2010 Magazine's Albums Of The Year Thread For Posting Lists and Discussion

Cool lists from Dummy:

Albums: http://www.dummymag.com/lists/2010/12/22/the-61-best-albums-of-the-year/
Tracks: http://www.dummymag.com/lists/2010/12/31/the-56-best-tracks-of-the-year/
EPs: http://www.dummymag.com/lists/2010/12/31/the-27-best-eps-of-the-year/

mixmag is the only place to rep for that awesome groove armada song, im with it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74cQF2ebgOM

lol well done Groove Armada still going

i talk about it in the actual list i linked, but basically a) i treat those lists as a 'yearbook' and obviously am not seriously recommending all 50 of those as unequivocally great albums, b) #34 is not that high and c) if you think an album is just OK and everyone else is giving it 5 stars yeah you end up in kind of an adversarial position toward it and downplay what you enjoy about it but i never said i hate everything about it

I guess different strokes for different folks; if I was making a list, I would stop when I ran out of albums I was enthusiastic about.

I think there were probably 25 albums that came out this year that I loved; I would rather enthuse about them for longer than pad the list out with 25 more albums that I thought were adequate.

― Indolence Mission (DJP), Saturday, January 1, 2011 4:55 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah hence the 'yearbook' philosophy, the top 20 or so is a pretty serious "best of the year" thing, the rest is so in 5 or 10 years i can easily look back and see what i was listening to. not about padding, just having a wider scope for the sake of personal indulgence.

considering how vociferous al was in his criticisms of the kanye record -- including giving me crap for not liking the record while criticizing some arguments against it -- i am also surprised he would rank it

― lyrics is weak ... like clock radio similes (deej), Saturday, January 1, 2011 5:20 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i was never on the lex tip of "this album is HORRIBLE and has NO VALUE AT ALL" though. if i thought it was completely worthless i probably wouldn't listen to it more than once or think enough to post on a thread about it that many times?

i think it's pedestrian and incredibly boring rather than totally worthless. two stars, remember!

so "pedestrian and incredibly boring" that you felt compelled to repeatedly state your case as such in a 4000 plus post thread concerning the subject? hmm, how much worse could it have been if you really hated it? i wonder...

(j/k dude. i know it was the zeitgeist-y aspect of the thing--as well as the overtly-fawning, hyperbolic silliness of the many rave reviews, of course--that irked you and others so.)

It pains me to hear peolple admit they're ranking albums they don't feel strongly about.

oh come on, a personal list's #34 being "i heard this too, it wasn't bad" is like some sort of failing?

Kind of implies dude should hear more records imo

nah, i probably didn't love more than 20 records this year, and heard at least 10 times that many

Considering that most lists seem to have the same albums in slightly different order, It seems like modern day critics dont seem to listen to as many albums as say Chuck does. And Chuck is always saying how P&J lists weren't like that in the 80s. Do most critics only stay within narrow comfort zones today?

shiplo said "I probably listened to somewhere between 100 and 200 new albums this year"

i feel like y'all listen to too many new releases. when do u socialize, get laid, or watch sports films & tv? or even given it's ilm, when do u relisten to your favorite records? absent a critic having a regular reviewing gig why would u expect numbers in advance of these?

xp to whiney

Me and unperson got in that argument on another thread. Its getting way more common since it's way more profitable to be the "world music expert" or "corny indie fuck" expert when an editor starts calling. Def a product of people going to specialty blogs more and more, tailoring their experiences...

shiplo said "I probably listened to somewhere between 100 and 200 new albums this year"

i feel like y'all listen to too many

new releases. when do u socialize, get laid, or watch sports films & tv? or even given it's ilm, when do u relisten to your favorite records? absent a critic having a regular reviewing gig why would u expect numbers in advance of these?
--zvookster

In tweet-reviewed 425 records and probably heard another 200 to 400 on top of that. I listen all day and do fun things all night.

yeah i know that, it's cool that it's your normal lyfe but i'm just saying u seem view that sort of listening as necessary from list-makers, which is dumb

zvookster otm

absent a critic having a regular reviewing gig why would u expect numbers in advance of these?

I expect a rock critic to listen to records. The job requirement shouldn't have too much else really.

one thing i like to keep in mind is audience. like, to other ILXors and critics, no one really cares that robyn or flying lotus or curren$y or caribou is on a best of 2010 list. seen that shit a million times. but to, say, a friend who casually listens to top 40 radio and that's it, those could be brand new. and great discoveries. not to say best-of lists shouldn't also poke around less critically-lauded circles, or challenge popular perceptions, but not everyone is obsessed with music like a lot of us are. we're looking at these "terribly depressing" lists from a different perspective. i mean, someone else may see arcade fire on a 2010 list not knowing them, and love that shit. who knows!

― i genuinely thought when i first joined that he was the admin (ilxor), Wednesday, December 22, 2010 10:45 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

ilxor seeming to defend intentionally packing one's top list with recognizable, generally well-respected consensus picks (assuming that's what one's audience wants or could use). posted re: algerian goalkeeper's question. i can see the merit in this, tbh, especially if one were writing for entertainment weekly or something. but it still leaves me wondering: "really? has everybody really settled on these 20 or 30 consensus albums in varying order?" i mean, i wouldn't include any of the four albums ilxor names on my personal list. not that i don't like them; i do, they're great, but they don't number among my personal favorites of the year.

maybe jan 2011 is when we finally reach an understanding on how year-end lists should be.

my point was that a lot of people not on ILX or obsessed w/ various musics may not recognize, say, robyn or arcade fire or something on a critics' list. also, they probably dont take the time to look at 100+ lists in an ILX thread the moment each is released. so, as a result, they aren't all "OMG KANYE AGAIN CANT BELIEVE THIS LISTS DONT HAVE MORE VARIETY" -- if you only see 2 or 3 lists in a year, like the casual listener may, then it's not a chore to see those "consensus" albums at the top.

that said, i'm not defending intentionally packing one's list with any sort of picks, recognizable or not. just list what you enjoyed most!

xp to contenderizer

yeah, i get that. but i'm always more interested in lists that reflect a specific personality, with weird quirks of taste and enthusiasm, than in lists that merely attempt to highlight "quality". lists of the latter sort tend to dull consensus, for various reasons, and they bore me no matter how many or few of them i've read. lists of the former sort are intrinsically unpredictable and interesting, because people are both, when they allow themselves to be.

and that's horseshit, too, because there are lots of intensely "personal" and intensely boring lists out there consisting of obscure friend bands, wacky pop, and bad albums by has-been artists the listmaker bonded with in their youth and can't let go of. which recipe isn't really any more objectionable than the mix-n-match 10 crit pop hits with 10 indie pop hits formula. so i dunno...

some dude's lists are good because when u read the writeups its like, oh ya, that's actually what listening to albums is like when ppl are just being real & not trying to will a sense of the exciting new music of our time into existence. i'm prob as enthusiastic abt new music as anyone else here & find a lot of it to love but i relate to the distribution of love in al's list way more than something that's just nonstop gushing

ime the nonstop gushing & positivity can make people feel guilty abt not loving everything so much & i suspect a lot of that shit is at least partly dishonest tho not necessarily intentional or w/e

otoh he is a total curmudgeon tho. if all i read was ilx this year i wld think he didn't like rap music, since he's never really enthusiastic abt anything.

I expect a rock critic to listen to records. The job requirement shouldn't have too much else really.

― our man flint flo$$y (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, January 2, 2011

u seem to expect them to listen to new records all day every day, once or twice each.

surely a requirement for a critic is to write cogently abt what u do listen to. i'm not sure how much having given a listen to 800 records from the same year wld help with that. again i'm not dissing what u do, just the concept that ur experience is in any way required or best practice - that's a joke.

yeah

flopson & zvookster are both otm about al, contradictory or not lol

love al's writing btw.

http://www.thesilentballet.com/tsbt/2010/20_11.html

good stuff on the silent ballet-- too bad they are wrong about Cosmogramma being FlyLo's second album (it's his third!!!!)

how red their faces must be!!!!

dying

of embarrassment

He didn't get a Grammy nomination, but at least he made the Silent Ballet Top 100 (top 20 even).

oh come on, a personal list's #34 being "i heard this too, it wasn't bad" is like some sort of failing?

― zvookster, Sunday, January 2, 2011 12:59 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Kind of implies dude should hear more records imo

― our man flint flo$$y (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, January 2, 2011 1:18 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dunno man, what's your 34th favorite album of the year and would you say you love every minute of it? if it was met with a MBDTF level of acclaim would you think it was a bit overrated?

the idea that you need to cover some huge breadth of music to be a good music writer is 100% nonsense and has gotten more ridiculous than ever

^^^

I've heard probably less than 50 albums this year. Even that felt like too much, like it resulted in cursory attention to everything. I don't see how hearing more would make me a better writer.

"I don't see how hearing more would make me a better writer."

really?

i mean, the more you know, the more you know.

unless you write, like, zen music writing, i guess. and you just listen to the same song every day.

and you CAN study one drum beat or one bass line for days. i dig that.

i'm all for obsessiveness. and if you listen to too much you might get all mixed up. like me.

Hearing more albums = thinking less about each album I hear.

I think a lot of critics listen to a fantastic breadth of stuff but as a result don't really allow themselves a chance to develop a particularly nuanced take on much of the music they're listening to. Arguably one of the reasons so many critics' lists look the same is that critics are churning through so much music that it just saves time going into a listening experience applying whatever emergent critical consensus already exists as a kind of listening filter.

i think everyone's got a right to operate differently and figure out what works best for them. i could probably stand to hear more albums than i do, or from a wider range, but keeping tabs on the beats i already cover and the artists i already like and letting other stuff kind of fall in my lap semi-organically keeps me busy enough as it is.

i listen to a lot, but i also focus on one thing for a period of days sometimes. i can go either way. i get obsessed and interested about things and then i go deeper. but people DO have a natural built-in capacity for all kinds of things and you know when your tank is full. so, really, whatever works best for you. hearing many examples of one type of thing can be helpful to me. i think about how it all fits/doesn't fit/connects/doesn't connect/etc.

I've heard probably less than 50 albums this year.

Isn't this a little misleading given the number of individual tracks and DJ mixes you probably listen to? Like, it might sound like less listening than you actually do because of the type of material you focus on.