Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

Do Outkast, Wu Tang, etc. count as bands?

PJ Harvery is a band whose lead singer is Polly Jean Harvey, kind of like how Sade is a band fronted by Sade Adu.

Harvery

saying Green Day (or RATM) are not remotely indie reeks of massive revisionism.

DOKKEN

idk wtf is wrong with my typing today

*crosses fingers in the hope that this thread devolves into a crazy bunch of posts about what is and isn't indie.*

Mastodon, Queens Of The Stone Age, Dixie Chicks (or, if they're too early, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings. Or Tinariwen. Or Kings Of Leon.)

those nu metal and post grunge bands that sold shitloads arent remotely indie.
Hootie as well.

My Morning Jacket

indie - guitars, distortion, bad singing
not indie - a vagina

Fluxblog on xhuxk's article:

This is an extraordinarily depressing essay by former Voice editor/professional contrarian Chuck Eddy. It’s like a guy who used to be principal of a high school getting really angry about the outcome of his old school’s student council election.

http://perpetua.tumblr.com/post/344479080/the-year-of-too-much-consensus

Ha ha.

Oh wait, '89? I thought you meant '99. '89 is easy.

those nu metal and post grunge bands that sold shitloads arent remotely indie.
Hootie as well.

Right, but they're not "critically popular."

wow, there's a lot of discussion going on about xhuxk's essay on Tumblr.

see T0m E.'s Tumblr: http://tomewing.tumblr.com/

yeah, none of that is indie-rooted or appeals to indie kids. The only that applies I think is SOTD and they, you know, sucked.

Kings Of Leon were definitely indie when they came out, could even make cases for QOTSA and maaaaybe Mastodon (though by there you're definitely into "non-indie that indie folks like").

yeah but all three of those bands sounds different^^^!

I refer you to my previous post.

yeah but "a vagina" is your answer to everything

touche

how long into our vessel reaches curvy colombian waters?

My friend raises this interesting point...

if it's so terrible that indie rock is in the top 5, what SHOULD have been there? Like and I mean things that people could actually rally behind, not just random shit you like

Tom Ewing: "It’s like when I first started blogging and I got the reputation of being fiercely pro-pop and anti-indie, and I played up to that a little bit, but what I was being contrary against was my immediate online vicinity."

THAT, my friends is indie guilt defined.

xpost

gucci mane seems to be getting a bit of attention online...

whiney, is your friend scottpl?

I can easily see The-Dream or Maxwell (neither of whom I like much, btw) finishing Top 5 in an earlier of era of P&J, Whiney. For starters.

I think Tom's onto something here:

My point is that at the moment we have one very big taste-cluster and it’s centred on the Pitchfork Top 10. This is no fault of Pitchfork’s and indeed the editors and publisher should be very proud and happy about it. But there’s also no reason why competing large taste-clusters shouldn’t exist, large enough that P4K’s Top 10 only crosses over with 30% or 40% of the P&J Top 10.

Neither The-Dream or Maxwell making the top 5 would really make my day, personally. The-Dream would especially be a case of P'n'J praising the album after the one they should have.

I think what finally made "New York State of Mind" finally click with me was hearing it in a bunch of different settings, it just sounded huge and anthemic - a quality that seems to have been missing from hip-hop for a while now (cue the autogoon crew popping up with dozens of refs to "anthemic" Gucci mixtape moments). I liked how bold and brash it sounded, that's all. Wasn't my single of the year, in fact it wasn't even top five. It just had a quality that a lot of other rap singles have been missing. I mean, all you guys complaining about swag, this isn't Jay's young man swag, this is "fuck you, I run this city" swag.

― you gone float up with it (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:43 AM (5 hours ago)

i know this will have already been addressed but it sounds awful like you're grading on a curve here - "well hip hop sucks and this is the only one i heard on the radio so i'll vote for this!" cool if you dig the big hook or whatever, but it's a failure as a rap song considering, you know, jay is a below-average rapper and he sounds as awful on this as he's sounded for the last five years. and tbh to everyone who acknowledges the song is fatally flawed but votes for it anyway: either listen to more singles or stop voting for singles

"...sounds an awful lot like..."

I was actually wondering whether Glenn McDonald recruited metal voters! (Which would help explain that mysterious Mastodon/Baroness/Converge convergence between #18 and #24, which apparently nobody but me cares about.

I care very much. Both Mastodon and Baroness were high in my ballot. I think it's also remarkable that Sunn O))) (#42) beat out Them Crooked Vultures (#58), a band with considerable star power. Also:

Kylesa, Static Tensions (71)
Cobalt, Gin (136)
Slayer, World Painted Blood (160)

Still plenty of stadium rock with Muse, Wolfmother, Cheap Trick, Alice in Chains, Black Crowes, Pearl Jam, arguably Dinosaur Jr. I didn't even know about the Black Crowes album.

also the closest analogy in an earlier top 5 to maxwell's album(cult r&b figure with some pop success finally makes another album) would be erykah badu at no. 5 last year, which wasn't that long ago.

PJ Harvery is a band whose lead singer is Polly Jean Harvey, kind of like how Sade is a band fronted by Sade Adu.

i think this was the case until TBYML - since then she's been pj harvey, solo artist.

fair point, although I like to think that in the context of the time frame being discussed I'm still right

how long into our vessel reaches curvy colombian waters?

Into?

typo but then again

last year, which wasn't that long ago

Which was the point of my essay, partly.

we have one very big taste-cluster and it’s centred on the Pitchfork Top 10. ...there’s also no reason why competing large taste-clusters shouldn’t exist, large enough that P4K’s Top 10 only crosses over with 30% or 40% of the P&J Top 10.

Which was another point of my essay.

i know this will have already been addressed but it sounds awful like you're grading on a curve here - "well hip hop sucks and this is the only one i heard on the radio so i'll vote for this!" cool if you dig the big hook or whatever, but it's a failure as a rap song considering, you know, jay is a below-average rapper and he sounds as awful on this as he's sounded for the last five years. and tbh to everyone who acknowledges the song is fatally flawed but votes for it anyway: either listen to more singles or stop voting for singles

First of all, I don't think the song is fatally flawed. Secondly, I don't think Jay sounds that awful. I think it's one of the only two songs on the album where he actually sounds somewhat inspired. Of course it isn't a patch on his glory days, but I think his flow fits the song pretty well. I voted for it because I think its a fucking great pop song with a lot of swagger, not because its a well executed example of hip-hop. I guess I might have brought this on by making my point about hip-hop lacking "anthems" lately, but whatever. Also, fuck you for the inference that I don't listen to enough singles.

the point of your essay (partly) is that a type of album that made the top 5 in 2008 only made it to no. 11 in 2009?

sorry, no. 14.

and my point in pointing that out is that cult r&b comebacks HAVEN'T regularly made the top 5...unless you wanna count the Neville Brothers in 1987 or something.

Maybe that was a little overboard, but ffs I hate that more than anything, "you have different taste than me, so you must not listen to enough music to be as enlightened as I am"!

Of course it isn't a patch on his glory days

right, i get how one could kinda enjoy and even defend the song despite this, but really, this should disbar it completely from being one of the TEN BEST singles of the whole year! reserve that ballot for the fucking crème de la crème, not the enjoyable-but-flawed.

My annual whine--Not enough critics who listen to stuff other than indie rock participate in the Pazz & Jop poll. The P & J poobahs every year say they reach out to be fully inclusive with the electorate, but it seems some folks who write about non-indie can't be bothered to be part of this or are somehow unaware of the poll. I've tried to encourage fellow writers in the past, but did not do so this year.

― curmudgeon, Wednesday, January 20, 2010 6:44 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

i just want to say and i know this has been addressed upthread to some degree (also, whiney OTM re: black people like indie too) but basically the thing about becoming a critic & being aware that you're voting in this poll is that for 99% of all-genre critics, they go through a not-well-thought-out bit of "what does REAL MUSIC sound like?" that ends with rap critics giving up a lot of ground to other genres aesthetically (& im sure the same is true to some degrees with other genres) -- that just the act of seeing yourself as a critic is like "maybe i should find out what these yeah yeah yeahs sound like" & that 'interesting ballots' that reject critical consensus as a baseline of appreciating music are usually the product of ppl who are concentrated on an aesthetic outside of crit, who are self-aware enough to look at what ppl are listening to who dont exist wholly within an indie rock consensus bubble -- i.e. andy k's list, which yes has a few indie-approved albums, but it genuinely feels like a list with a strong aesthetic worldview that is informed by multiple discourses & filtered through his own worldview, that hes not simply like "man i love all these R&B records but animal collective are very 'worthy'"

jon i deliberately distinguished the parts of that 'graph where i was responding to you and where i was talking about all the "yeah jay's kinda boring, but great hook!"

but whatever, let's get angry

& here's the thing i really really strongly disagree w/ scott about -- (or maybe i agree with him, and i just think it needs to be stated this way) -- the idea that readers of criticism dont care about R&B is, in my opinion, a failure of RHETORIC. That the values celebrated in this poll & on pfork are not nearly as written in stone as they may appear.

My official involvement was strictly data-handling after the ballots were submitted, I didn't do any recruiting, metal or otherwise. Not intentionally, anyway. Obviously I can't control the massive internet ripple effects caused by my offhand comments in Rolling Metal. But I don't actually like Mastodon, Baroness or Converge, myself, so if it was a subconscious secret plot on my part, it backfired.

The results of the ILM Metal poll are interesting in this regard, but Kerr is still rolling them out in another thread, so I won't spoil his slow reveal.

and tbh to everyone who acknowledges the song is fatally flawed but votes for it anyway: either listen to more singles or stop voting for singles

Like I said, I didn't vote this year. I'm not even convinced it would've made my list if I had.

But I wouldn't say that it's "fatally flawed" -- sure, Jay-Z doesn't sound that great on it, but there are other aspects of the song that more than make up for that. I don't always listen to rap for the rapping.

And even if wouldn't have made my hypothetical P&J ballot, it's still in my top 10 R&B/hip-hop singles of the year, along with Amerie's "Why R U?", Mos Def's "Casa Bey," DJ Quik and Kurupt's "Hey Playa!," The Clipse's "I'm Good," Ciara's "Love Sex Magic," Ryan Leslie's "You're Not My Girl," Whitney Houston's "Million Dollar Bill," Kid Cudi's "Day N Nite," and The-Dream's "Sweat It Out."