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

guys

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I think it's mostly hot air, especially the less of your taste you share in common with the person you are dialoguing with.

You might as well seriously try to convince someone to give the texture of a dried coconut another chance by talking about the way its firmness combines with a trace of its previously moist state.

Music: more complicated, but you soon run into similarly simple simples.

My experience is that discourse around music rarely comes anywhere close in changing my perception of music to: seeing how people (who are part of the musical sub-culture) move to it, learning how to dance to it (where things are formalized enough that that makes sense), drugs, and maybe heightened states of emotion, or simply being in an unusual context (staying up all night on a long ride home from somewhere).

I don't mean to say that it can't be somewhat interesting to find out how other people experience music, but I find those accounts have minimal persuasive force.

All of this may be less true of discussions of lyrical content, but lyrical content doesn't figure too significantly in my experience of music. (Maybe that's because I am otherwise attracted to so much foreign language music).

My experience is that discourse around music rarely comes anywhere close in changing my perception of music to: seeing how people (who are part of the musical sub-culture) move to it, learning how to dance to it (where things are formalized enough that that makes sense), drugs, and maybe heightened states of emotion, or simply being in an unusual context (staying up all night on a long ride home from somewhere).

I've said this before, but dancing is discourse. All you're saying here is that writing hasn't changed your perception of it much.

Part of my problem with the handwringing surrounding this thread is that suspending critical integrity and dismissing things you haven't really listened to based on contempt for the general aesthetic is FUN and nearly everyone does it including some of the people railing most vociferously against it on this thread (eg The Lex and the Arctic Monkeys).

I mean, if I ever stop having lazy gratuitous pops at mimsy tweepop bands with cardigans and recorders and xylophones then just kill me then and there. And I would say people with infinitely more critical clout than me doing it at, say, up and coming indie bands (or MCs, or singers, or whoever) is much more damaging to the artists than a perceived lack of critical respect for multi-million selling globally famous pop stars like Taylor or Mariah.

I mean, what this comes down to more often than not is a filtering of those aesthetics you consider worthy of lazy dismissal and those whose lazy dismissal you are outraged by. And the outrage is totally 100% OTM and justified in the case of say Lady Stush or some band playing a currently unfashionable strand of guitar pop but I can't think of anyone who is likely to be less affected or bothered by a lack of respect from the indiecentric internet critical sphere than Mariah Carey.

(God I think in a roundabout way I've just defended Pipecock - I'm going to go and hang myself now)

And yes I do realise that there's a world of difference between indulging lazy dismissal on a message board and doing so from a position of power and/or influence but the conversation seems to have moved away from Pitchfork and onto more general internet attitudes so I'm trolling a bit. But it doesn't really matter in the case of Mariah Carey who is so ridiculously successful without the critic's help.

Personally speaking I don't really want to give Mariah any time because a)there's so much else to listen to and b) she comes across as such an unbelievably unpleasant person and I can't see how I could possibly identify with her music on any level.

My experience is that discourse around music rarely comes anywhere close in changing my perception of music to: seeing how people (who are part of the musical sub-culture) move to it, learning how to dance to it (where things are formalized enough that that makes sense), drugs, and maybe heightened states of emotion, or simply being in an unusual context (staying up all night on a long ride home from somewhere).

I don't mean to say that it can't be somewhat interesting to find out how other people experience music

I am very confused by this line of reasoning! Aren't all the things you list "how other people experience music"?

I just banished the image of Mariah Carey excitedly photocopying the Sasha Frere-Jones New Yorker review of The Emancipation of Mimi

... in a pair of tiny hotpants with 'Animal Collective' written on them.

This is not a pleasant vision to wake up to.

Good morning, Ned!

Uhhhh . . . an image of Mariah Carey in a pair of tiny hotpants (with "Animal Collective" -- or anything else, for that matter -- written on them) is a very pleasant image!

She's your type of chick.

LOL

Yes. Crazy girls try harder.

Must be a Miami thing.

In reading over this last batch of posts I was thinking a bit about where I stand with it all, and I was able to put into words something more of the shift in the way I consider (and argue and write about) music in the past few years, or perhaps the decade as a whole. Some of which I'm going to save for my piece in the upcoming Stylus one-off, but more generally now:

The indirect exchange between Frank and Dan above helped me crystallize an idea that I seem to unconsciously, if not always consciously, steer away from 'anchor figures' to talk/think about music, at least in the sense of the performer or public face and, where applicable, voice. I kinda identify this as part of a larger withdrawal from the concept of the celebrity, partially due to the evolving change with which I dealt with music and media over the decade. In a strange way (and this sounds grotesque, so I will apologize for it in advance), one of the more profound personal impacts of 9/11 was a decision to stop switching on the TV and channel-browsing, as I didn't want a slew of voices and images in my head any more than necessary, even by chance. In combination with the fact that I long ago gave up on regular commercial radio listening (must have been around '92 or so), much of the decade has been a 'silent' decade on many fronts, the more obvious contexts in which popular music is consumed somewhat willfully shut off in favor of other, often unexpected ones which I find much more intriguing. (Going out and about somewhere, hearing something clearly well known but totally unfamiliar to myself is often a good shock to the system.)

Of course, it's not like I don't just call up everything and anything these days on the Net regardless, which has been plenty helpful over time (as have pop-conscious blogs like Idolator, a classic example of a gatekeeper function at work!). It's all there if I want or need it. But I don't always *need* it, and often the knowledge it is there is enough. Rightly or wrongly I have reached the point where given the sheer volume of music out there that I can and do have an interest in -- in combination with everything else in life I find of particular value, all of which is time spent, human capital -- means that I choose often to pick my battles precisely so I can let myself be surprised otherwise. And this doesn't mean a full retreat into the well-worn either -- in ways I've been doing that a little more lately due to the ongoing digitization of my library, but the majority of my listening remains new releases, newer artists, as part of a product of my reviewing for the AMG in particular.

Turning back again to Frank and Dan's points, said 'anchor figures' in pop for me have held much less of a sense of fascination than past ones have, and I rarely think about them in those kind of terms anymore. (Thinking not just music here but talk about actors in film and TV would need several posts on its own.) I was trying to think who for me had any sort of impact on that front recently that I used to feel for people like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince -- the usual suspects of my early adolescence -- plus the later more generally subcultural ones. About the only figure who comes close in recent years is *kinda* Kanye but more from a sense of appreciation at his series of balancing acts and impulses, not always successful. Similarly overarching figures of constant annoyance, focuses of ire, a reverse but equally strong fascination are much thinner on the ground for me now. Someone like Asher Roth's a dipshit, but I was never on the warpath against him like I was, say, Rage Against the Machine back in 1993 (and after). And yet the *sound* of the charts as randomly encountered away from the computer, unstable then unstable, constantly recombining into new monoliths -- same as it ever was but crazily accelerated -- is often relentlessly fascinating to me, a constant life-pulse that I lock onto much more than the people who are the brand-name for it, or the debates over them. I made a joke the other day, based on the upcoming Shakira/Lil Wayne/Timbaland single, that the charts seem to have turned into a rolling collaborative mixtape, and on that front the figures of pop seem to bob in and out of a larger pool, something that often feels -- again, in the way I tend to hear things now -- far less constructed of discrete parts than my earlier sense of what pop 'was,' when I was eight, fourteen, nineteen.

None of this is to somehow settle the debate or provide a grand unified theory or anything, it's just a sketch and outline. For all I know it's a position that nobody has any sort of connection to!

Age is something more than a number. It's possible that no one will ever Mean more to you than Prince, Madonna, and MJ did during your adolescence, Ned. The liberating effects of maturity released you from the influence of totems, leading you to a more catholic approach, say.

Doubtless, and J0hn D.'s spoken at length about studies where music heard (and heard again) in adolescence hardwires the brain in some fashion that can never be set aside, which of course makes perfect sense. But if one can't escape the past one can still find ways to engage with the present on different levels (which I'm sure we can all agree on).

Matt DC wrote: "[D]ismissing things you haven't really listened to based on contempt for the general aesthetic is FUN"

I can't get with this, though it's partly situational. In my world the music that is sneeringly dismissed without engagement is generally hip hop, contemporary r&b, female singer-songwriters, and country music. That is, what you're calling "FUN" in my world is the domain of racists, sexists, and classists; and I find those repugnant.

In addition it seems assholish to dismiss without engagement. If you don't want to engage (and I can understand this, time is limited as Ned says), why not just pass over it in silence and attend to what's worth your time?

but dancing is discourse

Not on some pretty commonly used definitions of "discourse."

Yes, I was talking about written and spoken discourse exclusively.

Sure, but you're admitting that experiencing how music is enjoyed by other people has changed how you experience it - whether it's writing or dancing, you're still letting some third thing mediate your relationship with the music.

I would want to narrow down my earlier comments, then, to verbal discourse around music. In the case of salsa, for instance, as I've mentioned before, for years I didn't like it. Then I caught a Puerto Rico Day parade and warmed to it slightly. (I'm not sure it was necessarily the dancing, of which there wasn't much, and probably what little there was wasn't even too good.) Then taking salsa lessons pretty much gotten me to like it and then being in a club setting and seeing people dance (one particular couple alone on the floor, actually) sealed the deal.

(Of course why this sort of exposure worked for me for salsa but hasn't worked for me for "dance music" or swing or zydeco is another question.)

(I also find banda more tolerable when I am shopping in Pro's Ranch Market.)

Okay but this is purely becoming about you rather than about people generally - why is it that you assume that other people's tastes can't be changed by what they read?

Mine are all the time!

Maybe I'm way over-generalizing from my own experience, but I find what you describe really hard to imagine.

For all I know it's a position that nobody has any sort of connection to! - I feel you, Ned. Actually, you've essentially articulated my own general relationship with music better than I could have hoped to. As the 00s pretty neatly matched my 20s, I've self-consciously grappled with the possibility that I was beginning to experience music through a "kids these days" disconnect/filter or if things really are as fragmented & shape-shifting as they seem. No definitive answer on that yet, but your post goes a good distance in phrasing said dilemma in a way that is applicable to my own perceptions. Looking forward to the finished piece!

Maybe

Probably?

I can't get with this, though it's partly situational. In my world the music that is sneeringly dismissed without engagement is generally hip hop, contemporary r&b, female singer-songwriters, and country music. That is, what you're calling "FUN" in my world is the domain of racists, sexists, and classists; and I find those repugnant.

This times 1000. I think this is the most OTM thing that I've read in this thread yet.

(though granted I did avoid it for a week while on holiday.)

And this is what gets me over and over, is how much of this upholding and deification of "basic taste" or whatever is just lazy excuse making for those who want to privilege music made by and beloved by white men* over music made by or beloved by anyone else.

*I was going to add "middle class" or "tertiary educated" in there, but this plays differently in the UK, where this is this reserved homage of "working class" music as revered by university-educated men who still wish to identify as "working class." But that's a whole nother kettle of fish.

Um, I think Matt was kinda defending e.g. Lex's sneering dismissals of indie.

But The Lex's sneering dismissals of indie are very much in response to and in echo of the USUAL sneering dismissals of the above.

Also, the idea that discourse can't change one's tastes is patent bullshit. The difference between my tastes circa 1999 and 2009 are almost entirely down to ILX. I'd be a much narrower person without it. So yes, discourse is hugely important.

I think Lex himself would say that his sneering dismissals of indie are more than just a "response and echo". He really hates it as music, and clearly derives some enjoyment from that. He and Matt are on the same side in this respect. Sure you can say that it's less of a problem when you're making a counter-discursive injunction (i.e. against pitchfork or whatever) but that doesn't mean the motivation is "pure".

This is not me having a go at Lex by any stretch: I used to be in the same camp pretty much, and still feel a certain allegiance that way.

Personally I think dismissal-without-engagement mostly works when you've got a prior history of engagement on which to draw from - this is what powered FT's anti-indie period, for example.

Obviously dismissal-without-engagement when practised by people w/r/t a genre that they really don't get is always going to fail, partly by just being wrong, and partly by almost inevitably tripping into dodgy social assumptions.

my vocal dismissals of indie are very much response and echo! cf metal - i really don't enjoy listening to it, i don't really get any element of it, but i don't dismiss it precisely b/c my knowledge and understanding of it is so limited, and it doesn't occupy the same amount of cultural space as indie. i mean the point about my indie hate is that i do like indie on the rare occasion that it's done well (yeah yeah yeahs, santogold, um).

I don't think that his *hatred* is response and echo. But the way that it is phrased, and the timing very much seems to be reactive. I'm not saying that justifies it, but think about it - 9 times out of 10 (just not in the rarified waters of ILX) when someone dismissively says "All X is shit!" with that edge of viciousness as well as snobbery, the target is not rock or indie, it's pop, R&B, rap - the historical backlash against disco, etc. etc.

There was definitely an element of this in mine own adolescence, mainly learned in an effort to be accepted by certain peer groups.

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My private example is always gay club culture, which I started feeling very critical of (in the years immediately following coming out), which was followed by grudging affection and then a sense of understanding. Of course back when I was very critical I felt like I "got" this culture. Whereas even though now I would say I feel a sense of understanding, I would actually be more hesitant to put myself forward as an authority. Maybe this is just a general part of aging whereby you trust yourself less after witnessing yourself getting things wrong so much in the past.

This is why I feel less inclined to HATE things than I used to: I'm more aware of the likelihood that I will get it wrong and have to retract.

x-post Lex but this goes back to my question I asked you re the difference b/w Fall Out Boy and Animal Collective. Are you saying you feel you "understand" the second more, so can hate it more comfortably?

i think that particular example is a split between

a) when writers like cis and tom have praised fall out boy, i find i actually recognise the qualities they're praising in the music - i just dislike it for different reasons. the same is not true of animal collective.

b) one gets an annoying kind of default critical respect, the other gets automatic default critical rejection - as i probably said when the album was released, what irked me more than people merely liking animal collective was the undertone that they were an Important Band who, regardless of whether you enjoyed the music, were somehow worthy of your attention anyway

Maybe this is just a general part of aging whereby you trust yourself less after witnessing yourself getting things wrong so much in the past.

Completely true. Of course, I discovered this, aged about 17 when I discovered that some of the Classic Rock I was sneering at as a teenage punk was actually quite beautiful (e.g. discovering the power of some of the mellow folky passages of Led Zeppelin) And again in my 20s, discovering that the pop music I'd had to disavow as a teenage punk - despite the sneering of my contemporaries - had some incredible things going for it, and Duran Duran would ultimately shape my tastes as much as if not more than Sonic Youth and Black Flag.

This is why I feel less inclined to HATE things than I used to: I'm more aware of the likelihood that I will get it wrong and have to retract.

Like I keep saying, the things that inspire HATE - that passionate kind of loathing - are the things you are more likely to experience turnarounds on, than the things that inspire more just a kind of ho-hum boredom. When 90% of music is landfill whatever, it's the 5% that inspire hatred and the 5% that inspire love that are much more likely to flip than the landfill.

It's obvious, again and again, the stuff that people HATE HATE HATE says as much about them as people as the stuff that they love.

and to the Lex - the whole thing of this "Important Band" - is to ask the question - important to whom?

I mean, in mine own experience, in the late 80s, Sonic Youth were The Band who were being talked about that they were going to be considered Important. And of course cheesey disposable pop like Duran Duran was not. But ultimately, both bands were Important in their own ways - sometimes it takes time to accomplish this, i.e. the critical reevaluation of Duran Duran that has made them utterly "cool" again when trust me, when Daydream Nation came out, nothing could be considered more naff than owning DD albums.

The problem is, who does the evaluation - and who does the reevaluation - and for what reasons.

Like I said, Important to whom? DD were naff when only girls who were growing into suburban mums still liked them. But when they got rediscovered by the asymmetrical Hoxton crowd - the taint of girlyhood has been washed off.

girlyhood has been washed off the taint.

I feel deeply conflicted 'cause I know exactly what you mean Lex about the critical reception surrounding Animal Collective and yet i love them. It was actually a really big thing for me, realising that, like it kinda was a sign that my former deep antipathy towards indie-culture had slipped out of my pocket somewhere a few miles back (though yeah, obv some of the writing is awful).

I think the tipping point for me was reading Andy Battaglia writing about them in The Onion AV Club about 4 years ago and thinking "Andy writes really smartly about 2-step and Herbert and Lil' Jon and Annie and etc. etc. etc. and he makes AC sound so good, I should probably give them a chance." Which I guess is similar w/r/t you and Fall Out Boy.

(Whereas stuff like Fall Out Boy and Paramore has seduced me not via writing but via awesome radio singles)

i mean the point about my indie hate is that i do like indie on the rare occasion that it's done well (yeah yeah yeahs, santogold, um).

I don't want to contradict this because I usually like the indie you like, but the form of this statement is one which coheres to the point I was making above about gay clubbing. 8 years ago I would have been very critical of music played at gay clubs and then justified this by pointing to the 5% of gay club music I thought was excellent.

I don't think "more right" now. Maybe what's different now is that I feel closer to gay club music per se, and i'm less likely to impose my typical external standards (sonic invention, performative unpredictability etc.) on it and be critical when it fails. Is this a more appropriate approach? I dunno. It's not like the standards I was imposing before were obviously unreasonable. Maybe I was more right before? Maybe I've dropped my standards? Or maybe my earlier position was the equivalent of someone getting upset when hip hop/r&b doesn't sound like Timbaland? I assume that to the person "closer in" to a genre, even a reasoned and articulate 5%-er (and I hope I fell into that category) is gonna sound like someone who "doesn't get it". It's hard to say how much of that is tied up in yr position and perspective.

First sentence of that last paragraph should be "I don't think I'm "more right" now."

I don't dislike Animal Collective or anything, but the fact remains, I cannot get through more half of MPP at a sitting. Sigh.

9 times out of 10 (just not in the rarified waters of ILX) when someone dismissively says "All X is shit!" with that edge of viciousness as well as snobbery, the target is not rock or indie, it's pop, R&B, rap - the historical backlash against disco, etc. etc.

yeah i didn't even really know that the r&b > indie taste set (to grossly oversimplify) really even existed before coming here. before it seemed like indie was universally accepted as critical gold besides stupid punks or metalheads and stuff.

i think feeling superior about what music you listen to over those who like something different is silly and it's something you should grow out of but most probably dont (on all sides)

i admit i feel strange kind of superiority over a lot of people wrt their tastes in music, but generally the people who's tastes i don't feel this way about are people who have totally different tastes than mine. people who's tastes i tend to dismiss are those which i recognize as similar to my own but shittier, or if they like a lot of the things i like but dislike the rest of it for bad reasons. but generally when i come around to remembering that most people are not as nerdy and intentional about it than i am i realize it was silly to ever care in the first place.