Year-End Critics' Polls 2014

Fuck open mindedness, music is supposed to be fun, not work. It's ok to not have an opinion about music. Saer otm.

"Happy" genuinely makes me happy.

i'm team "Not Happy" personally; there's a weird subsection of music (Drake, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry) that I simply can't connect with no matter how much I listen.

This whole "open minded" attitude is just anathema to me. What do you even value anymore? "It's all good!". smh

im team pissed off with happy

Not trying out new sounds also gets boring - I might be happy enough just listening to the 5000 shoegazy synth/balearic revival/psychedelic rock albums that come out every year but after a while the virtues of monotony tend to fade. There's definitely a bunch of stuff that I'll never really be into (no success so far with modern country) but every so often I'll just open a random ILM thread and check out whatever people are talking about there.

This whole "open minded" attitude is just anathema to me. What do you even value anymore? "It's all good!". smh

lol this is not how it works

Having an open mind != "it's all good"

Having an open mind = "even though I will probably hate this, I will listen to it anyway because it might be good" and even that has its limits

yeah only after you have accepted that all music is atrocious can you find enlightenment xp

I'll listen to anything at least once and am careful not to make blanket judgments about genres or artists with which I am unfamiliar. At the same time, I have pretty clear aesthetic preferences, a lot of which comes down to basic sonic characteristics tbh, and I'm comfortable defending those.

xp

for me it's more that i try to engage with everything on its own terms instead of whatever assumptions i'm bringing to it

it's a little strange/mysterious as to why certain sounds just don't resonate with me - or just seem downright unpleasaant - but what can I say that's how my ears work

xp

which definitely requires some kind of critical faculty imo

xp

The idea of listening to a bunch of talked about records so you can have your own opinion on something you wouldnt otherwise even think about just gives me a headache

Especially if/when you already think most of the people doing the bulk of the talking are idiots with terrible taste.

it's just a lot of this "open minded" stuff sounds more like disabling one's critical faculty. I'm not talking about actually being open minded about music, which I think most posters here are.

 idiots with terrible taste

i.e. most of humanity

Like, is forkclovestofu still just not being "open minded" enough wrt drake or katy perry? When do we stop trying to like things, when we die? When can we say "it's not for me" and move on?
I don't even know what I'm talking about, sorry, lol

my two most visited sites are discogs and soundcloud, but i like to find things new things myself in a meandering way. Playing a record that lots of people have lots of opinions on, just so i can have an opinion too is just dutiful anathema to me. I dont dislike anything in these polls, I just dont have any interest in any of it

"Happy" genuinely makes me happy.

― the farakhan of gg (DJP

...when it makes others miserable

I am curious insofar as it's interesting to see what I've heard that actually pops up on lists. that's about it though.

xp

Especially if/when you already think most of the people doing the bulk of the talking are idiots with terrible taste.

― Humorist (horse) (誤訳侮辱), T

Just to add in here - I dont think anyone is an idiot and i dont think anyone has terrible taste, its more that it feels like being taken to the Louvre to look at the great works of art when you were a child, and really you just wanted to play in the garden and look at the trees and it didnt matter which tree was the important one

Yes, when I die I will stop listening to new things because I might like them. I'd say that's pretty much what "dying" means to me.

Oh forget it, I'm obviously not against "listening to new things because I might like them", sheesh

...when it makes others miserable

that's part of my raison d'etre, yes

http://media.giphy.com/media/yQskUomixQk00/giphy.gif

Like, is forkclovestofu still just not being "open minded" enough wrt drake or katy perry? When do we stop trying to like things, when we die? When can we say "it's not for me" and move on?
― brimstead

in any case, every time i have this discussion with people IRL, we all understand each other clearly and every time i have this discussion on the internets, I always end up going back and forth fruitlessly for hours so maybe the fault is with the way I'm phrasing myself in print.

And I'm "obviously" not in favor of "disabling one's critical faculties", nor of making music less fun. For me some of the most fun I have in music is wandering into some kind of thing I've never heard of or neglected or assumed I wouldn't like, and discovering that it has something to which I respond.

But I totally agree that nobody "has" to engage with anything, songs or artists or genres or anything else, whether they're being "talked about" or not. There's a lot of music, and not that much time. If you have something you'd rather explore than country music, for example, I think that's very totally fine. Nobody should try to make you feel bad for it. They're allowed, in my opinion, to try to entice you into giving it a chance. But it's also way too easy, especially online, to aim for "enticing" and actually hit "condescending" or "judgmental"...

And also, I hate jazz. Which is a blanket statement, as forks says, and not quite accurate (I like giant old-school jazz orchestras), but I guess to me that kind of inward personal generalization is merely sad, whereas the outward version ("jazz if crap, why are you idiots wasting time talking about it?") is offensive.

I think I've told this story before, but this convo reminds me of a good friend, who was working one of his first "real" construction jobs in the 80's. his boss was like a mentor, my friend looked up to him and learned a ton of stuff. said friend was a big industrial music fan, TG, SPK, Neubauten, the usual. one day the subject of country music came up and my friend went on at great length about how awful it was. at the end of his tirade, his boss looked at him and said, with great scorn, "why don't you just say the only thing you CAN say - that YOU don't like it?"

i'll cosign on everything glenn's saying there

So instead of getting scruffy and pissed every time someone plays a song by an artist you dislike, you're going to get scruffy and pissed every time someone says the hallmarks that identify a given genre of music are things they dislike and, therefore, they don't like that genre of music.

constructing new buildings by day, einstrurzende neubaten by night

Nakh OTM.

not what I was trying to say, I give up xxp

my comment was to forks!

ha, sorry! I am having a very busy/intense day and should probably only be posting on the aging parents thread

I'm scruffy to begin with, but to me "the hallmarks that identify a given genre of music are things they dislike and, therefore, they don't like that genre of music" sounds like a logical proposition, but actually isn't. The part after "therefore" isn't a necessary consequence of the part before. Lots of the things in any genre don't individually display all of the genre's "hallmarks", and lots of those "hallmarks" are subject to a fair amount of variation. In fact, maybe those "hallmarks" are actually stereotypes. E.g., you don't like cookie-monster vocals therefore you don't like death metal; but not all death metal has cookie-monster vocals, and not all "growled" vocals actually sound like Cookie Monster, and not all songs that have cookie-monster vocals sound the same as a result. So maybe you suspend your certainty and end up discovering that when bands combine growled and operatic vocals, it sounds amazing to you.

Or maybe you tolerate it but always think to yourself "this would be a lot better if it was just the operatic dude"

www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/20-best-metal-albums-of-2014-20141211

All trees in a forest seem similar but if you ask the ranger, there are countless variations

That list reminds me that The Melvins were staying in the same hotel as most of the out-of-town guests at Fluffy Bear's wedding and we kept running into them at the lobby bar

the Norwegians have 500 words for growl

So instead of getting scruffy and pissed every time someone plays a song by an artist you dislike, you're going to get scruffy and pissed every time someone says the hallmarks that identify a given genre of music are things they dislike and, therefore, they don't like that genre of music.

catching up w/ this thread after being busy w/ other things, agree with many points mentioned, even if they are somewhat in conflict. yes i should be open-minded. i am really loving tejano, narcocorridos, and mexican border music a SHIT load right now and also some weird thai music from sublime frequencies and also a shit load of joni mitchell (as i've been mentioning constantly) and also a bunch of buck owens and george jones and marty robbins and and and and and and a bunch of other shit.... and i just feel like i am scratching the surface of all these artists and genres even if i've been listening to them for years. i'd like to think that's open-minded. fuck if i'm gonna spend time with some glossy country pop bullshit longer than one curious listen to see if anything's there. i will always hold the right to correct myself later, there is always some possibility that i'll hear something in that spin #1 country song later that i am not hearing now. but if not, i don't really give a shit. there is always amazing new shit to hear and if something doesn't sit right, fuck it, you know?

AND at the same time i LOVE that i can post to ilm and say "hey, what am i missing here" and there are a bunch of posters that will highlight everything cool going on in that kira isabella tune. i might not see it but i am grateful for you folks who will stan for it.

i am really loving tejano, narcocorridos, and mexican border music a SHIT load right now

for a different thread, but i'd like to hear recommendations in these genres.

yeah, i've never heard anything on the narcocorrido front that i could make heads or tails of; a top five artist recommendation would be greatly appreciated
"there is always amazing new shit to hear" otm and of course there is always amazing older shit to hear!

"there is always amazing new shit to hear" otm and of course there is always amazing older shit to hear!

If you never heard it before, its new

I've been reading a lot of lynda barry and her humanistic, non-ego based, everything-has-value philosophy really sums up how i'm trying to live my life when i'm at my best
http://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/

The rest of Wondering Sound's genre lists to date (metal already posted here):

25 Best Country Albums of 2014
http://www.wonderingsound.com/list/best-country-albums-2014/

1. Miranda Lambert - Platinum (RCA Nashville)
2. Sturgill Simpson - Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (High Top Mountain)
3. Angaleena Presley - American Middle Class (Slate Creek)
4. Lee Ann Womack - The Way I'm Livin' (Sugar Hill)
5. Hiss Golden Messenger - Lateness of Dancers (Merge)
6. Eric Church - The Outsiders (EMI Nashville)
7. Hurray for the Riff Raff - Small Town Heroes (ATO)
8. Christopher Denny - If the Roses Don't Kill Us (Partisan)
9. Lydia Loveless - Somewhere Else (Bloodshot)
10. Dierks Bentley - Riser (Capitol Nashville)
11. Shovels & Rope - Swimmin' Time (Dualtone)
12. Sam Hunt - Montevallo (MCA)
13. Sunny Sweeney - Provoked (Thirty Tigers)
14. Caroline Rose - I Will Not Be Afraid (Little Hill)
15. Old Crow Medicine Show - Remedy (ATO)
16. Doug Paisley - Strong Feelings ( No Quarter)
17. Lucinda Williams - Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone (Highway 20)
18. Amy LaVere - Runaway's Diary (Archer)
19. Robert Ellis - The Lights From the Chemical Plant (New West)
20; Billy Joe Shaver -- Long in the Tooth (Lightning Rod)
21. Alice Gerrard - Follow the Music (Tompkins Square)
22. Nikki Lane - All or Nothin' (New West)
23. Brad Paisley - Moonshine in the Trunk (Arista Nashville)
24. Dom Flemons - Prospect Hill (Fat Possum)
25. Rosanne Cash - The River & the Thread (Blue Note)

Best R&B Albums of 2014
http://www.wonderingsound.com/list/best-r-and-b-albums-2014/

1. Trey Songz - Trigga (Atlantic)
2. Toni Braxton & Babyface - Love, Marriage & Divorce (Motown)
3. Omarion - Sex Playlist (MMG/Atlantic)
4. FKA Twigs - LP1 (Young Turks)
5. Tinashe - Aquarius (RCA)
6. PartyNextDoor - PartyNextDoor Two (Ovo Sound/Warner Bros)
7. Shlomo/Jeremih - No More (We Did It)
8. Teyana Taylor - VII (Getting Out Our Dreams)
9. Fatima - Yellow Memories (Eglo)
10. Ty Dolla Sign - Beach House EP (self-released)
11. Mary J Blige - The London Sessions (Capitol/Matriarch)
12. Kelis - Food (Ninja Tune)
13. Neneh Cherry - Blank Project (Smalltown Supersound)
14. Brenmar - High End Times Vol 1 (self-released)
15. Kehlani - Cloud 19 (self-released)
16. SZA - Z (Top Dawg Entertainment)
17. Daniel Caesar - Praise Break (self-released)
18. Mariah Carey - Me, I Am Mariah . . . the Elusive Chanteuse (Def Jam)
19. Micah Freeman - Heartspace Vol 1 (self-released)
20. Ariana Grande - My Everything (Republic)
21. Chris Brown - X (RCA)
22. Katy B - Little Red (Columbia)
23. Keyshia Cole - Point of No Return (Interscope)
24. Pharrell - Girl (I Am Other/Columbia)
25. August Alsina - Testimony (Def Jam)

Best Jazz Albums of 2014
http://www.wonderingsound.com/list/best-jazz-albums-of-2014/

1. Steve Lehman Octet - Mise en Abime (Pi)
2. Sean Jones Quartet - Im-pro-vise (Never Before Seen) (Mack Avenue)
3. Trio 3 & Vijay Iyer - Wiring (Intakt)
4. Pharoah & the Underground - Spiral Mercury (Clean Feed)
5. Mitchell/Taborn/Baku - Conversations II (Wide Hive)
6. Oliver Lake Organ Quartet - What I Heard (Passin' Thru)
7. Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio - Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio (Concord)
8. Orrin Evans' Captain Black Big Band - Mother's Touch (Posi-Tone)
9. Kris Davis Trio - Waiting for You to Grow (Clean Feed)
10. Farmers by Nature - Love and Ghosts (AUM Fidelity)
11. Miguel Zenon - Identities Are Changeable (Miel Music)
12. Billy Hart Quartet - One Is the Other (ECM)
13. Darius Jones & Matthew Shipp - Cosmic Lieder: The Darkseid Recital (AUM Fidelity)
14. The Westerlies - Wish the Children Would Come on Home (Songlines)
15. John Ellis & Andy Bragen - Mobro (MRI)
16. The Bad Plus - The Rite of Spring (Masterworks)
17. Steve Wilson/Lewis Nash Duo - Duologue (MCG Jazz)
18. Omer Avital - New Song (Motema Music)
19. Sam Newsome - The Straight Horn of Africa: A Path of Liberation (CD Baby)
20. Get the Blessing - Lope and Antilope (Naim Jazz)
21. Jane Ira Bloom - Sixteen Sunsets (Pure Audio)
22. Tyshawn Sorey Trio - Alloy (Pi)
23. The Cookers - Time and Time Again (Motema Music)
24. Angles 9 - Injuries (Clean Feed)
25. Rafael Karlen - The Sweetness of Things Half-Remembered (Pinnacles)
HM. John Coltrane - Offering: Live at Temple University (Impulse)