P2K: The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s: 20-1

lol jon lewis why don't you go see for yourself?

Bcuz cannot get away with looking at p4k at work at this particular moment.

k sorry i was harshin up there

"It's just this kind of build-up of frustration - as I said earlier - at seeing list after list being 90% male. And every one gets excused as "well, this is kind of a niche audience, so of course..." until you get to the point where you realise that there IS not a place where female artists seem to be getting rated as canonical until you go to places that are built to be pro-female by design."

I take it by "places" here you mean indie magazines or websites? And if so, then it is a niche audience. Let's not conflate music crit with indie crit.

Her complaint has general validity. The canon-forging (crowning?) critics' lists that get the most attention at year's end tend to be male-dominated in most genres. The tendency isn't confined to indie-land. Pazz n Jop voters seem to take pains to be inclusive/generalist, but still...

pazz n jop was created by a dude who dismissed the runaways as sluts so maybe his torch continues to be carried?

i think pazz n jop has the opposite problem, where old lechs vote for feist

"At PFork, I suppose it's really just a way to say "not indie enough" (too ordinary, suburban, mom & dad, etc)."

But ordinary suburban moms and dads listen to "indie" music. It's not like Kid A or OK Computer was just bought by the secret heads that are totally into this hermetic indie. Fuck, this stuff shows up in car commercials. I think we can stop pretending that it's not mainstream.

k i'm going to gently suggest that we not do the what is mainstream argument here

is feist hot?

the what is mainstream argument seems slightly less annoying than the current 'SEXISTS!~!!! SEXISTSSS!' argument

xpost

Always fascinated when gender comes up. Seems like it was such a part of indie discourse back in my youth ie 90s. Not always as much anymore.
I always think the phrase self-selecting doesn't quite nail it. Maybe self-reinforcing is better? I always seem to tell the same story on this issue: back when I was promoting shows in college our little organization was all of 3 guys. We never turned any females down, or anyone for that matter, yet we didnt have any in our group. At one point, a couple of females did want to join but they ended up not doing it, and even felt dissuaded by the gender imbalance. Yet we wanted them to join, and not because of our genitals but because we needed the help and they were cool people. Nobody was actively or passively trying to exclude or be excluded and yet it happened anyways (the only caveat we, two nice-guy hippies and a harmless house dj, stoners all, gave to any prospective members is "be ready to coil microphone cables").

Which is why sometimes it is really important to try and interrogate perceived imbalance. Its not about trying to prop up some false, rigged parity to satisfy "gender police" or something like that its more about making sure options are perceived as existing. so the whole "what percent of top 20 are female" is a bit of a distraction. more important is to try and see if there are certain roles that must be played (yes there are, but for both genders) and whether the hierarchy of those roles favors one gender or another.

as for me, given what i felt about music this decade, it was really the listener that was unfairly discriminated against.

on another note: r&b/pop production, is for the most part, ultra-fordist so I would imagine Usher should suffer just as much as Rihanna in the whole "don't write their own songs, can't program synths, etc" rockist discourse.

Lastly:
Fever Ray wuz robbed!

let's try to prove that the #1-selling album among women 25 - 40 in Shakopee, MN is Bat For Lashes

I will pay for gas if you drive.

But ordinary suburban moms and dads listen to "indie" music. It's not like Kid A or OK Computer was just bought by the secret heads that are totally into this hermetic indie. Fuck, this stuff shows up in car commercials. I think we can stop pretending that it's not mainstream.

― Giorgio Marauder (I eat cannibals

Since cannibals said it, and since I'm now safely insulated from cad's objection by several posts, it doesn't matter how popular indie gets or who listens to it. It's still (and inherently) coded as non-mainstream. This is, I think, a big part of comfort-indie's success -- and PFork's influence -- in the "we're all non-mainstream!" social climate that nabisco describes in his essay on the Decade In Indie.

i'm watchin you contenderizer!

Re: Shhh!

Self-selecting and therefore self-reinforcing?

Plus Fever Ray OTM.

well, in the case i described there was agency involved, eg girls not choosing to join, but because they didnt join the concept "girls can be part of this organization" never became established so other people coming along later who didnt know about this earlier choice may have never understood that the above statement is true.

I keep thinking that maybe Fever Ray suffered because of the lateness of the release but really I was a few months behind in May when I bought the album and I would hazard a guess that Pitchfork got to hear it before its March release date. WTF?

bitte orca and veckatimest came out way later than fever ray so i don't think it's that.

For what it's worth, it took FR quite a while to grow on me. I mean, I liked it at first, but was inclined to (partially) dismiss it as a pleasant but less-catchy Knife offshoot. I.e., really good mood/background music, but still... (This in spite of many warnings from other ILXors that real appreciation would likely take time.)

Maybe a lot of PF staffers never had that eventual "aha!" moment with it?

I guess I can see that album being a slow-grower if you're coming at it from the context of The Knife, but I instantly loved it.

Also, if I were making a short best of the decade list, I might be inclined to slight Fever Ray in favor of The Knife, who I still prefer, if only by a slight margin. Just to make room for other stuff...

except for if i had a heart which is so doomy and creepy and awesome, it kind of sounds to me like a less-rich version of silent shout. still great, but lacking something to take it to the next level (cue accusations of sexism).

The space is what makes it awesome IMO; if every song were as thick as most of the Silent Shout tracks it would basically just be another Knife album. I like that it dials back the danciness and operates much more in drama.

Having said that, Silent Shout is fucking brilliant, too.

xpost

maybe that is it - I liked them before the show, loved them afterwards - maybe if the US leg occured earlier in the year...

i really generally do not complain about these sorts of lists, especially since I am not the target audience... but my original statement stands.

yeah dan that's def. fair and accurate.

It's funny, when I think of albums I admire more than I like, the first one that leaps to mind is Speech Debelle; I think she nailed exactly what she was going for and did a fantastic job of it, but what she was going for was not something that I am particularly geeked to hear. It was a very pleasant album and I'm glad I bought it but I'm certain my wife will play it more than I will, and she NEVER plays any of my albums except for MIA and Santigold.

If I Had A Heart is the worst thing on the album and can't believe it was the lead single but the album is excellent anyway

there's a pretty good reason why Dylan is being rated over Baez. I'll let you guess what the reason is.

― Mr. Que, Tuesday, October 6, 2009 12:57 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

a penis?

jk

If I Had A Heart is the worst thing on the album and can't believe it was the lead single but the album is excellent anyway

That's crazy talk, the worst thing on the album is "It's Not Over".

Yeah, I might agree that Heart isn't the best song on the album, but it's far from the worst.

hoping you don't mean I'm Not Done xp

but seriously folks -- 1) i think contenderizer was upthread defending ppl's right to let their taste be, that if u move away from your taste for political concerns you're being dishonest somehow ... i dont get that. I have to say that while my taste for individual songs feels very immediate, natural & linked to who I am as a person, I can't say that my 'taste' is so rigidly linked to my sense of self ... records i liked a couple years ago ive since rejected, & oftentimes for much more arbitrary & random reasons than politically-related gender concerns.

if anything, i think my worldview can be kind of self-correcting ... if i spend a lot of time listening to a certain aesthetic worldview for a while, i'll get kinda tired of it & autocorrect ... & gender (largely unwittingly) figures into this ... i mean, i listen to some super-gay house music one minute, then super-masculine gangster rap the next, and like both of them, & see how they complement each other within a larger rubric of my taste ...

i think at some level ive never been super-confident in the idea of 'taste'. there's stuff im drawn towards, but really your 'taste' always requires conscious effort in order to be engaged. & taking into account gender issues happens as a part of who you are. claiming that sexism is already written into your world outlook (probably true) is fine, but denying that its something u can be aware of & dialogue with internally is nonsense, your taste can absolutely be affected by self reflection etc

That's all true. Taste changes all the time. Geeking out for a couple years on lo-fi garage punk has definitely whetted my appetite for more interesting production. Listening to doom and black metal for a couple years chased me into lo-fi garage punk in the first place. That kinda thing.

And I agree that people should think politically. If you suddenly notice that you only ever listen to duderock and become curious about the rest of the world, that's great. Open-mindedness is a plus. But I don't think that people should be shamed into thinking they shouldn't like what they do, or that some enjoyments are morally superior to others. I don't think there's anything wrong, for instance, with wholeheartedly loving "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah", regardless of the associations. (All apologies.)

And I don't think there's anything wrong with genuinely tending to prefer music made/sung by guys. Not necessarily, anyway.

i think ppl already DO think politically

but heres the thing ... its so much more complicated than just listening to more women. its more like, being open to other kinds of aesthetical concerns that tend to be bigger with female audiences, for example

one record i think pitchfork really shortchanged was that amy winehouse LP. that really seemed like a huge demographic crossover record in so many ways, a really central record to the 00s -- > it was indie, but it crossed over; soul revivalist dudes liked it, but it also had a contemporary vocalist who sang w/ contemporary slang & wasn't trying to sound like motown, but like herself; & she was big w/ both black & white (female) friends I had. Dudes didnt really get into it too much, but even chicks started dressing like her around here. She was pretty huge indie-wise among chicks i knew anyway.

& i didnt vote for it either. But i liked it, & all my female friends being into it was what led me to check for it. but a lil more self-awareness on my part -- not 'politicization of my tastes,' but just further reflection when considering my albums list - would have probably led to me including it. there are like 5000 records i heard this decade maybe, & which ones i decided to vote for is less about "ooh so honest & true to my taste" & more about a huge multitude of different factors & concerns when i was constructing it

agreed w/ that second paragraph. without getting too far into the tedious gender discussions here, to answer something kate posed earlier, i think the mark of a critic are his/her interesting thoughts and perspectives on whatever he is writing about, not the horizontal scope of their tastes.

xp

Went for Daft Punk, but this lacks almost all of the central UK albums of the decade. I mean, no Franz Ferdinand? WTF?

so basically i'd rather read someone who writes about (and listens to) primarily, say, R&B (or punk or whatever) with valuable opinions than someone with a super self-aware politically correct taste w/ nothing interesting to say

xp

the mark of a critic are is his/her

a few other points --

1) tom ewing made this point in his freakytrigger thing on up-and-coming music writers suggest to him by his networks online, but there werent too many women, and the women who WERE identified very very rarely identified simply as music writers -- music was something they wrote about, but it was part of a larger project

2) we still havent addressed the fact that female ARTISTS dont necessarily appeal to female CRITICS, that Usher might do better among a bunch of female critics, Kylie might do better among a bunch of male ones (& even better among a bunch of gay ones? another demographic whose aesthetic concerns impact any discussions of gender)

i dunno this is all super-complicated

True, deej, but the all-girl pazz & jop lists do seem to include at least a few more female artists. Which is what I'd expect. Not looking for any huge transformation. Not in the short run, anyway.

Agree with you on the importance of being open to multiple points of view and different ways of looking at art, even art you're already familiar with. Still hesitant about the idea that cultural breadth in one's taste is morally/politically laudable (implying as it does that narrowness is a moral fault). I know that's not what yr saying...

I can't say that my 'taste' is so rigidly linked to my sense of self ... records i liked a couple years ago ive since rejected, & oftentimes for much more arbitrary & random reasons than politically-related gender concerns.

arbitry random reasons > politically related ones

There's nothing I really love on this list:

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion - Seems a bit manicured, and I'm not big on Beach Boys harmonies.
The Arcade Fire - Funeral - Seems kind of standard-issue indie rock.
The Avalanches - Since I Left You - Proves that one can combine lots of samples and still end up with boring instrumentals.
Daft Punk - Discovery - Seems a bit twee to really rock a dance floor.
Ghostface Killah - Supreme Clientele - Good, but seems dated for a 2000s list, a leftover from '90s hip hop.
Interpol - Turn On the Bright Lights - Takes derivative to a whole new level (see also: Strokes).
Jay-Z - The Blueprint - He seems a likeable guy, but his music is curiously bloodless.
The Knife - Silent Shout - Not sure when I'd be in the mood for something like this.

I could go on, but I'll spare you my snarky comments.

politically related ones

― samosa gibreel, Tuesday, October 6, 2009 4:59 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dont agree -- 'politically related' just means, like, 'i wonder why i havent ever paid attention to xyz...' & then u check it out. its not about being shamed by peta into checking animal collective or something

Daft Punk - Discovery - Seems a bit twee to really rock a dance floor.

funny, but ... this only makes sense if youve somehow managed to avoid a dancefloor w/ daft punk sometime in the last decade

Just had to jump in on the Fever Ray praise. It's my album of the year thus far; even better than the Pitchfork consesus picks, Bitte Orca and MPP, I think.

Don't forget that Grizzly Bear disc in your list of P4K "consensus picks."

9 years later still feel Avalanches LP is a super fun happy slide borderline masterpiece

I just heard it for the first time, thanks to the P4K list and the Lala sale.

It is v. good.

(and immediately accessible, which helps, given my shortened attention span)