Tag: chvrches

58 CHVRCHES: Love is Dead

~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

‘Love Is Dead’ is, as many commentators have already pointed out, a lot like Chris Pine’s penis. I can appreciate it, I understand why people might like it, and it’s definitely technically extremely sound. I can even perceive things about it that people would definitely like, and in theory there are many things about it that I should really be a fan of. On paper, ‘Love is Dead’/Chris Pine’s penis should be something I’m really into, they’re both legitimately ‘dazzling‘, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with either of them and there are no holes I can pick in…

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I mean… yeah… I suppose that… Chris Pine’s penis… pick a hole… Never mind, this analogy is golden. Let’s move along.

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Best Albums of 2013: Necessary Evil’s Chris Benoit

~ Lex Leeson ~ 91 Comments

I’ve tried to put this off for a long time: the 2013 best albums list that I originally emailed off to ‘friends’ and ‘allies’ around Christmas that year is the final collection to be posted onto the webisphere and officially archived. I considered never doing it, denying its existence and never admitting to the shameful mistakes it contains. However, when I write my NE2017 list (soon, I promise) I want to make a point of referring to artists’ past entries in the Necessary Evil Blogging Universe (NEBU), so I’ve relented and made it available to read.

I was mainly worried about two things: firstly, I spent 6 months of 2013 in hospital, occasionally politely coughing and making my existence known to death’s door, so the fact that I managed to still mash out a top 50 at year’s end- while being an astonishing achievement warranting some achievements in disability award- makes me assume that a large portion of it will be unreadable madness.

Yes, very funny: more so than usual

Secondly, Arctic Monkey’s award for best album was soon revoked in light of their tax dodging selfishness, and the records for 2013 now show Hjaltalin’s astonishing ‘Enter 4′ as the greatest album, as despite it only finishing 5th in this initial list, by the time Arctic Monkey’s were stripped of the award it had grown into my favourite release of the year. Arctic Monkey’s win in 2013 is now viewed in the Necessary Evil Online Community (NEOC) with the same divisiveness as Benoit’s Wrestlemania 20 Heavyweight Championship win, and doubtless the posting of this list will be viewed as an extremely controversial move by victims of the Arctic Monkeys’ crimes. I apologise for any offence caused, but you must understand the importance of establising the legitimacy of NEBU.

So, I re-read the list for the first time in years and…

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It’s…

…

…

…not bad. Not bad at all. In fact, I’d say that 2013 might contain some of my best and most incisive actual music writing, and I didn’t cringe nearly as much as I feared. Jesus, some of the entries (The Strokes, Arcade Fire, Kanye West…) are some of the best normal writing I’ve ever done! From death to coherence: I’m such a fucking inspirational figure

It’s far from perfect- I make a quip about Bowie not dying, I’m a little too subtly sexist in my Haim review, Steve Mason is number fucking two…- but I’m not completely overwhelmed by shame posting them

Also: Daft Punk are only no.42, Vampire Weekend 34, that’s pretty gangsta…

NE2017 soon, I promise

I love you all

Except you…

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10: CHVRCHES: Every Open Eye

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

“We will take the best parts of ourselves/And make them gold”

I have to say it saves me a lot of time when artists include reviews of their own music within the album itself, if only the new Prince had a song with the chorus ‘This shit took my ten minutes/I wrote it between scratching my ass/To be honest you should just give it a pass’ or if the title track on Carly Rae Jepson’s latest was a sing-a-long of ‘Insert lyric here/Insert lyric here/The fact I lack personality is already clear/So please insert lyric here’ then it would act as a great help to reviewers (although to be fair Adele’s album does contain the line ‘This is never ending/We’ve been here before’). And CHVRCHES outline their modus operandi clearly on ‘Make Them Gold‘: they intend to affirm and accentuate the glistening qualities of 2013’s debut that first brought them to the brisk of massive popularity. It’s so refreshing to see a band pull an ‘anti-MGMT’: to embrace rather than shun their poppier qualities. Their second album is an astonishing collection of some of the year’s best pop music. CHVRCHES may have sanded some of the jagged edges off their sound slightly since their debut was equally as storming, but this is still an amazing synthesised sound collage that should start to see them universally accepted as one of Britain’s best bands. The first three tracks here are almost impossibly exciting, and while the album can’t possibly remain on quite the same level, it’s still a remarkably consistent collection of killer songs: even co-songwriter Martin Doherty’s attempt on the microphone is forgiveable (generally because the song’s so brilliant), as is their pilfering of the odd Depeche Mode synth line. Absolutely brilliant.

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‘Fun’ Fact: While recording Doherty described ‘Every Open Eye’ as a ‘deep, thoughtful, dark’ album. The only way he could possibly consider this album ‘dark’ is if he were referring to the slightly shadowy cover art.

Why didn’t you use that fact about them putting a ‘v’ into ‘Churches’ to make the band easier to search for on Google? Because I already made a joke about that when I reviewed their debut album 2 years ago- a pretty damn good joke too- and even if no fucker read it I don’t want to repeat material, no matter how gold it it. Apropos of nothing ‘Empty Threat‘ is the best track after the initial three.

Album Link