Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

So glad to see Bill Fay doing so well in a few of these lists. Not just cos it's a good album but I mean really glad for Bill, the person.

Was just going to say; that album was nowhere as good as everyone wanted it to be.

fastnbulb: The exciting thing about "hot new genres" is that they don't sound like music you've heard before! I mean I hate to get all EPCOT WORLD OF THE FUTURE abt it, but yeah those Witchcraft and Grand Magus albums are great, but that Goat album is like beamed from an alternate reality

Jazz
1 Gareth Lockrane's Grooveyard
2 Tomasso Starace
3 John Turville Trio
4 Phronesis
5 Simcock Garland

Have heard exactly zero of these (my #1 jazz album is the Vijay Iyer one, #2 probably the Endresen/Westerhaus); anything worth checking out?

Also I think that Van Halen album is prolly the classic rock album of the year (but I didnt hear ZZ yet)

did actual jazz heads rate the neneh cherry & the thing album?

I think I've actually heard one of the songs off that Goat album (it was called Goatman I think) and yeah it was terrific.

Goatman, and yeah that track is great.

Unless it was Goathead which is also great ;)

did actual jazz heads rate the neneh cherry & the thing album?

this one did - free jazz and vocals is a p difficult thing to pull off, but it works so well here. great alb.

also, aside from one or two dodgy production choices and a certain lyrical... openness... that you just have to accept, the Bill Fay album IS as good as people say/were hoping. Parts of it are very beautiful, imho.

No sign in the old-man lists of my favourite old-man album this year, then: Loudon Wainwright III - Older Than My Old Man Now.

ha i just mentioned that in this thread: POX new albums from the 21st century by old fossils

Neneh Cherry + Thing is obv great; in my head I wasn't counting it as a jazz album but there's no real reason not to.

Unsurprisingly there's no mention of it in the Jazzwise magazine list:

http://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/news-mainmenu-139/69-2012/12580-jazz-breaking-news-courtney-pine-wins-jazzwise-album-of-the-year

TOP 20 NEW RELEASES 2012
1 Courtney PIne House Of Legends Destin-E
2 EST 301 ACT
3 John Surman Saltash Bells ECM
4 Christine Tobin Sailing To Byzantium Trail Belle Records
5 = John McLaughlin and 4th Dimension Now Here This Abstract Logix
5 = Gregory Porter Be Good Motéma
7 = Jeremy Pelt Soul Highnote
7 = Robert Glasper Black Radio Blue Note
9 = Branford Marsalis Four MFs Playin’ Tunes Marsalis Music
9 = Django Bates Belovèd Confirmation Lost Marble
11 Béla Fleck/Marcus Roberts Trio Across The Imaginary Divide Rounder
12 Christian Scott Christian aTunde Adjuah Concord
13 Esperanza Spalding Radio Music Society Decca
14 Phronesis Walking Dark Edition
15 Kurt Elling 1619 Broadway: The Brill Building Project Decca
16 = Ahmad Jamal Blue Moon Jazz Village
16 = Roller Trio Roller Trio F-ire
18 = Simcock/Garland/Sirkis Lighthouse ACT
18 = Colin Towns’ Blue Touch Paper Stand Well Back Provocateur
18 = Billy Hart All Of Our Reasons ECM

7 = Robert Glasper Black Radio Blue Note

this is good though! i'd forgotten about it, gonna revisit

9 = Branford Marsalis Four MFs Playin’ Tunes Marsalis Music

awesome title

yeah it's really good jazz/noise/soul all at once. and fits in with this recent trend of avant/leftfield pop/rock albums that make good use of brass - Love This Giant, Black Vomit, New History Warfare, Alice by Sunn O))) etc...

that was about Neneh Cherry btw

Jazz-wise, I agree with Glasper, Spalding and Roller Trio (and Neneh Cherry). Would also add:
Troyka - Moxxy
Get The Blessing - OC DC
Brad Mehldau Trio - Ode
Neil Cowley Trio - The Face of Mount Molehill
Portico Quartet - Portico Quartet
Lund Quartet - Lund Quartet

i wish i knew stuff about jazz. maybe i'll give it a go in 2013.

i'm saving it for when i'm too old to go raving

which on the evidence of last weekend is not yet

if only i had the opportunity to go raving more.

Piccadilly Records

http://www.piccadillyrecords.com/shop/feature.php?feature=708

Smoke Faeries I once saw play as an acoustic duo and it was amazing. Then they got a band together and went really boring.

Is TOY any good?

I didn't like the Neneh Cherry & The Thing album very much at all, but I suspect that most people who did like Neneh Cherry way more than they like The Thing. Which is weird all by itself - I mean, she was an 80s one-hit wonder. Why does she have the cult following she does?

Here are the jazz albums that will be on the eventual BurningAmbulance.com Top 50 of 2012 (which is a single blended-genre list):

JD Allen Trio, The Matador and the Bull
Jeremy Pelt Quintet, Soul
Return To Forever, The Mothership Returns
Charles Gayle Trio, Streets
Bill McHenry, La Peur du Vide
Matthew Shipp Trio, Elastic Aspects
Fontanelle, Vitamin F
Wadada Leo Smith, Ten Freedom Summers
Branford Marsalis Quartet, Four MFs Playin' Tunes
Darius Jones Quartet, Book of Mae'bul (Another Kind of Sunrise)
Steve Lehman Trio, Dialectic Flourescent
Black Music Disaster, s/t
Ralph Bowen, Total Eclipse
Nicolas Masson, Departures
The Thing with Barry Guy, Metal!
Full Blast & Friends, Sketches & Ballads

I didn't like the Neneh Cherry & The Thing album very much at all, but I suspect that most people who did like Neneh Cherry way more than they like The Thing. Which is weird all by itself - I mean, she was an 80s one-hit wonder. Why does she have the cult following she does?

she carried on having hits here throughout the '90s

xxp TOY are pretty good IMO, krauty psychy indie rock basically, so make of that what you will. Think The Horrors previous last album but one.

I didn't like the Neneh Cherry & The Thing album very much at all, but I suspect that most people who did like Neneh Cherry way more than they like The Thing. Which is weird all by itself - I mean, she was an 80s one-hit wonder. Why does she have the cult following she does?

Uh oh...

And yeah, I love Buffalo Stance, but she's had much more than one hit, not to mention her role in Rip Rig and Panic. And I like this album equally for the Thing as for Neneh. The attraction is:

a: a pop/soul singer working in an interesting and unfamiliar medium
b: covers of new-wave/industrial/post-punk songs
c: connection to her father's work
d: it sounds fucking excellent.

I like that White Manna album that's at #3 in the Piccadilly list a whole lot. Kinda sounds like it could have been made at any point in the last 30 years, but all the same, it's a really satisfying blast of Stooged-up psych rock.

tbh there are so many pegs to the neneh cherry & the thing album that i'm surprised it's not showing up a lot more than it is

I voted for Orbital in the Mojo poll but didn't expect to see them in the Top 20. Dad-rave ftw.

Lists so far confirm that it's been a funny old year. Lots of albums that aren't quite as good as you want them to be. I mean, I love Leonard Cohen, I have every album and I rate the new one but AOTY? Really?

I have more Thing albums than Neneh Cherry albums fwiw.

Is it alright to ask what current discussers' likely AOTYs might be ITT?

you prob know mine already, but my top six are pretty much set in stone by now - dawn richard / taylor swift / angel haze / farrah abraham / nicki minaj / miguel

the 誤訳侮辱 comments about Nenah/Thing are wrong on every possible level

i mean, even the label servicing it is aiming at writers who are down with Sunburned Hand of the Man and Nissenmondai and shit

My album of the year is Pinkish Black's debut.

my album of the year is deeeeeeeeeeez nuuuuuuuts

Rev OTM! J/k

My album of the year is either by Penny Royale or Sontag Shogun.

after my testicles, Frank Ocean

is that a Lil Wayne line?

the 誤訳侮辱 comments about Nenah/Thing are wrong on every possible level...i mean, even the label servicing it is aiming at writers who are down with Sunburned Hand of the Man and Nissenmondai and shit

Oh, bullshit. It's being aimed at indie nerd boys who are all too predictably treating The Thing like Neneh Cherry's backing band. I mean, it's not that huge a leap since The Thing have covered PJ Harvey and Yeah Yeah Yeahs and White Stripes songs, and they play non-jazz venues and work with Steve Albini, all of which I have absolutely no problem with (I've agitated plenty of times for indie bands who swear they love jazz to take a jazz group on the road as an opener, for example), but if more than a half dozen of the writers fawning over the Cherry collab had even heard the group's first two albums (never mind the original Don Cherry, Joe McPhee, Frank Lowe, James Blood Ulmer etc. songs they were interpreting early on) I would be fucking shocked.

lol xp

dude the current crop "indie nerd boys" discovered music with Siamese Dream, dude, no one gives a fuck about Neneh Cherry except old people. if contemporary "indie nerd boys" gave half a shit about nenah cherry then evryone wouldnt have treated MIA like she invented the fucking wheel

i mean, i havent read a single piece of crit about the record, but p much everyone I know who stans for it is an old dork like me

also, i fawned over the record and have been lovingly reviewing The Thing's records for a hot minute now

an old dork like me

Ha ha, I think I'm ~10 years older than you.

It's being aimed at indie nerd boys who are all too predictably treating The Thing like Neneh Cherry's backing band.

lol @ weirdo clique records getting big on the back neneh cherry - i person who i had never heard of before - and not the jazz band whos last records were done w/otomo yoshihide and jim o'rourke

dude the current crop "indie nerd boys" discovered music with Siamese Dream, dude, no one gives a fuck about Neneh Cherry except old people. if contemporary "indie nerd boys" gave half a shit about nenah cherry then evryone wouldnt have treated MIA like she invented the fucking wheel

― tome crues (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 23, 2012 12:16 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha Lamp read this post and raised his hand like "that's me!"