ILM'S TOP 77 TRACKS of 2011 (Los resultados!)

Really wasn't feeling any Junior Boys stuff this year. Banana Ripple was probably the best thing on the album but generally it feels like their time has passed now.

i heard this junior boys song a long time ago but it quickly receded from my memory

vocals on this junior boys are terrible

haha I thought it was just me

a little bit of me is like "are we really at the point where we're having Candy Flip tribute bands?" while listening to this

This Junior Boys track is definitely pleasant but I'm not sure I'll return to it. I like how they seem to take the skin of an 80s pop song and pull and stretch it to fit over a cosmic disco skeleton.

My experience of country music is almost entirely reducible to my Dad's 8-tracks and K Rose from GTA SA.

see now ^that makes it sound awesome! (xp)

you didnt like the GGD song, emil.y? :(

Also, the first two Junior Boys records are great.

"banana ripple" is def supposed to be like an EPIC dance track but the whole thing just feels v pro forma and uninspiring to me

Junior Boys song sounds like its from an awful tv show. Want to blame the terrible singing but it wouldn't be much better instrumental

My experience of country music is almost entirely reducible to the vast majority of the people I knew growing up who listened to it being unrepentant, irredeemable racists. Ironically, between this, the unrepentant racists into classic rock and the unrepentant racists into metal, I eventually ended up being into... industrial music.

the vocals remind me a lot of Kelley Polar - no processing, no reverb, just a guy singing. When it works it ratchets up the emotion and contrasts well with the electronics in the background. But when it doesn't work he can sound seriously awkward. There's a reason most artists slather their vocals in reverb.

Yeah this was the first Junior Boys album I was disappointed by. "Banana Ripple" was the best, but it was a low bar anyway.

they are really good live because they only play the fast tracks and pump up the volume so you can barely hear him singing. Not sure that speaks well of their music in general but I have enjoyed them both times I have seen them in person.

What's their best album then?

"banana ripple" is def supposed to be like an EPIC dance track but the whole thing just feels v pro forma and uninspiring to me

yeah it also feels like a pro forma attempt at making a "junior boys song". i don't really feel any great need for it to exist. which is sad given how great they used to be.

emil.y w/all due respect you don't know jack shit about my taste; oddly enough i don't talk about *everything* i listen to on ilm

I like the second, but most JB fans swear by the first. xp

idk when junior boys vocals crossed the line from charmingly bad to just regular bad

What's their best album then?

first two are essential - last exit = all time classic 4eva, so this is goodbye only slightly beneath it. nothing since then is that great :(

dammit i forgot to vote. looking forward to this regardless

lex and I agreeing shocker!

http://i.imgur.com/KoJDR.jpg

TIE-70 - BIG SEAN ft. NICKI MINAJ "Dance (A$$) Remix" (190 Points, 7 Votes)
P&J - 343
Pitchfork - DNP

http://youtu.be/pn1VGytzXus

none of them are all that amazing but there's a really nice greatest hits spread across the four of them.

WAIKIKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

yeah lex otm here

i think last exit was my #1 on the 00's poll/??

Damn, I forgot to vote for the JB album :(

Oh, and also for Rebecca Black's 'Friday' ;_;

So basically when they said So This Is Goodbye, we should have taken them at their word. xps

excellent screenshot emphasising nicki above sean

Drugs: Gang Gang track is alright, but it doesn't blow my mind.

emil.y w/all due respect you don't know jack shit about my taste; oddly enough i don't talk about *everything* i listen to on ilm

Okay, that's fair enough, and to be honest I feel like my snark was a bit much in those posts, so I am sorry about that. However, you frequently do dismiss whole genres with as much disdain and ignorance as 'I like all music except rap and country' people.

yes! this barely managed to squeeze onto my ballot iirc

these lyrics are horrible...I see how people can appreciate the wordplay but wow.

yeah i threw this on my ballot, been on repeat for much of the last few months

i did nicki's verse on stage at a terrible piano bar about a month ago, it was probably the highlight of my yr

YOU FUCKING LITTLE WHORES FUCKING UP MY DECORS
COULDN'T GET MICHAEL KORS IF YOU WAS FUCKING MICHAEL KORS

<3 <3 <3 it's like nicki minaj doing a dj assault song

Only 7 votes for "A$$" in the end? About 7 ppl nominated it between the two threads IIRC!

Re: Junior Boys

Last Exit is the most interesting and the best imo, at least it was at the time, with the whole combination of 2-step and Timbaland-style triple-kicks in an indie-electronica format. Johnny Dark was part of it for this one. Really fit into the general vibe of ILXOR as well, along with early music blogosphere. Nick Kilroy is part of this story as well.

So This Is Goodbye is somehow more consistent, but less adventurous. Still great though.

YES! Something I voted for.

Hahaha, I was totally thinking of DJ Assault during that song. But I prefer his stuff. I dunno, even Nicki's bit didn't appeal to me there, and I like her a lot.

"Dance (A$$) Remix" is still flat-out hot garbage in every possible way imaginable

So This Is Goodbye is probably one of the five best albums of the last ten year, Last Exit isn't far behind.

I like the latest two Junior Boys albums but they just set the standard too high with the first two albums.

Agree with some of the comments about Gang Gang Dance, I had three of their songs on my long list but just couldn't decide between them so ended up bumping the album a little higher instead.

i am at work so i am just kinda grabbing listens when i can but the problem with that pistol annies song is that its a boring by the numbers lifeless plod done by fairly average singers that know all the right twangy country tropes to hit + faux lyrical empowerment through money grabs. its fucking dire.

plz note: yes i do have open ears for country but this is not any good

haha ty jjj

I'm sorta with jjj on this.

i think it helped a lot that i could only find a version with no video, just the dense lyrics paraded in front of me.

I was forced because of where I worked to listen to country music radio for the greater part of the past six months. There's a lot to hate in country music even now, and DJP your impressions are not off at all, but it's definitely this experience that made me rank something like Sunny Sweeney's "From a Table Away" (which was top 3 for me but probably will not place) as a luminous masterpiece in songwriting.

That being said, the country radio station did not play a single Pistol Annies song the entire time I listened, which had me flummoxed until I actually listened to the album. The station I was listening to was def pushing a family-friendly, God-fearing, good people message, and Pistol Annies blasts through that. I actually think the down-homey-ness and the hewing to Nashville conventions makes the album sound tougher: less pretentious, gives it the illusion of rawness. Definitely it helps align the album with the 'outlaw country' tradition...

emil.y, I honestly think of "Hell on Heels" to be kind of a tokenist pick; it's the first song of the album, and though it works as a pop single, it functions within the album as sort of a program piece, an introductory gesture. If you want to find the punk in the album, check out "Housewife's Prayer" which sounds like a resigned sigh, but lyrically is a frustrated whelp of pyromaniac desire from the very heart of conventional domesticity. It's a stellar example as to why my country radio station wouldn't touch the album, and absolutely one of the top songs of the year (although I didn't vote for it ;_;)

fwiw lyric videos always make songs seem worse

i agree with drugs a money, i'm probably gonna make this argument at greater length in the albums thread when it places but it's probably the best recession album i've heard yet

(Hoping Todd Terje gets on here, but wonder whether it will go to Ragysh or Snooze 4 Love. RA had them both back to back.)

http://i.imgur.com/fmYUb.jpg

69 - INVISIBLE CONGA PEOPLE "In a Hole" (190 Points, 8 Votes)
P&J - 604
Pitchfork - DNP

http://youtu.be/ZZNqhLxNIdE

fwiw lyric videos always make songs seem worse

No, jjj just listened to the song where they proclaim about 5 bazillion times that they're hell on heels

(Ass song was good btw)