Year-End Critics' Polls '07

Awesome and stoopid!

Regarding Studio -- I'm voting for West Coast.

xp

Neither awesome nor stupid, though perfectly okay. (Bomshel, who completely fit that definiton, had a {long }shot at my list, though they won't make it. And Ashley Monroe -- who, at one point anyway, I think Frank Kogan said he was considering, at least for his Nashville Scene ballot -- is in that category too, right?)

Okay -- I have decided that for all the time and $$ I have spent trying to hear all the best stuff in the universe this year, my list should be the greatest one in history. I think having Fefe Dobson at #1 would pretty much ice that forever.

Why?

Because in 2006 she made the greatest teenpop album in history and it got deleted at the last second by her record company because the songs were angry and sexual and hilarious and it will never be released now and someone here got hold of a leak this year and emailed it to me and I almost didn't put it on my list because I was trying to be "correct" or something. Haha screw that.

Yeah I dunno dude, I'll rep for relatively unknown or barely released records all the time, but at least as far as polls like P&J, I tend to stick with stuff that's widely available, whether or not anyone else is going to vote for it.

I'm going to put Panda Bear as my #1 and then post a big PSYCHE on the Panda Bear forum here.

Haha, I totally thought Burial was metal, too, until a couple months ago.

Yeah I dunno dude, I'll rep for relatively unknown or barely released records all the time, but at least as far as polls like P&J, I tend to stick with stuff that's widely available, whether or not anyone else is going to vote for it.

I vote for my favorite records of the year.

I dunno dude, I'll rep for relatively unknown or barely released records all the time, but at least as far as polls like P&J, I tend to stick with stuff that's widely available, whether or not anyone else is going to vote for it.

Why, though? Prince's The Black Album made the list before, and so did some unreleased Pavement album, I think (that wound out coming out, maybe in slightly different form, a year later.) And those might not be the only ones. Christgau himself put a unreleased, who-knows-how-many-generatiton Pulnoc tape at #1 on his list sometime in the mid/late '80s. And people vote for bootlegs by, say, Lil Wayne or whoever all the time. And the initial mashup albums and singles that placed had never been officially released either, right? I don't see how Matt voting for Fefe Dobson is any different. (The fact that it won't get any other votes should never be a consideration. Or do people disagree about that, too? If so, it makes me sad.)

i wanna hear this Dobson thing now

i understand al but I'm rolling with xhuxk and jaymc on this one. of course, my list includes an indian soundtrack, a big band jazz album, reggaeton and houston rap and metal and south african pop and indie illinois rock as well as two pfork faves, so I guess I don't really care much about things being available.

although one of the pfork things might get thrown over for an emo double album or an awesome banda record or maybe ethiopian pop. we'll see when I finally submit the ballot.

emo double album = thrice alchemy index?

Why, though? Prince's The Black Album made the list before, and so did some unreleased Pavement album, I think (that wound out coming out, maybe in slightly different form, a year later.) And those might not be the only ones. Christgau himself put a unreleased, who-knows-how-many-generatiton Pulnoc tape at #1 on his list sometime in the mid/late '80s. And people vote for bootlegs by, say, Lil Wayne or whoever all the time. And the initial mashup albums and singles that placed had never been officially released either, right? I don't see how Matt voting for Fefe Dobson is any different. (The fact that it won't get any other votes should never be a consideration. Or do people disagree about that, too? If so, it makes me sad.)

(xpost I'm assuming he means Say Anything)
-- xhuxk, Wednesday, December 19, 2007 11:15 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Um, because that's how I roll? And also, because it's so hard putting together a top 10 with all the possible options and combinations that any decent external reason for disqualification makes it easier to narrow the field, for me. I didn't say everyone else should follow suit, but Matt had a dilemma and I just told him what my method is.

(uh obviously that xpost was meant to be at the bottom of my post, not added to the cut-and-paste of xhuxk's post)

naw -- i liked their last one okay, but they're more christian metal than emo aren't they? i'm talking about say anything's in defense of the genre, which is so brilliant that it might just beat out battles, who probably don't need any help from me this year.

Say Anything? (double-emo xxpost)

haha...

haha xpost

xhuxk what did you think about say anything? i love it every time it's on.

Say Anything keeps growing on me. Not enough to make my list, but I do like it.

The album looked long and intimidating! And also, um, emo. So I never got around to it (assuming I ever actually saw a copy in the first place.)

t any decent external reason for disqualification makes it easier to narrow the field

Yeah, I kind of agree with this actually. But my own reasons for disqualification are totally inconsistent from year to year. (I.e., some years I'll include collections of never-before-compiled '70s stuff by Cleveland proto-punk bands or Taylor Swift albums technically released in the previous year, and sometimes I won't. Depends how much I like them, I guess, and what their competition is.)

I think it's kind of a disappointment compared to Is A Real Boy, personally.

Yeah, I keep listening to stuff on my list so I can hear a boring track and consign that album / song to the "close but no cigar" list. AL I FEEL YR PAIN.

And I can only remember one (1) song from Is a Real Boy, which is kind of a bummer considering how many times I listened to it. I love the epic scope of the new one, but I love lines like "Toss my caustic salad" even more.

I'm pretty sure that once again everyone's 11-20 list will be more "interesting" than their top ten.

Thrice AFAIK isn't Christian at all... but maybe they're more metal than emo.

I'm pretty sure that once again everyone's 11-20 list will be more "interesting" than their top ten.

I know that's always the case for me.

Time will tell with In Defense since it's newer, but it's got twice as many songs as Is A Real Boy and at most half as many that hit me upside the head in the same way.

Nothing on it is as good as Alive With the Glory of Love.

Mordy, Thrice is all about coded language -- might not be as obvious to you (or my kids). Maybe the new one is less Xian than that last record, which was still pretty and hooky.

I'm letting my kids fill out my singles ballot by the way. "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" will therefore be quite high on the list, as it deserves to be.

Nothing on it is as good as Alive With the Glory of Love.

-- Mordechai Shinefield, Wednesday, December 19, 2007 11:34 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Omg. I forgot about Werewolf Bar Mitzvah. Greatest song since Dick in a Box.

Oh, I think "Retarded in Love" and "Baby Girl, I'm a Blur" are easily as good. However, I'm pretty sure nothing touches "Hey, I Can Get Sexual Too."

Re: Thrice
I don't remember the last one... (Vizchau or something?), but the one that had Stare at the Sun on it? (Two ago maybe) I don't remember ANY Christian references on it... coded or not.

Well, okay then. I haven't listened to it since.

I love this quote:

Let's get this party started quickly. Journey sucks. They sucked in 1981, they'll suck in 2033, and they suck now. Who gives a fuck what Tony Soprano thinks?

-- Mordechai Shinefield, Monday, December 17, 2007 4:53 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

Yeah, Jody R0sen must be all like "Oh, my ass. Thanks for handing it to me."

-- Dimension 5ive, Monday, December 17, 2007 5:08 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

no not really.

"not really" wot?

xgau is a fucking choad, to spell it out.

I think you meant to post that in the RONG thread.

Although it really doesn't matter if someone is a choad or not -- some of my nicest friends have crap taste in music.

But attempting to zing Xgau for hating Journey...no.

About voting for stuff from the previous year: On the one hand, I'm in favour of what people call the "personal impact" vote and damn-the-release-date technicalities. On the other hand, I do sometimes draw the line at stuff that I simply came late to, end of story. Stuff, in other words, that may have impacted ME in 2007, but which already impacted everyone else in 2006. My most-listened-to (and favourite) album of 2007 is the Clipse record from last year. But I simply got on the boat really late, so I don't see the point in voting for it. If it's something that I missed in 2006 and I feel that lots of other people missed it as well--those kinds of things feel more legit in a way. Maybe this is just silly, but that's kind of how I handle these ones. (And then you have cases like "Irreplacable," which I think you can make valid arguments for in both directions--had its strongest impact with critics last year, but radio played the shit out of it for the first few months in '07. For whatever reasons, I've decided to ignore it, in part, as someone else said above, because doing so makes it that much easier to whittle down my final 10.)

One of my top ten records is something I kind of dismissed this summer (I had a lot on my mind then) and came back to in the last few days. Got completely bowled over.

patting Xgau on the back for hating Journey isn't really any better, is the thing.

BTW, good for you, Matt. Always vote for what you love; who cares what some dorky indie fans may think? And now I'm curious about that Fefe record, too--see, da system works.

xp to Matt, obviously.

I'm too OCD to vote/list anything that first came out the previous year (unless it wasn't issued in the U.S. until this year or something like that), which is one reason why I wait until the last possible moment to "finish" my list, especially for the annual 4th quarter rush where the number of notable rap albums just about doubles in the space of a month. A lot of those albums get lost in the critical shuffle, and I try to at least see if they're worth acknowledging right away, since I know they'll be a distant memory a year later.

I AM NOT SALUTING XGAU FOR HATING JOURNEY. I JUST MADE A COMMENT ABOUT HOW HE COMPLETELY SLAMMED J.ROSEN FOR ASSUMING THAT A 25 YEAR OLD SONG IS SOMEHOW SONG OF THE YEAR BECAUSE IT WAS IN THE SOPRANOS. I don't even know if I agree with him -- it was just a good burn. That is all.

Always vote for what you love; who cares what some dorky indie fans may think?

Rather. My number one album, head and shoulders above anything else, is VNV Nation's Judgement, which I think *nobody* talked about anywhere outside the band's preexisting fanbase.

Ned, thanks for the recommendation. I'm listening to Illusion at the moment. AMAZING.