Yeah, that’s right, ALL CAPS. Because it’s been RAISED RIGHT. Can we please have a collaboration with awakebutstillinbed? Actually, I know I meant to clean up the capitalisation of ‘chaos take the wheel and i am the passenger‘, but can we just have that?? Honestly, use whatever grammar you want, call is ‘@wa[£b()$tIlInPEG’ for all I care. Can Peggy just produce?? JPEGMAFIA producing an emo album?? Nomnomnomnomnom! Give it to me now!!
Oh and apparently there was a different cover of this record?
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”.
(*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’
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
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.
Continue reading “The Necessary Evil Hall of Fame: Gold Star Artists”
(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
Fuck, dudes, I don’t fucking know.
I’m always wary of reacting to a Kendrick Lamar release. I’m far more scared of sharing my views on Mr Lamar than I am doing so with Taylor Swift (and even Pusha T), as I’m far more anxious about the Kendrickers than I am of the Swifties. And definitely more scared of them than I am of the Pushas, as that fangroup ain’t shit! Your hero calls me out (by, cough, ahem, misunderstanding the article and proving my point) and I don’t get one death threat or doxxing attempt?? We have a word for you around the Necessary Evil household: S… A… W… F… T… SAWFT! You casuals’ arms ain’t long enough to box with God. Hell, your arms ain’t long enough to wash my balls.
#DISS
Oh my fucking God! I neeeeeeeeeed this! You know you occasionally get braindead recommendations from hack critics (y’know, basically all of them apart from me that attempt to review or define music by blindly suggesting situations that the music might suit?
Sure you do, they’ll say stuff like “This new Taylor Swift is ideal for just reclining in a sofa enjoying an eggnog latte at your favourite artisan coffee place”, or “You’ll want to experience the new Tanya Tagaq while you commit cultural genocide on your country’s indigenous people”, or “Slap on this latest ANGEL_TECH when you feel truly goated with the sauce”. Well, Koreatown Oddity’s latest should come with the sticker “Just perfect for cleansing the palette after discussing horrific American war crimes at length“.
NOT A *SINGLE* WAR CRIME ON THIS RECORD
This post might actually be my last. It’s been fun. Occasionally.
OK, if you haven’t been following the news recently, I might have to give you a quick primer. I get it, don’t worry, it can be a nasty world out there and sometimes we have to attempt to protect our own mental health by not even engaging with the horror, I completely understand if you aren’t up on possibly the biggest story of late 2022. Trigger warning, this might be the most upsetting. Remember a few days ago when I posted my Pusha T post? Fifty second best album of the year? Not bad, right? Sure not as high as the near top five placing that Rolling Stone had (bafflingly) deemed it worthy of, but then I’ve certainly been questioning if it’s actually better than Alvvays, Lykke Li, The Smile or Big|Brave, so… it all works out? I dunno, whatever, that’s where the album fell. Was it a particularly good post? Hmmmmmmnot especially. I didn’t spend anyway near the time on it that I dedicated to Tanya Tagaq or Arcade Fire, for instance, but likely because there weren’t any sexual assaults or cultural genocides to discuss. I mentioned how Pusha’s lyrics often don’t convey what he thinks they do, which I would have liked to delve into more given the time. As a post in general though, particularly when compared to my best work, it was definitely m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m
Yes! It’s getting more and more difficult to use that MJF meme, but – bah Gahd! – I still manage it!
THIS IS ALREADY AMONG YOUR BEST WORK
Gee, thanks a lot Christmas Day…
Now I’ve got to start at the first day again! And finish, because it’s currently close to midnight on Boxing Day while I write this, and numbers two and one of this year’s list will be announced before many of the millions (and millions) of fans of this blog get out of bed. Isn’t it a damn shame that I had to stop at fifteen consecutive days though? I hear that when you reach twenty consecutive days you actually start earning money for writing. New York Times columnists get paid $350k a year, and you know how? They just never stop their daily streak! Charles Blow is currently on a 16,939 [SIXTEEN THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND THIRTY NINE] day streak! He started on his fifth birthday by harshly critiquing the level of presents that he was somehow expected to enjoy that year (“A Space Hopper, mother, really? And how, exactly, is one expected to improve one’s life by simply bouncing around on an inflated orange ball? What epiphanies is one expected to reach? Am I expected to gaze into that lifeless face and see myself reflected in his sad eyes? Perhaps this is intended to be Gerald Ford, whose ‘bouncing’ support is laughably intended to keep myself and others like me precociously and intermittently above the bottom line of the hard ground below us? And you said it talked. It definitely doesn’t talk, you fucking whore”. Yeah, some of Blow’s early work can seem a little problematic to modern sensibilities), and has just popped out another article every day since. Admittedly, he can sometimes obviously be struggling for material, His fourteen thousand eight hundred and seventy second article was just him ranking the different noises his chair makes when he sits down, his fifteen thousand and twelfth post was just the entire lyrics of Scatman’s World by Scatman John followed by the sentence “Is it not still the case? #ScatmanDidItFirst”, while his sixteen thousand four hundred and second post was just a piece of clickbait suggesting that Kylian Mbappe might be sighing for Liverpool. But you know what he did after writing each article? A spellcheck, yeah? To check the spelling? Or, perchance, the Spellling?? See, it all fits in, don’ tell me how to do my job.
I’LL BE RIGHT HERE, LITTLE DEER
2020 #32, 2019 #45, 2018 #59, 2014 #24
Nanananananananana na-na-na, Taylor Swift, Tayor, Taylor Swift! Nanananananananana na-na-na, Taylor Swift, Tayor, Taylor Swift!
Fuck, man, It’s Taylor, you bunch of fucking cunts! Somehow, amongst all the brouhaha, amongst all the controversies and talking points, amongst all the will shes and the won’t she’s and the have shes and the would shes, Taylor fucking Swift has now snuck five consecutive albums onto the Necessary Evil list. For a bit of context, Young Fathers – one of my absolute favourite modern acts – have had three. Radiohead have had two. Her talents are seriously beyond serious debate now, aren’t they?
NO BLOG, NO CRIME
Necessary Evil 