Ok, are you sitting down? Are you paying attention? Are your ears perked and your soul open? Is your Mana marvelous and your Qi chunky? Then eyes front, attention please:
I’m going to tell you absolutely everything I know about Bella Technika:
They’re called ‘Bella Technika Yeah, you might have been wondering if I was going to count that as a thing I knew about them, but as you’ll soon see this is going to be quite slim pickings so I’ve got to take what I can get.
I’m, like, 90% sure they’re from Belgrade, Serbia Pretty sure. I’m about 99% sure they’re Eastern European, and I found one review that mentioned Belgrade so I was like “yeah”.
This is their second album Now, I wasn’t sure of this, because when I named their previous album ‘Section’ as the 33rd best album of 2019 I was even more beguiled by these mysterious Serbians than I am now. This year though? No, not getting fooled again, I’ve done my own motherfucking research, sometimes as far as the third or fourth page of Google results, and ‘Section’ was actually an outstanding debut record.
I’ve always hated the concept of ‘desert island discs‘. So I’ve been shipwrecked on an island, marooned away from society, all amenities and all forms of human contact for potentially the rest of my sad and increasingly deranged life? I’ve not even got a beach ball to draw a face on and inevitably end up fucking by around week four as the loneliness drives me to sad, feral desperation? And you want me to choose eight songs to play on repeat for infinity to soundtrack my own mental journey into the heart of darkness?? I mean, I love Old Town Road as much as the next man, but by the hundred and twenty seventh time it’s played in the background as another angry parrot pecks at my arse hairs, repeatedly?? “Squawk! Can’t nobody tell me nothing! Squawk!”?? I’m going to learn to hate that song rather quickly.
But then I learned that perhaps it was just the number of songs that was the issue. Forty two songs to a desert island? Yeah, I reckon I could live quite happily for the rest of time. I’d still go crazy, obviously, but in a more earnestly satisfying and poignantly depressed sort of way. And those parrots will learn some bars.
Forty two songs. Two hours and twenty seven minutes. That is (as far as I can work out) the extent of Massachusetts group The Hotelier/The Hotel Year’s entire recorded output. And every emotional, artistic, intellectual and affectionate need a human being ever needs is here. Lead singer/songwriter/bassist Christian Holden is as accomplished a lyricist as there’s ever existed in the artform, possessing a poetic sensibility and unashamed earnestness that can fundamentally cleanse and then rearrange your very soul in a world of post-truth nihilism. More importantly though: their songs are almost always absolute fucking bangers. If you couldn’t speak English, The Hotelier would still be in your top ten favourite ever acts simply based on the sheer, bollock-splitting, rush of blood to the spleen of their immediate songcraft. Then you’d learn English from the lyrics, realise what beauty and genius underpins these bops, and would scientifically become a better person based on their teachings. You’d also learn words like ‘dichotomies’, ‘salutations’ and ‘chrysolite’ a lot earlier than most English speakers.
They are one of my favourite artists of all time. And the fuckers haven’t released a single piece of music since I first became aware of them
I can’t even remember how I first became aware of The Hotelier, can’t remember the first time I heard them, can’t remember the first time I felt their presence. It’s like asking me the first time I tied my shoelaces or became aware of my own mortality. I know there was a time where it wasn’t there, and now if most definitely is, but the changing of the guard was never noted. I heard their masterful third album ‘Goodness’ in late 2016, fell in love, named it the fourth best album of that year, fell in love even more and later retconned it to be the best album of that year (potentially the decade/century), saw them live and bawled my eyes out believing there was a God, and went back to assesstheir first two albums. In 2023, I named Soft Animal as the greatest song of the previous 10 years (spoiler…?). Goodness was released on May 27th 2016. I first started to become obsessed with them a few months after that. In the almost eight years since the fuckers haven’t released anything else!!
So perhaps I’m writing this list to tempt fate, to harness the dark power of Sod’s Law. Wouldn’t it be awful if I spent all this time and more than 10’000 words writing about the band’s complete discography only for them to release a new album and make the whole thing redundant?? Oh no, you guys, that’d be terrible! Absolutely don’t do that! That’d be the worst! Spank me, Daddoes, I’ve been naughty!! In terms of writing about the importance, majesty and genius of the band, Zac Djamoswrote a perfect piece for Stereogum to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the band’s most widely regarded second album ‘Home, Like Noplace is There’, which I’m not sure is humanly possible to compete with. So instead I’m sticking to what I do best: borderline autistic listicles! I was also blessed enough to have my longtime yaoi fixation Seth Manchester to answer a few questions about their bone rattlingly good production on the band’s (at time of writing!) final album.
Seriously though, the band have promised not to record another album before the revolution, so that’s yet another reason for all you workers to unite and break free of your chains (and join your local Communist Party branch, obviously). This list is basically a quick cheat sheet to the band, and forty two reasons why you should be as obsessed with them as I am!
All albums featured on the Necessary Evil best of year countdown
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.
OK, let’s try and put this in some sort of perspective: I have always considered my three favourite artists of all time to be Prince, Manic Street Preachers and Nick Cave. Between all three of them they have all had a combined thirty records make the Necessary Evil end of year list and out of those thirty, two have been namedthe year’s best. If I wanted to throw in some faves – both problematic and less so – from the last 15-20 years I might throw in the names of Janelle Monae, The Hotelier, Kanye West, Let’s Eat Grandma, CHVRCHES or Yeasayer. Twenty three entries between them. One winner. Oh, and Radiohead have never finished first, but
Can we get this meme a medal or something?
Thirteen different artists have won Necessary Evil since it first started in 2007. Maybe fourteen, depending on your take on 2013’s infamous Arctic Monkeys/Hjaltalín controversy. No artist has ever finished first twice. Until now. 070 Shake’s ‘Modus Vivendi’ was the greatest album of 2020, and the 2022 follow-up is unquestionably the greatest album released this year, with its only viable contender being a 1982 masterpiece widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time. These are the only two albums she has released.
We leave our higher educations that we all ‘must’ get With a signature stamped paper and a mound of debt The bank has got us by the throat and then we’re forced to settle For the jobs we hate, 9 to 5, 40 hour, 40 years ’til the day We are too weak to work, too frail to play No friends or lovers because they all passed away We’ve waited for this day all our lives long And on our death bed the stereo plays our favorite teenage anthem song And we sing along
Our Lives Would Make a Sad, Boring Movie
We into the top ten, God dammit! With, another album was wasn’t actually released this year: The Hotelier’s 2011 debut album that I just needed to complete my set.
Yeah, my subeditor Shawn picked that title, said it best encapsulated the feeling of the endless torment of duty that this list has become. “Shawn”, I replied, “You’ve done it again!”
Sigh, remember the good old days of this blog? I would have definitely have illustrated that with photos of me singing it shirtless, wouldn’t I? Maybe even make a YouTube video. I’d sing songs shirtless at the drop of a fartback in those days, wouldn’t I? I barely even illustrate my posts with selfies any more, and that used to be near enough all I’d do.
I feel I can’t rank this record any higher. It’s designed to accompany a drug trip and I have been stone cold and continuously, shamelessly sober since its release three weeks ago. Well…kinda… all my prescription medications kind of mean I’m blissfully high as a kite 24 hours a day so as not to acknowledge the overwhelming pain of day to day existence. But that’s my norm, so it doesn’t count. Sometime in January, I’m going to take some psychedelics and then blog about my altogether more valid opinion. That’s not a joke. It’s an excuse to take drugs as a professional study, why on Earth would I turn that down?
Yeah, it’s a bad idea, but name one good idea in my wntire life? And look how succesful I am. Exactly. Expect a potentially life destroying blog entry some weekend in January. You realise that I’m killing myself for your entertainment? Good. Just checking we’re on the same page.
Halsey sits in that awkward position of being an extremely, very, absolutely great artist, but at the same time being weighed down by almost being suffocatingly overrated by some corners. Also, she’s often really annoying.
Now that last (factual) statement may actually be problematic. Would I refer to Halsey’s objective annoyingness if she were a man? Truthfully, if she were a man I’d probably call her a ‘cunt’, but I’m always aware of how vicious it can sound to use such violent language when referring to a woman, so I’m slightly more polite. Is that sexist? To self censor my language and treat women more ‘gentlemanly’? Am I actually doing it because I feel that the curse is hilariously infuriating to a man but actually hatefully offensive when said to a woman? Is that idea sexist?? Should I maybe not be calling anyone a ‘cunt’??
Jump in any time, these are good topics.
If you show me that you understand this reference, I will honestly send you £50
Yeah, I’m in a good mood, what of it? Wanna fight about it? Bring it on, I bet I’ll have you kissing me before the first punch lands, because how can you stay angry at this face?? My good mood mainly arises from three reasons. Firstly, longtime reader Beryl got in touch to tell me how she enjoyed the last post, and only made the polite suggestion that this series could be improved if it…
…incorporated more hardcore scat pornography?? Jesus fucking Christ, Beryl. Honestly, whenever I’m that close to relaxing that restraining order, you come out with something that sends us back to square one. Maybe I’m at fault here for expecting more from someone I met on the online scatological fetish dating app ‘ScatrBraind‘, but I just always assumed she was interested in the person around the fecal matter, y’know?
Anyway, the second reason is that this will definitely be the final part in this series, allowing me to abandon my blog again to return to my three real loves (masturbating, crying, and masturbating while crying. Mainly the third, if I’m being completely honest). Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we are now actually into the years where I made a point of listing the best albums, so this part should be an absolute piece of piss! Look at the header of this blog- I’ve already got my best albums of 07-19 listed! I just need to copy those albums down again for this entry! It’s 8:53 now, and I’ll have all this done and dusted in time for my traditional 9am cry! Let’s do this shit!!
Necessary Evil 