A lot of these songs are about love, in various ways, but I wanted the album to feel like a battle cry. It felt urgent to me to express a sense of wanting things to change and actually taking steps towards that change.
Of course, this is Anna von Hausswolff we’re talking about, so that line in Facing Atlas comes attached with that voice, that incredibly powerful and borderline counter-musical battering ram of an instrument, perhaps one of the only human talents on Earth that could ever hope to position itself among the maximalist sturm und drang of Von Hausswolf’s music and not be immediately crushed to pieces by the musical waves crashing all around it: “This shit breeeeea-a-ye-aaaaaaaaaayks ma heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar…!!”
Fucking hell, liberals, enough with the purity tests!!
[EDIT: Sorry, but I went to bed last night hating this post. I just feel it was all over the place, undecided on what to focus on, dipped its toes into saying something more important but wimped out of it when I was worried that it wouldn’t come across how I hoped it would, then the post just garbled about nothingness. I wanted to say things that were thought provoking and interesting, but just ended up with milk toast nothingness. I’ve left the final couple of paragraphs, plus the amazing lyrics, but the rest of this post can get to fuck. I’ll take another swing at the topic I chickened out of another time in the future. Fucking incredible album though]
The stage curtains open, revealing 40 lovely ladies in bathing suits, wearing sashes that denote which of 2025’s greatest albums they represent, blinding the front row with quite how dazzlingly white their full toothed grins are, in danger of taking someone’s fucking eye out with quite how resplendently squeezed tight their open cleavages are.
I come out through the floor on an elevating platform, full suit and bow tie, hair slicked back and microphone in my hand:
“There she iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis, Miss Necessary Eviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil…!”
“…and I said ‘Lady, that ain’t no gear stick!!!’ Seriously though, if you don’t let me videotape me pissing on you then I’ll eject you from the competition
Considering this will be the seventeenth time that I’ve collated the Scientifically Proven Best Albums of the Year™, I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing by this point, yeah? I had only just graduated from university when I started writing this dumb list that nobody reads, and I’ll be freaking forty two when I finish the 2025 vintage! Considering my physical health (which, in 2025, has definitely started to take on a whole ‘end of days’ start of feel), it’s looking more and more likely that I will die before I ever retire this list. Mate, I would love to stop, this is a massive pain in the arse that ruins Christmas and my birthday for me every year. But if I go, then who seriously is there to take my place?? Pitchfork?? Give me a break. Fantano?? Bald fraud. Smash Hits??? Mate, I don’t like having to break this to you, but Smash Hits Magazine shut down in 2006. To quote a far less talented (but bizarrely more feted, which is often how it goes) personality who has been able to actually retire this year: I’m still here because you can’t do your job!
Fucking hell, first today I have to write about a black kid born into Jim Crow Alabama (like, literally Jim Crow, not just modern Alabama, which may still be accurately described as ‘Jim Crow Alabama’), now I get to Hayden Anhedönia, raised in one of those creepy Southern Baptist communities (Haydenwas literally the preacher/dean’s son, and when their Daddy would visit they’d come along, while Mummy sung in the choir) and was home schooled. Home schooled!! You know that they’re fucked up. Why am I covering all of America’s weird and traumatic – but always buttressed by religious belief – traditions today?? Oh, and before you ask: no, there isn’t a song here as good as Olivia Rodrigo’s ballad of a homeschooled girl, so let’s nip that in the bud straight away.
I talked to this hot guy, swore I was his type Guess that he was makin’ out with boys, like the whole night
I don’t get religious people. Hayden told their Mum that they liked boys when they were 12 and, yeah, I get how religious people don’t like unrepressed homosexuality (“I was the spawn of Satan to most people. The first person who told me that I wasn’t going to hell when I died was my therapist that my parents forced me to get when I was 16.”). Hayden left the family home aged 18, shaved their head for a while to try and be as masculine as possible (““I’m going to be a boy, and my family is going to love me, and I’m going to make them proud”), but that didn’t last long. On their 20th birthday, they came out as trans. What I don’t get is… Won’t their family accept them back now?? I get how they need to repress homosexuality – that’s kind of their ‘thing’ and it would be culturally insensitive for me to criticise that – but now Hayden is a woman who likes boys! They’ve come back around the other side! They’re straight again! Show me the part in the bible that disproves what I’m saying, you bunch of freaks. Didn’t Jesus come out of that cave three days after being crucified dressed as Trinity from The Matrix while praising the positive effects of their recent top surgery? Dude, look at that gorgeous flowing hair! You’re telling me a cis guy takes that much care over their hair routine?? Also, a carpenter?? So obviously a lesbian.
Necessary Evil 