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

yeah -- i really hope this this doesn't continue to become just another pitchfork argument thread and we can keep seeing and discussing lists from other outlets though

that's dope that midtown 120 blues is their #1

yeah -- i really hope this this doesn't continue to become just another pitchfork argument thread and we can keep seeing and discussing lists from other outlets though

Give it through Friday for Pfork's list to play out and then we'll return to your regularly scheduled programming.

kind of a boring day on ilm, huh?

Animal Collective even the Resident Advisor list, oh dear.

- isn't part of the appeal of r&b and hip-hop in particular the way they can adeptly balance commercial aspirations with being true to a relatively individual vision? ie, they're not wholly populist genres - not in the way that a britney spears album would be - and judging them on that basis is kinda reductive. dismissing eg richgirl's "he ain't with me now (tho)" because it wasn't a chart hit seems...completely wrong-headed

I agree with this, but don't you think it was more exciting when a tune like "Bills Bills Bills" - at least as bizarre as "He Ain't Wit' Me Now (Tho)" was also a really big hit? I know that my own pro-pop anti-indie campaign back in 2000 was based entirely on the fact that everyone I knew was listening to mopey rock while ignoring the amazing music at the top of the charts. It's my favourite album of the year but I can't similarly justify being disdainful of someone simply because they haven't checked out Electrik Red.

Sure there are all sorts of reasons why it's harder for those sorts of big crossovers to happen now, but that doesn't change the fact that pop - in the broad sense - simply feels like it has less momentum now than at any time since I've approached such things with an amateur music critic hat (since I was 15 basically).

Wasn't dancehall similarly more exciting when it felt like it was in more of a conversation with pop/hip hop/r&b? Hasn't ILX's drop in interest in dancehall neatly coincided with its own retreat from chart populism? Sure that doesn't make it somehow noble to ignore dancehall (and I try not to) but I think it does explain why I went from listening to heaps and heaps and heaps of it during 2001 - 2004 to listening to maybe 10-20 tracks per year now.

UK Funky has filled any resulting gap for me but it doesn't change the fact that it all feels like a drop off for me.

None of which is to say that I agree with the ultimate Pitchfork list - and my own list looked very different, though so weighted towards UK funky that it had basically zero impact on any of what ended up on the final list - but more to say that we should acknowledge that the goalposts have moved.

At the beginning of the decade pop music (again, in the broad sense) was in as good health as it's ever been; ignoring it then seemed like wilful perversity. It also seemed grinchlike - I used to think "do none of these writers go to parties or clubs? And if they do, do they just lean against the wall with their arms folded while all the ace songs of the year get played?"

Now, keeping on top of good pop music is much like keeping on top of any genre. One of the key weapons in the whole anti-rockist debate - "all of this great music is right under your nose, why are you ignoring it???" - has effectively fallen away, now that smart pop-fans basically agree that the public have bad taste. It seems just a bit less grinchlike to have failed to check out "He Ain't Wit' Me Now (Tho)" on youtube - though, sure, wrongheaded and to the critic's detriment.

a drop-off in...what, though? a drop-off in indie critical interest certainly, but not a drop-off in quality. and the latter is what we judge songs on, right?

uk funky is an appropriate thing to bring up, b/c people could easily shrug and say the same things of it as they might say about richgirl or electrik red or busy signal - it has no commercial traction, it hasn't provided any big hits...so why check it out? and - as i'm sure you'd answer - the answer is that the music is really exciting and incredible, and the fact that "in the morning" never became a "flowers" or "girls like us" is ultimately irrelevant.

Wasn't dancehall similarly more exciting when it felt like it was in more of a conversation with pop/hip hop/r&b?

it still is! it's just that the conversation's not taking place in the charts, and the reason for that is mostly to do with extra-musical factors and trends changing.

also, isn't it a critic's job to bring attention to great music which, for whatever reason, didn't break through? "it feels like a drop-off" is a cop-out if you're not listening to the music in question.

Now, keeping on top of good pop music is much like keeping on top of any genre. One of the key weapons in the whole anti-rockist debate - "all of this great music is right under your nose, why are you ignoring it???" - has effectively fallen away, now that smart pop-fans basically agree that the public have bad taste

haha i never actually used or subscribed to this argument b/c it's so easily countered with a swift reminder of eg westlife, who always used to be right under our noses but who i'd actively avoid. no, the argument for great music is that the music is great and why do i even have to make this argument in 2009?

At the beginning of the decade pop music (again, in the broad sense) was in as good health as it's ever been

it just seems so obvious that the reason for its relative ill health now is largely to do with industry upheaval - plus, wasn't a lot of critically-repped pop from the early part of the decade kind of cratediggery as well? not just the obvious m.i.a./annie internet pop types, but things like rejected album tracks, obscure remixes and so on have always been part and parcel of it.

Tim we did have a see-saw where pop was good and indie was staid around the turn of the century, and I'd say that went the other way from about 2004->early '08, where you had a huge amount of "street level" activity in hip-hop and the various (mostly UK-centric) subgenres, but a lot of that was driven by the audience's mindset, their obsessiveness - both in terms of DJs and downloaders. And much as something like Speakerboxxx and 2004 mark the falling-off point for that period of great/interesting commercial pop (after which we got bubblegum hip-hop), the by-now comical ubiquity of dubstep as a badge feels like it could be the conclusion of all that fevered genre-championing botany. The end of the decade timing is a nice coincidence, but you see such face-on cross-pollination now, with let's say "Stillness is the Move" being recognized by a mainstream hip-hop artist and producer, that (optimistically) perhaps the critical/audience dialog is a step behind the music. Which in my view is how it should be, because that puts the surprise factor back into play, a tier of artist and listener, rather than music which confirms expectations.

One thing I don't get is if the pop music fan/critic has to dig for pop music, why not just dig for music in general? Since you are putting so much emphasis on it's being about good music, why not dig for good music outside pop as well? Maybe you do. But the same thing puzzles me with people insisting that every pop music critic most be a pop omnivore: why stop there? why not insist that any music critic must be a complete musical omnivore (at least as an unachievable ideal)? (I'm not saying that should be the norm myself here. I think there are lots of different ways of specializing that are perfectly reasonable and justifiable.)

I guess this is mostly directed to lex.

And if you aren't particularly interested in music as reflection or expression of the Zeitgeist and you don't want to put emphasis on pop as inescapable, shared, common experience, then why even start your search for good music with a filter that is focusing on pop? I mean, okay, maybe because in your experience pop ends up being what you think of as good music more than non-pop types of music. I still feel like there's something I'm not getting here.

uk funky is an appropriate thing to bring up, b/c people could easily shrug and say the same things of it as they might say about richgirl or electrik red or busy signal - it has no commercial traction, it hasn't provided any big hits...so why check it out? and - as i'm sure you'd answer - the answer is that the music is really exciting and incredible, and the fact that "in the morning" never became a "flowers" or "girls like us" is ultimately irrelevant.

Well it was massively disappointing to me that "In The Morning" was not a hit, and one consequence is that you can't say of uk funky that it's the standard for pop music in 2009 because, well, it's not. It's the standard for dance music, sure, but that means something different. "Flowers" feels like a credible candidate for single of the decade in part because it was a hit, and while I'm very very reluctant to just hand out gold stars to crossover tracks I don't think it's meaningless either - that process changes the meaning of the track.

Sure, you're right that i'd of course argue that people should check out uk funky anyway because it's amazing music, but strictly speaking that puts me on the same argumentative level as someone championing chillwave. The fact that I'm right and the chillwave-stan is wrong doesn't get us very far because the chillwave-stan can always say "well, I'm right and he's wrong." Different tastes are a bitch obv.

(all of which is why I'm much more likely to get annoyed with a dubstep fan who ignores uk funky - because they do or should know all the arguments in favour of uk funky, its pre-eminence should be obvious to them)

In other words:

no, the argument for great music is that the music is great and why do i even have to make this argument in 2009?

Because this is the one argument you always have to keep making - because there is no proof for it other than your argument.

Any happy critic is effectively a lobbyist for their own taste, so specialization is part and parcel; and I think any good editor is going to silo a writer by the material that excites them, e.g. gets them to write the best and most impassioned copy. You can contra-position someone as well, but that runs the risk of your looking poorly, because it's very unlikely a writer is going to be versed well-enough in a genre they don't like to compose a proper hatchet piece. Even that can work out, though. Tim Jonze.

So wait.... no The-Dream, no Maxwell, no Oneida on the Pfork main list? Kinda o_O

Chris you're talking sense. I think you're right about the ahem "sorry" state we are now in w/r/t dubstep platitudes (and I give out a fair few of those myself) being indicative of the overall development of this decade.

Like it's a good track but I do find something dispiriting about all the Joy Orbison love. That and not "Between Us"? Somehow that seems far wronger to me than people going overboard over Indian Jewelry or the last Phoenix album.

joy orbison AND royal p would be ideal, surely? "hyph mngo" is pretty incredible (though really, superior comparisons in the joy orbison ballpark would be guido and ikonika, rather than royal p)

also i'm not sure how much royal p promotes herself - i don't even know if she's london based. as far as i know she's just a girl who's made one incredible track, whereas joy orbison is constantly djing the right nights, has internet mixes up all over the place &c &c...

and seriously i've said this before but NO DUBSTEP FAN I KNOW IGNORES UK FUNKY----

Someone in another thread had a good jab at The XX's "Love" mix, saying "They did a Utah Saints" with Florence but I think that's more applicable to Joy Orb's "Hyph". You can all but mix in "Something Good".

Nobody has to like everything or has the time to listen to everything,that's why I always wish editors will seek out writers interested in different things instead of limiting coverage to styles they themselves like or keep up on.

These arguments are not new either. I remember when I was a University radio station music director way back in 1981 being interested in DC hardcore, Gang of 4 and UK postpunk, Fela, Bruce Springsteen, rap, West End dance records,some pop hits, garage rock, blues, soul and more and being frustrated when wannabe djs and longtime djs alike limited themselves on a freeform station to narrow ranges of choices. I was not a bluegrass or metal fan but made sure we had shows offering those styles.

x-post

Hasn't ILX's drop in interest in dancehall neatly coincided with its own retreat from chart populism? Sure that doesn't make it somehow noble to ignore dancehall (and I try not to) but I think it does explain why I went from listening to heaps and heaps and heaps of it during 2001 - 2004 to listening to maybe 10-20 tracks per year now.

Also, Pitchfork used to have a reggae/dancehall monthly column but that disappeared this year.

All the people voting for Darkstar et. al. on the Pitchfork list and yet neither "Inflation" nor The-Dream album making the cut really does make me more annoyed than if it was just wall to wall Washed Out etc. It's like "you got that far, and then you stopped???"

Of course the way the voting system works it doesn't mean anything like that (if anything it means martin and philip are much better hype-machines among pitchfork writers than I am) but STILL.

and seriously i've said this before but NO DUBSTEP FAN I KNOW IGNORES UK FUNKY----

Come to Australia and explain that to the HORDES.

really gotta thank the heatwave and the fader for keeping me up on dancehall this year, b/c going by what i've picked up there it's been a strong, strong year. which pfork of course respond to by axing their dancehall column, lol idiots.

you can't blame dubstep for australians!!

actually what's most weird about all of this is how dependent it is on behind-the-scenes barracking - so this list which is (sadly) endlessly dissected and discussed is essentially based on factors like, idk, whether tom ewing was too busy at his day job to rep for pop.

Re the dancehall column, was it axed? I thought Dave Stelfox stopped doing it and they tried to get a new writer to take over (Cybele, who used to post here a bit) but it didn't work out.

I've been disappointed by a lot of the Heatwave dancehall pushes TBH. Greensleeves comps remain more reliable for me. Speaking of, new Vybz album is surprisingly mournful the whole way through!

you can't blame dubstep for australians!!

That's like saying you can't blame European pop for British popjustice-type fans.

also the impression i get that clark/sherburne/ewing/finney/drake are reduced to being the sole voices representing their genres, and have to cheerlead to even get noticed - maybe a better idea would be to cull 90% of the other writers, who can't write very well and have shitty taste?

yeah but i don't like european pop much anyway (unless it's annie or someone), with or without the fans!

you have to check out the go-go club riddim - the heatwave put up a post on it recently, sooooo addictive. love the gaza kim/lisa hype version.

Today, even, at a dance music record store, the owner harassed me for not visiting more often (he's got an awful, pushy, sales technique - one of the reasons I avoid the place) and said "you would have missed out on all this amazing music by not visiting". I explained I'd mostly been into uk funky anyway, which I knew he didn't stock. He didn't know what it was. I explained. "Oh," he said, "that stuff doesn't sell. You should check out our dubstep 12s though. I've got lots of it. That's the really exciting music at the moment."

I will check that - I like the idea of "go-go club riddim".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlWf1k6bEdY

yeah that's weird - really in london dubstep, uk funky, grime etc coexist as equals and bleed into each other too often for any either/or rivalry to make any sense. and everyone in those scenes seriously idolises the-dream, too. one fav memory of this year = ikonika and i belting out tracks off the new mariah carey album after dâm-funk's set at plastic people

All the people voting for Darkstar et. al. on the Pitchfork list and yet neither "Inflation" nor The-Dream album making the cut really does make me more annoyed than if it was just wall to wall Washed Out etc. It's like "you got that far, and then you stopped???

is this just the frustration of people liking dubstep and the likes of Darkstar for the same reason that IDM appealed more to indie-centric hordes than Garage or whatever. which is fine but the same old same old complaint really. not a case of laziness as such.

In Australia dubstep = almost solely the preserve of ex-drum & bass kids and ex-house/techno kids. No-one ever liked grime or garage here, and no-one likes or even knows funky here. There's no rivalry because there's no other options.

That kind of mindset - getting into dubstep with all of its halfhearted "urban"/jamaican signifiers but then steadfastly ignoring anything that runs further with that - frustrates me more than indie bedsit types who I basically see as a different type of person to me.

x-post Steve I guess the above basically is where i'm coming from here. Darkstar possibly a bad example given they're so IDM.

Lex that track is great!! "Put yuh money where yuh mout' deh!"

tho it is probably lazy to just assume that Dubstep is more "forward-thinking" than the stuff 2 doors down yes. this is not the same as actually preferring it to dance styles that are totally different mood/tone-wise but linked to it as part of some post-grime nexus. i see people on both sides being equally dismissive of the other but Darkstar-type stuff doing better in indie-centric polls just seems inevitable.

"aidy's girl is a computer" is a fucking incredible track though

elephant man and vybz kartel have done terrific versions of the go-go-club riddim too!

must say tho if you saw that clip of Tim Westwood interviewing Chase & Status his jokey rudeness towards them actually began to seem justified when one of them said "we don't dance, i haven't danced in about ten years..." i mean come onnnn. that actually bothers me more because they make DnB more than because of their dubstep lean (tho dubstep attracts the same 'how do you dance to this' type comments as DnB did) and just seems like a really bad reflection on them. why make (even slow) rhythmic music supposedly for clubs if you don't like dancing yourself? surely not everyone in that scene feels this way tho.

indie bedsit types who I basically see as a different type of person to me.

Who are the ones coming to dubstep in droves now, and this genre, like the monochromatic early days of Warp/"IDM" and Jungle, is very resistant to dilution by co-option. There's an assumed quietude about it, like...hard to get words round this but essentially the idea that This Music Is Cooler Than Everyone, culturally bulletproof, because of its anonymity, the frantic pace of releases, the leg up the artists have in that tidal wave of activity over both the audience and critics to say "Eh, we've moved on mate sorry you didn't get the news." And again, I like that, but, the whole landscape is so different now that this particular argument - Can You Have a Scene? - feels more like a war than a lark.

really in london dubstep, uk funky, grime etc coexist as equals and bleed into each other too often

where in london can i find this party?

i don't think i've been to a night where they've played anything that i'd recogise as uk funky. i imagine uk funky to occupy the same space that garage used to.. a little bit ugh classier, mixed crowd, smaller venues, ugh soulful. you know what i mean.

the one time i ended up in SE1 club on a dubstep night it was mostly students and white people with dreads and not a lot of dancing. they also play a lot of dubstep/grime at nights like bangface, can't imagine the djs there dropping much uk funky stuff.

Lady Gaga is the last.fm No 1 Artist of the year (based on most album Scrobbles)

1 LADY GAGA
2 The Killers
3 Lily Allen
4 The Prodigy
5 FRANZ FERDINAND
6 BEYONCÉ
7 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
8 GREEN DAY
9 YEAH YEAH YEAHS
10 KANYE WEST
11 BRITNEY SPEARS
12 FALL OUT BOY
13 TAYLOR SWIFT
14 MUSE
15 BLACK EYED PEAS
16 PHOENIX
17 PARAMORE
18 KELLY CLARKSON
19 PLACEBO
20 LA ROUX
21 GRIZZLY BEAR
22 ARCTIC MONKEYS
23 A DAY TO REMEMBER
24 RÖYKSOPP
25 PASSION PIT
26 BAT FOR LASHES
27 THE ALL-AMERICAN REJECTS
28 NICKELBACK
29 GUNS N' ROSES
30 U2
31 DEPECHE MODE
32 FEVER RAY
33 EMINEM
34 THE XX
35 METRIC
36 THE FRAY
37 REGINA SPEKTOR
38 KASABIAN
39 FLORENCE + THE MACHINE
40 LITTLE BOOTS

don't know why you bolded Kasabian at #38 when The Killers are at #2

It's kinda funny that most Paramore fans also are Nickelback fans.

where in london can i find this party?

night slugs, beyond, circle, wifey, the producers house, air...the pure "uk funky" nights are def more classy, aspirational &c (no bad thing at all), less so the nights that mix it w/dubstep, garage, techno, dancehall &c.

"dubstep" is getting a bit misleading i think: you'll rarely hear the lairy, macho end of dubstep at these nights (a good thing), more the hyperdub/purple wow end.

and seriously i've said this before but NO DUBSTEP FAN I KNOW IGNORES UK FUNKY----

― lex pretend, Wednesday, December 16, 2009 8:36 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is def related to you living in london. in the u.s. there are tons of dubstep heads & i know maybe three ppl who know that funky house exists that dont write for pfork

^agreed

People listen to dubstep outside of London? ;)

http://www.topdesblogueurs.fr/ -- 37 French bloggers choose their favorite albums. (Saw this on 17 Dots.)

aucuns sufjan, aucune crédibilité

Um I think Prodigy @ #4 is about a billion times more mindblowing than Killers @ #2.