The 2009 Magazine Albums Of The Year Thread For Posting Lists and Discussion.

oh internet

i do have to say that grizzly/AnCo/phoenix/dirty pro/yeahyeahyeahs (GAPDY) are all perfectly fine albums, but to call them the BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR really just means that you're not listening to enough records.

i doubt any of those albums are much worse than the xx album that's in a lot of lists this year too.

but lets face it, no matter what's in a list some will moan.

ban lists

opening track of dirty projectors is successfully managing to irritate me beyond all reason, and i am a fan of irritating music

second track = oh my god this really is gonna be of that twee, precious, ultradeliberate strain of american indie that almost always makes me wanna hurl

this ain't bringing the noise, sorry

Whiney, you KNOW you're gonna eventually publish a list of your 1,000 Twitter reviews somewhere, plus a special deluxe leatherbound edition!

wire is always the one i wait for, but i know that isn't original to say.

one album that was great but didn't make my top 10 list: that pissed jeans album! man. if only it'd dropped in a weaker year for music.

whiney, like i said on email, publish the twitter/1,000 deal-e-o as a pamphlet in a limited edition of 1,000

My favourite album of the year was Pere Ubu's "Long Live Pere Ubu!", closely followed by Dubblestandart's "Return TO Planet Dub", but I'm not getting butthurt they're not in the critics' end year lists.

MPP is a good album but lol at how everyone's making it their #1

whiney, are you doing slits on monday?

is anyone repping the Faust album? didn't make my list, personally, but it's pretty good

surely these lists aren't encouraging anyone to slit their wrists!!
xp

ok dirty projectors didn't do much for me. onto phoenix!

2009 friends and faves

my friends and favourite ratyourmusic.com 2009 customs albums chart is completely different to most of the EOY lists

see first link: archived on my evernote notebook
http://www.evernote.com/pub/djmartian/00s
relating to the top rated 100 albums of 2009

mind you there are some rather baffling albums in the top 100, i seem to have become aligned with rabid Editors fans 4: Editors - In This Light and on This Evening

50 highlighted albums NOT in the NME 2009 albums list

1: Mastodon
Crack the Skye

2: maudlin of the Well
Part the Second

3:Isis
Wavering Radiant

7: The Flaming Lips
Embryonic

8: Converge
Axe to Fall

10: Andrew Douglas Rothbard
Exodusarabesque

11: Telefon Tel Aviv
Immolate Yourself

13: Devin Townsend
Addicted

14: Katatonia
Night Is the New Day

15:Port-Royal
Dying in Time

16: Riverside
Anno Domini High Definition

17: Buried Inside
Spoils of Failure

18: Nile
Those Whom the Gods Detest

22: Kylesa
Static Tensions

23: Drudkh
Microcosmos

24: Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics
Inspiration Information

25: Tim Hecker
An Imaginary Country

27: Mew
No More Stories / Are Told Today / I'm Sorry / They Washed Away // No More Stories / The World Is Grey / I'm Tired / Let's Wash Away

28: Pan•American
White Bird Release

29: Blut aus Nord
Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue With the Stars

31: Sunn O)))
Monoliths & Dimensions

34: Porcupine Tree
The Incident

35: Richard Youngs
Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits

38: Zu
Carboniferous

40: Marissa Nadler
Little Hells

44: Cobalt
Gin

46: Dälek
Gutter Tactics

49: Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra
Take Off!

50: Wolves in the Throne Room
Black Cascade

42: Thy Catafalque
Róka Hasa Rádió

51: Do Make Say Think
Other Truths

55: Mountains
Choral

60: Alamaailman Vasarat
Huuro Kolkko

61: Rome
Flowers From Exile

63: Wobbler
Afterglow

67: Amesoeurs
Amesoeurs

72: Baroness
Blue Record

73: Natural Snow Buildings
Shadow Kingdom

75: Miriodor
Avanti!

76: Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions
Through the Devil Softly

77: Kreng
L’autopsie phénoménale de Dieu

79: Absu
Absu

87: Fen
The Malediction Fields

88: The Field
Yesterday and Today

89: Belbury Poly
From an Ancient Star

93: Obscura
Cosmogenesis

96: Pet Shop Boys
Yes

100: Sólstafir
Köld

how did I miss the fact that there was a new alamaailman vasarat album?! must track that one down.

i do have to say that grizzly/AnCo/phoenix/dirty pro/yeahyeahyeahs (GAPDY) are all perfectly fine albums, but to call them the BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR really just means that you're not listening to enough records.

or, y'know, maybe it means they really, really like these records above all the others they've heard? I'm no fan of this drippy bullshit either, but a lot of people I know who are really voracious pan-genre music consumers absolutely love it, particularly DP + AC.

I know. amazing. other people in 'liking different stuff' shocker.

that 'love like a sunset part one' song was really quite good, completely not sure about the rest of this phoenix so far

MPP keeps getting highly placed because it's a great album.

djmartian, i love you, but plz stop with rateyourmusic

boy, will you all be surprised when Stylus names LeeAnn Womack's album the best of the decade.

final track of phoenix not bad either, but largely these seem to be str8-up indie-pop jams which sometimes have nice keyboard parts tacked onto the end - the only thing that really hit me was love like a sunset

Whiney, i published the list to show there are alternative opinions, something relevant to the discussion of this thread.

(I know you dislike rateyourmusic.com because there is too much prog metal/rock)

Thanks for the reminder about Long Live Pere Ubu!

(GAPDY) are all perfectly fine albums, but to call them the BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR really just means that you're not listening to enough records.

I would love for the Village Voice poll to include in the pages for each critic, a two column list. Of all the albums in the poll, they have a column of what they've heard, and a column of what they haven't heard. And then have the option of sorting the results by giving more weight to the ballots of critics who've heard the most. I think that would be an extremely relevant and valuable distinction. Of the 700 or so critics that participate, I would guess that a good 25% or more have listened to less than 30 albums. I'd toss those results right out. It would be enlightening to find out the average number of albums critics have actually heard, going up to probably close to 1,000 for people like Christgau and Whiney. I sample from well over 800, but I usually can't give much more than 500 a focused listen without compromising my sanity.

In light of all the complaints of the group of albums showing up on multiple lists, it's interesting that Simon Reynolds makes a case about fragmentation: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/dec/07/musically-fragmented-decade\

"The upshot of the quantity x quality overload is that those relentlessly positive types who annually chorus about what a fantastic year it's been, how "there's more good music produced each year than the previous year", are actually right. But the reliably grumpy sods who whinge about the deficiencies of the year's harvest are also right. More and more good-to-excellent music is getting produced but that very fact is thwarting the emergence of the great, smothering it. The bigger the spread, the more "we" are spread. And the less impact any given record can have. Worse, as artists internalise reduced expectations, the cycle of diminution spirals ever inward."

If you look at the individual ballots made available on A.V. Club and others, they are pretty diverse. But there is also handful of albums that repeatedly show up.

I like the idea of taking the top 50 most commonly ranked albums across the major polls, and removing them from the running if we were to conduct an ilx poll. Additionally, allowing for ballots with up to 30 or 50 entries would give slightly more obscure albums a better chance at placing.

Additionally, allowing for ballots with up to 30 or 50 entries would give slightly more obscure albums a better chance at placing.

i'm always pro-bigger ballots - there are probably 30 albums i'd want to particularly rep for this year, and at least 100 tracks - but understandably the people running these polls would baulk at the huge amount of extra work they'd entail.

i find it difficult to believe that anyone who's enough of a critic to vote in any publication's list has heard as few as 30 albums in a year.

I'm not so much dismissing the AnCo, GrizzB and YYY albums without hearing them, as refraining from listening any further when what I've already heard by those acts did nothing for me.

I mean I figure if Sung Tongs left me unmoved MPP isn't gonna change that?

Whereas Dirty Projectors I have no sonic experience of whatsoever.

Once again, guys, I have to remind you that polls are aggregates: it isn't that AC made the album of the year, it's that AC's album was mentioned most often in ballots.

And you're fooling yourself if you think any magazine or website under a team of editors actually conducts a serious and fair "poll" of heir staff and publishes the results

Stereogum reader's poll without a single black person in the top 40 notwithstanding

LOL i misread that as 'sensuous and fair'

And you're fooling yourself if you think any magazine or website under a team of editors actually conducts a serious and fair "poll" of heir staff and publishes the results

You will soon see.

"And you're fooling yourself if you think any magazine or website under a team of editors actually conducts a serious and fair "poll" of heir staff and publishes the results"

Any site like A.V. Club that publishes the individual lists I would presume is legit. I don't think they'd do that if they tampered with the results. I wouldn't be surprised if your Uncut/MOJO/Spin/RS types do tamper, but I'm not really concerned about their lists anyway. The Voice poll is always transparent with the ballots. And I assume the one-off Stylus one will likely be also.

Oh, I've no doubt that Whiney's right about score inflation, but all this "lol Animal Collective album of the year" talk simply disguises the fact that, again, the damn album just showed up on a lot of ballots.

"I mean I figure if Sung Tongs left me unmoved MPP isn't gonna change that?"

Well apparently there's a ton of people who were unmoved by Sung Tongs really got into MPP, as ST wasn't nearly as popular. I actually like ST a bit more than MPP, but I never did fall in love with the band like I thought I might when their first couple albums came out. On the other hand, I love the YYY's beyond logical reason.

I just had a long chat with someone and i'm go agree that anyone calling out GAPDY for being bland and boring and fey is really not picking their battles correctly

Alfred OTM - MPP's a good album that a lot of fans and critics liked. That's why it's so high up. You may not agree, but what's the controversy?

Personally I'm conflicted about all this. MPP is a good album, but then I think AC have been churning out great stuff since at least Sung Tongs, and I'm puzzled why it's only with this album that they've broken into such widespread acclaim. So while I'm pleased they're getting the recognition they deserve, I'm bewildered at why this album, which in fairness isn't a huge departure from Strawberry Jam or even Feels, is suddenly topping all the lists.

uh because it's got big hooks and dance beats the whole way through instead of just in parts

is anyone repping the Faust album?

It had a shot at my list for most of this year, but replaying it over the past few weeks it's sounding more uneven than I thought. It'd almost definitely be in my Top 20 though (at least if I discounted reissues.)

MPP's a good album that a lot of fans and critics liked. That's why it's so high up. You may not agree, but what's the controversy?

i like the album (and the almost as popular YYYs) but i resent this almost unanimous verdict on them from all these mags/sites partly because it implies they all think the same. there's too many of them and too much other good stuff to justify that laziness and it damages their credibility imo. it seems more to do with the mentality of the list-makers than the quality of the albums themselves, when you look at what's missing. it even seems worse than most other years now so yeah again, so much for dissensus.

are you sure magazines didnt always have similar top 10s? i bet those canonical 60s 70s and 80s albums were in all the mags.

Personally I'm conflicted about all this. MPP is a good album, but then I think AC have been churning out great stuff since at least Sung Tongs, and I'm puzzled why it's only with this album that they've broken into such widespread acclaim. So while I'm pleased they're getting the recognition they deserve, I'm bewildered at why this album, which in fairness isn't a huge departure from Strawberry Jam or even Feels, is suddenly topping all the lists.

I may be wrong but I remember, going into MPP, we knew that they had toned down the inaccessible shrieking monkey shit that was on the previous albums, and so new, potential fans that liked Panda Bear's album and enjoyed its sunshine pop moments were looking for more of that and were jumping on board for MPP. The stars were aligning for it to be a hit imo and iirc.

xpost

MPP is a good album, but then I think AC have been churning out great stuff since at least Sung Tongs, and I'm puzzled why it's only with this album that they've broken into such widespread acclaim.

I don't like them at all, myself, but this isn't so weird to me. There have always been indie bands (Sonic Youth, Pixies, TV on the Radio, etc.) whose critical rep has snowballed over the years, as they've picked up, say, more or more mainstream newspaper critics in mid-America or whatever. Obviously that might not affect voters on individual indie websites, but it affects the overall consensus. The phenomenon's nothing new. And in a lot of cases, the bands don't seem to lose many old early-adopter supporters as they pick up new voters (at least until they peak, then their support starts whittling away).

yeah its probably no more samey than usual, i was probably expecting more variation because people keep going on about the fragmentation of pop music generally xposts

I may be wrong but I remember, going into MPP, we knew that they had toned down the inaccessible shrieking monkey shit that was on the previous albums, and so new, potential fans that liked Panda Bear's album and enjoyed its sunshine pop moments were looking for more of that and were jumping on board for MPP. The stars were aligning for it to be a hit imo and iirc.

that is kinda how it is for me tho i liked a couple of things off their older albums just never gave them much time before Person Pitch (and i only like half of that anyway)

i dunno, i much prefer their older stuff myself, i neither love or hate the recent stuff.
xp to chuck

What's new is that all these lists/polls come out so fucking EARLY now. It's ridiculous! To get really old-man on you, year-end polls used to come out, wait for it, in January! After the year had ended! Consarn all the consarn-nation! [shakes cane]

Seriously: more outlets promulgating year-end lists + longer period of time the lists come out (November through January, when P&J hits) = greater irritation/exhaustion factor. Especially when the same handful of albums top so many of the polls. Which they always did, but not in such dense numbers or for so prolonged a period.

There's a really tedious uniformity to this year that I can't remember being replicated to *quite* this extent in the past.

LJ - the critics faves tend to occupy 20-8 in the ILX poll and then the big ILX faves to kick in. I fully expect The Dream and Electrik Red to place higher than Grizzly Bear and the Dirty Projectors and possibly even Animal Collective in the ILX poll.

I need to give those ILX faves a real go! I also think The xx will be in the top 3, but I'm not so keen on them.

Also Lindstrom & Prins Thomas.

xp And I think there's also a sort of "story" that snowballs through the year, so by December websites and magazines feel like they'll look like they're being perverse if they don't jump on the bandwagon and, say, put AC or Grizzly Bear or whatever random record near the top of their list. And individual critics who don't hear many records (and also ones who've heard so many that they're hard to sort through) have heard those names so much that, by December, they don't want to look like they're out of it, either. Doesn't affect every critic, but enough to make a consensus. With the Internet, the effect is amplified even more. It's idiotic; always has been. But again, it's nothing new.