Pitchfork's P2k: The Decade in Music

Haha, weren't Ned and Dan united in 2003 by preferring JC Chasez over Justin Timberlake?

I still like JC's songs from that era more than Justin's.

presented without comment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmwB9ZwItz4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6i0V9OWo0s

you missed one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQdYbkbFvA8

the hot 100 missed that one too

sometimes i wonder if might like those songs if i didn't know what dude looked like.

It's my fave, though, and that is pretty much what I care about.

i feel like he should be trying to sell me knock-off gold chains at a boardwalk stall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv-2XYOtgCg

always thought "shake it" was the pick of chasez' album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4F_lQ-W2cg

no way is justin not preferable though

i like to imagine that in 40 years JC partisans will be roaming the scorched earth, still muttering "Justin's overrated" and "it's pronounced sha-zay"

HE WAS ON A BASEMENT JAXX SONG

http://intertubes.info/downloads/images/motivation/strawman.jpg

haha dan i don't give any more of a fuck if you prefer j.c. to justin now than i did in 2003

the simple fact that i can say that makes me weep for my twenties.

lol

"i backpacked around europe and spent a few years in africa doing aids-related charity work."
"i was dismissive of a grown man preference in pop stars"

i like to imagine that in 40 years JC partisans will be roaming the scorched earth, still muttering "Justin's overrated" and "it's pronounced sha-zay"

would enjoy mocking, but...cassie fan club :(

i'm sure they'll let you keep that Connecticut Fever Demos 08 CD-r in the old folks' home

Ha, I don't know that "Crazy in Love" is all that central, but if you ask me, I would say (a) it came just a touch after the "indie" audience had warmed up toward the idea of liking pop, (b) it was really good and attention-capturing and (significantly) aggressive enough for rock types to dig without complication, partly because (c) like lots of people said, it's built on types of drums and horn sounds that are common to rock, too.

OTT: Thanks, honestly, that literally means a lot coming from you. It's true -- it felt more appropriate for me to just lay out the issue rather than take a stance on it. I'm over 30 and I'm a "critic" and that means I can just magpie around and pick up on whatever seems well-done or resonates with me, without quite so much of the sides-taking identity-based preference stuff. (My only real indie desire is to hear as much stuff as possible that's poppy and deeply weird at the same time, especially in terms of people's voices.) So I don't know that my personal sides-taking is important, but I do think it'd be awesome if reading that piece sensitized anyone else to the sides-taking or, like, hastened anyone's desire to make something shift.

stop saying magpie

:)

btw re: Superchunk, I always find them a great example of the shift across the 90s, especially since they always seem like such a right-in-the-middle definition-of-indierock band -- toward the start of the decade they were all "Slack MF" throat-shreddy and whatnot, and toward the end they were more of a modern indie band rolling out the vibraphones for backing tracks, right? I think it's true that somewhere in the middle there was this point where the average popular indie-type band was going to be more of a rock band, with some fuzz or punk to it, and since then the most popular indie-type bands have tended to be more just pop, or sorta orchestral, or softly psychedelic, etc.

Also -- speaking of 2003! -- I just realized that I wrote this in a review back then:

Producer Dave Fridmann has built his name on highly successful, invigorating experiments in pop classicism which revel in the same swooning orchestration that rock music all but abandoned after the 1970s. But it seems every year, he's got another up his sleeve, never much different than the last, and with repeated exposure to these kinds of grandiose epics, the newness has worn off, leaving many of his productions to join their cousins Wilco and Elliott Smith in a genre I describe as, well, indie adult-contemporary. ... Don't take offense yet-- I think indie adult-contemporary is a fine idea, and I've loved far too many of these records to get snobby about it. It's just a fact: This is the music that may eventually prompt your preteen kids to roll their eyes and make unenthusiastic noises when you force them to listen during long car trips. Jeff Tweedy may become your Sting, Wayne Coyne your Peter Gabriel, Mercury Rev your Steely Dan-- and there's no reason any of this will be any less wonderful than the Carole King LPs in your parents basements. But at some point, I realized my shelves were filling up with this stuff, and even though I knew I'd find every new release of it perfectly lovely, it seemed more rewarding to look into something else.

(xpost - haha Whiney, I can never read the phrase "stop saying X" without hearing it in the voice of this kid with Down Syndrome yelling "stop saying BOO" at some friends at a volleyball game in college, so thanks for the memories)

didn't think it was possible to be that polite while comparing someone to a retard

aww no! :( -- plus keep in mind that in this instance the kid was correct

I always find them a great example of the shift across the 90s, especially since they always seem like such a right-in-the-middle definition-of-indierock band -- toward the start of the decade they were all "Slack MF" throat-shreddy and whatnot, and toward the end they were more of a modern indie band rolling out the vibraphones for backing tracks, right?

Heh, the only Superchunk album I own is Come Pick Me Up (1999), which is fantastic but I've long suspected not to be entirely representative of their earlier, more critically acclaimed stuff, which is why I've never bothered seeking it out.

it sounds pretty much like all of their other stuff, except the tempos are maybe a little slower? more restrained? but not really. it's not like there are *huge* gaps in their sound from record to record.

i'd say the biggest gap is between On the Mouth and Foolish

more critically acclaimed stuff

geez, there's that phrase again ;)

I love Superchunk's later sometimes lighter stuff, especially Come Pick Me Up, maybe more than the earlier records. Here's Where The Strings Come In is like the best of both worlds for me, though.

Yeah? I just remember reviews of Come Pick Me Up being like "no, here's really where the strings come in," and if you look at the personnel that played on the record, it's like a who's who of the late '90s Chicago post-rock scene. Or at least the jazz musicians (Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, etc.) that always played on Gastr del Sol and Tortoise records. And O'Rourke produced it. So I guess I was like, "well, of course I love this."

yeah i would try Here's Where The Strings Come in next, maybe. i love that one and Come Pick Me Up a lot

Yeah...imo Superchunk are one of the best indie bands of their era precisely because they could make a jump in that direction without going too soft and still having awesome drumming and brisk tempos. Any other band doing a record w/ that supporting personnel probaly wouldn't do much for me. (xpost)

Really half of my gripes about the last decade of indie rock could be summed up as me wishing there were more Jon Wursters around.

yeah, easily one of my favorite drummers

btw.. the last song on the Japandroids album is really good. 'I Quit Girls'. It's the slow repetitive shoegazey song. I don't care for the other songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFD9WONu_ms

they definitely made both work, and obviously their movement from thing to thing is gonna mostly be about them personally growing/changing -- but I think they did wind up moving alongside a bigger wave/trend on this one, from old-school indie/punky to, well, having a bunch of post-rock guys in. and the same with a lot of the post-rock guys in Chicago, too -- loads of them started off in late-80s or early-90s punk-type bands!

this is maybe the equivalent of how loads of the UK's early-90s post-rockers spent the late 80s in jangly/fuzzy indie or c-86 bands, and then felt like they needed to hop forward

Yeah I mean, obviously Mac has his finger on the pulse of popular indie taste, whether intentionally or not, if you look at how well Merge has done the last ten years, probably just because he's a big record geek.

they could make a jump in that direction without going too soft and still having awesome drumming and brisk tempos.

That's true. Actually, my favorite song from Come Pick Me Up is probably "June Showers," and that's all about the awesome bass riff.

Looking forward to this week's countdown of the Top 200 albums of the decade.

The list of Nos. 200 -- 151 go up on Yom Kippur.

Hope the administrator puts it up on a new page. My computer at work can't handle even 2000 posts, let alone 4000

this list will be interesting since i don't feel like there's developed any consensus on even a shortlist of 'defining album of decade' candidates at this point. and i'm wondering if pitchfork's status now is such that the results of this list may actually play a strong hand in determining what albums from this decade will still be popular among musicnerds 10+ years from now. who knows.

i like these lists mainly because they're fun to mock and to argue over but also because they sometimes help me catch some good indie stuff that i missed over the course of the year (or years in this case)

It's gonna be Kid A just as surely as it was gonna be "B.O.B."

Sneak Preview of the Pitchdork Top Ten:

1. Some OutKast Shit
2. Some Radiohead Shit
3. Some LCD Soundsystem Shit
4. Some Radiohead Shit
5. Some OutKast Shit
6. Some Radiohead Shit
7. Some Radiohead Shit
8. Some OutKast Shit
9. Some LCD Soundsystem Shit
10. oh shit do we remember the strokes

Yeah, probably it will be Kid A. Still should be an interesting list, especially if you're less concerned about what-places-where and more concerned about discovering stuff that may have escaped your attention and reading thoughts about what happened in music this decade, e.g., trends, new sounds and production methods, and so forth.

hilarious and perceptive, kbp. stop by this thread more!

Not enough Radiohead predictions on his list, tho.

Yeah that is quite a conservative prediction on Radiohead's share in the top 10 KPB

KBP even