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

the woebot top 100 was quite influential for me a few years ago -- acen, tob jobim, ar kane, thomas leer, yusuf lateef, vivien goldman, monoton, implog

I guess, for me, if you are going the "yearbook" route, it makes more sense to do something like:

rank your top 10/15/25/whatever your cutoff point is (depending on how strongly you feel about the albums you liked)
list your "honorable mentions" (ie, the albums you liked enough to be worth mentioning but are not among your favorites)
list your "rogue's gallery (ie, the albums that you disliked or found extremely disappointing)
possibly some sort of "important albums" list (where you give your opinion on the critical darlings; this could just be the albums you were ambivalent about that everyone else went apeshit for, or you could take the albums that appear all over the place off of HM and RG and talk about them here if they aren't in your ranked list)

You can still end up talking about your 100 albums, but it's narrowed down in presentation so the reader gets more focus on the ones you liked most. I can't speak for others, but my perception of reading a ranked album list is, absent of verbiage to the contrary, you are putting things on it that you liked enough to rank; this is one of the reasons I think Ned's 90s list is one of the most successful* album lists I've ever read. There isn't ranking albums that he is lukewarm about just for the sake of reaching a milestone number; it's 136 albums which, at the time of writing, he thought represented the best of what the 90s had to offer. That's the context in which these lists make the most sense to me as a reader; obviously it is fine if you are approaching it as a historical roundup of The Year In Music as a writer, but bear in mind that you may be giving more weight to some of these albums than you mean to just by putting them in a ranked list, regardless of how you blurb them.

* Possibly not the best word but I can't think of a better one; basically, the methodology behind how he put together that list matches most closely with how I read ranked lists. My assumption is that you are not going to bother ranking an album you are ambivalent about or just think is okay, because quite frankly I don't want to read about what albums you thought were just okay. In my world, if it's "okay", it isn't a top album.

my perception of reading a ranked album list is, absent of verbiage to the contrary, you are putting things on it that you liked enough to rank

Well, in the case of my lists at least, then, your perception is right. I don't set out at any point to come up with a list of 150 albums; if I wound up with only 20 I liked enough to rank, that'd be fine with me (although I might wonder whether I should still be doing this for a living.) As I said, records I like (to some degree or other -- chances are, I'll be at least somewhat ambivalent about all of them, because perfect albums don't exist in this world and never have) accumulate through the year; I evaluate, re-evaluate, live with them, etc., and the list is what I wind up with, and people can ponder or ignore however much of it they want to. It's really not rocket science. (This year, I wouldn't have known I had 150 albums -- or 180 or so, counting also-rans -- until the moment I finally posted the list and numbered them.)

Hubie Brown is totally OTM here, btw:

And there seems to be an implication that being more generalist is a career strategy or about trying to duplicate the critical consensus or whatever. Which is silly. For most people I know who listen to and are interested in different types of music, it's natural. It's an outgrowth of being interested in culture broadly...Being interested in different kinds of music is an outgrowth of being interested in different types of people.
Write about what you want, but only caring about one specialized genre or musical subculture is some Trekkie stuff to me.

no one you're talking to in this thread is lke that about one genre, though. but there's a pointlessness to total 'i listen to EVERYTHING' too. it makes taste hopelessly arcane

not saying thats your taste either, rather i construct my taste against the idea that my thoughts on a variety of genres are equally valid

Well the
WORLD
DON'T
MOVE
to the beat of just one drum...

I still get people saying they used my 90s 136 list as a buying guide. Which kinda terrifies me.

i totally did this during my 2003-05 early college yrs era

R.I.P.

r.i.p?

R.I.P. ilxor's college years/ned's 136 albums list (whichever u find most applicable)

RIP

ned's list is still up innit?

IT'S ALIVE!

Then I guess ilxor must have committed seppuku. Zombie ilxor sure posts a lot.

gonna restrain myself from even searching for a lolzombie.gif in reply

LOL

Ozzy’s top 10 albums of 2010:

1. Ozzy Osbourne – Scream
2. Black Label Society – Order of the Black
3. Motorhead – The World is Yours
4. Slash – Slash
5. Halford – Made of Metal
6. Korn – III: Remember Who You Are
7. Pantera – Cowboys from Hell (Reissue)
8. Lamb of God – Hourglass Box Set
9. Firewind – Days of Defiance
10. AC/DC – Iron Man 2

Metal Hammer Top 50 Albums of 2010

1.) Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier
2.) Alter Bridge - III <--------------------- WTF
3.) Deftones- Diamond Eyes
4.) Killing Joke - Absolute Dissent
5.) Airbourne - No Guts. No Glory.
6.) Triptykon - Eparistera Daimones
7.) Slash - Slash
8.) Cathedral - The Guessing Game
9.) Parkway Drive - Deep Blue
10.) Cancer Bats - Bears, Mayors, Straps & Bones
11.) Ihsahn - After
12.) Bring Me The Horizon - There Is A Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is A Heaven, Let's Keep It A Secret.
13.) Avenged Sevenfold - Nightmare
14.) The Dillenger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis
15.) Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here
16.) Black Country Communion - Black Country Communion
17.) Swans - Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
18.) High On Fire - Snakes For The Divine
19.) Electric Wizard - Black Masses
20.) Fear Factory - Mechanize
21.) Rob Zombie - Hillbilly Deluxe 2
22.) Kvelertak - Kvelertak
23.) Letlive - Fake History
24.) Black Label Society - Order Of The Black
25.) Dimmu Borgir - Abrahadabra
26.) Accept - Blood Of The Nations
27.) Burzum - Belus
28.) Grand Magus - Hammer Of The North
29.) Volbeat - Beyond Hell/Above Heaven
30.) Coheed And Cambria - Year Of The Black Rainbow
31.) Your Demise - The Kids We Used To Be
32.) Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Oudini
33.) Scorpions - Sting In The Tail
34.) Lower Than Atlantis - Far Q
35.) Black Breath - Heavy Breathing
36.) 36 Crazyfists - Collisions And Castaways
37.) The Sword - Warp Riders
38.) Monster Magnet - Mastermind
39.) Ufomammut - Eve
40.) Kylesa - Spiral Shadow
41.) Stone Sour - Audio Secrecy
42.) Whitechapel - A New Era Of Corruption
43.) Serj Tankian - Imperfect Harmonies
44.) Soulfly - Omen
45.) Christopher Amott - Follow Your Heart
46.) Armored Saint - La Raza
47.) Ozzy Osbourne - Scream
48.) Watain - Lawless Darkness
49.) Korn - III
50.) Ghost - Opus Eponymous

I hate metal hammer - their logo is "defenders of the faith". in the 90s they wanted to drop the "metal" part from their name. Disgusting magazine.

Hah I just saw that Ozzy list. His favorite album was his own... its cute, I'd accuse him of megalomania but he was probably just like "welp, I gotta be honest - I liked me own a whole bunch..." -- he's like a little kid. I bet if Zach Wylde had put out a solo album he'd have put that at the top out of deference, instead of having BLS at #2.

I'd say Ozzy had fuck all to do with it and Sharon chose it..

glad to see the Alter Bridge getting some love!

Liar

Next you will be saying you like their parent band Creed.

ILX did agree that Creed was better than Owl City...

yeah but ilx also said both were better than markers.

decapitation is also better than being drawn and quartered but that doesn't mean I'm particularly eager to get my head chopped off

:)

i don't think anything chuck has been saying is surprising or mysterious, but it does seem to confirm that long lists are not likely to be very meaningful past a certain point. and i agree with dan that there's something potentially, vaguely misleading about the manner of presenting lists like that, though obviously it's pretty innocuous.

but if the sorts of things chuck is saying hold generally, then what exactly is supposed to be the benefit of a critic listening to a lot of records, like fastnbulbous was saying upthread? simply that they get noticed? if the average record on a year-end roundup like that is basically there because the critic heard it two or three times and thought it was more notable than another 200-500 that didn't get listed, it doesn't seem like that extra bit of notice affects what the critic is capable of giving to the people who read her, that much.

what i'm interested in is the idea that a critic would do better to listen to a LOT of records (so many that other, professional critics here are going: o_O) than to listen more closely or repeatedly or thoughtfully to fewer records. (i'm not saying the people who are in favor of listening in bulk are ruling out the latter, just that it seems obvious that they couldn't have as much attention to spare on fewer records.) i was asking about how mega-lists work because it seems like that's the main thing critics who listen in bulk have to show for their labor.

Well, they'd have a much wider context in which to judge and compare and contast other records, for one thing. They'd learn things. And they'd satisfy their curiosity, which I hope is endless, because otherwise why are they even bothering? Different strokes, again, this just seems obvious to me. I'm still waiting for somebody to explain what's to be gained with listening to individual albums scores and scores of times, long after they've outworn their welcome, and you don't especially want to hear them again. Don't you have enough work to do already? I sure do. What exactly are you hoping to learn from them, that you don't already know after a few listens? I really don't get that. Sure, there are exceptions once in a blue moon that warrant that sort of obsessiveness. But otherwise, talk about turning something fun into drudgery. Sounds like the life of a monk.

lol, just to continue to be the completely contradictory/inconsistent person that I am, ^^^ OTM

(although yeah I do go down the rabbit hole with albums, but that's largely because I'm not reviewing them)

most ppl live with records for a long time, either trying to like it, or if they instantly do, until they know every word and every noise, & i think most critics try to emulate that experience in as much as a deadline allows

I would say those albums I've lived with all this time are ones that I barely touch now. I don't need to, really. Andrew Eldritch of the Sisters of Mercy was once asked to do a Desert Island Discs or equivalent for Q Magazine back in 1993; he provided it, but noted that he had barely listened to any of them in years. Paraphrasing his comment: "All I have to do is look at the spines of the sleeves and everything comes back about it and where I was in life." Strikes me as very sound -- I do have a couple of general fallback albums (and Loveless isn't one of them) but that's about it.

I do have a couple of general fallback albums (and Loveless isn't one of them)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/614gKUDWmUL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51iajO15O4L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Har

Didn't you sell every one of your cds?

Sold quite a few but the bulk are earmarked as a donation for my old radio station's archives.

when do they leave the raggettstacks and join the... radiostacks? :/

(wonder if it's more like "raggettpiles" at this point?)

I assumed he meant in his will.

Oh lord no. I don't want to have to move these things again, for one thing.

raggettplies

so that's what the RIP means

i'm slowly making my way through ned's 90's list

I wasn't actually saying that listening to less albums scores of times is the way to be a good critic, I was saying it's fallacious to argue or imply that listening to hundreds of albums is some kind of qualifier for being a good critic, when it's a strategy that has it's own limitations, and there are other strategies which have their own advantages.

Basically this goes back to fastnbulbuous' attempt to divorce being a music critic (which he associates with listening to as much music as possible) from being a good writer.

Being a good critic is about being able to respond to music, to hear and draw out nuances, ideas, connections, possibilities an distinctions, and then communicate these to the reader in a manner that is both pleasurable in itself and also makes the experience of music more rewarding.

Listening to as much music as possible helps, but lord knows there's many critics who do this and remain incapable of talking insightfully about any of it. It's not just listening that counts, but the application of the critical process I spelt out above, a large part of which requires (a) allowing your critical ideas and categories to be transformed and developed by the music you're listening to; and then (b) working out what those mutations mean for your ideas about music generally, how they impact on all your ideas about the music you've heard before.

This requires talking, with other people of course but also with yourself as you listen to music. It also necessitates a certain amount of muse-following, allowing yourself to drift in certain directions as the music you listen to inspires ideas that demand testing against other music.

Obviously you can't do this with just a handful of records - there's not enough nutrients to allow your ideas to develop - but go too far in the other direction and you can get diminishing returns as well, your critical energy spread too thinly across too many records, which is why so many super voracious critics end up writing about all but their favourite or most interesting releases in the format "this is vaguely comparable to but not as good as another record i already have and which I'd rather be listening to".

But then my thoughts on this are largely shaped by having a fifty hour working week.

I'm still waiting for somebody to explain what's to be gained with listening to individual albums scores and scores of times, long after they've outworn their welcome, and you don't especially want to hear them again. Don't you have enough work to do already? I sure do. What exactly are you hoping to learn from them, that you don't already know after a few listens? I really don't get that. Sure, there are exceptions once in a blue moon that warrant that sort of obsessiveness. But otherwise, talk about turning something fun into drudgery. Sounds like the life of a monk.

no one is saying critics should listen to records once they don't want to. i'm asking what the relative value is to trying to 'meet' (to use the 'worn our their welcome' metaphor) orders of magnitude more 'people' without ever spending enough time with them to see if they're worth sticking with: the exceptions.

isn't one of a critic's jobs to look for those exceptions?

how is the critic supposed to know if they are exceptions, without spending more time with them?

i think this is good:

most ppl live with records for a long time, either trying to like it, or if they instantly do, until they know every word and every noise, & i think most critics try to emulate that experience in as much as a deadline allows

i don't think there's a hard-and-fast one-size-fits-all rule to how many times one "needs" to hear an album, and it's a critic's job to articulate what the case is for each particular one. let's be real, some albums we could all get an adequate handle on after listening once, and others it might take years.

quantity of listens isn't as important as being aware of how your circumstances/mood are affecting your listening imo, there's nothing more offputting than having to force yourself to listen to something over and over again rather than being able to put it on as and when the mood takes you.

well emulate that experience could mean listen three times over the course of one week i guess, but the mood and circumstance is part of why living with a record a bit is a good idea

let's be real, some albums we could all get an adequate handle on after listening once, and others it might take years.

― lex diamonds (lex pretend), Tuesday, January 4, 2011 4:39 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

i don't believe that this is very often true. the things that provokes a strong response on one listen tend to be those that push our buttons, interacting with our deep-set biases and prejudices more than our critical faculties, prompting an instantaneous but shallow "I LOVE THIS!" or "I HATE THIS!" response. i think you have to listen past this kind of knee-jerk immediate reaction to get a truly adequate handle on most music.

I think distinguishing between "deep-set biases and prejudices" and "critical faculties" is usually a false dichotomy, and I don't believe in "trying" to like something. I do believe in trying to figure out how the music works, in giving it a chance, no matter what it is. But if I like it, I like it, and my job is to explain why; if I don't, ditto. And though records have been known to grow (or shrink) on me over the course of weeks, months, years (happens all the time, actually), I usually have a pretty good idea of how much I'll like something (i.e., how good it is, in my terms anyway) after ust a listen or two. On the other hand, I've also advocated "living with albums" (before I put them in a year-end top 10, say) a few times on this thread. And I agree with pretty much everything Tim F says until the "diminishing returns" claim at the end of his spiel. I just don't understand how hearing more music, can, in and of itself, make you a worse critic. Which isn't to say that all critics who listen to hundreds of albums a year are good, when it comes to actually writing about the stuff. But some people can actually walk and chew gum at the same time.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to constantly try to challenge your biases, or at least have self-knowledge about why they're there. But in the end, they're something you learn to live with. And you're allowed to explain and analyze them in your writing, too.

Or I should say that part of my job is explaining why I like something, or don't. But a much bigger part is just explaining what the music does. Though that includes explaining where and how and why it works, and where and how and why it doesn't. So it's not like that's unrelated to my tastes (which include my biases), either.