Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

kudos for santigold too, no 10 seems high but it's been weirdly overlooked elsewhere considering how strong the strongest cuts on it are

― #YOLO ONO (lex pretend)

Agree with this, listened to it the other day and enjoyed it so much more than I remembered. The Keepers, Disparate Youth, This Isn't Our Parade and The Riot's Gone are some of the best songs of the year.

I'm pretty gutted iamamiwhoami's Kin has only made the RYM list so far, guess it's going to be this years ignored masterpiece like When Saints Go Machine was last year. Hopefully it can squeeze into the ILM list like that did. I think it has stronger tunes than Grimes, less filler than The Chromatics and more variety than Purity Ring. I like those albums but Kin blew them away.

Possibly on my tracks list

http://m.soundcloud.com/opponents/lucid-dreams

iirc The Wire gave both the Laurel Halo album and the Sun Araw/M Geddes Gengras/Congos album negative reviews when they came out, so it's interesting that they (reportedly) top their year-end list.

speaking of Sun Araw, I think his better album from this year was The Inner Treaty, which could be his best yet

I'm not even going to comment...

Best Of 2012: Indie Roots
http://www.magnetmagazine.com/2012/12/03/best-of-2012-indie-roots/

MAGNET’s Devon Leger picks the best indie-roots releases of the year.

1 Mumford & Sons - Daytrotter Stopover Sessions (Daytrotter)
2 Old Crow Medicine Show - Carry Me Back (ATO)
3 Lake Street Dive - Fun Machine (Signature Sounds)
4 Various Artists - The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 And Beyond (Universal Republic)
5 The Lumineers - The Lumineers (Dualtone)
6 Black Prairie - A Tear In The Eye Is A Wound In The Heart (Sugar Hill)
7 Rayna Gellert - Old Light (Story Sound)
8 J.P. Harris & The Tough Choices - I’ll Keep Calling (Cow Island)
9 Jay William Henderson - The Sun Will Burn Our Eyes (self-released)
10 Joan Shelley - Ginko (Ol Kentuck)

that hunger games sdtrk is legit good imo

xp Like seandalai says: "I doubt anyone expected it to sell as well. What I find interesting is the critical abandonment as shown in these EOY lists." MPP was a P&J-winning album that got rave reviews across the board - CHz, without being an obvious dud, is hardly registering a mention. Something similar happened to TVOTR last year and I see it happening to a lesser extent with the xx. Metacritic doesn't tell you much because there are a lot of over-generous critics out there and if you're a certain kind of band you have to deliver a real turkey to get less than 70.

― Deafening silence (DL), Monday, 3 December 2012 20:20 (2 hours ago) Permalink

For me, AC were at one time my favourite extent band. I loved pretty much everything they did up to and including Feels, but under the Animal Collective name I've been consecutively disappointed with every album they released since Strawberry Jam. I've had a lot of time for their EPs and singles and various side projects since then, so it's not as though they don't have it in 'em any more or that my appreciation for their schtick has changed since I first learnt to like them. It's just that their frequently lauded LPs don't seem to cut the mustard. I never understood why MPP became their breakthrough album because if anything it was less accessible, more abstruse and more lyrically trite than anything they'd done before. It suffered from all the complaints the band might have (often unduly) received over the years and was IMO only made up of about 50% worthwhile material.

So it took me a while to pluck up the gumption to listen to Centipede Hz - I only listened to it all the way through for the first time the other day. Frankly my reluctance was justified. It's just not a very interesting record. I was pleased to hear they'd decluttered and ungritted their sound because TBF Merriweather was the production equivalent of one of those houses off of Hoarders - reverb and granular fx piled up like shitty newspapers in a kitchen where you have to climb through old vegetable choppings just to use the hob. But by peeling back the layers AC exposed themselves to have become, well, rather dull and ultimately sloppy at what they do.

But 2004's Sung Tongs (IMO their crowning achievement) was also stripped right back - acoustic guitars, hand drums, a few effects for variety - but that stuff was TIGHT, the rhythms were groovy, the song structures interesting, the vocals poised and harmonically original. When I first heard it I remember being happily confused until one day it all clicked and became one of my favourite indie records. Centipede Hz sounds, by comparison, like someone doing a bad AC impression - prospects which by all accounts do not bode well at all. The arrangements are clumsy; not in that same savantly-controlled skew-whiff way as before, just sloppy and obvious and tedious to the point you don't notice them unless they're being actively irritating. It doesn't feel like the kind of daring album you'd expect from a band who used to tour with Black Dice, release albums of super-slow acoustic dirges recorded on their front porch, and create multi-layered psych-noise records like Here Comes The Indian. It just blends in with the crowd, not doing anything particularly exciting and sounding pretty much like any other 2012 indie-psych album.

Part of the problem, I believe, is due to the sheer number of acts who now sound like AC. Back in 2004 I don't think there were really that many bands who sounded like them. Since then we've had bands who, while not exactly ripping them off, to my mind represent a more accessible, watering down of their ideas - Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, Ariel Pink, the whole freak folk and chillwave scenes - I kind of believe AC were responsible for catalysing all these things for better or worse. And yet I don't think that creating a scene was ever a deliberate intention with AC - they were just a band doing what they did while others fed off them for higher levels of acclaim.

MPP wasn't their best album - it just came out at the right time; a peak period when the music press and industry had their feet firmly plonked in grassroots quirky folk and hazy electronic rock - ironically thanks to the wave of influence AC initially helped kick off a few years prior. In a way they just managed to catch the crest of said wave and propel themselves towards wider critical attention.

But if the original AC fans such as myself have lost interest, and the folkies are more interested in listening to Shields or whatever, and the chillwavers have any multitude of bands to choose from that probably sound identical or better than a half-baked AC collection, and the hipsters are off seeking new thrills, why should Centipede Hz do well in these polls?

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/154912

haha, rev

ok guys i have a high tolerance for bullshit but it's 2012 and for once we don't need to be talking about animal collective

dammit

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/154/912/berneydidnotread.gif

...is what i was trying to post :(

ok guys i have a high tolerance for bullshit but it's 2012 and for once we don't need to be talking about animal collective

^ this! I welcome the respite.

xp I didn't really care that AC were topping lists last time around, but it is nice to see someone feels the same way. I was excited about AC until about the same period in '04. It seems that their more experimental stuff was also somehow more listenable, probably because of the kitchen-sink issue of cramming the sound with too much . . . stuff.

It's a similar problem I have to an extent with Flying Lotus and some other current albums.

I'm gonna defend anybody's desire to go long form about whatever on ILM. So many of us (myself included) don't go long here anymore.

i grudgingly agree w/that, actually

I don't think the Santigold album is as wondrous as "The Keepers" and "Disparate Youth" but I'm glad it made somebody's top ten -- it's an idiosyncratic enough choice.

ST = fell in love right away, never fell out
Feels = warmed to it over time, fell in love
SJ = never cottoned
MPP = fell in love right away, then got bored 2-3 months later, possibly due to overexposure (same thing happened with the last Spoon album)
CHz = listened a couple times, didn't feel compelled to return other than obligation to write about it

Centepede is easier to admire than to like, and I never find myself missing ANY of it, at all, which sets it apart from every other thing AC has ever done.

The absence from lists makes sense but it still sucks.

Note: I did heart Peaceabone and BrotheR Sport btw

it's 2012 and for once we don't need to be talking about animal collective

...is essentially a summary of what I posted ;-)

Also the pre-ST AC is dope need to revisit

Well, it is a story when one of the most critically lauded groups of the past decade falls off their perch. As Raymond says, the absence of AC on these lists is not inexplicable but it's not something that could have been predicted with certainty either. Not that it matters here but I rate CHz about the same as Strawberry Jam.

I don't really like the pre Sung Tongs stuff. ST, Feels and MPP are all great, feel the same way as you about Strawberry Jam.

xp

I'm gonna defend anybody's desire to go long form about whatever on ILM. So many of us (myself included) don't go long here anymore.

― Raymond Cummings, Monday, December 3, 2012 4:14 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I was being a dick, but it was more his topic than the length of his post I was reacting to.

I'll add Fireworks to Strawberry Jam. Until Centipede they've always had a few notable gems on each album, but this is the first one I just feel ambivalent about on every track.

Yeah was thinking about adding a Fireworks caveat to the SJ comparison, it's better than anything on CHz. Today's Supernatural and New Town Burnout are, I think, the keepers on the new one.

That Death Defying Unicorn album someone posted upthread is insane and cool

they're so horrible. animal collective sound to me like what i imagine most modern music sounds like to really old people. like, what is that shit? i'll never understand them.

You have lost touch with the feral spirit of youth, scott.

they're just bad at it. and annoying. in a world where this already existed who needs them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fidi0JvFAnk

Just out of curiosity, is anyone listing Meek Mill on any lists?

i can't listen to horrible mr. bungle music either though. people are horrified by different things.

x-post

Wondering which Death Grips album will place higher in P&J?

And Rev, it's all love - just felt like ppl were dog piling on dog Latin a bit

if I didn't know dl would take it good humor, I wouldn't have posted it

no offence taken, i mean, i was banging on about animal collective so i get what i deserve really.

that Paul Dolden thing is interesting, but it's nothing like AC.

I'm pretty gutted iamamiwhoami's Kin has only made the RYM list so far

listening to this now. pretty outstanding, definitely for fans of gazelle twin, the knife, and similar artists.

more than pretty outstanding actually

Ha this is what I get for being outta touch with ILX for so damn long

Sorry dudes

Hey, is Alt Press still around, do they have a list?

"that Paul Dolden thing is interesting, but it's nothing like AC."

thank the lord.

i was put off iamamiwhoami because of their name (even clunkier than when saints go machine) but this is really good.

that last track is especially decent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3G_Y3aIlis&noredirect=1

lol "especially decent"

isn't that diplo's label

i was put off iamamiwhoami because of their name (even clunkier than when saints go machine) but this is really good.

― make like a steak and beef (dog latin)

Yeah I can understand the name thing, there are some things about the whole campaign that have been a bit much but the music is just incredible.

It's all about Play for me, the chorus is just so good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJBC8L3pG_Y

Am I the only person who dug the Project Undark Radium Girls 2011 stuff? Need to track down the full album... And yes, it was released this year, despite the misleading name.

listening to iamamiwhoami right now, having put it on the back burner for a while. this is really good stuff, and if i was inclined to compile a top 20 or whatever, which i may well do just for the hell of it, then this would definitely be vying for a good spot. it just seems to strike such a strong balance of tempos, atmospheres, everything. i really love "goods" and the frantic, spooky undercurrent that sends it whisking along.

It's a shame some of the earlier stand-alone iamamiwhoami tracks didn't make it to Kin, especially ";John", but at the same time I understand that the build-up and the final artifact are probably intended to be different things.

Pretty sure iamamiwhoami will place pretty well on ILM, as there's at least 5 of us who rate it. And yes, the initially offputting "Play" with the lovely Cocteau Twinsy chorus is my highlight too.