Tag: NE2023

28 Efficax: Dissent, Penance, & Destroy

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

I mentioned the epic road in my awakebutstillinbed post. One of the most notable things about the eight minute soul cleanser is now it acts as an early and definitive primer on the wider themes of the whole album, and would likely have been the title track had the band not come up with the far more metal album name ‘chaos take the wheel and i am a passenger’. It’s all there: the anxious combination of living the life you’ve always dreamed of while still being dragged down by dejection and doubt, all backdropped by a tour bus hauling itself up highways on the endless cycle of boredom/validation/loss/boredom/validation/loss/boredom/validation/loss…

On what I guess would be the 20th track on ‘Dissent, Penance & Destroy’, my mate Efficax lays out a similar mission statement:

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

You told me,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Find out find out,

You told me,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

You told me,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Fuck around and find out,

Find out, find out.

fvckaround

And around they fuck, with great discoveries being made. They also fuck as well, you know? You get me? Like the songs fuck? Like there are songs here that just law out vinyl sheets to protect the furnishings, squirt baby oil over every surface and just get down to it, yeah? Are you following me? Do I need to draw a diagram? Because you know I will.

JUST A HEART BROKE BITCH, HIGH HEELS, SIX INCH

31 awakebutstillinbed: chaos take the wheel i am a passenger

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

Fucking yes! Fucking yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! Three and a half fucking years I’ve held on to this screenshot!

People laughed at me when I saved that Tweet from 2020. Laughed at me! Of course, back then it had only been two years since the release of their incredible debut album ‘what people call low self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way other people see you*’, a furious and intoxicating powder keg of intense self-hatred infectiously narrated. All us ‘Bedheads’ ate it the fuck up, because we are all reprehensible vultures. We had tasted the blood of Shannon Taylor as they eviscerated themselves for our entertainment, greedily sucking it down as they slit their wrists above our mouths and let it flow so beautifully down our gullets. Yum yum yum yum. Please, Mommy, can we have some more?

IN FACT, I DON’T WANNA FEEL, SO I STICK TO SIPPIN’

32, 33 The National: Laugh Track/First Two Pages of Frankenstein

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

There’s recently been a lot of talk over what jobs will be the first to be replaced by AI, as all of humanity furrows its brow in the staff break room after the massive buy out of the company by robots. Part of the reason behind the 2023 actors and writers strike was the studios admitting that with AI it now took them no talent at all to make movies, with one studio exec admitting that “Mate, I caught Taylor Lautner’s face in my dashcam* while driving through Hollywood last week, now I have enough footage to release a dozen more Twilight movies. Watch out for ‘Twilight 8: Imprinting on Elves‘ this Christmas! Does anyone have any cocaine? Don’t print that last part”.

are Mandy, Indiana the version of Anna Indiana that caught a computer virus?

(*he was asking to clean the exec’s windows at a traffic stop. Taylor Lautner is… not in a good place, man… Partially because of AI! But, yes, mostly because of the PCP)

The UK government has “pledged to ask responsibility” on AI weapons, with a government source quoted as saying that “We would never enact the use of our kick ass, super cool war robots with anything less than absolute seriousness”. The source then did a robot dance with a toy gun in each hand while making ‘P-choo! P-choo! P-choo!’ laser sounds, before stopping, putting the toy guns back in their briefcase, clearing their voice and announcing “So, yeah, that’s pretty much how it works”. The government pledging to ‘act responsibility’ in the production of autonomous weapon systems – widely known as ‘killer robots’ – is like your weird uncle Danny pledging to ‘drink responsibly’ after lining up a dozen Jägerbathbombs (like a standard Jägerbomb with a sprinkling of bath salts) on the bar in front of him.

AND I DON’T WANNA FEEL HOW MY HEART IS RIPPIN’

35 Sufjan Stevens: Javelin

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Ma dudes, of course it’s great. It’s Sufjan freaking Stevens, yo! This is only their second proper album since their magnum opus ‘Carrie & Lowell’, which I named best album of 2015 ahead of ‘To Pimp a Butterfly*’ and forever confirmed that I am, in fact, the softest of soft soyboys. But Sufjan’s creativity and genius is far from simply contained to their own albums: they’ve penetrated Necessary Evil with Lowell themselves, with fellow indie softbois Bryce Dessnar, Nico Muhly & James McAllister, and just with shit that didn’t fit on his magnum opus. They had two Necessary Evil entries in 2017 and in 2020. Mate, the Sufjan Stevens Blogging Universe (SSBU) is rich with lore.

(*as low as number 14! You’ll rarely see lists of best albums of all time where it’s listed that low! And I stand by it. Why? Because I’m a free thinker. A philosopher. A leader. And, yeah, also a soft soyboy)

And they almost had two entries on the 2023. The year also saw the 20th anniversary release of ‘Michigan‘, and if you haven’t heard that album, maybe… like… listen to it rather than ‘Javelin’? Like, seriously, it shits all over this album. I’m not one of those dedicated softbois who have followed Sufjan religiously since he was releasing electronic albums based around the animals of the Chinese Zodiac, and…

THE MAN I LOVE SAT ME DOWN LAST NIGHT

36 Mitski: The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

I have a hope and though she’s blind with no name
She shits where she’s supposed to feed herself while I’m away
Sometimes I think it would be easier without her
But I know nothing can hurt me when I see her sleepin’ face

Buffalo Replaced

Fuck it, right, Mitski? Fuck it! Might as well scratch that old dog at least one more time.

It seemed like the “21st Century’s Poet Laureate Of Young Adulthood” was so done with this shit after last year’s ‘Laurel Hell’. That album was the soundtrack of “what capitalism’s churn and enforced responsibilities can do to a person, how art is far from safe from being depressingly commodified and incorporated into the machine”. The relative ‘success’ that they’d so far achieved had done nothing and had meant nothing, so what was even the fucking point? Oh! And the last album their record deal required! See you later, losers! Peeeeeeeeeeeeeace!

I FIND MYSELF IN A SHIT POSITION

38 Wednesday: Rat Saw God

~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

Firstly, how fucking pissed much the band be that Netflix did that thing and it was such a big hit? Fucking decimated their SEO.

Secondly, if Jenna Ortega really did quit Scream VII (there are seven of those things now??) in protest over their co-star being axed after their support of Palestine, then good for them. It’s not much, but it’s something.

Thirdly, doesn’t ‘Jenna Ortega’ sound like the name of some fleet-footed Argentinian Boca Juniors winger that Atletico Madrid have shown an interest in signing?

Fourthly, the Argentinian footballer’s first name would obviously be pronounced with a really raspy ‘H’ sound, like ‘Hhhhhhhhhhhhhenna Ortega’.

I ORDERED TWO MORE WINES ‘CAUSE TONIGHT I WANT HIM

40 Nicky Wire: Intimism

~ Lex Leeson ~ 17 Comments

Life has been unfaithful
And it all promised so so much
I am a relic
I am just a petrified cry…

I see liberals
I am just a fashion accessory
People send postcards
And they all hope I’m feeling well
I retreat into self-pity, it’s so easy
Where they patronise my misery

La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)

You all know the song. The third track on the Manics’ criminally underrated second album in 1993. I named it the second best Manics song ever in a 2021 post that’s the most read thing I’ve ever done (and will be the most read post of 2023). Which proves it’s correct. Because I’m a genius. I also named ‘Gold Against the Soul’ as the best album of 1992. Which is dumb. Because I’m a fucking idiot.

ALL OF MY DIAMONDS ARE DRIPPIN’ ON HIM