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

it's jessica harvell iirc

How hot is she in person, I'll tell you what

And lex, you've totally earned your rep as an at least occasionally narrow-minded defender of the music you think is right and proper. You may not be the lex you once were (dunno, been away for a while), but you have in the past been rather famously frustrating in this respect -- though not quite to Geir levels. This isn't an attack, you're generally a very interesting poster, and I don't think any of the light mockery above was anything but fond. Not to mention fair...

Plus yeah -- thanks for the perspective, cricket.

when i disdain indie rock it's "narrow-minded", when others admit their prejudice against non-indie rock genres it's just their honest taste. right.

I would think that the details of your celebrity would be a point of pride, but what do I know?

when i disdain indie rock it's "narrow-minded", when others admit their prejudice against non-indie rock genres it's just their honest taste. right.

No, they're narrow-minded too! Everyone's narrow-minded about SOMETHING (for example, as far as I'm concerned the vast majority of country music can go fuck itself).

it's kind of annoying when i spend most of my time on ilx repping for and talking in depth about music i like, to be characterised as narrow-minded just b/c the one genre i openly disdain happens to be the critical mainstream. and i only disdain it b/c i like it on the rare occasion when it's done well!

lex i know yr critical faculties are sharp but i would suggest this is a perception issue based on you regularly wading into indie rock and pfork threads with no purpose beyond expressing your disdain.

I suspect people are less bothered by people dismissing entire swathes of music than their tendencies to bang on about their disdain, unprompted, over and over and over

i think i've done more in this thread than dismiss and disdain. as have kate, tim, deej, contenderizer, dan &c.

pfork is for better or worse a cultural arbiter beyond "indie rock" - if it wasn't, i wouldn't be confronted w/it on a regular basis and i wouldn't have to think about it ever.

lol yes you have in this thread but that's because this thread has gone off on some pretty major tangents iirc.

lex have you softened yr position since you wrote this last year:

"when i first went to university i made a real effort for maybe 5 months to get into the old music i thought/was told i "should" like and i'm not joking, it almost all sucked...dylan, stones, beatles, bowie. dreadful! so many hours wasted trying to get into them. those 5 months may have put me off delving into the past 4 life."

it's not the only genre you openly dislike tbf lex

^^^^ this this this this this this this

And the fact is that yr generally pretty funny about it, lex (see above quote). It's part of yr brand, and I don't see anyone really hating on your for it -- not on this thread, anyway.

hang on, my experience of actively trying to get into stuff i didn't know about is "narrow-minded" now? oh, fuck you all. well done especially to the people whose only contributions here are snarking at me rather than responding to any of the points raised.

yeah let's make this a thread about how Lex dislikes stuff, that will be original AND productive

xp: okay too late

I know how we can settle this. FIGHT! FIGHT!

Preferably involving Turkish Oil Wrestling, please.

sorry lex, i wasnt having a go at you, i was just making a point.

lex i know yr critical faculties are sharp but i would suggest this is a perception issue based on you regularly wading into indie rock and pfork threads with no purpose beyond expressing your disdain.

― call all destroyer, woensdag 7 oktober 2009 16:12 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

Well this, basically, makes me agree with most here on how you got your 'reputation'. I wouldn't say you're narrow minded, but I have shaken my head on more than one occassion seeing you entering a thread about some band or genre you just do not like, and we all understand, but you seem to be there only to express your disgust of that music. It's not narrow minded, rather than 'pointless'.

(and I'm NOT joining in on a hate march here or anything Lex, please believe)

what a disaster for the canon

my experience of actively trying to get into stuff i didn't know about is "narrow-minded" now?

― lex pretend

No, dude, it's yr experience of actively (and hilariously) slagging off like 90% of the music in the world. With special bonus points for the casual dismissal of sacred cows in a manner that makes die-hards see spots. All of this is to yr credit.

when i went to university i made no real effort at all to get into dylan, stones, beatles, bowie etc. but i didn't have that same feeling that i should, or maybe i just found that i could dismiss this as i felt comfortable enough with the relative broadness of contemporary music love. i would say i've become more...appreciative of that older canon stuff as i've aged (matured? hmm) tho not to the extent that it figures in my regular listening much, just that i'm more willing to see why they're good (when they were/are good).

so ignoring them at the time as i did may seem narrow-minded, just as a blanket dismissal (at least one beyond 'tried it, don't get it/not for me') of them might despite the initial gesture of being prepared to give them a chance could be considered the opposite.

just picking up on this because it struck as interesting if not particularly relevant to the main topic.

Well, you're getting old, and "contemporary music" will become Old Music soon enough.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but the most usual complaint about canon (from those that I hear, at least) is NOT about what is included, but more about what seems to be almost deliberately EXCLUDED. Just sayin'

No, dude, it's yr experience of actively (and hilariously) slagging off like 90% of the music in the world

bowie/beatles/stones = 90% of the music in the world now?

ppl who diss the many artists and genres i love don't seem to get this sort of treatment.

I don't notice people coming on the threads for music you love and mentioning the "pity w/a tinge of contempt" they feel for people who like that music. Although being plenty narrow-minded and not actually reading those threads myself, how would I know?

Geir does, kinda. That's a whole nother ball game tho really. xp

Not to put to fine a point on it, but the most usual complaint about canon (from those that I hear, at least) is NOT about what is included, but more about what seems to be almost deliberately EXCLUDED.

otm. it's the LACK of many artists that i consider to be the elite of this decade that galls most than the inclusion of whatever band i dislike or don't care about. where are mariah carey, ellen allien, ce'cile, ashlee simpson, taylor swift, teedra moses, busy signal, young dro? where is the dubstep and grime and dancehall and techno and house and teenpop and funky?

Yeah, I can't imagine someone turning up on ILM slagging off rap as a genre and getting clowned out of here

xp x 3

It really comes as a shock to you that loudly slagging Bowie/Beatles/Stones (etc. -- you forgot the very extensive "etc.") earned you a rep as a narrow-minded shit-stirrer on an indie-centric crit site? Really really? Cuz, man, I thought that was the whole point. Color me confused.

I wasn't aware that ILM was indie-centric.

If anything, in its original incarnation as the discussion board for Freaky Trigger, it was POP centric.

we could go on all day abt how sincere it is, but lol @ indie rock is pretty much the #1 conceit on this board.

the whole point of ilx for me when i joined is that it WASN'T just another indie-centric crit site - it was a place where all the genres i loved were held in as high esteem, or higher.

actually that's another thing that galls about the pfork-and-beyond critical consensus @ the end of this decade: it seems to be a total regression given all the pro-pop, pro-r&b, pro-hip-hop, pro-dance critical thought of the past few years. so many arguments made so eloquently for a shift in critical assumptions, and then...we get the same ol' same ol' bullshit.

let's not forget that according to those meddling poll results, ILM's favourite album of then 90s (and all time) is 'Loveless' and 'Kid A' won the 00-04 mega-poll.

that doesn't mean ILM hasn't traditionally been more popist (with Wu-Tang and Daft Punk at #2 in those polls/lists respectively) than most channels but it does always serve as a reminder of what i think is ILM's default direction (coming FROM indie) if not current position

Yeah, but wasn't that same bunch of polls that revealed Loveless to be the best album revealed Britney Spears as being best single?

Yeah, but "lol @ indie rock" is (or at least can be) a very indie thing to do. The non-indie thing is to just talk about something else. Indie gets a LOT of play around here -- at least it always has during the four or five years I've been reading/posting. Endless Vampire Weekend & AnCo threads, endless PFork threads, tons of Sonic Youth, Radiohead & MBV stans. Liking pop singles and indie albums is a TOTALLY indie stance. I think y'all doth protest too much...

yeah you're right obv, i guess my point is more that this is a shitty place to be an earnest new indie poster

louis ears burnin'

i think tons of lex's & MB's points are right on, but seriously looking @ the p4k albums + singles lists, for an indie-centric site the two lists taken together aren't even that bad! r&b & hip-hop (as well as female artists) have a pretty solid presence in the singles list, especially in the top 20. the albums list yea could use some work but i wouldn't call it a "total regression given all the pro-pop, etc" critical thought this decade

I mean, I totally feel lex on his last point, but fundamentally indie-oriented critics and fans collectively made a big point of embracing pop, hip-hop, r&b and dance music over the course of the past decade. That's a huge part of the indie narrative. Doesn't make the basic POV any less indie though, and it's totally unsurprising that this should show through in the end.

the characterisation of r&b and pop as genres which throw up brilliant singles but no worthwhile albums is the no 1 way of implying that they're not important, significant genres compared to indie rock, and not to be taken as seriously in terms of their form or values

fundamentally indie-oriented critics and fans collectively made a big point of embracing pop, hip-hop, r&b and dance music over the course of the past decade

well that's the point. it feels like lip service. it doesn't really show.

So, erm, basically, even if your tastes mature or grow or change, you are forever tainted with this "indie" association? Is it like Catholicism or something, that you can take the kid out of indie, but you can't take the indie out of the kid?

That seems pretty, um, ridiculous to me. If a genre has become that amourphous or all encompassing.

and this brings up another problem with my idea of trying to come up with a personal "best of" or "favourite of" for the 00s. My tastes have grown and changed and widened over the past 10 years. Am I supposed to be looking at "stuff I rated at the time" in early parts of the 00s, or "stuff that I rate now" - knowing full well that my tastes in music *do* change and in another 10 years, I'll have a completely different view of what the 00s were about?

Ten years is a long time. And I know that I certainly don't have enough perspective on the 00s yet to come up with any "best of" conclusions about the decade.

it seems to be a total regression given all the pro-pop, pro-r&b, pro-hip-hop, pro-dance critical thought of the past few years. so many arguments made so eloquently for a shift in critical assumptions, and then...we get the same ol' same ol' bullshit.

I think this point was covered on the other thread, but the list does make sense considering these advances. The number of early 2000's albums is indicative of it (though there are other reasons such as the further back in the past can = staying power/canon). The narrower taste of the early part of the decade wrapped up in the pre-mp3 craze colluding with the more major-label indie aspect having hot sex with the indie-kids-have-grown-up-and-broadened-tastes-mentality all means that everything is much more niche now than it was then, so sacred cows in recent times are harder to agree on.

That said, I'm coming from that being pretty close to my experience, and the p4k top 20 oddly reflecting that. Early 00's albums represented were some of my favs when they came out, but recent stuff like AnCo have completely passed me by, and as such I feel out of the loop in regards to p4k (American?) indie. Can't say what my number one would be, but I've listened to Studio's West Coast more than any other album over the last several years, and it's nowhere in the top 200. In 2002, Kid A and Moon and Antarctica and Is This It might have been my votes.

i think part of this is that pfork probably represents the best chance, by some distance, of achieving the diversity (as opposed to specifically reflecting their own tastes better) people here would prefer to see compared to their rivals. and tho it is a more diverse list than most you will see from major pop cultural arbiters (e.g. how many other mags will feature as many as 7 nationalities in their best of 00s top 20s?), what it lacks and obscures will stand out to ILM readers more than most people.

what other publications/websites might be producing a best of 00's rival canon?

genuine question, not a 'p4k stan(d)s alone' statement

Well, we discussed the Uncut one on Twitter - which SURPRISINGLY - actually had higher female content in their top 10 than the P4k one.