclusion. The same music that had previously swept its hands in overt astonishment as the landscape that is now starting to melt away, now grabs you roughly by the collar and pulls you forward. It opens a hand to you containing a red pill and a blue pill. Before throwing them both in rage at the still deforming landscape.

“Nah, fuck that”, they say. “That trope has been done to death to such a point where it now somehow represents Men’s Right Activism. There aren’t just two routes anyway, there are an infinite ways to comprehend reality, let me show you them all“.

I’LL SHOW YOU MINE

6 Prince: Controversy

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

It’s a long way to the end if I want to jack you off. Year four of my approximately thirty year crusade to revisit and document each Prince album annually. I’ve so far found that His first two albums, unfortunately, really don’t stand up to modern scrutiny, but his third album ‘Dirty Mind‘ was as demonstrative a mark of His genius and as revelatory an LP in 2020 as it was in 1980. That album reached #7 on the year end chart and, fair warnings, we’re going to see a fair few of his following albums do the same, as that masterpiece officially kicked off one of the greatest run of albums any artist has done, ever.

While ‘Dirty Mind’ is much lauded over and intensely debated to this day, and His fifth album frequently joins it on lists of greatest albums ever (as does His sixth. And His seventh. And His eighth. And His ninth. And occasionally His tenth. Probably not His eleventh though), His follow up and fourth album ‘Controversy’ doesn’t get anywhere near the same attention. It seems to be looked upon as merely a transitional point between Prince really nailing down the style and the look on ‘Dirty Mind’ and then later finding the right mix of invariables to make him the biggest star in the world.

LET’s WORK

8 DAWN: Second Line

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

2019 #11, 2013 #24

DAWN (née Richards) is quietly becoming one of the world’s most astonishingly unique, progressive and essential artists. Well, I say ‘quietly’, there is absolutely nothing ‘quiet’ about her sixth studio album. It’s an extravagant, extraverted, shameless parade of confidence. Continuing the dissection and celebration of what New Orleans means to her that began on the (already fucking amazing. Already fucking. It fucks. That album fuuuuuucks. This one might even fuck harder. I have been violently pegged by this album for eight months now) 2019 album ‘New Breed’.

But ‘Second Line’ expands its focus far past the Louisiana city, aiming to use its Afrofuturism to comment on wider instances of black people migrating across state lines and why they ever felt moved to do so. Even when the lyrics or the spoken word montages from DAWN’s mother don’t explicitly make the statement, DAWN’s incredible amalgamation of seemingly every black musical culture of the last 500 years – jazz, obviously, but DAWN also ensures that you’d be able to consider her but never box her in as an artist performing funk, R&B, soul, hip-hop, blues or even grime – is still a pronounced statement on both the artist’s continued existence despite so many barriers, and also to the communities that were able to inspire that. There’s a lot going on here! Which is one of the reasons I love it!!

SO WON’T YOU CLICK LIKE ME?

9 Kid Cudi: Man on the Moon III: The Chosen

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

2020 #20, 2016 #5 (Kid Cudi) 2018 #8 (Kids Sea Ghosts)

Released in December last year, don’t make me come at you.

Kid Cudi, if you don’t love him your opinion and emotions are wrong and you should be extraordinarily ashamed. He could very well be argued to be one of the absolute most important musical artists of the past twenty years, so maybe that could be a reason you don’t love him. You don’t like ‘modern music’, right? Because you’re a cantankerous old fool? Well, the way it sounds is very much Kid Cudi’s fault, so boohoo him all you want. You do realise that everyone who ever loved you is now dead and you’re likely to follow them off this mortal coil sometime very soon? Cool. Just making sure you were aware how grossly old you are and how you are now impossible to love.

u/Sharp_Vermicelli8470 (who seems to have deleted their account)

I can actually do a pretty good Kid Cudi impression. No, wait, come back! I promise it’s not racist!! Well, not that racist… It might be a little racist, but not that much! I can basically write a fictitious Kid Cudi song, with all the ‘Mmmmmm‘s and all the ‘Woah-uh-woah’s and all the ‘Yes yes yes yes yes’ followed by ‘No!’, or potentially the other way around. It’s fucking uncanny. But I don’t know anyone who would appreciate it. Sigh, I can’t wait to start my TikTok, it’s gonna be freaking lit bruh!!

FALL INTO THE VOID