Tag: best music 2023

11 Protomartyr: Formal Growth in the Desert

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

That’s kind of what the Internet or modern life is like. You’re throwing all this stuff—personality, or music, or whatever the hell—into the Internet, and you have no way of really knowing if anybody’s reacting to it. A lot of times you’re just throwing it down a well, or you’re hoping that someone’s hearing you. It’s kind of like people praying to God; it’s the hope that somebody can hear you, but they probably don’t. You especially see it now on Twitter, or X, or whatever the fuck it’s called, you know—the people really kissing the ass of billionaires. (mockingly) “Please, please, look at me!” It’s not a very original thought. But it is weird that people are basically praying to these billionaires now. “Notice me!” That sort of thing.”

singer Joe Casey explains a a line from Let’s Tip the Creator to Tune Glue

And in explaining how the content they have created comments on mindless content creation, the Swamp Rock David Cameron (Joe Casey) both creates content for one website while also leaving themselves open to be quoted by a second website (hello!) to open a post on why the wider content that included twelve separate but intertwined pieces of created content was the eleventh greatest such collections of content in a near arbitrary period.

LAST NIGHT REALLY WAS THE CHERRY ON THE CAKE

12 Mogwai: Mogwai Young Team (Remastered)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Listen, boys and girls and others, I’mma keep this relatively brief. I feel like my words are pretty irrelevant here, I’m not sure that it’s easy or even possible to explain the beauty, the power, the genius of one of the greatest albums released during my lifetime. My short lifetime. I am young. I’m basically a baby.

1997 was the best year for music, don’t @ me. There wasn’t even a Manics album that year, so I’ll let that sit in just how powerful a statement that must be coming from me. British music, at least. I was in Britain at the time, you see, and though we were still obviously pathetically in awe of the USA – all the cool kids hated Friends, while every movie at the cinema starred Will Smith or George Clooney or… erm… Robert Carlyle…? – the world wide webification hadn’t yet taken over. What’s big in the US is now just big in the UK, because we’re all hooked up to the same companies’ propaganda machines, but back in ’97 we still kinda did our own stuff. Fucking Full Monty was the biggest movie of 97 (and, for a short time before Titanic, of all time in the UK*), nine of the top 10 selling albums of 1997 were by British acts. Trust me, bro: Jewel? Third Eye Blind? Tim McGraw? Notorious motherfucking B.I.G?? We had no idea who these people were. And you know what? We were happy.

I GOT A NEW MAN ON ME, IT’S ABOUT TO GET SWEATY

14 Jamila Woods: Water Made Us

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Aaaaaaaaaah, love, isn’t it? Don’t you love love? Don’t you love love, where you finally find the one who allows you to live your life and not make any sacrifices. Love, where you don’t need to make any effort at all, just vibe? Love that allows you just be yourself, right? Love, where you and your soulmate just sit in each other’s company and feel? Love, the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket, like the lost catacombs of Egypt, only God knows where we stuck it?

Or maybe your love is the passionate sort?? Maybe your love is defined by long periods of anger and trauma interspersed jarringly with incredibly lascivious and incredibly loud sex? Your love is broken cutlery and broken backs? Your love is screaming in anger but occasionally screaming in pleasure? You have one of those steamy relationships like they do in the movies, right? Your relationship is sometimes that argument scene in ‘Marriage Story‘, sometimes they’re outside the house doing a ‘STEEEEEEEEELLAAAAAAAAAAAA‘, but sometimes it’s the opening scene in ‘Betty Blue’, you know warram saying?? Seriously, the only place I can find that clip is on porn sites! Hot! Spicy! Nobody else understands! They only hurt you because they love you, right?

BACK TO MY WAYS LIKE 2019

15 Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter: SAVED!

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Religion sounds like a hoot, doesn’t it? Like, imagine if you were into Live Action Roleplaying/LARP or civil war re-enactments, you loved all the play pretend that you had to work within (“Put your phone away, Stuart!”), loved these artificial rules that you’re being asked to work under. And then some weirdo, probably wearing a cloak and maybe a golden hat, comes up to you and says “A’ight, that’s cool and all, but I’ve got a game that you have to play you’re whole life, and if you break any of our artificial rules, you’ll burn in hell for eternity!!” That’d be pretty dope, no?

the next step after atheism is ‘TikTok Live NPCs’

Mate, religion is some next level LARPing. You’re always in the game because this God, or these Gods, they’re everywhere, all the time, and they can see everything you do. And the punishment for breaking the rules isn’t just some sinbin, or a disapproving look from Janet because they don’t believe you should be wearing New Balance sneakers if you’re supposed to be an Elemental Elf. If you get the rules wrong, this God character – or these God characters – will burn your soul for eternity!! And you thought Rio getting eight months for missing that drug test was excessive! And yes, that is the most recent cultural reference I can think of! Oh, and some of these Gods have, like, lions for heads and shit, you do not want to fuck with them. Seriously, they’re metal as fuck.

TOKE THIS JOINT HOW I’M BLOWIN’ THIS STEAM

16 Young Fathers: Heavy Heavy

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

I want your shield
I want your weapon
Gimme that bulletproof vest
And don’t forget I’m not susceptible to your nonsense
I’m a winner

No falling for your charms
No crash into your arms
Handful of coins
And a balled-up fist
Picking rubbish
Cleaning rubbish

I Saw

Aw, man, Young fucking Fathers, dudes??

They’re up there with Janelle Monae as Necessary Evil legends – and given the cultural importance of this blog that essentially makes them musical legends of the past fifteen years – with a simply inscrutable back catalogue that now demands they’re expected to meet higher standards than their peers. Like, I really loved the RobinPlaysChords album, but am I unconsciously and immediately setting it against some of the greatest music of the century? This means artists like Young Fathers, Let’s Eat Grandma, and Janelle – the most golden of Gold Star Artists – are, unfortunately and perhaps unfairly, held to a higher standards than mere mortals like Lauren Auder.

YOU’RE ASKING ME MY SYMPTOMS, DOCTOR, I DON’T WANNA FEEL

17 Lauren Auder: the infinite spine

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

I was born an open wound that only suicide could sow up
But I refuse that healing thread, I wanted God to look at us
And she whispers you sweet nothings, you hope it’s true enough
To keep you here ’til you give yourself up

33 & golden

Do you know what happens when you open an album with a line of delicious ideation like “I was born an open wound that suicide could sow up”? Do you know what door you prise open when you begin your album career with such a beautifully nihilistic suggestion like that? Do you know what you get if you awaken my never fully dormant but always pathetic Richey Edwards fandom??

You get what you deserve.

Which is my attention.

DOCTOR, DOCTOR, HAVE MERCY ON ME, TAKE THIS PAIN AWAY

18 Lost Girls: Selvutsletter

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Fancy a quick look behind the curtain? A glance into the magicians’ circle? A unobstructed look up the wizard’s sleeve?

“Who’s ready to PAAAAAAAAAARTAAAAAAAY?!?!”

I kind of wasn’t going to bother with the Lost Girls’ second album?? I mean, I bothered to an extent: I bought the album digitally the day it came out, because I’m the last person in the world just buying albums because I like to financially support artists I consider incredibly important but that I worry about their work being financially rewarding in late stage capitalism. It’s bullshit, I know, and Bandcamp is about to be stripped for parts, because it’s a gross company like all the other gross companies, but it makes me feel better. Oh, and artists like Olivia Rodrigo who are too big a deal to ever have a Bandcamp page? Yeah, I torrent that shit. We don’t have time to discuss all of this now, what I mean by not bothering is that I wasn’t going to bother putting it on the list this year.

DOCTOR, DOCTOR, ANYTHING, PLEASE

19 Velvet Negroni: Bulli

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Firstly, am I allowed to say the name of this Jeremy Nutzman project? I feel sweaty. Like, really sweaty.

Oh fuck! They were adopted by a strict evangelical Christian album when they were young as well?? How much of that upbringing has rubbed off on them? Do I really need to watch my P’s and Q’s? As in do I need to watch my Prostitution and Queerness? They really don’t like that shit, do they? Mind you, they later joined the group Marijuana Deathsquads so, I dunno, they probably know how to party?

I DON’T WANNA FEEL HOW I DID LAST NIGHT

20 RobinPlaysChords: Unmasking

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

The Soviets were completely convinced that “Able Archer” was the cover for a real nuclear strike. They believed that starting from this maneuver a strike aimed at decapitating the command, control and communication centers of the Soviet army, the state apparatus and the party apparatus would be carried out with the help of the new ultra-modern and precise tactical nuclear missiles, Pershing II and cruise missiles for which you had a warning time of only five to eight minutes. With these rockets, the criminal gang in the Pentagon hoped to decapitate the Soviet army, so that they — a quote that I myself have heard — “would run around the farmhouse like a chicken with its head cut off.”

Rainer Rupp

I mean, yeah, sure, you had the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and that was a whole thing, but honestly the Cold War kind of chilled out for a long time after that. The USA and USSR hardly kissed on the mouth afterwards, but they at least came to the conclusion that they should probably take actual nuclear war and guaranteed world destruction off the table for a while. There were still working people attempting to build some sort of Communism all over the world of course, and the USA trying to support the ruling classes to beat these people down – in Angola, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Bangladesh and Ethiopia – but the world’s two biggest swinging dicks at least agreed to maybe not spray both of their piss in every direction with such ferocity that it ended all human life. That would, they both agreed, really stink.

Then – whoop-de-fucking-doo – Thatcher and Reagan were elected in 1979 and 1980. They were both united in their shared belief that they were tired of this hippy bullshit. They also both agreed that having to consider workers rights and public welfare to make sure their populations didn’t look too longingly over to the Soviet Union was a lot of work. It also required a high tax rate for the rich. And they thought fuck that. What if, yeah – here me out, OK? – we just stopped caring for 90% of our own citizens, tell them that the real enemy is the ‘Evil Empire’ of the USSR, cut all taxes for rich people so the ruling class has reason to support us, and be done with nearly all public spending apart from shit loads of fucking rockets and shit that we’ll obviously need to protect ourselves against the ‘Evil Empire’? Cool? Cool.

‘CAUSE I DON’T WANNA FEEL HOW I DID LAST NIGHT