The Pitchfork People's List - top albums 1996-2012

I have THREE Lamb albums on my list! Love them to bits

I decided to only go with one album per artist, or I'd have had more than one. Of course, I went with one (What Sound you didn't choose!

Pitchfork could easily strengthen its sense of specificity by stopping coverage of chart pop, hip hop, dance music, metal, and any other genre that already gets extensive coverage and attention elsewhere. But that would go against everything people are asking for wouldn't it?

― wk, Tuesday, August 21, 2012 7:37 AM (1 hour ago)

afaic, pitchfork has the right to cover whatever they want. the more the better. i'd just like to see critics and critical organs be straightforward about where they're coming from & who they are. for pitchfork, it'd be nice to have links from individual reviews to critic bios, photos (maybe, if people wanted to be seen?) and lists of their other writings on the site. plus maybe a bit more upfront honesty about the fact that pitchfork is still basically an indie site and the ways in which that orientation frames their overall editorial/critical philosophy. i don't think the wire is at all reticent about the fact that they're primarily interested in experimental & avant-garde stuff. like the pitchfork of old, the specificity of their interest is what makes the wire distinct and useful.

fwiw, dog latin, i think you're doing fine here. you've said some stuff i disagree with, but you seem overall to have been open-minded and to have engaged with the debate in a fair and honest fashion. that's all that can reasonably be asked of anyone, afaic. of course, i can't speak to whatever offense you may have given anyone else...

i agree

Aw, it's so cute, you guys giving him manpointz when he so clearly wanted the Feminist Cookie.

WCC is seriously one of the best posters on ILX right now.

"We, the white men, were so totally not ~offended~!"

Because news flash: no one on this thread was ever actually offended. Dude said some bullshit, some people with actual experience took the time to correct those fallacies and now he's crying victim coz he done got told. Yay, white men! Let's go make some lists!

http://open.spotify.com/user/djperry1973/playlist/43Zk2ca6q9IBEFPoIDV8xm

Here's my ballot as a Spotify playlist. There are some weird omissions due to some things not being online in the US, like the Prodigy singles comp, Music Has A Right To Children, the Moloko albums and the first two Basement Jaxx albums, and things that just wouldn't be on Spotify like my brother's hip-hop group's album from 2003.

incredibly ironic xpost

gonna go and play my ballot on shuffle now, it's enough music for three days

I think it's a (nice, liberal, open-minded) SWM instinct, when confronted with their SWMness by people who feel victimised by the dominance of SWMs and SWM culture, to go "hey, I feel victimised too; we're kind of alike!" which I can understand, and probably do myself (in fact I absolutely know I do, at least emotionally, but I'm trying to CBT it out of myself almost), but which, when you stand back and think about it, is actually almost like the epitome of SWM privilege: it's a privilege of SWMs not to think of themselves as SWMs, but rather to think of themselves as "normal", which, even if you're not assuming or insinuating that everyone else is "abnormal", is probably going to make them infer that you are.

Fwiw I don't thing you've been out of order on this thread, DL, a little gauche at points for sure, and I don't think you've been victimised at all either. Take a breath, and keep on.

maybe a bit more upfront honesty about the fact that pitchfork is still basically an indie site and the ways in which that orientation frames their overall editorial/critical philosophy

how much more upfront can PF be? If you visit the site, its orientation is obvious.

WCC is seriously one of the best posters on ILX right now

nicks on fire today with otmness

Somehow I must have missed Third when I was making my list. Such a huge omission.

I didn't make a list. So no such problems here. Would be too hard to decide plus I'd just get called a rockist or something.

Any of my top ten could have been my #1 album on any given day, except for when I REALLY started asking myself "how does this album compare to the others?" and shuffling them around, they ended up in this order with Third clearly on top. (Join The Dots is clearly cheating but I don't care, and prior to 2007 In Sides would have easily been my #1; in fact, I had to wrestle with whether to put that or New Amerykah 1 in at #3, probably the hardest decision I made in the list)

sad that I missed Barking and that the M.I.A. and Santigold mixtapes ended up sliding off the bottom along with Spiritualized

If you look at the Wikipedia page for truthiness it actually mentions the phrase 'dog latin' (not the person obv)

how much more upfront can PF be? If you visit the site, its orientation is obvious.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 21, 2012 9:57 AM (2 minutes ago)

yes and no. pitchfork doesn't deny anything, but nor does it clarify much. what is "indie" exactly? what does it mean to pitchfork that it's associated with this music? what is its place in the world? what are it's limitations (i.e., what isn't it)? most music publications wrestle with these sorts of identity-defining questions every once in a while.

i see pitchfork as being an "indie site" in much the same way that the rolling stone of the 80s and 90s was a "rock magazine" - as though "indie" were an infinitely extensible and plastic umbrella under which the whole world could be organized and evaluated. open-minded, explorative curiosity is always a good thing, but i have real problems with the pervasive dominance of one specific and fairly narrow critical viewpoint - again as negatively exemplified in those 70s/80s "acclaimed music" lists we were polling a while back.

i personally feel that the overwhelming ubiquity of these crushingly homogeneous (and unsurprisingly white-guy centric) views is, at least in part, the product of niche specificity passing itself off as universally knowledgeable generalism. it's the hyper-empowered will-to-canon that bothers me. you can see it being written in the here and now, the prime placement that will be granted artists like neutral milk hotel, the strokes, the black keys, LCD soundsystem, spoon and the arcade fire in a thousand "acclaimed music" lists yet to be.

looking at the top 20 2010 pazz and jop album finishers, i see 13 indie acts (including some crossover stuff), intermixed with a few "standout" rap and electronic sort-of-dance-pop albums of precisely the sort that pitchfork champions. and one country record. 15 of the 20 were made primarily by men. it's fine, people are gonna like whatever they want to like, but doesn't the constant critical celebration of this one rather narrow band of pop become rather stultifying after a while?

speaking of things that become rather stultifying after a while

^ the strongest possible counter to this that i can think of is the argument that the people who most want to read and hear music reviews are primarily attracted to what i'll loosely call "pitchfork music": ostensibly intelligent and forward-thinking pop that reflect's a certain culture's tastes and values. and the people who most want to write music criticism share the same basic bent. so there's nothing at all surprising about the fact that the tastes of this one rather narrow cultural group so completely dominate pop criticism as a whole.

i'd probably accept that argument, but no one's really making it.

speaking of things that become rather stultifying after a while

― Jandek at the Disco (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, August 21, 2012 10:52 AM

okay, i'll quit. i get caught up in these discussions and keep going as long as others seem interested (or engaged, anyway), but i should know by now that a little goes a long way.

a little late to the game. didn't see this thread until now.
unfortunately forgot to add the mollusk before the end date but other than that I stand by this list

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/7d38e3d1/

had a brief moment of panic where i thought "adding the mollusk" was some special thing i was supposed to do in order to officially submit my ballot that i didn't know about

adding the mollusk is still illegal in 38 states iirc

lol naw, i completely forgot about it until now. the ween album.

From my more or less arbitrary #1, Getatchew Mekuria & The Ex - Moa Anbessa. Post-punk Ethiopian jazz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V267-_ST_Uw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s3S0KiwWBE

^ meant to post that stuff to the other thread, but what's done is done

Actually, that was top of my list to check out, so I'm glad you posted those here.

also, i included The Holy Bible but pretty much only because they had it in their database. doesn't fit the 96-2011 thing but, i imagine its for the bonus reissue stuff

ha when i saw the ex i bought one of the cassettes of that record they made for when they toured ethiopia

for pitchfork, it'd be nice to have links from individual reviews to critic bios, photos (maybe, if people wanted to be seen?) and lists of their other writings on the site.

― contenderizer, Tuesday, 21 August 2012 16:32 (3 hours ago) Permalink

Or to make it easier they could just put personals-style abbreviations next to the byline. Ryan Schreiber (SWM). Dominique Leone (F). etc

sure

& lol @ dom (F), the joke that keeps on giving :)

Selfishly, may I ask for a few thoughts on my list beyond how white I am? Just craving a little feedback on it.

Oh I noticed you like that Real Estate record, I like that record

And I guessed when I looked at it that you were Canadian

Interesting! Why is that? I'm from New Jersey.

Evan, your list kicks ass. I'm not just saying that. Maximum riffage.

It seems very pre-"pfork-indie", when guitars crunched and snares shuddered

You said Shocking Pinks and I read Shearing Pinx and then I couldn't shake the feeling
Plus: Plants And Animals

Thanks blank! Wasn't asking for that, but it was nice to hear.
My favorite era of music ended just before 1996 and I'm very much into crunching guitars

That Plants and Animals record is so great, it's too bad they weren't ...something... enough to get as popular as other Canadians. Their next record didn't help, though it wasn't necessarily bad.

Want to big up contenderizer, I found yr thoughts on p4k interesting and engaging!

Also, totally pro the idea to 'have links from individual reviews to critic bios, photos (maybe, if people wanted to be seen?) and lists of their other writings on the site.'

If only b/c I like certain contributors to p4k a whole lot and it would be nice if I can just scroll down a page of links to their contributions. Would also re-enforce the idea that the site isn't some monolith of single opinion (which is what, like, The Economist tries to suggest), but an amalgamation of viewpoints.

Here's my list (not submitted). The least it can be said for it is that it hasn't lots of albums that aren't going to be on other lists, but that's probably also the most that can be said for it. Ranking is a bit bogus, starting with the album in second place, but there is some rough difference between top third, middle third, and bottom third.

1. Shiina Ringo – Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana
2. Kate Bush – Aerial
3. Tokyo Jihen – Adult
4. Michael Stuart – Back to da Barrio
5. Matthew Shipp – Equilibrium
6. John Fahey – Red Cross
7. e.s.t. – Leucocyte
8. Boris – Smile
9. Boy Better Know – Tropical 2
10. Kayhan Kalhor/Mohammad Reza Shajarian – Night Silence Desert
11. Janelle Monae – The ArchAndroid
12. Marina & the Diamonds – Family Jewels
13. Miguel “Anga” Diaz – Echu Mingua
14. Ayelet Rose Gottlieb – Mayim Rabim
15. Miranda Lambert – Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
16. Mohamed Abdo – Kuwait 2001
17. Daddy Yankee – Mundial
18. Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma
19. Lansing-Dreiden – Incomplete Triangle
20. Shiina Ringo – Shouso Strip
21. Cooper-Moore & Assif Tsahar – America
22. Khaled Abdul Rahman – Khalediat 2010
23. Boredoms – Rebore 0
24. Maria Rita – Segundo
25. Bannakumbi – El Nuevo Dia
26. Sunny Jain Collective – Avaaz
27. Lansing-Dreiden – Dividing Island
28. Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow
29. Company of Thieves – Running from a Gamble
30. Hossein Alizadeh – Ney Nava Plus Avay-E Mehr Nowruz & Savaran-E Dasht
31. Yousef Shamoun – Taneh wu Raneh
32. Marit Larsen – Under the Surface
33. Ned Rothenberg – Inner Diaspora
34. Boris – Feedbacker
35. Tokyo Jihen – Kyōiku
36. Taylor Swift – Fearless
37. Derek Bailey – Ballads
38. Maria Rita – Elo
39. Boris – Rainbow
40. Shiina Ringo – Muzai Moratorium
41. Nejo & Dalmata – Broke & Famous
42. Company of Thieves – Ordinary Riches
43. Rahim Al Haj – When the Soul Is Settled
44. Abdelli – New Moon
45. Jon Hassell – Maarifa Sreet
46. Janet Feder & Fred Frith – Ironic Universe
47. Kimbra – Vows
48. Cadaver Exquisito – En Vivo Desde La Terrraza del Ateneo
49. Cinematic Orchestra – Motion
50. Erik Friedlander – Volac: Book Of Angels Vol. 8
51. Matthew Shipp – One
52. Grupo Cimarron – Si Soy Llenaro
53. Dave Fox – Dedication Suite

It should be stressed that this problem is by no means unique to Pitchfork - the same "will to canon" feel is evident in the writing on sites like FACT (which swaps a US indie-rock center for a UK dance center) or The Quietus (which strikes me as a Pitchfork/FACT/The Wire cross) as well as your more typical organs like Rolling Stone, Spin and indeed The Wire. All of these are basically different slants on a SWM perspective, and all have a rather fuzzy editorial remit.

I don't think any of these particularly need to change their approach but it's worth acknowleging the limitations of that approach if only so as to recognise what kind of perspectives (and obv in particular written perspectives) outside of that worldview are worth locating and supporting.

interesting list, rudipherous. not familiar w much of anything on it, but love the kate bush and boris stuff. went for attention please as my state-allotted single boris pick, but it could just as easily have been smile, rainbow, feedbacker or flood.

enjoyed reading your list, too, evan. you remind me that i criminally neglected my beloved guitar romantic and, dang, for some reason i thought dusk at cubist castle came out in '95! crud. anyway, cool to see mention of giant sand, polvo, bedhead, etc. early 90s nostalgia right here. would have voted for what fun life was had it come out a few years later...

this list is going to be super embarrassing for everyone involved i think

not familiar with most of what's on your list rudipherous, but good to see some love for 'rebore vol. 0' - it should have been in my top 20 and i prefer it to 'vision creation newsun' by some margin.

enjoyed reading your list, too, evan. you remind me that i criminally neglected my beloved guitar romantic and, dang, for some reason i thought dusk at cubist castle came out in '95! crud. anyway, cool to see mention of giant sand, polvo, bedhead, etc. early 90s nostalgia right here. would have voted for what fun life was had it come out a few years later...

― contenderizer, Wednesday, August 22, 2012 12:17 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thanks! I had to remind myself when What Fun Life Was came out because that album is so fantastic. Though Transaction de Novo is special to me since it was the gateway for me to their patient sound.
90s nostalgia is a common thread for me.
It would be fun to try to make a list consisting of the 15 years prior, but would be much much harder for me.