Year-End Critics' Polls '07

basically, wanted to love the album, thought i did, now idk i think it's 3.5/5. definitely a strong third album, but ive def heard at least 10 better records this year.

same here, except i kinda knew i wouldn't love it based on the advance singles, and only thought I did for like 2 listens.

I dunno, I've kind of had a really weird reaction to this album. For the first two months after it came out, I had the same kind of middling response that you guys have (hold up - didn't you have this in your CP top ten, Al?), but then it started making sense in ways it hadn't before. Even a month or so ago, when I first started trying to puzzle together a top ten, I had it posited at maybe 9 or 10, if it made the list at all. But then it got to where I want to listen to it twice in a row every day, and I never do that with albums. It's kind of freaking me out, really.

I feel he's found not necessarily found the perfect mid-point between the aw-shucks warmth of Dropout and the international assholism of Registration, but rather mastered their use, learning how and when to perfectly play them against each other or completely drop one for the other. (Note, that last third he pretty much cuts the ego out entirely and thus is the most sympathetic he's been since his debut.) And the production just fucking slays me. The synthesizers are so fucking audacious and in your face, but its always buoyant or sensitive or intense enough that it never feels cold and repellent the way the back half of Registration did.

hm. i disagree re: the beats. i think my ultimate problem is that i feel let down by the fact that this is his least sonically interesting album. like once i got over "oh synths hm?" i just kinda got... bored. and even though i like kanye as an mc, he isn't carrying songs with so-so beats on graduation like he did with, idk, "spaceship"

you say audacious, i say harsh :/

you say cocks i say COCKS

it was at #10 on a list I turned in last month, yes, definitely not in my top 10 anymore.

"Spaceship" has a great beat. That's kind of interesting about the synth thing, I HATE the way he used them on Registration, but here they are just beautiful.

stephen otm

Also, I think he's learned not to sound so fucking pleased with himself. (He still does, but not to the point where I want to slap him, you know?)

I almost liked the 'Can't Tell Me Nothing' hype mixtape more than the Graduation itself. The last verse of 'Us Placers' is perhaps the most poignant thing he's done (and it helps it isn't him).

Also I can't get behind Muscles probably because he is irritating live and I've seen him a bunch of times now. Battles neither, 'Atlas' reminds me too much of 'Doctorin' The Tardis' and the rest of the album comes off as pointless as the height of that cymbal.

Stuff I liked:
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Burial - Untrue
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Ricardo Villalobos - Fabric36
Studio - West Coast
Justice - Cross
Chromatics – Night Drive

Which is far less traditional indie rock/pop than the last couple of years. Fun fact: The highest selling independently released record of 2007 was the Eagles - Long Road Out Of Eden.

^those are all pretty good albums except radiohead.

rev, i never really was as turned off by his egotism as seemingly everyone else, and idk really why that is.

The last verse of 'Us Placers' is perhaps the most poignant thing he's done (and it helps it isn't him).

Wait, are you calling Pharrell poignant? Remind me never to take anything you have to say seriously.

haha that really confused me cuz i had didn't remember who had the last verse on that song so i didnt know if he meant kanye was like out of character "not him" or what

you know who had to die for these ice creams?
these bapes, these gold chains?
clothing production is not nice, but mean

~~~^^^lol pharell parody verse lol^^^~~~

Every time someone calls Pharrell "poignant", god sews through a little girl in Nicaragua's hand.

/\ Holy shit, Rev.

what's his verse even about? at these stages in their careers, i couldn't even imagine the hilarity that would ensue over the course of a kanye-pharell-lupe super-group super-album.

(Pharrell)
G.R.I.P P.I.M.P
I, any spelling ***** come on that’s me
I bring a burning sensation to the urban eye
Like an eye-drop of Turpentine
You can listen to the serpent, fine
But the earth got gas once it burps its fine
Someone around me they talk about the grease
Not G.H.G, how to cook a quarter ki
Talking all nasal, he aint over that cold
No glove scrub, Manny just over that stove
Perfect paradigm
Wrong place wrong time
Should have been Phizer, GlaxoSmithKline
Number one chemist
Look at him no blemish
Egg shell off white like a DuPont finish
Young, dumb, high strung, who could handle us
I wonder how Gods gon’ paint today’s canvasses
Cause who knew that day that man would just
Go to VA with a Tec and spray campuses
What a way to see the cover of Time
I know that ***** wish he was standing in line
To see it….As if he didn’t do it.

Lupe's a great rapper who got lost on a venture up his own ass.

yup.

and wack beats with wacker hooks.

It's Dormitory Hip-hop.

you made that pharrell verse up right? "but the earth got gas once it burps it's fine"????

is that even the worse line??

No! That's the actual verse in question.

poignant is really the only word that comes to mind.

"Egg shell off white like a DuPont finish
Young, dumb, high strung, who could handle us"

Makes me tear up. It's like listening to Time Of Your Life.

(See what I did there? A little thread-mix and matchin.)

"Young, dumb, high strung, who could handle us
I wonder how Gods gon’ paint today’s canvasses
Cause who knew that day that man would just
Go to VA with a Tec and spray campuses"

this rhyme structure is actually pretty def, too bed the words are indescribably bad.

deft*

Perfect paradigm
Wrong place wrong time
Should have been Phizer, GlaxoSmithKline

Kanye could never elicit this kind of emotion.

Hey Reverend. I was as surprised at the pharell verse as you should be.

http://bp0.blogger.com/_bJX2ryvw3U8/RiWKkS0gFOI/AAAAAAAAAQc/zhIT9VVCHZY/s400/pfft.jpeg

Look, I didn’t say it was the best thing ever. I think it ends well.

Are you really making a case for Kanye as a lyricist here? Come on... the guy can barely make the last syllable match the next last syllable and when it does, it's all cloud/proud, oft/soft and the number of times he rhymes 'me' with 'me'...

Out of interest, does anyone think Kanye has any strength in this?

battle of the heavyweights over here.

OK, to get away from the boring crap above, the Resident Advisor polls are starting to go up. So far:

Top 5 producers

Top 10 comps

THANK YOU

Does anyone else find it weird that there is almost no dance music AT ALL in ANY of the generalist lists (bar FACT's)? Justice scrapes in, I suppose.

Par for the course tho, innit? Nice to see that RA have given some love to that Lee Burridge mix, which I didn't notice getting much otherwise

LCD isn't dance? (I mean sure it's indie, but it's also dance.)

(or am I just out of it in terms of how these things are discussed now?)

(haha "these things" "discussed" "now")

Aren't there normally a few crossover or token records?

NME list is actually more varied this year - Rhianna!

It just seems that indie (loosely, inc folky stuff) AND hip-hop/r&b are the mainstream this year, whereas dance music (and also the whole disco-edit balearic dub disco side of things) has just vanished, which isn't how it feels out here.

The utter style-less-ness of stuff like Q's list shouldn't surprise me, but does. Someone commented that the FACT list seemed overly hip and mp3-blog influenced, but wouldn't/shouldn't what's fashionable have some bearing on these polls. I feel like a dick for decrying their sobriety, but it just seems so dull.

'Atlas' reminds me too much of 'Doctorin' The Tardis'

NOT ENOUGH

xpost

LCD is indie music for dance fans, as someone on here once said.

That's a good example, though. Obviously they have several constituencies and cross all sorts of boundaries, and have the profile to make it onto these polls, but if you look at their remixers - Harvey, Windsurf, Carl Craig (and er Franz Ferdinand and John Cale, but that doesn't help my argument) it's clear that they have the same idea of "what's going on" as I do, so it's then odd that people who like their record enough to poll it, have a completely different idea.

I agree. I was shocked by how popular "All My Friends" got with people because when I first paid attention to the lyrics all I could think was that it was so specific to raves that no one else could possibly get it. How wrong I was!

"That's a good example, though. Obviously they have several constituencies and cross all sorts of boundaries, and have the profile to make it onto these polls, but if you look at their remixers - Harvey, Windsurf, Carl Craig (and er Franz Ferdinand and John Cale, but that doesn't help my argument) it's clear that they have the same idea of "what's going on" as I do, so it's then odd that people who like their record enough to poll it, have a completely different idea."

It's not really that odd. LCD Soundsystem represent the furthest foray into balearic disco etc. for some people in the same way that M.I.A. represents the furthest foray into dancehall etc. for other people (or, indeed, sometimes the same people). To some extent you could argue that both acts process all sorts of stuff so that a good chunk of their fanbase doesn't have to.

Tim OTM--LCD are processing indie for its dance fans as much as the other way round.