Not Pazz & Jop 2016

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/index/2016

BLACKSTAR won albums, "Formation" won singles (LEMONADE came in second on the albums front).

Can we talk for a second about how there are FIVE Beyonce songs in the top 50

And yet still she came in second on the album list

clearly David Bowie had his moment

he also had two songs in the top 10!

30 Rolling Stones, Blue & Lonesome

really now

i mean i actually like the album, i like the stones covering blues, but...

oh good, looks like my ballot went through (for infinitesimal quantities of "good," considering events today)

good set of essays as well

the only time I ever hear about Drive-By Truckers is when P&J comes out

are glenn's stats existent this year?

My ballot. Albums in the top 50 I heard all the way through: Bowie, Radiohead, 1975, Iggy, Stones, Savages.

A comment of mine that got included:

Tiwa Savage feat. Dr. Sid, "If I Start to Talk"

Catchy Afropop that needs to be put on a compilation and get pitched to hipster media.

here's my ballot

It's still Pazz and Jop, btw

Did they get rid of the feature that shows you whose ballots overlap with yours? That was my favorite part.

You can click on individual albums you voted for, and see who else voted for them.

that's separate from the village voice site i think

on glenn's site perhaps

They only publish my comments when I swear or get super snarky or political. I guess I should just tailor a piece for them next time.

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2016/as-van-dorston-6595319

I think I'm more out of sync than ever with the critics. The few who voted for my choices are: Robert Ham, Mark Lore, Jim Farber, Shawn Macomber, David Accomazzo, Jonny Leather, Doug Wallen. Any of them ILXers?

The quotes a) seem more and more exclusively focused on the Top 10 (I guess that's been going on for a few years), and b) shorter than ever. I think the entirety of the singles section is comprised of quotes that are 30 words or fewer. I'd speculate that they run them by Trump or something, but the longest one does seem to be well over 140 characters.

Sour grapes here.

I've got comments but (a) I never sent them comments (b) never authorized comments. As near as I can tell, an intern or somebody pulled them from my published reviews or blog.

If that's how they're doing it now, I'm going to spend 2017 sharing my wisdom on websites that cover the globe.

This was the first year that they had a little space under where you input your tracks to put comments (plus they asked for them separately) so my little comment about a Tiwa Savage afropop song that I was one of only 2 people to vote for, got included.

Lex and I voted for 2 other afropop songs (one of those artists I voted for, Kiss Daniel, got 1 album vote from Deej)

Interestingly to me, NYC rock band 75 Dollar Bill whose guitarist learned how to play North African style from Mauritanian guitarist Jeiche Ould Chighaly, got 14 album votes, while Chighaly's band with singer Noura Mint Seymali only got 4 votes. I guess those folks who like 75 Dollar Bill don't like North African vocals, just instrumental guitar and drum sounds. The 75 Dollar Bill Band is instrumental and has longtime New Yorker Rick Brown on percussion.

At least one of those 14, voted for both

The New York nerderati's deep affection for 75 Dollar Bill is baffling to me, but I've never seen them live and people say that's a thing

I'm not in New York, have never seen them live, and love that 75 Dollar Bill record. I like the Chigaly record too but it didn't click the same way with me. I listened to mainly instrumental stuff this year so I'm sure that played a part.

But hey, at least we both voted for the Fox/Soper Duo record.

Maxwell got 12 album votes and Dawn Richard 11.

By votes I mean voters

i voted for both

I guess those folks who like 75 Dollar Bill don't like North African vocals, just instrumental guitar and drum sounds.

Or they got served by 75 Dollar Bill's publicist but not Noura Mint Seymali's.

http://images.villagevoice.com/imager/b/original/9408437/590d/VV_Music-Critics-Poll_COVER.jpg

see this is why we still need pro music journalism, i didnt even know charli xcx and rita ora did another collabo

Maxwell got 12 album votes and Dawn Richard 11.

― curmudgeon,

hi!

Or they got served by 75 Dollar Bill's publicist but not Noura Mint Seymali's.

― Don Van Gorp, midwest regional VP, marketing (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, January 25, 2017 8:41 PM (forty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, the ruthless and calculated press campaign of the two guys that run Thin Wrist Records was truly unavoidable

I feel like 75 Dollar Bill's press agent probably cost less than $75.

I don't know, I was just guessing. I figured I was hearing enough about 75 Dollar Bill that they had to have a decent PR campaign going. I'm in the opposite position - I got the Seymali disc but not the other one.

Highest Charting Metal Albums

 98 Cobalt, Slow Forever
100 Metallica, Hardwired... to Self-Destruct
108 Sumac, What One Becomes
110 Kvelertak, Nattesferd
116 Oranssi Pazuzu, Värähtelijä
131 Oathbreaker, Rheia 
156 The Body, No One Deserves Happiness 
164 Vektor, Terminal Redux 
175 Blood Incantation, Starspawn 
176 Deftones, Gore 
194 Goat, Requiem 
    Khemmis, Hunted 
201 Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas, Mariner 
217 Neurosis, Fires Within Fires 
224 Swans, The Glowing Man 
229 Inter Arma, Paradise Gallows 
    Opeth, Sorceress 
245 Nails, You Will Never Be One of Us 
251 Gorguts, Pleiades' Dust 
290 Astronoid, Air 
333 Tombs, All Empires Fall 
346 Whores, Gold 
354 Trap Them, Crown Feral 
383 The Dillinger Escape Plan, Dissociation 
445 Uada, Devoid of Light 
456 Truckfighters, V 
    Wovenhand, Star Treatment 
463 Suns of Thyme, Cascades 
477 16, Lifespan of a Moth 
539 Årabrot, The Gospel 
    Bloody Hammers, Lovely Sort of Death 
    Ghoul, Dungeon Bastards 
    Vorvan, Once Love Was Lost 
579 Skunk Anansie, Anarchytecture 
581 Aluk Todolo, Voix 
    Madder Mortem, Red in Tooth and Claw 
617 SubRosa, For This We Fought the Battle of Ages 
652 Alcest, Kodama 
    Brutal Juice, Welcome to the Panopticon 
    Planes Mistaken for Stars, Prey 
    Vultures of Cult, Pastoral

Feel free to not point out that _______ is not metal, just imagine it not on the list if you disagree with any inclusion. In my defense, the least "metal" bands - Goat, Swans, Wovenhand and Skunk Anansie - do have albums (not necessarily these albums, but whatev) that have dented metal lists in this very forum.

I wonder if #98 is the lowest position for the highest metal album in recent P&J history? I imagine it would be?

For shits and giggles...

2015 #54 Deafheaven, New Bermuda
2014 #56 Pallbearer, Foundations of Burden
2013 #19 Deafheaven, Sunbather
2012 #24 Baroness, Yellow & Green
2011 #48 Mastodon, The Hunter
2010 #48 Agalloch, Marrow of the Spirit
2009 #18 Mastodon, Crack the Skye
2008 #31 Torche, Meanderthal

That's as far back as the Village Voice has where it was easy to find...
This specifically excludes Swans albums (three of them are higher than the ones above).

So at least in the last nine years, #98 is pretty low for the highest-charting metal album!

i got into 75 dollar bill b/c i'm a huge run on fan so that accounts for me and like 5 other people probably

i mean i didn't vote for it - nor do i expect any different - but it makes me feel sad to see SubRosa at 617.

I voted for one of the tracks but not the album

Wiliam Bell, old-school soul singer got 10 votes; chitlin circuit/southern soul singer Ms. Jody got 2; and Xchuckx voted for the "My Sidepiece" southern soul soundtrack

Not really seeing any reggae or dancehall

It was also a really shitty year for metal

wish there was a way to write a fake ballot and some genius calculus/coding lets you know which writers have the highest compatibility with your taste

the genius calculus/coding is already in place. find a writer whose ballot looks close to what you'd submit and then find 'em on here: http://furia.com/pjs/

i realize that's not exactly what you're asking for, but it's something.

yeah I'm aware of that (although I didn't remember the url so thanks for reminding me) but that implies checking out hundreds of ballots one by one

but it is something and it is helpful indeed, you're right

I bet it's going to come down to Marc Masters again anyway

My tabulation notes are here:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/pazz-and-jop-the-village-voice-music-critics-poll-this-years-tabulation-notes-9607137

xp yeah, not perfect. although if you start at, say, Marc and poke around his most compatible, perhaps you could cut down considerably on the number of ballots you'd feel like you need to look at. unless you're the "better look at all of them, the perfect one may be just around the corner" type.

glenn, i'm curious: how hard/easy would it be to do something like what Dinsdale wants? make a public-facing feature where people can input their 10 favorite albums and see what writers are their closest match? might be cool...

cool notes, glenn!

yeah, glenn's notes and the furia site are always the best part of this whole thing :D

I agree that that matching feature would be cool, but I can't currently do it. It's not algorithmically difficult (as you say, I'm already doing the same math), but the stats site is hosted on a regular personal web-server account, so I can't really do any live analysis there. Thus I do all the analysis offline and generate static web pages for the site...

Monolithity re-scores albums by the percentage of their voters who didn't also vote for any songs by the same artist (but who did vote for songs). Eight albums got all their votes from people who didn't also vote for songs by those artists, but the only ones with more than ten voters were Michael Kiwanuka's Love & Hate and Nicolas Jaar's Sirens, which I will not describe for you because the whole point of this is that you have to listen to them properly, meaning alone, at night, with extremely expensive audio cables.

lmao

It was also a really shitty year for metal

nah

i was going to disagree with that too. personally i had a great time

Glenn, these notes are so much fun. Thank you for doing these!

yeah, great year for metal

thx for the reply, glenn! what you already do for this is greatly appreciated.

P.S.: The prize for the best voting typo of the year goes to former Voice music editor Rob Harvilla, who voted not for YG's mordant anti-Trump rant "FDT," but instead for "FTD", his instantly timeless and viscerally vituperative takedown of corporatized floral-delivery. Fight the Flower.

ha

inevitably I'm surprised by some of the albums/tracks I'm alone in voting for but I did not expect to be literally the only kristin hersh voter http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2016/katherine-st-asaph-6596429

(christ, that spacing)

I don't know if I realized I was #1 in "Metalism" last year. This year I was #14 despite the fact that I consider Khemmis the only metal album on my ballot. Despite fewer albums at top, I still think it was a good year for metal.

I guess my love for psych prog is deeply unfashionable, to the point where I felt the urge to friend the three people who also voted for Wolf People and Syd Arthur (there were no other votes for Lola Colt, Blood Ceremony and Purson).

No ballot in there for me this year.

The interface kept failing, so I sent my votes in a Word file that must've gotten lost along the way.

Ah well.

The New York nerderati's deep affection for 75 Dollar Bill is baffling to me

drone for podcast listeners

seems fine, forgettable tho

I like 75 Dollar Bill but can never quite make the leap to loving it. Someday, maybe.

how did Weyes Blood only get 7 album votes in this thing

Less contributors to the poll than in certain prior years, although more than last year