2010 Magazine's Albums Of The Year Thread For Posting Lists and Discussion

let's be real, some albums we could all get an adequate handle on after listening once, and others it might take years.

― lex diamonds (lex pretend), Tuesday, January 4, 2011 4:39 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

i don't believe that this is very often true. the things that provokes a strong response on one listen tend to be those that push our buttons, interacting with our deep-set biases and prejudices more than our critical faculties, prompting an instantaneous but shallow "I LOVE THIS!" or "I HATE THIS!" response. i think you have to listen past this kind of knee-jerk immediate reaction to get a truly adequate handle on most music.

I think distinguishing between "deep-set biases and prejudices" and "critical faculties" is usually a false dichotomy, and I don't believe in "trying" to like something. I do believe in trying to figure out how the music works, in giving it a chance, no matter what it is. But if I like it, I like it, and my job is to explain why; if I don't, ditto. And though records have been known to grow (or shrink) on me over the course of weeks, months, years (happens all the time, actually), I usually have a pretty good idea of how much I'll like something (i.e., how good it is, in my terms anyway) after ust a listen or two. On the other hand, I've also advocated "living with albums" (before I put them in a year-end top 10, say) a few times on this thread. And I agree with pretty much everything Tim F says until the "diminishing returns" claim at the end of his spiel. I just don't understand how hearing more music, can, in and of itself, make you a worse critic. Which isn't to say that all critics who listen to hundreds of albums a year are good, when it comes to actually writing about the stuff. But some people can actually walk and chew gum at the same time.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to constantly try to challenge your biases, or at least have self-knowledge about why they're there. But in the end, they're something you learn to live with. And you're allowed to explain and analyze them in your writing, too.

Or I should say that part of my job is explaining why I like something, or don't. But a much bigger part is just explaining what the music does. Though that includes explaining where and how and why it works, and where and how and why it doesn't. So it's not like that's unrelated to my tastes (which include my biases), either.

I just don't understand how hearing more music, can, in and of itself, make you a worse critic. Which isn't to say that all critics who listen to hundreds of albums a year are good, when it comes to actually writing about the stuff. But some people can actually walk and chew gum at the same time.

Well by "diminishing returns" I didn't mean it makes you a worse critic, I meant that the value of listening to each additional album diminishes the more albums you listen to - it doesn't strike me as controversial to suggest that there's a larger difference between listening to 10 albums and 20 albums than there is between listening to 150 albums and 200 albums.

The diversity of music (not just in sounds or genres but in effects, strategies, functions etc) is of course a very long piece of string, but even if critics can walk and chew gum simultaneously, they can only walk so fast and chew so many pieces of gum. The diversity doesn't just exist between pieces of music but also within them, and I think the process of interrogation required to draw this out (or more prosaically, "living with" the music) requires time and effort, at least if you actually intend to say something interesting about the music. Like, I think there's a difference between "getting" an album on first listen and having something to communicate that any other critic couldn't communicate just as easily - unless the "getting" is just the application of your instinctive biases. And I agree chuck that biases are inevitable and even necessary, but unless there is some effort spent in drawing those biases out in novel and illuminating ways one's writing gets pretty repetitive pretty quickly.

Again, though, a lot of my thoughts on this come from having only approx 1.5 hours max of listening time available to me per day, such that if I actually set out to hear 200 albums my average number of listens to any given album would be less than 3 (and that's assuming I listened to no older music). And, as well, full time work doesn't just take away listening time, it takes away the amount of creative energy necessary to really engage with music.

Which doesn't mean that i want to be all Hornby-esque and advocate listening as comfort food, but that I don't see what is the problem with thinking a bit more strategically about the importance of listening to every critically rated album versus other things that might make me a better thinker/writer/critic.

Though I suspect no-one's gonna rush to disagree with that last point and at at this stage of the conversation we're really just defending and promoting our own various approaches to same task.

some effort spent in drawing those biases out in novel and illuminating ways

Pretty sure I've exerted some effort in this direction over the past 30 years. (Whether it's been successful or not is for readers to decide. But though my writing gets accused of a lot of things, sounding like every other critic is usually not one of them.)

listening to every critically rated album

And I've never advocated this, either. (I sure don't do it myself -- I've never heard the vast majority of albums listed on this thread!) And as I also said above, some of my favorite critics barely hear any new albums at all. So again (again) different strokes.

Chuck it should go without saying that you are a special freak who falls outside of all the things i'm talking about pretty much entirely.

I listen to albums so much that I stopped writing about them. ITS THE PERFECT CRIME

I think distinguishing between "deep-set biases and prejudices" and "critical faculties" is usually a false dichotomy, and I don't believe in "trying" to like something. I do believe in trying to figure out how the music works, in giving it a chance, no matter what it is. But if I like it, I like it, and my job is to explain why; if I don't, ditto.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, January 4, 2011 5:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

yeah, i agree. wasn't trying to suggest that careful listening will or should reverse the knee-jerk impressions of one's "deep-set biases and prejudices," but i do think that what we get on the first pass is almost always superficial (if just as often generally accurate). that said, i don't think that the barrier i set between those superficial biases/prejudices and deeper critical thinking creates an entirely false dichotomy. the former come easy, while the latter take time and care to fully develop. it's easy to go into screed/hosanna mode based on initial impressions, and that isn't necessarily wrong, but i find that the eventual peace i reach with most of the music i spend any serious time with is more measured, less dramatic. true even of what i love & hate most intensely.

I think the difference between bias and interesting critical analysis is mainly explication or "working out".

Like a straightforward maths problem some musical puzzles can be solved almost instantaneously (during your first listen), while some require more working out, false starts, thinking around your reaction.

Good music writing usually involves (even if unwittingly) a search for interesting puzzles.

i kind of disagree with that - it reduces criticism to "analysis" and makes it seem like solving an algebra problem. i've never approached music writing with anything like a "strategy" beforehand - it's a mix of the intuitive/emotional and more contextual joining-the-dots.

haha "like an algebra problem" which is exactly what you said anyway. HUGE turn-off! do not want to solve algebra problems, do not want anyone to think i should be.

eh, it's more like filtration than algebra. or culinary reduction. getting to the essence of things takes time, though sure, it's not always worth the bother. some cores are best left unplumbed.

An algebra of emotions though. Why do I feel the way I feel when I listen to this music? What does it mean? I can't imagine not being interested in the answer to that.

If it's not clear, the puzzles are internal to your relationship with the music, your experience of and reaction to it.

Tbh I don't think it's really possible to think outside of that.

eh, it's more like filtration than algebra. or culinary reduction.

I like your latter simile but based on a Twitter group conversation yesterday I fear cooking comparisons are not the best for Lex. :-D

i have no idea what culinary reduction even is. i would rather do algebra than cook, though.

yer all nuts! listening makes you a better listener; reading/writing makes you a better writer; life makes you a better critic. yer welcome. ^_^

Is there a thread for people to confess what they got wrong in 2010? I really feel the need to get some things off my chest.

Start it up.

ned dislikes the rolling stones?

I think you posters all...LAUGH at me.

I might do.

Doran's post-Salem remorse?

waking up in the morning with an empty bottle and a salem cd in your bed. very painful and very awkward. um, this was great, but i gotta get to work...sure, i'll call you. *oh god what have i done?*

lawls

what you've just done is you fucked a CD

the fact that it's Salem is kind of meaningless next to that

Ha ha, no I still like that album. It was more like I heard some Waka Flocka mixtapes but then didn't bother (properly) listening to Flockavelli and I am now.

And obviously it's awesome. It happens every year with stuff I don't get sent.

i did that display name, btw

yay doran getting into flockaveli

Sorry Whiney. Will change ASAP. Just been offered an interview with him by his manger.

"I say, Waka old boy..." etc.

I am slowly rolling this out but I have some interesting demographic data on the Sound Opinions Message Board user poll. Such as the average age of Arcade Fire voters was 31.16 but 28.07 for Big Boi. http://bit.ly/gblXlJ

where's the interesting data?

Interesting only in the context of where it came from I guess. While it's fairly obvious that older people like Grinderman and don't like The-Dream to have that shown empirically is interesting to me. 85% of Love King votes were from people in their twenties and a third of Grinderman 2's were over 35.

so eventually we will be able to construct statistically sound strawmen?

That is the-dream.

what age were the other 2/3 of the Grinderman votes?

unfrozen nick cave fan lawyers

ha!

encino grinderman

trying to think of a clan of the cave bear joke, but i can't think of one.

so eventually we will be able to construct statistically sound strawmen?

― call all destroyer

Grand lolz, thanks.

trying to think of a clan of the cave bear joke, but i can't think of one.

haha yeah right scott.

I don't know where to put this, but did any of you check out this Japanese band 80kidz album on at least one of the lists posted or linked to on this thread (I think it was the Silent Ballet one)? It starts off electro-dribble, but it sounds more like regular "dance music" as it progresses. I'm okay with it but I have a feeling a bunch of you would like it more than I do. I think it's all instrumental. (I've only listened to the whole thing once and might have been out of the room for part of it.)

Is "electro-dribble" hyphenated?

Tokyo must be an awesome place to live.

Is "electro-dribble" hyphenated?

I hate to be all stephen's sock, but come on--new board description?

lol-- i wouldn't have suggested that one :(

just messin around ilxor...sorry

what thread is your sn from?

anyways I don't think electro(-)dribble has been a meme since 2009