Tag: spotify

#26 Ibeyi: Spell 31

~ 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

#27 Shamir: Heterosexuality

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

You wanna kill me? Well, here’s your chance
I can barely get around now as it fucking stands
You wanna see me, but you just can’t get passed
How I look or talk or think or walk, and it’s fucking sad

I don’t know what I can do
To make you comfortable
With what you see before you
So let me let you know that

I’m not cisgender, I’m not binary, trans
I don’t wanna be a girl, I don’t wanna be a man
I’m just existing on this God-forsaken land
And you can take it or leave it
Or you can just stay back, stay back

Cisgender

Heeeeey, you know what the world needs more of? Straight, cis, old, fat, white guys judging the scorched soul searching of young black queer people! Yeah yeah, Shamir, boohoo for you, tissues for your issues, but allow me to state the proper reaction to your inner trauma. “I’m just a faggot, who lives like a maggot”?? Hey! That’s our word for making fun of you people! So now we’re allowed to call you lot ‘queer’ and you get to use the F word?? And yet when I use the N word as a joke at my job I’m suspended from teaching primary school PE for a whole two weeks?! No fair! Where’s my artistic communication of hopelessness in a world that’s still depressingly oppressed against me?? I just wanna use the N word and bully queer people online!! Truly, we are the lost generation. Thank God that comedy is now legal on Twitter, because I’ve got some bangers.

UP YOURS, WOKE MORALISTS

#28 Psalm One X Custom Made: Bigg Perm

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

What I do this shit for

Why I get so passionate

Never been in pitchfork

Nighas know I’m talented

Know they always watchin

Even when you feel obscure

You should know you poppin

I’m that bitch and yeah I’m sure

Pitchfork Score

Never been in Pitchfork?? That can’t be right, those motherfuckers review everything. When I released my first mixtape, ‘Phish Pale’, back in 2011, they even reviewed that piece of shit and gave it a respectable 6.8. I get it, that line is obviously meant to emphasise how bafflingly obscure she remains despite being consistently responsible for some of the greatest hip-hop of the past decade, but it’s not meant to be taken literally. Let’s just search the Pitchfork site:

See! She got one mention when she released a new track once! In October 2022. One month after this album was released.

Dang!

THE OSTRACISATION IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE

#29 Anna von Hausswolff: Live at Montreux Jazz Festival

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Bwa-haha! Yes! Yes! I know it was all I needed, I know that all it would take to lift me out of my stupor was a visit from my old friend, the big man downstairs, lord fire and brimstone, Georgia’s best fiddler (in every sense! Bwa-haha!), The Big D with the Big D, the Antipope, Red (Dante’s version), I Love Lucifer, Orbital’s 1996 number 3 hit, Mr Rin Tin Sin, The Devil himself!

Or herself. I’d like to think we’ve reached a stage now where we#re comfortable with the devil being a woman. If you met my ex-wife, you definitely agree.

OOOOOOOOOOH! #CANCELLED

#33 Backxwash: HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

They’ll pay respects in the fire and brim,

Elijah and kin the violent things

Jesus will need to annihilate me

The Jesuits will sing from the highest of peaks

Beezlebub brought to his knees

Asmodeus, gon leap from the tallest of trees

Satan won’t feel so forsaken

Now that the lord has awoken and brought all his grace in

ZIGOLO

Ouch! Feel that? Oooh! There it is again. Bit of a stinging… ah! Bit of a stinging pain, no? Well… hang on, here comes another one: ouch! Well that, ma dudes, are the sharp throbs from this album going so fucking hard.

Well, what did you expect? It’s fucking Backxwash. I’m sorry, were you looking for some inoffensive muzak to play in the background at your latest ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ style upper class orgy? Firstly, you should never play inoffensive muzak at those events, your clientele are largely ruling class leeches looking to live out their furry fantasies to take their mind off the millions of victims that the current gross power structure they benefit from. You don’t think they might be a little shy if it’s their first time? Play something to lighten the mood, ease the conversation a bit, loosen people up. I’d personally recommend Adam Sandler’s ‘They’re All Gonna Laugh at You’. Food Innuendo Guy?? Guaranteed to start a conversation.

I’VE NEVER SEEN ‘EYES WIDE SHUT’

#35 Saba: Few Good Things

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Hustlin’ candy bars to play basketball
I still get nostalgic seein’ houses that my family lost
They wished upon a star, I caught it like I’m Randy Moss
When granny fought for her property, she would turn down any cost
I’m the grandson of Carl who lived across from the fosters
Then fostered me to spread love through holiday poverty
Hand-me-downs I was given, I thought they were bought for me
A tale of two Chicagos, this gets confused commonly
‘Cause one, you’re commemorated if you’re the hot commodity

Free Samples

Comrade Saba!

Is there an industry less concerned with ethics and more damaging to the general populace yet still so accepted as the real estate market? I’m not going to delve to deeply into it here, but the correct position to take is that all landlords are scum. If you own more than one house, you’re at the very best low key scum. Property development and large landlord associations are actually beyond scum and actually evil. I may be against the death penalty in its current widely accepted form, but we as a society need to seriously look at what horrors are accepted in our current decaying capitalism and make big decisions to punish the minority for their crimes against humanity, especially if it benefits the vast majority. That’s all I’m going to say right now. Unless there’s an album coming up soon that I can’t think of anything to say about. I will always reserve my right to go off on a massive far left tangent. Here’s ‘Britain’s Road to Socialism‘ again, give it a read (or a listen).

AND NOW BACK TO OUR SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING

#36 METHYL ETHYL: Are You Haunted?

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

OK, again, I’m not 100% sure who this band are. They made the 2019 list after I’d spent the entire year thinking they were someone else. I have no idea how I got into this band, I have no idea where they came from, I have no idea why I ever got that last album. Are they haunted? Is this some spooky shit going down? Did METHYL ETHYL die, on this very night, on this very spot, ten years ago today? Also, have they always stylised their name IN CAPITALS like that? I’m not gonna lie, I’m scared.

What I do know though, is that these mysterious Aussies (to a British person, aren’t all Australians a little mysterious? Like, why are they like that?) just keep producing banger after banger after banger after banger. ‘Are You Haunted’ is perhaps even poppier than their last album – which, I feel I must stress, is absolutely a good thing – and is full of standout tracks.

HOW MANY TRACKS CAN LOGICALLY ‘STAND OUT’?

#38 Mitski: Laurel Hell

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Sometimes I think I am free
Until I find I’m back in line again

Everyone

Ma dudes, Mitski’s sixth record is really fucking depressing. We’ve already seen plenty of records on this year’s list that deal with weighty and emotionally devastating subjects. But ‘Laurel Hell’ is different. It doesn’t just contain sad lyrics, but it’s very sound is beaten, dejected, empty. Like, total bummer, you get me?

It might just be me. I am, as you might have noticed, a total bummer merchant. I’m sure most people would still find it depressing just knowing the general story behind it. Mitski had sacrificed everything in order to do music for a living (“I will neglect everything else, including me as a person, just to get to keep making music”), and with the wider acclaim and success of ‘Be the Cowboy‘ she seemed to have lived her dream to the extent that she no longer needed to do it. And, having realised the sacrifices such success entails, she decided to chuck it all in. She wrote one of her greatest ever songs Working for the Knife in late 2019 as a spectacular and self-explanatory goodbye to the business (“I always thought the choice was mine/And I was right, but I just chose wrong”). Whereupon her label said, erm, no, you’re still contracted for one more album. Get back out there and dance for us. ‘Laurel Hell’ is that album. I’m sure Mitski was overwhelmingly happy to make it

I START THE DAY HIGH AND IT ENDS SO LOW

#42 Ari Lennox: age/sex/location

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Jesus, this record is far too classy for this list. I don’t feel like I’m paying it enough respect just lying here on my sofa. I’m still wearing the same shirt as I was yesterday, for Christ’s sake! I feel like I should be wearing a tie – perhaps a bow tie – or the general mood surrounding a listening to this intensely elegant record threatens to be laughably inappropriate.

No, Alex! This isn’t like all the other records, you can’t just be posting wrestling references that literally nobody is going to get! Put some respect on this album’s name! This album deserves low lighting, it deserves champagne on ice, it deserves candles, it deserves an open fire, it deserves a fur throw that you and your partner(s) are reclined upon. It also deserves lots and lots of sex.

OH NO…