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

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.

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.

Well by "diminishing returns" I didn't mean it makes you a worse critic, I meant that the value of listening to each additional album diminishes the more albums you listen to - it doesn't strike me as controversial to suggest that there's a larger difference between listening to 10 albums and 20 albums than there is between listening to 150 albums and 200 albums.

The diversity of music (not just in sounds or genres but in effects, strategies, functions etc) is of course a very long piece of string, but even if critics can walk and chew gum simultaneously, they can only walk so fast and chew so many pieces of gum. The diversity doesn't just exist between pieces of music but also within them, and I think the process of interrogation required to draw this out (or more prosaically, "living with" the music) requires time and effort, at least if you actually intend to say something interesting about the music. Like, I think there's a difference between "getting" an album on first listen and having something to communicate that any other critic couldn't communicate just as easily - unless the "getting" is just the application of your instinctive biases. And I agree chuck that biases are inevitable and even necessary, but unless there is some effort spent in drawing those biases out in novel and illuminating ways one's writing gets pretty repetitive pretty quickly.

Again, though, a lot of my thoughts on this come from having only approx 1.5 hours max of listening time available to me per day, such that if I actually set out to hear 200 albums my average number of listens to any given album would be less than 3 (and that's assuming I listened to no older music). And, as well, full time work doesn't just take away listening time, it takes away the amount of creative energy necessary to really engage with music.

Which doesn't mean that i want to be all Hornby-esque and advocate listening as comfort food, but that I don't see what is the problem with thinking a bit more strategically about the importance of listening to every critically rated album versus other things that might make me a better thinker/writer/critic.

Though I suspect no-one's gonna rush to disagree with that last point and at at this stage of the conversation we're really just defending and promoting our own various approaches to same task.

some effort spent in drawing those biases out in novel and illuminating ways

Pretty sure I've exerted some effort in this direction over the past 30 years. (Whether it's been successful or not is for readers to decide. But though my writing gets accused of a lot of things, sounding like every other critic is usually not one of them.)

listening to every critically rated album

And I've never advocated this, either. (I sure don't do it myself -- I've never heard the vast majority of albums listed on this thread!) And as I also said above, some of my favorite critics barely hear any new albums at all. So again (again) different strokes.

Chuck it should go without saying that you are a special freak who falls outside of all the things i'm talking about pretty much entirely.