2022’s Statictus the Fitness: The Numbers Behind the Year’s Greatest Albums

Nov 4, 2023 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Remember when I used to do these posts right after I did the albums of the year? So it’d be the Necessary Evil albums of the year, the scientifically proven best album fawned over at length, the stats, and then we’d be officially done for another year?

Boom! You just been Mandela Effected, boyeeee! I actually only think I ever did that schedule once, for Necessary Evil 2019. I’ve always been far more often waaaaaaay late with these statistical breakdowns. What I actually used to do really early is (pfff!) do the stats just before the number one album! I could never (be arsed these days! These days the writing of the list itself is such a huge emotional toil that it takes me a long time to even consider thinking about these fucking albums again. Also, it’s getting harder and harder to think of puns on the word ‘stat’.

But these posts are basically just pictures, so I may as well just freakin’ do it. Let’s glance back at the wonderful year od 2022 when we all collectively thought, as always, “Well at least the next year can’t be as bad as this one…”.

Watch me drift and watch me struggle, let me go

The Necessary Evil Hall of Fame: Gold Star Artists

Sep 30, 2023Apr 19, 2025 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 21 Comments

At least three albums
All albums featured on the Necessary Evil best of year countdown

I’ve been doing this dumb blog that nobody reads since my first post on the 1st December 2014 called the latest Pixies album an “especially grievous dirty protest”. 2024’s list was the tenth I’ve written in excruciating detail on the blog. The intelligent thing to do would be to call it a day after that. But then again the really intelligent thing to would have been to never start it in the first place. As a stupid person, I’m definitely conflicted. My (recorded) albums of the year go back to 2007. I’m not wanting to put too fine a point on it, nor am I at all pompous enough to ever overexaggerate my importance, but I think it’s fair to say that I am objectively the paramount and most respected voice on music of the last 15 years. And before that too, I just didn’t have a blog then.

But what about the artists themselves? They sometimes play a part in the psychosexual agitprop magic of this blog. We can obviously consider the artists whose work has appeared most in my year end lists, but that’s obviously going to be the Manics (eleven + one very decent JDB solo record and one dreadful Nick Wire one), Prince (eleven, and eventually all 42 of the fuckers) and Nick Cave (I think around eleven, over a variety of projects). Like, duh much? We can all agree without any argument at all that these are the three most important musical artists of all time. It’s like if someone says their favourite food is “crisps”. Like, of course it’s crisps. Crisps are amazing. Everyone loves crisps. But what does that tell you about them as a person?? No, we need a different gage to work out the real stars of Necessary Evil.

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#17 Young Jesus: Shepherd Head (+ love for a new century)

Dec 18, 2022 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

(Firstly, this entry was originally just the outstanding LP ‘Shepherd Head’, until I remembered that the band also released a limited edition and equally fabulous EP ‘love for a new century‘, a one day BandCamp exclusive to raise funds for the Midwest Access Coalition, a charity providing funding for people who now -fucking ridiculously – are forced to travel to different states in the US as a woman’s right to her own body somehow went up for debate in that hellhole country in 2022. Didn’t buy it on May 7th?? Well sucks to be you. There’s nothing stopping you from just donating to that charity though, you lazy pricks)

Yeah, I know, it’s just ‘Bandcamp’, isn’t it? Not ‘BandCamp’ like it’s some internet 2.0 app allowing preteen marching band players share news about events (that later turned out to be a massive secret international pedophile ring), but I started calling it ‘BandCamp’ on the first sodding entry so now I have to either go back and change every entry – which will take, ugh, effort – or just continue doing so and hope nobody notices. I’ll change it in 2023, I promise. Resolution and shit, yeah?

#PROMISE

#26 Ibeyi: Spell 31

Dec 16, 2022Dec 16, 2022 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

OK, so Sister 2 Sister is track four and it just sends me, knowarra mean? When that chorus hits and it’s all like:

Dancing in front of the mirror
Singing along with Shakira

Already I love, love, love love it. What an adorably succinct and heartwarming depiction of sisterly love. And ‘sisterly’ love doesn’t need to refer to literal siblings (even if it might do originally for Ibeyi’s twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz), but that sorority that can exist between friends. I mean, I guess. I grew up with two brothers and all my friends at school were boys (I was terrified of girls until…

SLOW DOWN, NOW WE’VE GROWN, LeT’S START ANEW

Stats Off To You, Sir 2017

Apr 12, 2018Apr 12, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

The Only Reason I Do This Fucking List

Yaaaay!! A statistical breakdown of 2017’s albums!! Suddenly, all those wasted evenings desperately bashing out 1000 words of utter shite on Muna or something finally comes to fruition!! I get to do a mathematical breakdown of the findings!! Kinda get tired reading more than 100 words but enjoy looking at pretty pictures? Yeah, me too…

This post is just for you!!

(number 3)

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14 Ibeyi: Ash

Mar 28, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Sick of ‘Strong Women’

Don’t you just hate Strong Women?

Not strong women, I’ve got nothing against women who are strong, fair dos to them. I’m sure there are plenty of strong women that I really like. There are just as likely to be a lot of strong women that I simply can’t stand. Human beings are very complex beings, I couldn’t simply group them under a single adjective and know enough about them to profess any strong feelings toward them. I wouldn’t be able to say I love garrulous men, or hate sticky women*. Real people are far more complex than that.

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24: Ibeyi: Ibeyi

Dec 8, 2015Dec 8, 2015 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Díaz were born in France but grew up with their time spent both in Paris and Cuba due to their father being legendary Cuban percussionist Anga Diaz, who not only won a Grammy for his work with Latin jazz band Ikakere but was part of the Bueno Vista Social Club on that CD everybody bought in 1998 and have never listened to since. He sadly passed away when the girls were just 11 (with their elder sister following 7 years later) but the sisters decided to follow his musical legacy, not only by learning his signature instrument the cajón but also by studying the West African Yaruba culture (where there family descended from until being brought over as slaves in the 1700s) and immersing themselves in Regla de Ocha, the Afro-Cuban religion based on the worship of Orishas. Now, with a backstory as fascinating as that you already love the debut album by the 20 year old twins before you’ve heard a single note don’t you? But even if you set aside the origin story worthy of the Marvel cinematic universe then ‘Ibeyi’ is close to a perfect debut album, in that it touches on as many influences and inspirations as possible in 13 tracks, yet all the while remains doggedly committed to the twins’ unique style so no track ever really sounds like anything other than the band themselves. It’s not until the tenth time you listen to the album that it really strikes you just how sparse these songs are, often just Lisa’s voice over Naomi’s percussion, yet still the albums sounds so conversely FULL. Perhaps that echoes the ideas put across by the album’s lyrics, that of seemingly simple ideas and emotions that are actually far deeper than you may give them credit for. An extraordinary introduction

‘Fun’ Fact: The video for ‘River‘ is one of the most strangely disturbing things you’ll see today

Hmmm, I’m not really a fan of that funny foreign music, are we almost at the Coldplay album? You, sir, are an imbecile, start with ‘Stranger Lover‘ and delve deeper from there.

Album Link