Year-End Critics' Polls 2013

(I think there are enough stupid things about the writing in that list to make fun of; we don't need to invent shit)

the byline for the Lorde blurb might as well be "ILX Strawman"

Ha ha. My reaction too.

From my experience here there's a frightening number of college students for whom Monae is awesome because she's not R&B. For them JT is the acceptable face of pop; Daft Punk gets in on a pass for earlier work.

If I were to ask the kids at the radio station next door to come up with their favorite albums I'm pretty sure Arctic Monkeys, JT, Daft Punk, and Monae would figure (although lol I don't know about Lorde).

here's what Harvard rock radio looks like:

http://recordhospital.org/new/?cat=4

Top 20 Songs Played 09/17/12 – 09/24/12

Artist – “Song”

Foreign Objects – “Mammonism”
Holograms – “ABC City”
Carnivores – “Sense of Dread”
Obnox III – “Home”
June Paik – “Grenzwert”
Grass Widow – “Disappearing Industries”
Troubled Sleep – “Bald Spot”
Nude Beach – “Love Can’t Wait”
Moe Meguro – “School”
Trophy Wife – “Four Five”
Hop Along – “Tibetan Pop Stars”
Stripmines – “Reversal of Fortune”
Walls – “In Disguise”
Severance Package – “Miseducated”
Street Eaters – “Frigid Digits”
Opposite Sex – “Mary Lu”
Exusamwa – “Vulcan Formed Them”
Alaskas – “Walk on the Walls”
Potty Mouth – “Kids”
Dry Hump – “I am the Doorway”

ok lol

Are we letting ignorant college students define what is and isn't R&B now? Because Monae's album sure sounds like R&B to me.

Arctic Monkeys album of the year in Q mag. can't find the full list online.

Most of the huge Monae fans I know are.......black women who love r&b.

In fact, I'd say it's the people I know who like R&B but are outside of the genre's core demographic who tend to be most disdainful of her and reject her as "not real" (although I realize that's a separate group than the straw indie kids you guys are talking about).

Q Top 20:

1. Arctic Monkeys - AM
2. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
3. David Bowie - The Next Day
4. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
5. Jon Hopkins - Immunity
6. Manic Street Preachers - Rewind the Film
7. Cass McCombs - Big Wheel and Others
8. Bill Ryder-Jones - A Bad Wind Blows
9. John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts
10. Haim - Days Are Gone
11. Jagwar Ma - Howlin'
12. My Bloody Valentine - mbv
13. Steve Mason - Monkey Minds in the Devil's Time
14. Queens of the Stone Age - …Like Clockwork
15. Foals - Holy Fire
16. Laura Mvula - Sing to the Moon
17. Matthew E White - Big Inner
18. Laura Marling - Once I Was an Eagle
19. Factory Floor - Factory Floor
20. Biffy Clyro - Opposites

here's what Harvard rock radio looks like:

Top 20 Songs Played 09/17/12 – 09/24/12

Dry Hump – “I am the Doorway”

― deX! (DJP), Tuesday, November 26, 2013

____________________________

ok lol

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, November 26, 2013

don't scoff. dry hump's i am the doorway has replaced ten thousand men of harvard as the most-frequently performed harvard university fight song.

Lol @ the horror, the horror, people like a good artist... but for the WRONG reason. Mein gott.

for an album i don't hate, it's jon hopkins repeatedly inducing the most rage. really really demonstrates how little handle most rock critics have on dance music

A Bad Wind Blows <- who calls an album this?

I'm holding my breath for the follow-up anyway

holding out for the Wire/misc egghead lists, and the dance lists.

It's the follow-up to He Poos Clouds.

xp

Btw, the hip hop/R&B entries in the Q 50 (which I can't be arsed to type out in full) are Kanye, Janelle and Run the Jewels. The other dance/electronic albums are Disclosure, Boards of Canada, Pet Shop Boys, James Blake and Daniel Avery.

Who is Daniel Avery?

Finally, it's here!!!
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/26/zane-lowe-lists-100-favourite-records-2013-radio-1

lol emil.y

Avery makes solidly enjoyable, diverse, somewhat retro techno - shades of Underworld, Chemical Brothers and Orbital. It totally makes sense that it's a a crossover record.

Yeah, there's a definite Underworld feel to some of the tracks on the Daniel Avery, it's like very smudgy greyscale house music.

Who is Daniel Avery?

― old homophobic boom bap rap traditionalist (The Reverend), Tuesday, November 26, 2013 11:35 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

crappy nu indie dance

solidly enjoyable, diverse, somewhat retro crappy nu indie techno, u mean

i kinda dug some of the 12s i heard before the album, which was an emperor's new clothes moment for me

xp haha yes

did you get a vote in the q mag poll DL?

Surprised mags are rating that Manics album - I'm a pretty huge stan and even I think there are only 3-4 keepers on that one, tops.

Q list most boring so far.

i have no idea about 85% of that zane lowe list, but at least now i can say i have heard *of* Catfish & the Bottlemen.

I thought the KKK was racist, but they have nothing on these list makers!!!!!!!

Lists that put titles first don't even deserve to be read.

damn straight

especially when it's in alphabetical order by artist. What a strange decision

i understand the acclaim the jon hopkins record is getting - its got a really immersive & alien sound to it that anyone who wasn't paying attention to electronic music back in the late 90s would probably find new and exciting. i listen to a ton of similar music to it and i still think it's great, and pretty masterful in terms of sound design.

i will fully admit to being a dance music dilettante (i would consider myself a dilettante of most genres, really -- mp3 generation etc) yet really liking the hopkins record. i have trouble seeing why "this record isn't very different from other records that came out 5-10 yrs ago and were better" is actually that valid of a criticism when none of us seems to have a problem w/ loving, say, the ariana grande album.

i mean yes i do get frustrated sometimes when the music press finally picks up on something and starts talking about it like it was only now beginning to be worth paying attention to, but if i like the music i like the music *shrug*

I think the people voting for Hopkins are voting for it as swoony bedroom music rather than dance music, but there have been better examples of that this year.

the ambient side of it is better than the 'dancier' part

would agree with that but as an album it is partly about the journey from the one to the other and i can't think of much else this year that takes quite the same route as hopkins does

that said, there are probably a hundred albums i like better than it this year

there have been better examples of that most things this every year

fixed.

listening to it again, there's something quite radioheady about it, that same sort of sombre mood. maybe that's what rock music audiences are responding to?

yeah its very smoothed out and polished in a nigel godrich-y way that most dance records are not these days

Except for relentless PR push, who knows why some things draw a crowd at list time and other (better?) things don't. It's the same every year, though. I've given up trying to understand it.

huh thank you thread for getting me to look into Jon Hopkins, it is very The Erasery on the first track

its also inherently more accessible in content than, say, the holden record. its got grooves, its got pretty washes of sound, rather than claustrophobic noisiness. i think the latter is a bit more exciting but ymmv

okay gonna check out Holden next

though tracks 2 & 4 on the hopkins are pretty claustrophobic themselves i guess

well my first impression of both Hopkins and Holden is FUCK YES