Year-End Critics' Polls '07

at least Of Montreal finally gets some love, my album of the year.

True dat.

WOW, no Wilco.

Sarcasm, I assume. They panned Sky Blue Sky. It got lots of love elsewhere, tho, and is doing well in Year-End polls, I think.

Given its frequent referencing of the band, wow no Menomena.

Finally, however, some reader input, Pitchfork Readers Poll.

wow, those are seriously the only options for favorite albums on that poll? i mean the options are limited as is but still include albums that barely anybody liked (i.e. Smashing Pumpkins).

"Other: Please Specify" is an option. And one I used to include The National as my favorite live show (until I saw that ___ National was an option). Think of all the "international music" that will fill that blank!

at least Of Montreal finally gets some love, my album of the year.

Yes. But they ignored the Apples In Stereo, another one of the year's best.

Just glanced at P4K's. Has metal safely returned to the underground?

haha. seems to be the case, i guess.

re: the Wire:

01 Robert Wyatt - Comicopera (Domino)
02 Burial - Untrue (Hyperdub)
03 Panda Bear - Person Pitch (Paw Tracks)
04 OM - Pilgrimage (Southern Lord)
05 LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver (DFA/EMI)
06 Von Südenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions (Domino)
07 Pram - The Moving Frontier (Domino)
08 MIA - Kala (XL)
09 Battles - Mirrored (Warp)
10 Ricardo Villalobos - Fabric 36 (Fabric)

I would've liked to see some more variation from every other damn top 10 this year. But it's nice to see OM's Pilgrimage get some attention, it's been virtually absent from just about all year-end lists, metal lists included. Though I guess it was in Rock a Rolla's. Maybe experimental music mags are the only ones who care about it?

Speaking of Rock a Rolla, their list has a lot of stuff that I'll want to look deep into during the next few months. That's the most fun part of these lists -- seeing all the cool stuff that you missed ! So it kind of sucks when you see a top 10 and you're like "man I don't really care to look into any of those." Hopefully the rest of the Wire's list will be more interesting.

and sometimes the Wire's genre top lists are more interesting than the main 50, despite some overlap obv.

re: the Wire, I thought for sure they'd put Stockhausen on the cover, even though it's the Rewind issue. Maybe next issue?

The major flaw with Metacritic is that it treats the ratings for, let's say, "Untrue" (91 with 13 reviews) and "In Rainbows" (88 with 40 reviews) without the quantity of reviews as a consideration.

There are various formulas that can be used to weight the score by the number of reviews - I'm surprised that Metacritic doesn't do that. For example the beer review site, BeerAdvocate.com, uses a more sophisticated formula:

The general formula uses a Bayesian estimate:

weighted rank (WR) = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C

where:
R = review average for the beer
v = number of reviews for the beer
m = minimum reviews required to be listed (currently 10)
C = the mean across the list (currently 3.62)

The formula normalizes scores, that is pulls (R) to the mean (C) if the number of reviews is not well above (m). So if a beer has only a few reviews above (m), its (WR) is decreased a little if it is above the mean (C), or increased a little if it is below the mean (C) in accordance with the normal distribution rule of statistics.

Currently, a beer must have 10 or > reviews to be included in any calculations. And (m) is calculated by averaging the number of reviews for beers that have 10 or > reviews within the list being viewed, while (C) is the mean (average) overall score for all beers that have or > reviews within the list.

Example 1: (a beer with a 4.35 review average and 105 reviews)

(105 ÷ (105+10)) × 4.35 + (10 ÷ (105+10)) × 3.62 = 4.29 = WR

Example 2: (a beer with a 3.1 review average and 11 reviews)

(11 ÷ (11+10)) × 3.1 + (10 ÷ (11+10)) × 3.62 = 3.35 = WR

This would probably improve the quality of Metacritic's rankings somewhat.

AMG's blog has a lot of genre-specific year-end lists, here.

beer snobs: smarter than film and music snobs in their aggregating formulas, and in how they spend their free time.

here's a better link, if you just want the year-end stuff and not the other blog stuff.

This would probably improve the quality of Metacritic's rankings somewhat.

Definitely, and likely cure my number one gripe with Metacritic (i.e., that so many "metascores" show albums with >70/generally favorably reviews). In my mind, and in all the music I've heard this year (much less any year), that just ain't so.

Well I'm pretty sure you're not gonna find Pram and Von Südenfed on any other top ten. I used to love Pram, but I found the new one more of the same but less, leaning towards soundscapes than songs. More please.

Pitchfork top 10 was more predictable. I've been enjoying Sally Shapiro, and am unfamiliar with Tough Alliance, Bon Iver, King Khan & the Shrines and James Blackshaw. Suprised at no Apparat, Matthew Dear, Chloe, or Modeselektor. I think they're all more engaging than The Field.

beer snobs

I work with environmental scientists, and I have to report that there is heavy overlap between those who do Bayesian statistics and homebrewing.

xpost - Yea I've been surprised in general at the complete critical adoration of the Field this year. It's good, but not that good.

I read in the PF interview with the guy, and I think he mentioned how he doesn't really work on tracks longer than an evening, like he does them all in one take. I wasn't surprised, it shows, in kind of a bad way.

However, I loved his "Kappsta" track off the Kompakt Pop Ambient 2007 disc. I was hoping the full-length would be more like that.

It does get more engaging though, I think, with repeated plays.

also, for reviews I've written that got assigned a numeric grade by metacritic, it's always been 10 points below what I intended.

I was listening to the Field album last night and was struck by the monotony of his techniques. Also, his Thom Yorke remix is spectacularly lazy.

i think its strange that minimal techno has now been added to the list of genres (along with metal, rap, etc) that have a small handful of albums each year that cross over into the sphere of popularity w/ indie rock kidz

Here's the Resident Advisor remixes list.

didn't Boards Of Canada, etc. make that crossover a few years before the current reign of hipster-metal?(xpost)

current reign of hipster-metal

as mentioned above, this kinda seems to be done with already, huh? no metal as far as I saw in PF's top 50

ok change current to recent, whatever

sorry i wasn't trying to be nitpicky haha

lol no prob! /Surmounter

so's his remix of battles "tonto"

my year-end reflection are as follows ~
1. person pitchFORK could be panda bear's memoir
2. apparat's album is way better than burial's (and so are strategy's and white magic's)
3. i have yet to see snakes and arrows on any 007 list

xpost to simon h. re battles

also, for reviews I've written that got assigned a numeric grade by metacritic, it's always been 10 points below what I intended.

If METACRITIC has to err on one side or the other in translating reviews into scores, I'd rather they err on the side of assigning too low a score.

2. apparat's album is way better than burial's (and so are strategy's and white magic's)

totally agree with this. i was a little shocked when i couldn't even find it in the Pitchfork readers poll that someone posted earlier.

Damn, I forgot about the Apparat album.

You still have until Friday for P& J and Idolator...

Yea I've been surprised in general at the complete critical adoration of the Field this year. It's good, but not that good.

i agree with this and everyone else above who's mentioned something along the same lines. i thought it was boring, and definitely thought there was better stuff this year in that genre. you guys have already mentioned Apparat, yes, and i'd add Gui Boratto's Chromophobia to that list.

and speaking of metal - what happened to Boris and Michio Kurihara's Rainbow on the Pfrk list?? i thought they loved Boris, seeing as Pink had top 10 placement last year, and Rainbow was pretty great as well i thought. Pfrk reviewed it well too, like an 8.something if i recall, right?

re: and speaking of metal - what happened to Boris and Michio Kurihara's Rainbow on the Pfrk list??

A: not enough metal luving dudes at pitchfork

yea, one of their main metal writers (brandon stosuy) wasn't even on the individual writers' list, so i assume he didn't submit a ballot.

You still have until Friday for P& J and Idolator...

I know, but I'm happy with my top ten. Still, I might switch one out...

ned i hope you'll be giving props to om in your top 10...

I was so happy when Apparat arrived on 180 gram

ned i hope you'll be giving props to om in your top 10...

Hell yeah. That was in the minute I heard it.

excellent

re: indie-centric critical perspectives.

Is indie a genre or is it an approach to form or is it a production philosophy or is it... what exactly? We ask because we want to draw connections between the music of M.I.A. and LCD Soundsystem and you know, Band of Horses or whatever. We want to understand what quality is being privileged by our metacritics, pitchforks, etc. But thats backwards. Indie is a term that only describes the listener and what the listener likes; not specific musical qualities or studio recording techniques or the shelf in the record store where it is found or anything else. Perhaps in 1985, indie was a meaningful designator for a specific model of music production and distribution. But, nope, probably not; probably by this point indie is synonymous, in America, with 'college rock'. College rock, what a wonderful term! Completely unsatisfying, but honest; because the only thing that unites what falls under its umbrella is the affluent demographic that collects and sorts and fetishizes it. R.E.M., the pixies, sonic youth, the replacements--these are white, (mostly) male, not distributed via the mainstream (and thus, determined by an oppositional relationship to the mainstream) guitar rock, but not belonging to other anti-mainstream guitar rock styles like punk, metal, or goth. Punk, metal, and goth are genres, in the sense that they each contain certain musical prescriptions; but much more importantly, they are exclusive subcultures, teenage, high school subcultures. The musical exemplars of these subcultures are undesirable (insufficiently sophisticated) icons to the older, college educated white students; but in any case, they are already taken; they already belong to a (not collegiate white male) group, are already attached to that group by ties of mutual self-definition, already serve that group as a signet of authenticity. College rock is whatever doesn't already first belong to the mainstream, or to black people, or to exclusive groups like high school punk, metal, and goth. And whatever isn't tainted by an association with an undesirable group like businessmen or old people or women or gay people. The college rock fan adheres to idols which don't already have other ties and which resemble himself. These idols become 'college rock' because students have the time and money to classify, sort, listen to, worship, rearrange, share, acquire and trade and sell every disparate vinyl release by all sorts of independent (independent here means: not taken, not already the exclusive property of some other subculture) labels. This music is the particular drug, the key exchange commodity and (simultaneously) the intoxicant of choice, for gangs of white college kid types. Thats the mid-eighties.

At some point the perjorative 'college rock' falls out of favor, and 'indie rock' (isn't this a british term?) becomes the descriptor of choice for the whole musical preferences of this demographics. Maybe this reflects a growth out and away from college campuses, expanding into hipster enclaves in NYC for example (maybe not, I'm making that part up). Indie in the 90s is wide enough to encompass elephant 6 and post-rock, but not R&B or hip hop; hip hop always belonged to someone else already; first to a black youth subculture, then co-opted into mainstream pop, and thus was always off limits for the indie audience. At some point this starts to change.

When did american indie become the dominant cool discourse (not just for college ed. music geeks)? And why? I don't know, but this is true: in 2000 Pitchfork is (a website that covers canonical) indie; in 2007, indie is (whatever) Pitchfork (decides to cover). At some point in between, indie became large enough to draw the cool people, hip-hop heads, poptimists, gay britishers into its gravitational field. This, in turn, forces indie (kids) into the confrontation/conversation with pop that they had always avoided. The result is greater self awareness of where indie is situated in the whole culture, and with increased knowledge (facilitated by the internet), grander ambitions. Now its much harder to think you are cool and at the same time maintain a smug, antagonistic distance from pop culture. The derision of ILM types was absorbed and actually made indie stronger (while violently mutating it, to be sure).

Even though this is a terribly reductive picture, its pretty obviously true that there is an antagonism between a practice of identifying with whatever doesn't fit into its genre/doesn't belong to any other subculture (music identified this way always becomes the beneficiary of a cult of the artist); and on the other hand the worship of exotic, powerful, sexual, the most beautiful things, the chart toppers, the middle of the road in other cultures and in our own. The universality of knowledge of everything local means that, since rare knowledge is currency, everything outside indie (jazz/'world music') will be slowly absorbed into indie by either of these two mechanisms.

You are nabisco w/ new s/n, y/n?

^ I didn't write this. But W.B. did write this:

"*Fiat ars--pereat mundus*," says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of "*I'art pour l'art*." Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.

Indie has reached such a degree that is can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order?

"Oy, MIA, you've got me all bugaboo."

http://www.braungardt.com/Theology/Benjamin/Benjamin.jpg

At some point the perjorative 'college rock' falls out of favor, and 'indie rock' (isn't this a british term?) becomes the descriptor of choice for the whole musical preferences of this demographics.

this post is funny and also mostly true, but this bit of the trajectory misses the big vigged-up elephant of nirvana and the attendant "alternative nation" era, which complicated the calculus considerably by briefly pitching a sizable chunk of the college-rock-era underground squarely into the mainstream, getting major-label deals for everybody and for a little while making it hard to separate out what was what. when the dust settled "indie" was on one side, veering off toward pavement, tortoise, gybe and lord knows whatall, and various other forms were left lodged in the commercial marketplace, including most obviously grunge but also assorted popped-up takes on '80s forms (the replacements begat the goo-goo dolls and gin blossoms, the pixies begat the breeders, soul asylum begat soul asylum, etc). no surprise then that '90s amerindie, as it became "indie," wrapped itself in lo-fi and post-rock and whatever other kinds of sonic and compositional signifiers it could use to put some distance back between itself and the gaping mass culture maw.

has there been a link to all these ilxors making 2007 mix-tape yet:

http://www.paperthinwalls.com/feature/mixtape2007