jop jop jop pazz and jop 2011

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.

How can you say P&J is theoretically less interested in underground music when tuneYARDS was #1 this year? It's an aggregate!

because tuneyards isnt underground music.

the underground is a very diverse very weird place atm and one in which 'approval' has increasingly less meaning

as an idea this sounds awesome, but i wonder if it is in practice and/or if it's true. one of my pet theories is as sales not only matter less but don't exist for a lot of free mixtape!/band camp sects of indie, it seems like actual number of fans or even how fanatical that fanbase is matters less than having the right kind of exposure on the right kind of sites, not just for the power of the co-sign but to put you in the category you aspire to be in, subculturally, which means more and more emphasis on bullshit 'approval' from an increasingly lame array of tastemakers

oh Lamp

everyone's a sellout to somebody ::looks on wistfully, wipes a tear::

having read the whole thing i think there's a few ideas happening and he doesn't really tie them to his central which is about the evacuation of a broad swath of indie from the results.

basically he's looking for the new brooklyn and not finding it and my response would be don't hold your breath because logistically and economically no one wants to be in an indie band anymore.

because tuneyards isnt underground music.

haha okay what

I'm curious to know what your metric for "underground" is.

i like this because lamp is right and people questioning lamp are right

pj harvey album is pretty awesome, as is the tom waits. i really like the wild flag lp and destroyer as well. tried to give tuneyards a shot but it wasn't my "thing."

Does he point out any "bold and brave" that WERE, actually, ignored? (Sorry, I'll read it.)

maybe not on 4AD? idk this seemed so self-evident to me that im a little taken aback by it being at all controversial...

basically he's looking for the new brooklyn and not finding it and my response would be don't hold your breath because logistically and economically no one wants to be in an indie band anymore.

my take was that he already heard the new brooklyn and found it wanting. and plenty of ppl want to be in bands? idk. i agree with larges parts of some dude's post and i think scotts right in certain ways abt how everyone is a rush to move fwd to the next thing the whole early-adopter 'i saw them when they played a set in a closed ethopian restaurant' and how that colors the music that gets talked abt. but i think this also drives the rebloggers and the tastemakers and the tumblr whites to chase cool rather than codify it, things are p wide open for any weirdo w/a drum machine rn

I like weirdo underground music as much as the next joe, but it's by design only going to appeal to a small number of people. I think the problem lays squarely on ... music criticism itself!

Anywho, VV, Spin, Stylus, Pfork, etc., are all magazines meant for a wider audience. Don't think they're going for the art snob crowd, and it's hard to blame people for not being interested in one particular permutation of culture.

Tim F*nney did not vote this year, I don't think.

If I'm still receiving invitations it wasn't to an email address that still works. I know that this can be fixed but it's the kind of administrative detail that's beyond my very limited powers of self-organisation.

most indie rock has been pretty conservative since the dawn of the 90's. that's when normal people started making it.

We're constructing all the wrong binaries -- imo this debate isn't "art snob" versus "Britney fans." The metiers of all the magazines you mentioned is, in part, to put the spotlight on an unknown act. Otherwise they're into necromancy, like MOJO.

even arty magazines love their old favorites. okay, there are like TWO arty magazines, one?, but they will write about the red krayola forever.

btw it increases a site's hit count when an Underground Act gets a positive review (ask Pitchfork or Stylus), so you can't separate the mercenary reasons for looking for unknown artists.

Conservative doesn't mean bad, though, of course. I'm interested in why I don't like indie more whether it's conservative or not.

i don't think the conservative nature of indie/undie types means much now. maybe it would have meant something years ago. its just what a lot of that music is now. its what things have become.

Does it not mean much because the alternative is uninteresting?