Year-End Critics' Polls '07

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

probably. i'm slow.

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

This has a really ominous ring to it.

They give a whole top 50 along with top 10's for each of their review genres, but I can't be bothered typing those right now...

-- krakow

more please!

or it should read, can you post of the rest of the Wire list.

Metacritic with my predicted rankings (not very insightful):
1 Untrue by Burial - Will make top 20 (more critics seem to be listening to metal, but i don't think enough to get it in the top 10)
2 From Here We Go Sublime by the Field - Will make top 20 and maybe sneak in at 9 or 10
3 In Rainbows by Radiohead - Top 10, obv. Probably Top 5
4 And Their Refinement Of The Decline by Stars Of The Lid - Will make top 30 and, maybe, just barely make the top 20
5 Raising Sand by Robert Plant And Alison Krauss - Not that cool with hipster critics, a Top 20 for sure...I think the old people might get this into the top 10
6 Let's Stay Friends by Les Savy Fav - Not that cool with the old people, right? 25-30, probably
7 Neon Bible by The Arcade Fire - One for the whole family! Top 5, probably
8 Children Running Through by Patty Griffin - She's old. Probably in the 20-25 range
9 Kala by M.I.A. - A welcome guest! Top 10 for sure, hopefully top 5
10 Sound Of Silver by LCD Soundsystem - Same as M.I.A.
11 Comicopera by Robert Wyatt - Old. Probably around 40?
12 Person Pitch by Panda Bear - Top 15
13 Mirrored by Battles - For sure top 20, probably in the 8-12 range
14 45:33 by LCD Soundsystem Nowhere (last year, right?)
15 Boxer by The National A favorite for the old people and the hipsters...Top 15 at least
16 New Moon by Elliott Smith Too old. Around 33-37
17 Crazy Ex-Girlfriend by Miranda Lambert Hmm...An interesting one...Hopefully top 10 but probably around 15-20
18 Ire Works by The Dillinger Escape Plan 25-30
19 The World Has Made Me The Man Of My Dreams by Me'Shell NdegéOcello She's on a Batman soundtrack. Uh, 50-60?
20 Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga by Spoon - Top 10. Not sure why it's this low on Metacritic. Actually, I know why it's this low. I don't know why so many magazines are rating it really high. But they are. I think it's because a huge number of people list it in the 8-20 range. That starts to add up.

burial isn't metal

m.i.a. will be #1

Hahaha, Burial is most definitely not metal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hI4bSCy9iE

I actually am optimistic that LCD will win.

i'm holding out for a panda bear sweep followed by a noah lennox/mordechai shinefield ticket in '08

gotta appeal to all bases

BURIAL NEEDS TO CHANGE ITS NAME