SPINAL BAP'S TOP ALBUMS OF 2022

“Comedy is now legal on Twitter,” declared Elon Musk shortly before losing his position as the world’s richest wally. The way things are going, hopefully he’ll tumble down the rankings faster than a bank holiday cheese-chaser on Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire and be forced to go on the game. You’d think a thrice divorcee with a South African accent and slappable forehead would be a niche kink but there are plenty of fanboys out there with cryptocurrency to splash and an involuntary celibacy predicament. The Musked One also swore to suspend parody accounts, which seemed a counterintuitive way to decriminalise humour. What he really wanted to stop were posts that mocked him, his ill-informed beliefs and those of his three friends (Joe Rogan; Russell Brand; a line drawing named Dilbert). He may be almost as wealthy as Bernard Arnault, but Musk’s skin remains thinner than an unpeeled chorizo’s.

So before he outlaws punching upwards altogether, let’s crack on with the annual shoddy rundown of crappy albums. And if any touchy plutocrats out there don’t like it, you can always purchase this blog at a mere sum of 44 billion dweebcoins. Then you can write PARODY across it in virtual marker pen or simply run it into the ground quicker than I can.

Arcade Fire – WEE

“WE can’t wait to be in a room with you and sing it together as it’s meant to be heard,” tweeted Arcade Fire when plugging their first album since lockdown. “WE works better when we do it together.” The sentiment was dampened slightly when looking closer at their account. They have over 90,000 followers on Twitter. How many accounts do they follow back? A. Big. Fat. ZERO! They have this in common with Peter Hitchens, a man who’s turned his nose up so many times his face is now frozen in permanent condescension.

Followers: 949.6k
Following: 0

#together 

Since the album’s release, a series of allegations against singer Win Butler have painted some of WEE’s lyrics in an unfortunate new light. “Lookout kid, trust your body / You can dance, and you can shake.” Sorry, Edwin. I’m not really interested. “It’s not up to you.” Pardon? “You and me could be we! Could be weeeeeeee!” Leave people alone, you PartyRing-hatted weasel.


Kanye Westphalia – Dondaseeinskampf Zwei

In 2022 Yeezy went more batshit than Bruce Wayne’s ensuite. After a series of increasingly antisemitic pronouncements he declared his outright hard-on for Hitler, a fascist who’d condemn West as racially inferior and might even have struggled to appreciate the lyrical flow on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. According to Ye, Adolf did invent highways and microphones though, which suggests the rapper has read fewer history books than the number of successful bids he’ll have at the White House. 

Highlights on his eleventh studio album included ‘Jesus Volks’, ‘Blutorden On The Leaves’, ‘Devil In A New Dresden’, ‘Through The Wehrmacht’, ‘Heimkehr (featuring Chris Martin Bormann)’, and ‘Heideggers In Paris’.


Muse – Willy Of The People

Muse singer Matt Bellamy has renounced his beliefs in chemtrails, spiked tap water, UFO botty probes, The Moon Landings Directed By Stanley Kubrick, the Earth’s flatness, Paul McCartney’s deadness and 9/11’s inside-jobness. Well, he says he has. Which isn’t necessarily the same thing. What hasn’t changed is his approach to writing bombastically overproduced songs that could have some sort of socio-political sentiment behind them but are vague enough that any interpretation can be projected onto them by anybody on the spectrum from homemade jam bottling Green Party flyerers to QAnon nail-bomb enthusiasts. Cast thy net wide, Bell-am-end, over that oceanwide demographic, for Muse can be all things to all men. The Incel Bee Gees. Reclaim Party Rasmus. Neil Oliver’s Sparks. Momentum Freddie Mercury. Centrist Dad Tool. 4chan A-ha… 

Incidentally, chances are Kanye West listens to Muse. All the time, Muse are playing in his blinged headphones. If not using one of his own songs (which admittedly is more likely) he'll probably choose Muse as the theme music to his next presidential campaign. Desecration! Liberation! Kill or be killed! Another world war! Lebensraum! Podkulachnik! Scaramouche! Scaramouche!


Bard Act – The Overcoat

A northern man wearing a long jacket, glasses and a ruff recites Shakespeare over a post-punk backing band. Some critics considered it a little dated.


Bruce NoSpringChickenSteen - Only The Long Decline

Less of The Boss these days than David Brent when he still turns up to the office after being fired, Bruce has reached the Johnny Cash American Recordings stage of showbusiness. Propped in front of the microphone by Ron Aniello and told to sing some old R&B hits, Bruce did exactly what he was told thereby undermining all those male rockist types who vaunt his “authentic” superiority over karaoke talent show singers and Crazy Frog.

To rub further salt in the earholes, Springsteen defended Ticketmaster’s cynical “dynamic pricing” model on the basis that “Well, I’m old.” Come on, Bruce! That’s the same excuse that codgers use when asking non-whites where they really come from or refusing to learn the preferred pronouns of the perfectly friendly milkperson.


Liam Gallagher – C’mon, You Know, Aussie, C’mon

Liam Gallagher records a 45-minute version of the theme tune to Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. Still not the dullest or most derivative thing he’s ever sung.


Kiefer Sutherland – Blur Streets

It took just 24 hours for this O.G. nepo baby to record a bunch of Blur songs in the style of The Streets. Once ridiculed for his ropey English accent as a Roman senator in the period spear-fest Pompeii, the Young Guns star still managed sound more convincingly cockney than either Albarn or Skinner.


Carctic Monkcars – THE CAR 

Alexandcar Turncar wasn’t old enough to own a driver’s license when his band first formed. Twenty years on, he finally got round to writing a fully automobile-related, road tripping concept albrum. He had dabbled in similar ideas on previous singles ‘Corvette You Look Good On The Dancefloor’, ‘When Datsun Goes Down’, ‘Suck It And SEAT’ and ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re Hyundai?’ But now it was time to really hand the wheel over to his petrol-headed imagination. And the only thing that was going to stop him was Charli XCX climbing all over his bonnet in a tiny bikini with a J.G. Ballard novel in her hand, its pages dripping in various bodily fluids. 

‘The red car and the blue car had a race,’ Turncar crooned in randomly fluctuating notes over pseudo-John Barry orchestration. ‘All red wants to do is stuff his face,’ he continued, mixing his tenses slightly to prove his maverick rule-breaking abilities. ‘He eats everything he sees / From trucks to prickly trees,’ continued the wise lyricist, presumably meaning cacti. ‘But smart old blue he took The Milky Way…’ It was an instant classic. A tale of greed, hubris, temperance and heroism, Aesop-like in its simplicity. It made listeners feel confident that their waistlines would barely expand, even as they shovelled the endorsed brand of sugary snack into their insatiable faces. Enjoy your tubs of Mars Celebrations this Christmas, folks. At least it wasn’t as much of an overpriced, tooth-ruining rip-off as Tranquility Base Hotel Chocolat.


This year’s listicle is dedicated to Victor Lewis-Smith.

SPINAL BAP'S TOP ALBUMS OF 2017

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Have A Flying Banana
With seven members, two drummers and a flagrant disregard for patience, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released more albums in 2017 than Donald Trump sent spectacularly ill-informed tweets. The first of about 692 LPs was performed entirely on customised hollowed-out fruit and consisted of one 45-minute Australian psych-rock reinterpretation of the classic cockney knees-up ‘Let’s All Go Down The Strand And Have A Banana’.

Morrissey - Low In IQ
On his eleventh solo album, indie rock’s surliest martyr stuck it the to the nefarious forces of the mainstream media by unleashing a much-needed truth bomb on the sedated minds of the sheep-like public. Via his MOR warblings Morrissey informed us that Queen Elizabeth II, Emmanuel Macron, Michelle Obama, Barry Scott from the Cillit Bang adverts, Ant & Dec, Jamie Redknapp and The Weeknd are all sinister illuminati lizard people. You just have to squint your eyes a bit and spend too much time by yourself in an LA mansion. The Mozfather also revealed that our tap water has been laced with fluoride with the express purpose of making the public more susceptible to the art of Banksy who is secretly a double-agent of MI5, that Lena Dunham was an inside job, Ellen Degeneres died in a tragic accident back in the 1990s and was replaced by a doppelganger of Owen Wilson, Hurricane Maria was faked by the BBC news, no one will let you say Christmas anymore, and Israel proudly invented the banoffee pie.

Queens Of The Stone Age - Bellends
Oh come on, he didn’t mean to kick her in the head. He was just trying to help her get a better shot of the underside of his shoe. Anyway, you can’t even boot an innocent female photographer in the head anymore without being hounded by the alt-left forces of oppression. It’s political correctness gone mad! She was probably fat and ugly anyway which is why she’s behind the camera instead of in front of it like lovely Kate Moss. I bet she has no sense of humour and I could easily beat her in an arm-wrestling contest, wrote Giles Coren in his latest column for The Times.

LCD Soundsystmeh - Amehrican Dreameh
In 2011 Jamehs Mehrphy disbanded LCD Soundsystmeh even though the act is essentially just him anyway. This year Jamehs Mehrphy returned with a new LCD Soundsystmeh album. The whole thing was orchestrated to make money and everybody was fine with that, as that is what music is for. Mehking lots and lots of mehny.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Polywonkyplonkywoowoo
By mid-April, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard were already on their 116th album of the year. Building on the 115th’s innovative fusion of tinned spaghetti instrumentals and operatic Go Compare vocal work, Polywonkyplonkywoowoo was a concept album in three chapters which narrated the interlocking stories of Zuko: Destroyer Of Planets, Flabby Ian The Moss Monster and a final character based loosely on the classic Sega Master System protagonist Alex Kidd. All this was set to a furious neo-psych post-prog soundtrack complete with complex polyrhythmic freebop cyber beats. So quite similar to Elbow’s Little Fictions, then.

Arcade Fire - Everything Foul
One of the most irritating promotional campaigns in recent times saw Arcade Fire impose a strict dress code at their concerts which dictated that no audience member was allowed to wear a band t-shirt bearing the name of any musical group objectively superior to Arcade Fire. That didn’t exactly narrow it down. The campaign rolled on with Arcade Fire claiming ownership of the millennial pastime of eating Subway sandwiches while watching repeats of The Big Bang Theory on their iPhone in a crowded quiet coach.

Then all of a sudden the whole thing was revealed as an elaborate hoax. Not just their most recent album rollout but also Arcade Fire’s entire career, including even Funeral when they were still good. It had all been one long spoof conceived by Jim Carrey when he believed he was the resurrected spirit of Andy Kaufman with some assistance from that Lee Nelson bloke.

Liam Gallagher- As You Wad
When the ex-Oasis frontman announced the first solo album of his career, few expected to it to consist entirely of songs originally performed by the British reggae outfit Aswad. Despite some critics having expressed discomfort with Gallagher’s brazen appropriation of black culture, most agreed that the material was not as dubious as Gorillaz. Without any doubt, As You Wad proved significantly more successful than the second album by Beady Eye, 2013’s UBE40.

St. Vincent Jones - MASSIVEARSEHOLE
First a footballer, then Guy Ritchie’s go-to movie hard man, and now an award-winning multi-instrumentalist who’s every bit as handy with a slide whistle as he used to be with a sliding tackle, there really is no end to the talent of Vinnie Jones. Many of the songs were said to be inspired by the impressive eyebrows of Eric Cantona, one exception being the opening track ‘Hang On Me’ which was written from the point of view of Gazza’s trouser plums. The record fared better than that terrible X-Men film he once did, even if St Vinnie lacks the effortlessly cool charisma of Lana Del Ray Wilkins.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard featuring King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Fuzzy Wuzzy Pomegranate Gasblimp Part I
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s 442nd album of the year was their most ambitiously conceptual work to date. Using innovative Holodeck technology and formal advice from The Ghost Of Christmas Yet-To-Come, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard 2017 were able to collaborate with their future selves in the form of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard circa 2049. Together the cross-period 14-person supergroup managed to create the busiest psych-rock album since King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s 441st album of 2017. No band needs four drummers, mind.

Richard Dawson - Pheasant
Prior to his latest release, everyone had assumed that the alt-folk troubadour was a north-eastern everyman. It turns out that he was a privileged member of the landed gentry all along, as Dawson (real name Richard “Dickie” Davenport-Fiennes IV) revealed in this concept album about the illustrious history of his favourite game bird. Little has been heard of Dawson since his latest gig at Islington Assembly Hall, although sources close to Nicholas Witchell claim to have seen him playing an aggressive round of croquet with Princess Eugenie after a night on the razzle with Ed Sheeran and The Bluntmeister.

RANKED: ARCADE FIRE'S ALBUMS FROM BEST TO WORST

Contemporary journalism has been widely criticised for eschewing traditional investigative practices, nuanced politico-social commentary and specialist arts criticism in favour of desperate and nihilistic click-hungry ranking. Ranking members of the Kardashian family. Ranking singles by Ranking Roger. Ranking yourself into apathetic numbness as the world around us slowly burns.

Here at Spinal Bap we are not above such unashamed rankery and seeing as Arcade Fire have a new cassette tape out or something and they’ve appealed to complete rankers since day one, we thought we might as well rank all their albums.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the order we came up with!

Funeral
In first place we have the first Arcade Fire album, obviously. Released in 2004, Funeral offered everything from a semi-tragic back-story to a post-Godspeed propensity for additional viola players. The album earned an unprecedented nine-point-infinity rating from Pitchfork even though it contained nothing that Hope Of The States hadn’t already nailed. Still, there’s no denying this was their first album.

Neon Bible
Arcade Fire’s difficult second album was difficult for the band to make and even more difficult to be excited about unless you happened to work in the offices of Pitchfork. It had that song about cars on it and, y’know, that other one, the other one about the cars. It was better than what was to follow, however, and anyone who disagrees has clearly lost their bag of spherical rolling toys.

The Suburbs
Arcade Fire’s difficult third album is also third in the respect that it is their third best. Not to be confused with a competition from the pages of an upper-class Victorian periodical, Win Butler is the frontman of Arcade Fire. Win described The Suburbs as a cross between Depeche Mode and Neil Young even though neither of those artists peaked with their debut album. Pitchfork were euphoric once more, comparing the record to The Clash’s Sandinista!, Bruce Springsteen’s catch-all genius and The Earth by a supreme being known to some humans as “God”.

Reflektor
If their third-released and third-best album was a little on the long side, Arcade Fire’s difficult fourth album was a never-ending road trip down the dull freeway of Win Butler’s self-indulgence. Across two discs produced by the confidence man who pretended to split up LCD Soundsystem, Reflektor explored dance-rock, art-rock and dub reggae, but mainly dance-rock. New Order remained untroubled. Pitchfork remained in thrall, enjoying the results as much as oxygen, orgasms or cake.

Everything Now
Everything? No. Not with a title track that sounds exactly like Dan Gillespie-Sells from The Feeling covering ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ in an ABBA wig with a panpipe breakdown. Arcade Fire’s difficult follow-up to their difficult fourth album was marketed in an even more patronising fashion than Radiohead’s previous six promotional campaigns combined. The actual music, which they’d spent less time on, was so bad that even Pitchfork scored it lower than the third Kaiser Chiefs LP.