Best Wire Record of the Year 1994-2009 Poll

or the books for that matter.

It's funny how for the first two years they pick pretty big records, and then do not.

― The New Dirty Vicar, Monday, 1 March 2010 15:37 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

See what struck me for pretty much all of it aside from the Ayler box was that their top picks are squarely in that area that encompasses the most populist music press as well as the Wire... like even Antipop and Mouse On Mars would tend to get positive, if not big, reviews in the NME or whoever. (Plus Portishead and Tricky were MM and NME number ones respectively as well)

Always love that one reads the Wire and gets the impression from the reviews and most of the features that the staffers listen solely to white noise or amelodic skronk, but when you check the playlists and end-of-years lists, it's not a million miles from Pitchfork ...

I guess the reviewers all like different amelodic skronk albums but the same popular-conventional ones. (is this where I should write "xpost"? asketh the newbie)

Anyway, I went for A Thousand Leaves, as it's my favourite SY album. I'm not excited by much on the list; I haven't heard the Ayler box though I do have a couple of other albums and played the hell out of the Greenwich Village set one summer, so I expect I would like it.

I voted for Murray Street, which is probably my favorite SY album since, I don't know, Goo. Runner-up would be Shleep.

voted for A Thousand Leaves, it's the album that made Sonic Youth my favorite band (It should probably be noted that I'd only heard Dirty and Experimental Jet Set before this).

Shleep

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I guess the reviewers all like different amelodic skronk albums but the same popular-conventional ones.

Hard to overstate the effect of this phenomenon on... well, All Polls Ever.

I think Yeats wrote a poem about it...

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Most surprising thing about this poll is how many people voted in it.

Biggest surprises are the lack of Robert Wyatt love (5 combined votes for 4 albums -- really?!!!??!) and the predominance of love for trip-hop, all these years later. Portishead I get, kinda, but hasn't Tricky come and gone... and then gone, and gone, and gone again?

5 votes for 3 albums *

I voted Tricky. He may have come and gone but that's still my favourite record of the 90s.

No Maxinquaye is still great, and the best thing on this list I think. Though I love Robert Wyatt.

I was surprised by how many of the winners were either (a) trip hop and its descendants (let's face it, Burial is basically pirate radio trip hop) or (b) Robert Wyatt.

don't get what's surprising about the love for trip-hop. it was critically fêted at the time, and if anything time has strengthened it - certainly a bunch of widely praised current genres are fairly obvious descendants of it.

hasn't Tricky come and gone... and then gone, and gone, and gone again?

and this has what, precisely, to do w/maxinquaye's quality?

i love robert wyatt too but this list looks a bit much. would have voted murray street i think.

and this has what, precisely, to do w/maxinquaye's quality?

Nothing, other than that I expected the apparent love (read: votes) for his first record would be affected by the mostly middling work he's released since. Look at the Streets in another recent poll, the same thing happened to Original Pirate Material. Maybe that record just needs another 10 years and it'll be back into the ILM canon?

The diff is that The Streets getting worse has turned many things that were great about his first record into liabilities - with Tricky the poor later work doesn't retroactively infect the great early work.

I still love OPM to death but I can see why people take that line.