Tag: david bowie

Entry #5 Future: Mask Off

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Phew, that last entry was a bit of a mess, wasn’t it? Barely mentioned the (excellent) song and just flew off into TMI land. It won’t be the last time that happens, I’ll often have something to get off my chest that I feel can’t wait until December, but I always feel that there has to be some overarching ‘point’ to each entry and this series is literally the only outlet I have for that. At least until I get around to starting ‘Sing of the Thrill’ [TITLE TO BE CONFIRMED], my long promised/threatened King of the Hill episode by episode retrospective that’s currently the second most eagerly anticipated literary operation behind George RRRRRR Martin’s ‘No, No, No, This is What Was Supposed to Happen!’. To make up for Entry #4, this time around I’m actually just going to talk about one of the greatest songs ever for a thousand words or so, all tangents and flights of fancy will be kept to an absolute minimum, and if anything I’ll be undersharing, yeah? We cool? We cool.

This post contains a lot of information cribbed from Simon Reynolds’s fantastic Pitchfork article from last year. I might call him a ‘contributor’, but the fact is that he’s very likely to sue me for royalties once the money starts rolling in.

Continue reading “Entry #5 Future: Mask Off” →

55 Manic Street Preachers: Resistance is Futile (and the Manics albums ranked)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 23 Comments

You might not believe this- considering it sounds so much like a slogan that would have been scrawled over the shirt of an awkward looking Sean Moore in 1991*- but the Manic Street Preachers haven’t actually released an album (or even song) called ‘resistance is futile’ before!

03fd182aa688476b9f94031c7590f9da-21.jpg
thankfully, it says ‘broken algorithms’ on the inner sleeve

(*some classic Manic Street Preachers t-shirt slogans from the early 90s:

  • Bon Apetit Benito!
  • Pol Pot Luck!
  • Atrophy is Ecstacy!
  • She Had a Honky-Tonk Badonkadonk!
  • Burn Your Kindling!
  • You’re the Spitting Image of Your Father When You Make That Face!
  • (poo emoji)!
  • Mao That’s What Zedong Music!
  • Rick and Morty Reference That I Honestly Believe Makes Me Smarter Than You! Seriously, What The Fuck Is Up With That Shit?! It Makes Me Want To Hate the Show Because Its Fans Are Such Cunts!
  • USSR! Fuck Yeah!

OK, we’re done here…)

‘Resistance is Futile’ is absolutely a treading water, ticking boxes, Manic Street Preachers album. And that’s absolutely fine, not just because the absolute riproaring success of ‘Futurology‘ means the band are allowed to put their feet up for an album or two (you Millennials don’t appreciate how much doing something decent really takes it out of you at a certain age), but also because the lack of talking points means it’s given me a chance to finally rate all the Manics albums!!

Continue reading “55 Manic Street Preachers: Resistance is Futile (and the Manics albums ranked)” →

Entry #2 Manic Street Preachers: Roses in the Hospital

~ Lex Leeson ~ 10 Comments

Forever, Ever Pastiche

I’ve explained on this blog before how music journalism is absolute bollocks. A person’s response to music is a primal and unconscious reaction that simply can’t be described in words. Because of this paradox 99% of music reviews are the writer vainly attempting to explain why he or she likes or hates a song and twisting themselves into utter bollocks. You like a song because it sparks an unnamed fuse in your belly and twists your stomach in a knot*. You like a song because it reminds you of a time you were happier. You like a song because it reminds you of someone you love. You like a song because it soundtracked the sex scene in Trainspotting. You like a song because you really want to fuck the singer. You like a song because you did fuck the singer. All music journalism assumes an objective truth that can never be, and supposes there is any use in a larger knowledge of context. Just because you’ve religiously listened to all of Avril Lavigne’s records in the past doesn’t make your opinion on Hello Kitty any more valid. No matter the circumstances, no matter the knowledge, no matter the context, you can never force yourself to either like or hate a song. These things are primeval and undefinable.

03fd182aa688476b9f94031c7590f9da.jpg

(*Evidently, reactions to music are primarily based in the digestive organs)

Music journalism could never hope to describe- or even comprehend- that dizzy and nauseous feeling you get when you fall in love with a song. This series isn’t a ‘review’ of the greatest songs ever, it’s simply aiming to be a practically collated list of all the songs that electrify your innards.

Continue reading “Entry #2 Manic Street Preachers: Roses in the Hospital” →

6 Fever Ray: Plunge

~ Lex Leeson ~ 8 Comments

I Decided to Love Her.

but She Didn’t Make it Easy

01.jpg

Sometimes I envy NME. And The Guardian. And Pitchfork. And Melody Maker. And Q Magazine. And the Manchester Evening News. And Rolling Stones. I envy The Roling Stone’s money, but I don’t envy being them, as that would mean losing 50 years of my life and a complete morality lobotomy. And Crack Magazine.

How many others are there…?

And Kerrang. And the Telegraph And NME. I said that one, didn’t I? I envy it twice. And Mojo. And Uncut. And Mixmag.

I envy all these vessels of music journalism- to different degrees and holding it to varying degrees of importance- because, I don’t know if you ever noticed, but they manage to get their albums of the year list out at the actual end of the year!!

1522953423760-1434301991.jpg

(Falling)

How do they do that?? I mean, even if Mojo is in a terrible place mentally, and is considering if it’s really worthwhile writing anything anymore, it still manages to garner up the motivation to try and and convince us that David Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’ was the best album of 2016 (nonsense, I have the science to prove it was actually 27th) on December 11th!! I didn’t even get around to explaining the truth until October 30th 2017!!

Continue reading “6 Fever Ray: Plunge” →

26 A Tribe Called Quest: We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

We love it when old people can still do stuff, don’t we?

+12

Roughly seven times every day local news recommends that we celebrate the fact that a 98 year old man still has his job as Tesco’s, inviting us to applaud open mouthed in marvel that an old person is still able to stack shelves for 8 hours a week without frequently shitting himself

+15

Not frequently…

+21

tribr.jpg

My Gran is a real inspiration, as she’s 94 yet still walks up to two miles a day to post dog excrement through the letter box of immigrant families’ houses

+18

Continue reading “26 A Tribe Called Quest: We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service” →

27 David Bowie: Blackstar

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

db1.jpg

db2

 

Aw, dude, so many people died in 2016, yeah??

+36

I mean, how many fatalities were there in Haiti because of Hurricaine Mathew? At least 500, but some people put the death rate at closer to 1000!

+37

Aw man, and the Syrian civil war, yeah?! About 470’000 people have died in that! 2016 was, like, such a bad year for deaths!

+17

Aw, dude, and the illegal Saudi Arabian intervention in Yemen! Which Britain is partly funding and yet barely reporting on it at all! The UN reports that there’s been over 10’000 deaths there, including 3’799 civilians! Man, 2016 sucked!!

+37

Continue reading “27 David Bowie: Blackstar” →

36 Kanye West: The Life of Pablo

~ Lex Leeson ~ 10 Comments

kan3

kan4.jpg

The wild tackle in the 1991 FA Cup Final- that Paul Gascoigne injured himself so comprehensively attempting that he was never the same player again- was a painful example of the kind of aggressive and impulsive thought process that actually played its part in making Gazza the amazing player he was. If you took such spontaneous and emotionally intuitiveness our of Gascoigne’s game, he wouldn’t be the same player. The tackle itself though, was an act of stupidity and should not really be celebrated

+34

Charles Darwin was a hideous misogynist, who viewed women as simply womb vessels who were little more than irritating intellectual inferiors who interfered with serious scientific research by talking about ponies and periods and shit. He ended up marrying his cousin, probably because he felt marriage was sufficiently socially expected and didn’t want to leave the house to find a wife. However, if you took this sociopathic view of life only through its logical and consequential results, then he may have never invented dinosaurs and proved God wasn’t real, or whatever. However, his sexism should still not be celebrated in and of itself

+33

austin

Continue reading “36 Kanye West: The Life of Pablo” →