Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

Poliça sounds interesting - I liked the Gayngs album on the whole.

Sicko, it was more the ubiquity of those five/six albums in the 2009 EOY polls more than any narrative or generic strand. They dominated that year, but sentiment among Ilxors was that these were not particularly new! fresh! exciting! albums on the whole and signalled a trend towards MOR-values for the year.

xp It's not going to blow your mind or anything, but it's solid enough. Dark Star is probably the best song on it: http://youtu.be/h6WgWCIkH9U

I like that Sharon Van Etten album, but it's funny to me to see it as anyone's top pick. Otoh, it may actually be the best thing on that particular list.

cat power is kinda confusing cuz i like her and i thought that album was a mess, and i thought that was the consensus

― #YOLO ONO (lex pretend), Thursday, November 22, 2012 3:35 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh it's fucking terrible but of course people like it

Spiders, Horisont, and Troubled Horse.

I definitely support them all as primo candidates. Troubled Horse place highest for me, but still not quite surpassing Graveyard & Witchcraft.

As much as I like the Goat album, for some reason it bugs me that so many seem to rate their album but aren't at all interested in the other Swedish stuff, I feel like just cuz they toss in some Afro rhythms.

I tried the Troubled Horse album the other day - more late '60s garage-rock than I prefer. Generally speaking, the more shamelessly a Swedish retro band is ripping off the first November album, the better I like them.

Did you hear Captain Crimson?

As much as I like the Goat album, for some reason it bugs me that so many seem to rate their album but aren't at all interested in the other Swedish stuff

And the same goes for metal fans who listen to Witchcraft, Goat should be up their alley too. That's why I raved about it on MSN's metal blog in August, even though it's not really a metal album per se. After much hemming and hawing, I left it off my metal list...like Swans I'll give it a special mention instead.

I don't really get this at all tbh, I have no problem w/ anyone repping the Goat album but there's like one hard rock song on it and the rest of it bears no meaningful resemblance to the other "Swedish stuff"

wow! people actually like purity ring more than grimes? purity ring is really boring to me. like a mushy blend of chillwave, witch house, and uk bass. to me it works as background noise and little else. the grimes album, though, has identity! "vision" if you will, yuk yuk. i think it at least deserves points for being legitimately polarizing.

what was the big problem with the cat power album? i liked it.

Fucking chillwave. I'm so fucking sick of this ongoing wishy washy "our vocals are shit so let's cover them up by smothering them in cheap reverb effects and just pretend we're really really into Heaven or Las Vegas" aesthetic. It was alright for a little bit, but jesus can it stop now?

DEATH TO REVERBCORE

Sort of feel this has been a weak year even by the low standards of the sort of indie that habitually fills these polls but there's not really anything filling the void other than weaker versions of similar stuff.

weak year for music in general or?

No, a weak year for that strain of indie.

I know there's a school of thought that says that no year is worse than any other, and there's always good stuff to be found, but I'm sure I found more killer albums last year.

there were definitely fewer albums this year that provided that social rush of loads of people rallying round something to praise it - i think in my top 30 or so, miguel is the only one that kinda qualifies. maybe jessie ware but even that has a "will this do" air to it. even my favourite indie-leaning albums seemed to only get people who were already fans talking - school of seven bells, neneh cherry, fiona apple, even leonard cohen.

which isn't to say that the music i did love wasn't as fantastic as it always is, it's just that too few bothered with my favourites because they didn't have massive ~news pegs~

i think in my top 30 or so, miguel is the only one that kinda qualifies

I'm assuming Kendrick Lamar misses out on your top 30 then?

oh i forgot about that, it's between 20-30 at the moment

xposts it's just so prevalent, as though things haven't moved on since halfway through the last decade - distant, indistinct vocals; gloopy "textures"; general feyness; superficial keening and yearning and an overall lack of presence. I just don't feel inspired in any way by this stuff - and yet I guess I class myself as an alternative/indie fan deep down, but when I hear Grizzly Bear or whoever, I can barely make it through a song without getting frustrated. And yet when Animal Collective decided to lay off the reverb for once, they released a shit album that doesn't even compare to their legions of soundalikes. So it's lose/lose I guess.

listening to animal collective at any time is def lose/lose

It certainly feels like there's less of a unilateral pushing of certain releases. The only thing I can think of really is Bish Bosch (which isn't out yet) and to a lesser extent The Seer, but that's only from my own, Quietus-influenced perspective. That said there've been some classic moments (great year for footwork's upward rise for example), and I really like the current flavour of leftfield pioneers from this and last year - Julia Holter, Neneh Cherry & The Thing, Julianna Barwick, Swans, Scott, Colin Stetson, ummm, can't think of too many off the top of my head from this year but it's all been great and very inspiring.

I've heard dance fans bemoan the state of the genre this year; that there doesn't seem to be a thing to rally around - loads of individual micro-scenes rather than the usual cause celebre. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing though. Dance music has come to operate so much around "now everyone listens to electro" "now everyone listens to minimal" "now it's dubstep" that maybe this breaking of generic barriers is sort of positive? I dunno.

I dunno in dance music this year the big thing has definitely been straight-up house music. The bobbins thread is a lot more slamming than in previous years, Hot Creations and Huxley and Maya Jane Coles are bleeding over into the garage interzone, throw jackin' in there as well and there's a definite 'story' there but not exactly a convenient rallying point.

there were several pretty great dance albums in 2012. andy stott, michael mayer, voices from the lake, lindstrøm, vatican shadow, smallpeople, blondes. dunno why people didn't rally round them, they certainly should have.

That Blondes album got a fair bit of buzz, in fairness. Obviously the Talabot one as well.

oh yeah i'm guessing talabot will prob be top 20 at least on the ilm poll

claro intellecto and silent servant albums were are both terrific, as are the collected untold eps from this year. have no idea whether any of these were a thing or not.

I think the main complaint was more that there was no "ah, hot new genre, everybody go apeshit crazy!" than a lack of decent releases. It seems to be more made up of individual artists and labels carving out their own particular niche. As I say, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.

I think the Talabot album is one of my favourite records of the year.

It's around this point in a decade that things tend to take a bit of a sea-change anyway. I think about the disparity and diversity of the pop charts in 1982, how new wave was turning into new pop, reggae into dancehall, disco into electro blahblah - it probably felt like a bit of a mishmash at the time, but in retrospect it was actually the true beginnings of what would come to define the rest of the decade. Similar sentiments with the mid-early 90s, 70s and 60s. To me it always feels like the first couple of years of a decade are a kind of "putting to bed" of the last decade before really kicking things off. But maybe not.

It's around this point in a decade that things tend to take a bit of a sea-change anyway

what

that's not how...time works

I dunno about on you guys' side, but tarp (lol) was def the big sound in dance music this year over here. Does seem like a better year for house than the past few though, yeah.

i think it does. generational shifts, economic patterns, the overall psychology that is wrapped up in "a new decade, time for something new" - i think it affects everything from the artistic instinct, consumer trends and label management decisions - it will affect the music that reaches us.

xpost

what's tarp, rev?

oh TRAP!

haha, i know nothing about trap. I'd like to though. I'm more interested in tarp though now you've said it.

oh yeah, lex - i listened to Armour On on the train today; really enjoyed it. must give it another listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HzyUHxmkg0

^Total anthem. I have issues with the name "trap" and the lack of feminine pressure in the genre, but some of it's fun to dance to. There's a lot of really lazy stuff out there tho. I mostly try to avoid djs who lean too heavy on it, esp as such parties tend to attract too many bros.

still can't believe a bunch of dance geeks co-opted "trap" and are pretending it means something other than dope boy rap

and are being taken seriously by anyone, it's ludicrous

Oh yeah, I've heard that Hudson Mohawke track - it's cool, but I had no idea that's what trap was supposed to be. assumed it was dope boy rap.

would like to hear a footwork/trap crossover actually..

But it's basically almost exactly the same production style being reappropriated. But without rappers over the top I find it difficult to find much to latch on to.

(xpost - to Some Dude)

Unfortunately, no one's come up with a better word for this stuff. But my point is it's all over the place in clubs right now. xps

white electronic guys appropriating black electronic styles, i guess it's inevitable in all cases. similarly, it's hard to differentiate between the kind of music made by Rashad and that by Machinedrum even though there's a clear stylistic difference.

*differentiate in generic terms, that is.