68 Prince: For You

Dec 6, 2018Dec 7, 2019 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 14 Comments

And so I embark on the largest, most ambitious, vital and- dare I say it?- woke undertaking of my young life. Yes: ‘young’. Relatively, I mean. In comparison to most trees.

Starting with Necessary Evil 2018, I am going to include one Prince album a year on the list, starting with His 1977 debut and ending when I reach His final album, ‘Hit N Run Phase 2’ that was released in 2015 (one of the very few Prince albums I’ve never actually heard, though I was sufficiently unimpressed with it’s predecessor to beg “oh God please don’t subject us to phase 2…”). I will eventually provide the definitive reaction to each and every officially released album credited to either Prince or New Power Generation (word to the wise, New Power Generation released some stinkers). Prince was a recording artist for thirty seven years, but I’m going to be concentrating on the years in which He actually released music. That means this will take me thirty years. It’s a big task, but I’m man enough to do it.

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73 Luke Haines: I Sometimes Dream of Glue

Dec 3, 2018Dec 3, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

‘This is the non-stop train to Hull’

Yaaaaaaaaars!! Luke! Luke! Luke! Luke! Haines-o! Haines-o! Haines-o! L-M-H! (clap, clap, clap) L-M-H! (clap, clap, clap) L-M-H! (clap, clap, clap). And so it continues, mainly in that fashion.

I freaking love Luke Haines, and pretty much any old shite he releases is going to end up on the best of the year list.

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79 stef chura: Messes

Dec 2, 2018Dec 2, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

Four albums in, and two of the artists have debilitating issues with capitalisation (stef shares similar disregard for proper nouns to american poetry club). The only two artists from America, make of that as you will. Is this the Donald Trump effect? In fact, if any human being on Earth loves capital letters, it’s The Trump, so maybe these artist’s refusal to capitalise is a subtle form of process. Fair enough, as you were…

I don’t think I had as much of a personal relationship with any artist on this year’s list as I had with stef chura. Back in early 2018 I was relatively new to Bandcamp, which is one of the Greatest Things Ever that I really don’t have time to talk about here (I’ll save that for an album where I can’t think of what to write about- there’s plenty of those coming up). I was initially overwhelmed by this new tool that was seemingly offering me endless opportunities to hear new music from artists not even yet big enough to have had held discussions over the exact makeup of the band’s logo*, artists so obscure that even if the singer committed suicide it would only make even the local news on a really slow news day, that I didn’t really know where to start. I followed a few people, hoping to get suggestions from their own opinions rather than go through the laborious task of forming my own.

(*Every band should have a logo. Listen, this isn’t a debate, I’m just telling you a fact. If you haven’t yet got one you’re obviously not taking your art seriously enough. I’ll accept that some artists might not have had the time yet, but if you’re on your third album and still logoless then you’re showing offensive disregard for your own brand. Did Steve Jobs die for nothing?**)

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82 Ash Koosha: ‘Return 0’

Dec 1, 2018Dec 1, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

The human race is kind of resigned to losing all of it’s jobs to robots. In their March 2017 paper, ‘Robots and Jobs: Evidence from the UK Labour Market‘, Acemoglu and Restrepo found that the addition of one more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio by about 0.18 – 0.34 percentage points and wages by 0.25 – 0.5 percent.

Of course, I wouldn’t be the widely lauded and routinely celebrated investigative journalist that I am if I didn’t investigate their findings and see if such statistics could be replicated in the UK job market. Unfortunately, Manchester Refugee Support Network only employs 5 people, so in order to get a proper reading on effect on one robot per one thousand employees I had to measure the effect of

one two hundredth of a robot on our work. I think. There’s really no way of knowing exactly what the maths are, but that’s what I did so it has to be correct.

It’s hard to truly say what would represent 0.5% of a robot, but my contacts in the robots industry* tell me that equates to roughly a robot eyeball. With this in mind, I introduced a fully automated eyeball to the office at MRSN. Well, I initially assumed it was a fully automatic robotic eyeball, but later examinations have suggested it may in fact be closer to a chocolate ball wrapped in tinfoil. Again, there really is no way of actually knowing, but talks conducted with my contacts in the scientific research industry* have confirmed that this trivial matter should have had no effects on the findings.

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9 Jane Weaver: Modern Kosmolosy

Apr 3, 2018Oct 22, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

Modern Kosmetics

The Weavs has had an astonishing career.

Her first band, Kill Laura, were about 4% as bad as you’d expect a band who released their first record while Weavo was still at college- in 1993- to be. Kill Laura ended up on a record label run by Rob fuckin’ Gretton, where one can only assume the band were paid in horse tranquillisers and forced to record their songs while Rob aimed a crossbow at Weavy’s forehead and masturbated into a tin bucket full of custard ‘for the acoustics’. Weev actually recorded a solo album while at Manchester Records (really, Rob? That’s actually the best you can come up with? Fucking waste of space) which was never released because it coincided with Gretton’s death (I’m sorry for your loss. Bur Manchester fucking Records?? That is such bullshit! I’m not saying I’m glad he’s dead, not at all).

Weaverino went on to form Misty Dixon, a band who you can tell from that one song were roughly 76 times better than more than two thirds of your embarrassing record collection. As they were always likely to be, as they featured the talents of not only Weaverine but also Dave Tyack, one of the founding artists of the Twisted Nerve label. The release of their debut album was overshadowed slightly by the disappearance of Tyback. He was found dead in Corsica, two years later. Misty Dixon had already broken up by then. The quitters…

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10 Miguel: War & Leisure

Apr 1, 2018Apr 1, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Awe and Pleasure

(Hate to Say I Told You So)

“Miguel is one of the faces of an enthralling new strand of R’n’B that has blossomed recently, a strand that never takes its eyes off its influences but still crafts music that represent new creative highs for the entire genre. I’m generally heterosexual and generally male, yet after listening to ‘Wildheart’ sultrily and explicitly dry hump my ear for 46 minutes I still became pregnant more than a dozen times and tweeted Miguel so many naked pictures I’m actually due in court a week next Tuesday. If he concentrated more on the brash and provocative modern rethinks of ‘Dirty Mind’ rather than AOR nonsense like ‘face the sun(sic)’ then he could get amazing.”

In 2015 a influential yet outrageously (and intensely sexually) intoxicating up and coming writer wrote those words about Miguel’s previous album. That writer believed that they key to unlocking Miguel’s potential brilliance was to concentrate and focus his influences on compiling a modern update on Prince’s best works. That writer believed strongly that Miguel should always concentrate on the shagging-that was pretty much his calling card, after all- but he should look into more subversive ways of presenting his sexuality than the occasional one note dogged horniness of ‘Wildheart’. An aldum, lest we forget, contained tracks with titles such as Suck It Like It’s George C Suckington’s Birthday; Touch it, I Dare You (Eeeew! I Can’t Believe You Actually Touched It!, I Don’t Have Any Serious Reservations About A Little Slap and Tickle (If You Catch My Drift) and PENIS!! FUCKING PENIS!!!! FANNY!!! (I’ll Have Some of That N’All). The writer was at pains to confirm just how amazing and important shagging was.

Well, and this revelation might blow your tiny and insignificant minds, that writer was I, reader. And I’m not too proud to admit I was wrong.

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15 Rina Sawayama: RINA

Mar 28, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Just Preparatory Superstar

(…)

This placing is perhaps a little too high for Ms. Sawayama: her debut EP probably doesn’t actually have the fifteenth greatest collection of songs of 2017. Based on solely the actual musical merits it would still feature highly on Necessary Evil 2017, don’t get me wrong. Though perhaps it’d be awkwardly bumping body parts in the crowded economy section with the likes of Andrew Bird and Ghostpoet, rather than clinking champagne glasses in first class as she spreads her legs and guffaws with Lupe Fiasco over Moses Sumney‘s droll anecdote.

But if you think pop music is 100% about the music then you’re an indefensibly dull person. Great pop music isn’t just about great music: that’s definitely a large part of it, of course, perhaps even as much as 53%, but there are so many other factors involved.

It’s those other factors, those elusive forty seven percenters, that Rina Sawayama knocks comprehensively out of the park

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41 Shamir: Revelations

Mar 12, 2018Mar 23, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 7 Comments

I Bet You Think This Album’s About You

“You have a song/Which means you’re doing something wrong/Don’t think you’re special/’cause it’s about you”

On his second song from his second album* Shamir brilliantly showcases something quite perverse about the human psyche. Let’s imagine that I was once Shamir’s shitty ex-boyfriend: if I just left my clothes strewn across the hallway when getting undressed ready for bed; if I pretended to be, like, really into hip-hop as I felt it would somehow demonstrate affinity, and yet only ever listen to Lil Yachty on loop**; if every time I entered the house I’d bound over the sofa, snatch the remote from him and turn over from whatever faggy thing he was watching like ‘Narcos’ or ‘Gomorrah’ in order to immediately watch the highlights from last night’s WWE Raw (“No, Shammy***, you don’t understand! It’s being held in Chicago and, like, CM Punk is definitely going to make a comeback!”); whenever I’d finish the last of the milk I’d just put the carton back in the fridge; if I once acted surprised when he mentioned he’s black because I ‘Really, honestly don’t see colour’; if I said to friends that you ‘obviously’ didn’t vote for Trump; if I had an ‘All Lives Matter’ bumper sticker and don’t understand the problem with it; if I always had bad breath; if I was the absolute freaking worse. Then imagine if Shamir wrote a song outlining how big of a frickin’ arsewipe I was, basically just taking the 182 words above and making them rhyme (the fucking hack), and broadcast to all of his fans what a miserable waste of flabby-fucks-not-worth-giving I actually was. Have you ever thought how that would make me feel??

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1 Beyoncé: Lemonade

Nov 5, 2017 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 21 Comments

Well… yeah… I mean, come on… yeah!

+84

The sixth album by Beyoncé is so obviously the best album of 2016 that it’s near offensive to posit the theory that any other could possibly be considered superior

+117

‘Lemonade’ is legitimately one of the greatest records released in my… 29 years of age, of which maybe I was paying properly close attention for 13 (once you take away the times I was either too young or too drunk and suicidal). Both musically, artistically and due to wider cultural impact, few records can seriously compete with this immediate masterpiece

+153

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You’re Looking at the Real Deal Now

Nov 5, 2017 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

In 2010 Spin Magazine listed the greatest albums released since the magazine’s conception in 1985, since I’ve been (ahem) alive for a large part of that time I’m going to quickly list the top 20 and briefly state why they’re now way near as good as the top record of 2016*:

*erm, assuming that all the records released between 2010 and now were comparatively garbage

20 My Bloody Valentine: Loveless

Speak up, mate, speak up! I can’t bloody hear you over all this racket! Also: know how many albums Ireland contributed to this year’s Necessary Evil? None! Your country’s a musical nonentity!

19 Jay-Z: The Blueprint

Oooooh! Look at my big cigar! A guy smoking a cigar this big couldn’t possibly be subconsciously compensating for something else could he?? Pathetic!

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