Year-End Critics' Polls '07

"didn't mean to come off wrong, i just thought "safe," as shorthand, wasn't saying much."

Oh, yeah, that's totally fair—it wasn't saying very much. And apologies for getting snippy, sometimes everything on ILX feels like sniping, and it gets my back up.

The Skull Disco was working at 1:30 PST, with nary a hiccup. Saved it, imported it, enjoyed it.

Breaking news. . . NPR "All Songs Considered" listeners pick the best albums of 2007 (and yes 15 was missing from the listing I cut and pasted):

25. Artist: Rilo Kiley
Album: Under the Blacklight

24.Artist: Lily Allen
Album: Alright, Still

23.Artist: Tegan and Sara
Album: Con

22.Artist: Beirut
Album: Flying Club Cup

21Artist: Ryan Adams
Album: Easy Tiger

20.Artist: Okkervil River
Album: The Stage Names

19.Artist: Josh Ritter
Album: Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter

18.Artist: Bright Eyes
Album: Cassadaga

17.Artist: Band of Horses
Album: Cease to Begin

16.Artist: Of Montreal
Album: Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

14.Artist: The New Pornographers
Album: Challengers

13.Artist: LCD Soundsystem
Album: Sound of Silver

12.Artist: Iron & Wine
Album: Shepherd's Dog

11.Artist: Amy Winehouse
Album: Back to Black

10.Artist: Andrew Bird
Album: Armchair Apocrypha

09.Artist: The National
Album: Boxer

08.Artist: The Shins
Album: Wincing the Night Away

07.Artist: Modest Mouse
Album: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank

06.Artist: Spoon
Album: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

05.Artist: The White Stripes
Album: Icky Thump

04.Artist: Wilco
Album: Sky Blue Sky

03.Artist: Feist
Album: Reminder

02.Artist: Arcade Fire
Album: Neon Bible

01.Artist: Radiohead
Album: In Rainbows

Crunching the number of the individual lists of PFork writers/contributors, here's a baker's dozen of notable snubs (# of votes; ranking average):

Simian Mobile Disco: Attack Decay Sustain Release (7; 17.14)
Band of Horses: Cease to Begin (6; 10.5)
Blonde Redhead: 23 (6; 13)
Nina Nastasia & Jim White: You Follow Me (6; 13.16)
Matthew Dear: Asa Breed (6; 15)
Grinderman: Grinderman (6; 20.66)
Apparat: Walls (5; 12.4)
Klaxons: Myths of the Near Future (5; 12.81)
PJ Harvey: White Chalk (5; 12.97)
Times New Viking: Present the Paisley Reich (5; 14.4)
The Twilight Sad: Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (5; 15.4)
!!!: Myth Takes (5; 16)
Sir Richard Bishop: Polytheistic Fragments (4; 12)

Fwiw, Apparat, even with its average thinned over five votes, still outperformed listmakers Yeasayer (3; 20) and Beirut (3; 14). I dug into the individual lists' numbers because I figured there were albums/artist popular among the writers but their popularity didn't make the final cut (but nonetheless might be worth giving a shot).

the apparat album is better than both those albums, objectively speaking

Here's a bit more looking inside the machinations (i.e., exercised editorial discretion) of Pfork, 11 listmakers (# of votes; ranking average; poll position):

Deerhoof: Friend Opportunity (6; 12; 31)
Liars: Liars (6; 12.9; 20)
Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago (6; 15.16; 29)
Dan Deacon: Spiderman of the Rings (6; 15.3; 24)
The Arcade Fire: Neon Bible (6; 17.83; 27)
Black Lips: Good Bad Not Evil (6; 18.33; 35)
Dizzee Rascal: Maths + English (5; 10.6; 49)
Les Savy Fav: Let's Stay Friends (5; 12.81; 44)
Ghostface Killah: The Big Doe Rehab (5; 14.2; 42)
Marissa Nadler: Songs III: Bird on the Water (5; 15.8; 46)
The White Stripes: Icky Thump (5; 15.82; 39)

Crunching the number of the individual lists of PFork writers/contributors, here's a baker's dozen of notable snubs (# of votes; ranking average):

Simian Mobile Disco: Attack Decay Sustain Release (7; 17.14)
Band of Horses: Cease to Begin (6; 10.5)
Blonde Redhead: 23 (6; 13)
Nina Nastasia & Jim White: You Follow Me (6; 13.16)
Matthew Dear: Asa Breed (6; 15)
Grinderman: Grinderman (6; 20.66)
Apparat: Walls (5; 12.4)
Klaxons: Myths of the Near Future (5; 12.81)
PJ Harvey: White Chalk (5; 12.97)
Times New Viking: Present the Paisley Reich (5; 14.4)
The Twilight Sad: Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (5; 15.4)
!!!: Myth Takes (5; 16)
Sir Richard Bishop: Polytheistic Fragments (4; 12)

Fwiw, Apparat, even with its average thinned over five votes, still outperformed listmakers Yeasayer (3; 20) and Beirut (3; 14). I dug into the individual lists' numbers because I figured there were albums/artist popular among the writers but their popularity didn't make the final cut (but nonetheless might be worth giving a shot).

-- dblcheeksneek, Thursday, 20 December 2007 22:59 (19 minutes ago) Link

interesting stats. here's one omission you missed with comparable numbers:

UGK: Underground Kingz (5; 13.2)

i'm just guessing here, but at the top of the individual lists it says that the top 50 was culled from each writer's top 50, even though only top 25 was posted. so i guess if les savy fav was in everyone's top 50, that would propel it ahead of ugk if ugk was only in like 7 or 8 writers top 50s.

My bad, I had UGK at four votes and 14.75, just ahead of Gui Boratto: Chromophobia (4; 15).

i'm just guessing here, but at the top of the individual lists it says that the top 50 was culled from each writer's top 50, even though only top 25 was posted. so i guess if les savy fav was in everyone's top 50, that would propel it ahead of ugk if ugk was only in like 7 or 8 writers top 50s.

I think you might just be on to something there (and figured out why I majored in English and not Math)! I just sorted the top fifty vote getters (according to the posted Top 25's) and 41 of them earned "poll" positions (whereas the other (9), from my list of "snubs" probably didn't appear much/often in the 26-50 ranks we didn't see)...ahem...as interesting as all this is...anyway...

"objectively speaking"

LQTM, too.

I won't vote as I am only now catching up on 2007 releases. :-( However if I am allowed to pick Robyn's s/t that woiuld top my list.

Surprising (to me) non-listeds:

Mekons
Shellac
The Fall
Qui

not surprising to me, older bands rarely seem to do well on Pitchfork year end lists, with some exceptions (often reunions/comebacks, like Dinosaur Jr. this year).

qui was on the rockarolla magazine list. pretty bad record though.

yea i thought the shellac record would fare better than it has in these lists. it got quite a lot of positive attention when it came out.

no the field?? can anyone explain why?

OK, it's the one you've all been waiting for... the Nottingham Evening Post!

1 - Radiohead, 2 - Arcade Fire, 3 - White Stripes, 4 - Bruce Springsteen, 5 - Grinderman, 6 - The Good The Bad & The Queen, 7 - Kevin Ayers, 8 - LCD Soundsystem, 9 - Kings of Leon, 10 - Nick Lowe.

Four of these are in my Top 50, Radiohead isn't because I'm old in my ways and I want to hear it on a Proper CD, which doesn't come out until Hogmanay, Bruce and Nick would have been in my 51-60 section if I'd done one, Stripes and Grinderman I didn't feel and Kings Of Leon I have never felt, and furthermore I now automatically think of the X-Factor.

That's quite a sentence.

no the field?? can anyone explain why?

karmic payback for the ridiculously high score on metacritic

no the field?? can anyone explain why?

not actually that popular beyond dance critics?

Jordan is correct re the pitchfork albums poll.

I just hope my crate-digging intent in crunching the available Pfork numbers isn't lost in translation: I feel like I found some interesting albums in tallying discs that repeatedly made individual Top 25's but didn't make the year-end poll.

However, the list-making album(s) I'm beyond intrigued by by now is the Studio disc(s).

Studio's West Coast EP is fantastic, so I imagine the full-length (which has many of the same tracks) is just as fantastic.

BTW, Tim F.'s opening few posts on the Studio thread paint a vivid picture of how the disc sounds.

man, i've been listening to the tracks from pitchfork's 100 tracks. i can't believe my ears. so many not-so-interesting tracks. groove armada? ellis-bextor? BARR? dirty projectors? bat for lashes? magic markers? no age? old time relijun? times new viking? so this is the sound of indie rock right now? correct me if i'm way off because it's been a long time since i listened to indie stuff.

dblcheeksneek, when you're done lqtying, you should check out studio, "indo" especially

I don't think those represent ''the sound of indie rock right now,'' but complaints about the supposedly tired state of ''the sound of indie rock right now'' are old as dirt (i.e., they've been around forever).

XP, obv.

Those tracks don't really represent "the sound of indie rock" at all. I don't know if you could create a representative sample of indie rock tracks in 2007, but if you could Old Time Fucking Relijun definitely would not be in the conversation.

I dunno, the non-indie rock tracks on the Pitchfork list aren't really very interesting either. There were some good albums in 2007 but it really just wasn't a great year for individual tracks.

That Groove Armada track is good, duke.

between UGK and dblcheeksneek's list most of 51-60 on the p4k list are mentioned. Clientele and Menomena were also in there. We do have a slightly complicated tallying system for each list.

slightly complicated, yet evidently mostly democratic.

Boomkat's charts, inc. charts form Skull Disco, Robt Wyatt and others.

actually matos, i'd suspect the field was way more popular with non-dance critics than dance critics.
and that no age is pretty great, durrr, give the album a shot.

that boomkat list is awesome! kind of seems what the wire's list should've been...

i'd suspect the field was way more popular with non-dance critics than dance critics

Seconding Phil here.

Not that I mean that as a dis. (Although I don't really see what the fuss was about, at all. That record to me feels like one half-decent idea, never fully baked, repeated over and over and over again. And no, I don't think that's what all techno (or minimal or whatever) does.)

That record to me feels like one half-decent idea, never fully baked, repeated over and over and over again.

yes! sometimes this half-decent idea works -- there are parts of the album i enjoy -- but most of the time it gets pretty stale quite quickly. the half-bakedness of it all really shows, i think.

I actually really like it -- got on my Idolator ballot because I kept listening to it, the basic rule of thumb -- but no question it's simpler in comparison to something like, say, P***a B**r. Yet I also retain a belief than 'simpler' != 'worse.'

no question it's simpler in comparison to something like, say, P***a B**r.

Arrgh.

Of all people to have that touch a nerve with!

Prada Boar?

They're out there, you know.

No, I don't think that simpler != worse either. But I don't think that the Field is quite "simple" (to use a reductive shorthand term) enough. I'd rather listen to purer drone music (Rosy Parlane, say). I don't think the Field's sound design is terribly good, either -- those hi-hats are pure meh. Rhythmically, it's also snoozeville; I'd rather he'd left out the kick and hi-hats altogether, since all they're really doing is keeping metronomic time.

Rosy Parlane, say

Mmm, Rosy Parlane. I should dig those discs out, thanks for the inadvertant reminder! :-)

What's annoying with The Field is that he clearly put a lot of effort into "Over The Ice" and "Things Keep Falling Down" (both of which sound really smartly constructed and effective to boot - esp. the former) but most of the new tracks on the album simply take the underlying formula to those tracks and deploy them without any extra ideas. I suppose you could say he was moving towards some idea of sonic purity, but it's not like a Basic Channel story where the simpler the grooves the more eternal and natural they sound - The Field is far too herky-jerky for that.

ned, you heard the new one on touch, right? it's luscious.

Yup. I think I reviewed it for the AMG, not sure.

term out: arpeggiator
term in: herky-jerkiator!