jop jop jop pazz and jop 2011

http://www.savewesternoh.org/images/Give%20Me%20a%20Break%20Stossel.jpg

xp

well, for better or worse i feel like MOST halfway decent year-end lists compiled by an individual critic or specific publication's staff tend to be "better" than P&J, the latter just holds more weight in the consensus-measuring sense. i was just depending Spin against the 'middlebrow rap' zing because that list was suitably goonish.

i don't really get the passion some people have for year-end reissues lists -- like i think it's great that reissues are consumed and written about but imo it doesn't lend itself to year-end listmaking like new releases.
I just think reissues/compilations should be a separate category — as P&J did in the past — so as not to confuse things or split votes. What’s the point of an old Smashing Pumpkins album or the Beach Boys “Smile” box set competing with new music released in 2011?
In 1991, P&J wisely kept “Nevermind” from going up against “James Brown: Star Time,” “The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1958-1968,” “Ray Charles: The Birth of Soul” or “Phil Spector: Back to Mono (1958-1969).” Similarly, three year’s later Hole’s “Live Through This” didn’t compete with “Louis Armstrong: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: 1923-34.”
Plus, I just want to see if I missed anything. Without a separate category, there are fewer reissues mentioned overall IMO.

yeah i definitely agree that reissues being in the main poll clouds things up, i raised an eyebrow earlier today at this ballot that has THREE reissues of very popular well known albums on it:
http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2011/686341/

i guess i'm not sure why someone would do that if not given the option to do a seperate reissues ballot, and even then i confess losing that part of the poll doesn't feel like a huge loss to me. reissues lists are interesting but measuring consensus on them seems so abstract; are you voting for the ALBUM itself primarily or how much value is added by the remastering or bonus material or liner notes? would you a vote for an album you loved for years if it went back in print this year with particular changes or improvements, or only for something that you discovered for the first time as of the reissue? i imagine lots of voters answering these questions differently, which makes the 'results' of such a poll kind of a meaningless mish mash.

*with NO particular changes or improvements

wtf are you listening ro when hella dated Smashing Pumpkins records sound better than anything else in 2011

haha what an unbelievably terrible ballot

the smile sessions are a bit tricky though, because it's not really a reissue, the stuff was never officially released or leaked in that form before.

i mean, if a band's album sits in limbo for 3 years then comes out, it's kinda the same thing imo

haha i found that when i was looking to see if anyone voted for that great Craig Wedren record and was v disappointed when i saw the rest of the ballot

Ned (and everyone else), please vote in the ILM 2011 poll! It's clearly a more worthy enterprise. If you're already maxed out on list-making for the year you can just resubmit your P+J ballot.

yeah Smile is a unique case, although something like that that's such a big deal and in some ways still a 'new' product i feel like it's fair game for the main poll, like Bruce's The Promise the year before.

wtf are you listening ro when hella dated Smashing Pumpkins records sound better than anything else in 2011

Drake and Rick Ross, probably

haha i found that when i was looking to see if anyone voted for that great Craig Wedren record and was v disappointed when i saw the rest of the ballot

that dudes ballot is like inverse case of those ppl whose ballots i checked cuz the voted for like a rad spectrum spools lp and find at least one terrible james blake record or s.thing in the rest of their top ten

are you voting for the ALBUM itself primarily or how much value is added by the remastering or bonus material or liner notes?

Most of the reissues that used to score in the results, when it was its own category, weren't really this kind, though -- They tended more often to be career retrospectives, or box sets, or unearthings of previously obscure stuff by cult acts like Os Mutantes or Shuggie Otis or Esquivel or whoever. (Not saying the category was great -- in fact, mediocre cult acts who got hip cred for a year and bloated boxes by Hall Of Famers were part of what dragged it down. Which is part of why the category wound up seeming like a waste of time to tabulate. Just saying it wasn't dominated by pre-existing old albums with outtakes tacked on.)

Agreed that "Smile" is a special case when it comes to reissues. Similarly, "The Basement Tapes" (1975) and "VU" (1985) were also "new" music.

cover feature on the artist with the #190 album
http://thewire.co.uk/images/artists/lil_b/cover336.jpg

gtfo

shut it all the fuck down

photo is all "thank you based godzilla"

i knew you would be pleased

wanna read that KFW article tbh

haha i was thinking the same thing. p excited for the record he has coming out on editions mego. (i was also happy to see ital on the cover but i doubt youd share that enthusiasm)

I sent them over 5,000 words, and only one line was bitchy. Of course that's what the rat bastards print. "Apparently it's now cool to like fucking Bon Iver but not TV on the Radio." I'm only one of two people who voted for Graveyard and Elder, and one of three for Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats :(

My ballot and positions in the poll:

1 TVOTR, 43
2 Graveyard, 284
3 White Denim, 81
4 Elder, 295
5 Been Obscene, 882
6 At Devil Dirt, 1583
7 Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, 408
8 The Vaccines, 114
9 Mastodon, 47
10 Tom Waits, 5

were all 3 ilxors?

Beats me, I don't know everyone's names.

Jonathan Lundeen
Patrick McNally

Well uh I was one of the Uncle Acid voters so I'm guessing its pretty easy to figure it out from there.

yeah dude your ballot ruled

yeah i think other dude might be an ilxor if its who im thinking of

Anyway, one reason a reissues poll would theoretically make sense is for albums like Matos's #3 this year, which doesn't really make sense to rank up against current music, but which -- if it's as great as he says -- also doesn't make sense to ignore entirely:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2011/685276/

Only problem is, when there's a reissue poll, albums like that aren't necessarily what most people vote for -- and it might be even worse now, when lots of critics seem to think "reissues" only mean boring expanded remasters of classic albums.

wow, the rapture had an album out this year! who knew?

yeah dude your ballot ruled

Not sure if that was for me or FastnBulbous, but, uh, thanks.

had no idea they were even still a group. i liked that one song that everyone liked. years ago. next thing you'll be telling me the strokes and interpol are still going!

The Strokes in at #164 on P&J was pretty rough even by extremely low standards

gtfo

― 誤 means 訳. 訳 means 侮辱. (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, January 18, 2012 1:52 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

shut it all the fuck down

― 誤 means 訳. 訳 means 侮辱. (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, January 18, 2012 1:53 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

*works for magazine that put das racist and odd future wolfgang on consecutive covers*

nah that album blew dick xp

photo is all "thank you based godzilla"

― 誤 means 訳. 訳 means 侮辱. (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, January 18, 2012 1:55 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is otm th

of course it blew dick, not what i was saying

had no idea they were even still a group. i liked that one song that everyone liked. years ago.

the first single from that Rapture record is pretty great imo. How Deep is Your Love. indie-dance piano-house track. didn't really like the rest of it

The Men "Leave Home" is cool too. noisy art-punk

dmr otm on both counts

are the new men as good as the old men? i like this one a lot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGWdoJU3HSg

reading the scott pl essay and this caught my eye:

he head-spinning end result is an indie-rock world that feels like a place where fitting in is more valued than standing out. Chillwave and its electro-pop cousins—easily digestible, rooted in collective memory and experiences, lo-fi enough to mask amateurishness—were tailor-made for the job, capturing mood and vibe and, by extension, providing a ready-made soundtrack for listeners. The resulting pattern of looking over one's shoulder for approval while attempting to embrace an artist as early as possible doesn't foster a healthy creative environment but one dominated by conservative choices, where the familiar (or easily understood) trump the bold and the brave. Ruptures in expectations, risks, and singular artists who defy categorization are suppressed if the overarching motivation of the audience is a fear of looking foolish.

as someone not very tapped into this stuff i thought it was kind of the other way around, at least on some superficial level? i feel like the indie crit/blogosphere has gotten very big into valuing the 'bold and the brave' over the 'conservative'? like most of the really hyped acts seem to have some angle of "this isn't your usual white guy/girl with a guitar, and here's why (plus they use the word 'gangsta!')". i mean i'm as much a fan of novelty in the classic sense as anyone, so i'm not trying to be snarky when i say there seems to be a premium on novelty at the moment. am i wrong?

just spitballing but i think you may be right about how these artists are described while scott is right about how they actually function

and apparently i need to read his whole essay because i'm loving that graf

i mean i'm as much a fan of novelty in the classic sense as anyone, so i'm not trying to be snarky when i say there seems to be a premium on I GOT THE SWAG AND ITS PUMPIN OUT MY OVARIES

if he's knowingly and purposefully describing what he sees as the reality beneath the narrative he should've said so at least to be more overt about the 'emperor's new clothes' implications of it (xpost)

yeah makes sense.

ok i'm gonna get some wine and read the whole thing.

to an extent. i posted s.thing abt scott's essay upthread during last nite's excellent 'zan wit that lean' argument but i dont think theres a specific premium on novelty nor do i think theres a refusal to embrace risk or the singular. its not that theres isnt a fair # of underground bands working a similar and similarly tiresome post-anco fugue but the underground is a very diverse very weird place atm and one in which 'approval' has increasingly less meaning

lol man i am shocked by the gorilla vs. bear top 30 and how little of it i know #old

ha i was looking at the bottom of the list and saw "new crayons" by big zach and "king gampo" by prof w/one mention and knew it was pete

as a whole scott's essay was really terrible but hard to argue against vehemently because its framed w/in the context of pazz and jop which i guess is theoretically less interested in underground music. but think its hard to argue that underground music is particularly 'conservative' this year simply because it doesnt have a breakout star and i dont know how much if any this has to do w/the quality of that music or really how much this poll and critics as a whole really 'get' avant/weirdo music. theres always been wide segments of what you could call 'indie' esp the places that border w/ various ill-represented genres like jazz/classical/experimental thats sortof nodded at vaguely by mnstrm indie critics w/o much real engagement regardless of w/e currents and evolutions these microgenres are undergoing.