Tag: hannah cohen

Necessary Evil 2025: The Ragin’ Climax

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

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!

the last time ISN’T now

Legit Bosses: The 112 Best Songs of 2019

~ Lex Leeson ~ 10 Comments

OK OK OK! There were 112 amazing songs released in 2019 (or, erm, released earlier but I just listened to them a lot this year), and here is the definitive, objective and scientifically proven ranking. You can disagree all you want, just remember your disagreement is merely an opinion and this list is fact.

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Or maybe not. I made a big change of tablet and therefore music player this year, and I might not have remembered all of the songs I deemed to be Legit Bosses earlier in the year. But whatever, here are 112 amazing songs, here’s the YouTube list and here’s the Spotify playlist, now please leave me alone, yeah?

Starting at number 112 wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiith…

Continue reading “Legit Bosses: The 112 Best Songs of 2019” →

Necessary Evil 2019 (16-11)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 10 Comments

Boooooooooooooooooooooooooo-yar!! This will actually take us up to the top ten! And it’s not even Christmas yet!! Just to be clear, you should all be very impressed.

16 Pickle Darling: Bigness

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Just… gorgeous. ‘Bigness’ seems almost like it was intended as something of a wry, ironic name, as Mr Darling deals in ostensibly small scale music. His songs can initially seem so slight, polite, inoffensive and casual, all linked with a voice so hesitant and unassuming that it’s the volume and urgency that a fruit fly might adopt if it wanted to get the waiter’s attention at Costa Coffee to inquire as to what was taken its Hazelnut Praline & Cream Latte so long but didn’t want to make too much fuss. The tags that the album is identified with on Bandcamp are alternative; bedroom pop; christchurch; new zealand; pop; indie; indie pop; Christchurch, which tells you one thing… Well no, it firsts lets you know that Pickle Darling is from Christchurch, New Zealand, as he’s so keen for you to realise that that he states it twice, but the second thing that the tags tell you is that ‘Bigness’ is a bit of a cheery, unassuming and- in the words of Helltown– ‘bedroom bullshit‘ kind of record. It’ll be fine. It’ll be cheery, a little bit twee but well meaningfully pleasant. Most of all though, it’ll be small.

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(…)

Continue reading “Necessary Evil 2019 (16-11)” →

20 Hannah Cohen: Welcome Home

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

I absolutely adore Hannah Cohen. I would go as far as saying I love her. As an artist, of course, I think she’s amazingly talented and has that certain something special that you can’t quite put your finger on. She may well be a fucking nightmare as a person. Maybe she spends half the time complaining about how dumb people are for watching Love Island, and the other half actually watching Love Island “Just to see how shit it is”. Maybe she’s a staunch believer in aromatherapy and whenever you bring up the questionable science behind it she simply states that there’s “A lot we don’t know about the world”. Maybe she prefers Jurassic Park 2 to Jurassic Park. I mean, it’s not a bad film, don’t get me wrong, but come on! Maybe she hates feminism because she “doesn’t hate men”, which leads to so many circular arguments that you know it’s a guaranteed evening wasted if you bring it up so have learned not to. Maybe, when she rides the bus on her own, she sits on the seat next to the aisle and leaves an empty seat next to the window just to make sure nobody sits next to her. Do you know these people?? Worse than fucking Hitler. Maybe- in fact, statistically, very probably– Ms Cohen is the absolute worse person in the world, that doesn’t matter, it’s the artist that I love.

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“[FUNNY QUOTE]”  Sorry, it’s late and I’m tired
 

‘Pleasure Boy‘ was all kinds of amazing. One of the best albums of

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Continue reading “20 Hannah Cohen: Welcome Home” →

8: Hannah Cohen: Pleasure Boy

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

There is no artist on this countdown- few on this Earth- with a greater disparity between the quality of their work and the level of their fame than Hannah Cohen. Cohen’s songs are so ridiculously fantastic that her music should be as inescapable as whatever nonsense John Lewis has squirted out as their latest Christmas add… no, wait, Hannah Cohen should be in the John Lewis advert, standing on the moon charming the entire Earth with a singing of ‘Keepsake‘ before eventually destroying the solar system with gamma rays shot from her very eyes as John Lewis reminds us that Acana Moth Control Trap is now half price.

I fear I may have gone off on a little bit of a tangent there…

‘Pleasure Boy’ is absolutely magnificent piece of work, an ingenious mix of synthesisers and jazz music but also much better than that sounds. Cohen had previously preferred to work with simple musical arrangements to reflect the simple and raw emotions she was attempting to convey, but on her second album a magnificent wall of sound powers the heartache to sheer celestial levels. I can imagine some people might consider the naked emotion on display here occasionally overbearing, but these people are obviously idiots and their opinion should be aggressively discounted: ‘Pleasure Boy’ simply makes you swoon as it veers from the exquisite to the exhilarating.

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‘Fun’ Fact: The way ‘Watching You Fall‘ climaxes at 3:31 with ‘But you’re still my baby!’ is the greatest thing that’s ever happened.

So is this your pick of some obscure and unlistenable artist I’ve never heard of because you think it makes you sound cool? Not at all, listen to ‘Take The Rest‘ and tell me it’s in any way difficult to listen to

Album Link