Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

xp Exactly.

It makes his writing vibrant and different and fun.

he's the canibus of rock critics!

it's true, his verbal acrobatics are consistently on display

he kicked me in the groin and stuck me for my vanguard award :(

he said i started it

It makes his writing vibrant and different and fun.

― Hoisin Murphy (jaymc), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 5:25 PM Bookmark

A+

dont mock him for knowing the word "adenoid"

call him cultured

http://www.distantcreations.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/205432-yo__noid_large.jpg

Ya know, I seriously thought maybe there was a definition or reference or something I just wasn't picking up. I even looked it up in my dictionary just to make sure.

I mean, we've all done it.

I got curious about the combo of the "name the bands formed after 1989 that are both critically lauded and not indie" thing up there and the notion that all of a sudden these lists are way more indie

by my count, these are the only rock records to place in the top p&j top 40 that weren't a) loosely indie-friendly ("covered by pitchfork" was the easiest and quickest way I could skim that)* or b) made by baby boomers:

2002: none
2003: none
2004: none
2005: SOAD
2006: MCR
2007: Against Me!
2008: none
2009: none

* and as said before, extending this definition to all genres nearly absorbs all of the past four or five years' worth of lists under the banner of "indie-friendly" regardless of genre. Indie audiences and writers for what is derided as "indie" sites are listening to and forming consensus around the same metal and r&b and pop and hip-hop records getting voted into these lists.

Another example: A bit more than 10 years ago, when RS made its 90s list, it split the choices into categories-- alternative, rock, hiphop/r&b, dance/pop, with slight nods to box sets, blues, world, country (http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/rstone.html#Recordings%20of%20the%20‘90s) (I would guess this was a balls-less move to avoided confronting their audience with the idea that the rock records weren't necessarily the best ones). Ten years later and their decade list is ranked, the slight nods are slighter, and it's basically the same as the last decade except without the rock. (http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/rs200.html#00_09decade) "Rock" was relegated to basically a handful of boomer records. On the RS list. SOAD is the only the non-boomer, non-indie guitar record there.

I just don't understand how this is still a surprise to people.

* and as said before, extending this definition to all genres nearly absorbs all of the past four or five years' worth of lists under the banner of "indie-friendly" regardless of genre. Indie audiences and writers for what is derided as "indie" sites are listening to and forming consensus around the same metal and r&b and pop and hip-hop records getting voted into these lists.

fair point buuuut i'd imagine this has more to do with you diversifying your staff (ie hiring the finneys and drakes etc of the world) rather than the same people canonizing GADPY all agreeing on electrik red and gucci

I think this argument is really about, "C'mon, Animal Collective? Really? They're kinda mediocre, aren't they?"

sure but electrik red and gucci* aren't the consensus picks on pazz and jop any more than they are on pitchork. in fact, hell, both of those records placed higher on the p4k poll than on the p&j one, we just didn't print full results. 40% of the burrprint voters in p&j are on our staff currently; and three of the nine p&j ER voters have logged decent time as p4k writers.

Scott, I don't know if this is true, but I'd like to believe people are just annoyed Animal Collective, Dirty Projects, Phoenix, etc emerged as the consensus best album of the year, and the most obvious people to blame for that consensus forming is p4k.

It's like; look, top 10 in p4k and in J+P look almost exactly the same but p4k came out first. I wonder if they're to blame. But then you're like, "Yeah, but we cover other stuff." But that's not addressing people's thing at all really. Because lol you didn't put Gucci at #1, did you?

I guess the question then becomes "but for Pitchfork, would P&J this year look any different??"

I'm leaning to "no" - Pitchfork has played a big role w/r/t the development of what you might call the mainstream-indie-sensibility, but I don't think that it wouldn't have happened anyway had the website not existed.

mordy i don't think anyone was genuinely complaining about pitchfork, more p4k's consensus influence and every other writer biting their taste

Well, yeah. But people were also complaining that the consequence of letting all the p4k writers vote is that the P+J poll looks like the p4k poll.

i think you guys are putting the cart before the horse here

animal collective was entertainment weekly's album of the year. we should maybe be decrying the EW halo effect...

I mean these albums were gonna be popular even if Pitchfork dropped off the face of the earth in December 2008

Everyone made their mind up about Animal Collective like WEEKS before pfork ran their review, Pfork REFLECTS a current critical mood more than it SHAPES it

Can I just say: I listened to Phoenix a bunch and I totally didn't get the big deal. And I've read all this critical stuff about the album and I still have no idea why people like it. Unrelated, but I wanted to say this somewhere. I don't hate the album, but I really do not get the big deal at all.

I'd credit the "pitchfork effect" for helping blowing up something stupid like "The Drums" but there's no way I'm gonna credit them for critics liking the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for the fifth year running or making heroes of bands like Girls who were tearing up Hype Machine for like ever

xpost

i heard their single for the first time today and I had the same reaction

(Not trying to bait an explanation either. I'm really trying to say that when I look at a poll that puts Phoenix in the top 5 slot I assume that it's not going to be totally congruent with my tastes. And I'm okay with that. If it was my poll Neko Case would be #1 and that would be totally weird, right?)

Everyone made their mind up about Animal Collective like WEEKS before pfork ran their review, Pfork REFLECTS a current critical mood more than it SHAPES it

yeah really the main thing that bugs me (apart from the animal collective album itself, which definitely bugs me) is that mpp was seemingly declared ALBUM OF 2009 sometime in late 2008 and it was like "ok that's settled" and we went through a whole year of fairly interesting music and still at the end of the year the consensus somehow held. which maybe wouldn't bother me if i liked the record, i concede that, and i don't doubt that other people really like the record as much as they say they do. but it all just felt sort of weirdly pro forma to me.

and i'm already afraid that contra is going to do the same thing this year. can't we at least wait til february to declare a winner?

At this point I'm just taking people at face value. A lot of people really really really like Animal Collective. I don't hear it, but there are people who don't like Dylan. So anywayz, not losing sleep over it. Scott, do you really dig AnCo?

tipsy, I'd be really shocked if Contra became the de facto best album of the year. It doesn't sound like that kind of album to me. I happen to really love it, but I can't imagine it has that same kind of consensus.

I'm looking at the 1971 P+J poll and I wasn't alive at the time but I'd probably be a little annoyed at Blue coming in at 9 when it's clearly the best album of all time and who has even heard of this Joy of Cooking indie album? (nb I don't know what kind of music Joy of Cooking is. I think it's a cookbook?)

sure but electrik red and gucci* aren't the consensus picks on pazz and jop any more than they are on pitchork. in fact, hell, both of those records placed higher on the p4k poll than on the p&j one, we just didn't print full results. 40% of the burrprint voters in p&j are on our staff currently; and three of the nine p&j ER voters have logged decent time as p4k writers.

― scottpl, Thursday, January 21, 2010 1:07 AM (7 minutes ago)

right i'm just saying, (and this is in general b/c i know ewing likes YYYs, deej like girls, tim likes anco etc,) you're making it seem like the whole staff is all over the map when i'd guess (maybe wrongly) that you've got a lot of dudes voting GADPY and a smaller number of (different) writers forming the consensus for the r&b and rap albums while also throwing some GADPY votes to strengthen consensus. not that this is necessarily awful

you didnt post individual lists this year so i'm basically talking outta my ass here i realize

I mean these albums were gonna be popular even if Pitchfork dropped off the face of the earth in December 2008

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Thursday, January 21, 2010 1:21 AM (14 minutes ago)

december 2008, sure. december 1997? maybe not

(nb I don't know what kind of music Joy of Cooking is. I think it's a cookbook?)

Bless you. (They were a Bay Area folk-rock combo led by two women.)

a serious discussion of the relative merits of GAPDY has broken out in that poll Whiney started

Everyone made their mind up about Animal Collective like WEEKS before pfork ran their review, Pfork REFLECTS a current critical mood more than it SHAPES it

the LP leaked on XMAS and we ran our review 12 days later on Jan 5, our first day back from break. So, no, that didn't happen.

And the Drums thing was a readers poll result, not something we've talked a lot about. We reviewed one song.

I don't even know what to say to crediting "the hype machine" for something. Nobody cares. It's an aggregator of blogs with mostly a fraction of the readership of us (or Stereogum or Fader). Their cumulative top songs of the year are full of things most people don't know exist (http://hypem.com/zeitgeist/2009/songs), whereas, again, 30 of the top 34 p&j songs also made our year-end list.

other than that, I agree with your facts and conclusions ;)

do you think P&J would look any different if PF waited to post it's albums/singles lists until the day after the P&J deadline, though?

re: Girls. Hellhole Ratrace was in our 2008 year-end list and we booked them for Primavera and SXSW this time last year. This is a meaningless argument over flag-planting but at the very least I will defend the false accusation that we're following people. Just because we don't have the luxury to post whateverthefuck, say nothing about it, have everyone forget you posted it, and then point to it months later and say "see, see, I posted it early!" if it's advantageous to do so doesn't mean we are hanging around looking over other people's shoulders. People remember what we say and we give things due diligence, and as a consequence we sacrifice speed at times.

But, still, having the belief the that some blog is more responsible for spreading news about a band than us probably means you like in Brooklyn or somewhere else where you're surrounded by this sort of inside baseball shit all the time. Even a "big" blog like gvsb, well we'll have more readers from midnight to the time I clock in for work tomorrow than he'll have all month. I think you underestimate how much bigger we are than these sites.

Wait, so you are taking responsibility for P+J looking a ton like p4k?

http://www.pjlighthouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/a-few-good-ads-funny-junk.jpg

Genuine LOL

haha i was about to go for a different Sorkin soliloquy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqeC3BPYTmE

?!

All I said to Chris was that it's possible the publication with by far the second-biggest readership in the country had more effect on people than the kid down his block who runs a blog.

the few good men thing is a genuine lol tho ha

so which one are you beating, time or newsweek

Anyways if I had voted in P&J there would have been one more vote for AnCo - it's no #4 for me (when Dan says "biggest case of Emperor's New Clothes since The Avalanches" I think "get me that designer's number"). I don't think it's being defensive for me to say that this is less about whether or not critics like Anco and more about whether and why critics like or don't like the other stuff we think should be at or near the top of the list.

If Pitchfork either shapes or reflects the consensus (it doesn't matter for the purposes of what I'm about to say), and Pitchfork is in fact gfetting behind artists like Gucci Mane or Electrik Red (in terms of very positive reviews at least), why are hardly any other critics agreeing? Every person who voted for Burrprint: 3D is an ILM regular except for Tom Breihan, who's a Pitchfork writer! Same story for Electrik Red (replace tom with Julianne Shepherd).

Now admittedly the reviews for those albums appeared in Pitchfork in January and December respectively, i.e. they weren't gonna impact on voting habits. But it strikes me that to the extent that ILM might complain about the tastes of other critics, Pitchfork is ahead of any non-ILM critics anywhere...

(see also: Deej and Lex were the only two people to vote for "Inflation" despite it being the best song of the year)

so, to back up: No I don't think our year-end lists specifically do shit for P&J. Any effect, which is totally impossible to quantify (so no there is no credit involved!), would come from our reviews throughout the year and the rather easy way we present our bnm. It's quite simple to drop in and see what we've been most enthusiastic about. It's not simple to do that with nearly any other pub of any size.

But it's impossible to determine how much effect this or that thing has on the larger critical culture. Even w/AnCo, despite getting our best review in five years, I'm sure we had *zero* effect. We def had no effect on Uncut, since Stevie T, who wrote that review, heard the LP before I did and filed his review before ours. That's the one real-world example I can give either way.