Tag: spotify

12 Mogwai: Mogwai Young Team (Remastered)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Listen, boys and girls and others, I’mma keep this relatively brief. I feel like my words are pretty irrelevant here, I’m not sure that it’s easy or even possible to explain the beauty, the power, the genius of one of the greatest albums released during my lifetime. My short lifetime. I am young. I’m basically a baby.

1997 was the best year for music, don’t @ me. There wasn’t even a Manics album that year, so I’ll let that sit in just how powerful a statement that must be coming from me. British music, at least. I was in Britain at the time, you see, and though we were still obviously pathetically in awe of the USA – all the cool kids hated Friends, while every movie at the cinema starred Will Smith or George Clooney or… erm… Robert Carlyle…? – the world wide webification hadn’t yet taken over. What’s big in the US is now just big in the UK, because we’re all hooked up to the same companies’ propaganda machines, but back in ’97 we still kinda did our own stuff. Fucking Full Monty was the biggest movie of 97 (and, for a short time before Titanic, of all time in the UK*), nine of the top 10 selling albums of 1997 were by British acts. Trust me, bro: Jewel? Third Eye Blind? Tim McGraw? Notorious motherfucking B.I.G?? We had no idea who these people were. And you know what? We were happy.

I GOT A NEW MAN ON ME, IT’S ABOUT TO GET SWEATY

14 Jamila Woods: Water Made Us

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Aaaaaaaaaah, love, isn’t it? Don’t you love love? Don’t you love love, where you finally find the one who allows you to live your life and not make any sacrifices. Love, where you don’t need to make any effort at all, just vibe? Love that allows you just be yourself, right? Love, where you and your soulmate just sit in each other’s company and feel? Love, the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket, like the lost catacombs of Egypt, only God knows where we stuck it?

Or maybe your love is the passionate sort?? Maybe your love is defined by long periods of anger and trauma interspersed jarringly with incredibly lascivious and incredibly loud sex? Your love is broken cutlery and broken backs? Your love is screaming in anger but occasionally screaming in pleasure? You have one of those steamy relationships like they do in the movies, right? Your relationship is sometimes that argument scene in ‘Marriage Story‘, sometimes they’re outside the house doing a ‘STEEEEEEEEELLAAAAAAAAAAAA‘, but sometimes it’s the opening scene in ‘Betty Blue’, you know warram saying?? Seriously, the only place I can find that clip is on porn sites! Hot! Spicy! Nobody else understands! They only hurt you because they love you, right?

BACK TO MY WAYS LIKE 2019

15 Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter: SAVED!

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Religion sounds like a hoot, doesn’t it? Like, imagine if you were into Live Action Roleplaying/LARP or civil war re-enactments, you loved all the play pretend that you had to work within (“Put your phone away, Stuart!”), loved these artificial rules that you’re being asked to work under. And then some weirdo, probably wearing a cloak and maybe a golden hat, comes up to you and says “A’ight, that’s cool and all, but I’ve got a game that you have to play you’re whole life, and if you break any of our artificial rules, you’ll burn in hell for eternity!!” That’d be pretty dope, no?

the next step after atheism is ‘TikTok Live NPCs’

Mate, religion is some next level LARPing. You’re always in the game because this God, or these Gods, they’re everywhere, all the time, and they can see everything you do. And the punishment for breaking the rules isn’t just some sinbin, or a disapproving look from Janet because they don’t believe you should be wearing New Balance sneakers if you’re supposed to be an Elemental Elf. If you get the rules wrong, this God character – or these God characters – will burn your soul for eternity!! And you thought Rio getting eight months for missing that drug test was excessive! And yes, that is the most recent cultural reference I can think of! Oh, and some of these Gods have, like, lions for heads and shit, you do not want to fuck with them. Seriously, they’re metal as fuck.

TOKE THIS JOINT HOW I’M BLOWIN’ THIS STEAM

16 Young Fathers: Heavy Heavy

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

I want your shield
I want your weapon
Gimme that bulletproof vest
And don’t forget I’m not susceptible to your nonsense
I’m a winner

No falling for your charms
No crash into your arms
Handful of coins
And a balled-up fist
Picking rubbish
Cleaning rubbish

I Saw

Aw, man, Young fucking Fathers, dudes??

They’re up there with Janelle Monae as Necessary Evil legends – and given the cultural importance of this blog that essentially makes them musical legends of the past fifteen years – with a simply inscrutable back catalogue that now demands they’re expected to meet higher standards than their peers. Like, I really loved the RobinPlaysChords album, but am I unconsciously and immediately setting it against some of the greatest music of the century? This means artists like Young Fathers, Let’s Eat Grandma, and Janelle – the most golden of Gold Star Artists – are, unfortunately and perhaps unfairly, held to a higher standards than mere mortals like Lauren Auder.

YOU’RE ASKING ME MY SYMPTOMS, DOCTOR, I DON’T WANNA FEEL

27 Sharon van Etten: Tramp

~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

Sharon? Imma get to you in a minute, OK?

This going to be one of those narcissistic overshares that I occasionally dip into, so if you’re not interested in that maybe just skip to the end. And then tell all your friends and family how disappointed you are and make sure they all too click on the article and don’t read it. And get them all to subscribe as well. It’s the only way I’ll learn. I also accept how it heavily features somebody else as a main character, and though I’m going to obscure identities and nobody reads this blog, there’s always a chance that it will get back to them and they will recognise the situation being written about and find it triggering or traumatic. If that happens, I’ll just fucking delete it, whatever, it’s not worth causing someone else that kind of grief. This isn’t a blanket policy by the way: my ex-wife asked me to take down a post I wrote in 2021 and it’s still there, and this post is going to be way softer than that! Oh, and I should probably mention that they’ll be no suicidal ideations in this post. Sorry to disappoint you.

So anyway, it started with a photo:

still makes me laugh…🤦
IN THE BACK OF THE NIGHTCLUB, SIPPIN’ CHAMPAGNE

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

39 Nourished by Time: Erotic Probiotics 2

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Once or twice I prayed to Jesus

Never heard a word back in plain English

More like signs or advertisements

Telling me to be keep consumerising

The Fields

Firstly: No, I’m pretty sure ‘consumerising’ isn’t a real word

Secondly: capitalism really won’t leave anything alone, will it? Won’t let anything just exist if it isn’t somehow commodified. And maybe I’m only really able to remark on this because no fucker reads this blog, it doesn’t make me any money at all, so I’m not even reaping the benefits of my own commodity. I’m instead producing excessive amounts on Content™ for WordPress and then sharing it on X (formally known as ‘X formally known as Twitter’) so it can be a small piece of those companies’ endless churn of millisecond flashes of dopamine hits. And then the lines of code scrolling past people’s eyes on the screen are commodified and sold to advertisers as proof of ‘engagement’. But only after these people have logged into the site using their name, address, phone number, bra size and blood type, ensuring that their very existence as a statistic can be commodified and sold to people who need to know the exact sample size of people worth advertising their new bracelet that’s designed to work well with a AB RhD positive blood type, as it cascades across it from a slice made on the wrist. It’s fucked up, is what I’m saying.

I MET HIM AT THE BAR, IT WAS 12 OR SOMETHIN’