Do we have a PAZZ AND JOB 2009 thread yet?

I don't know that anyone is "blaming" Pitchfork for the indie stuff, or claiming that indie stuff is the only thing Pitchfork covers, either. (And I do agree that the genre "indie" is really vague now -- in the top 10, for instance, do YYYs or Flaming Lips or New Pornographer Neko Case even fit the genre? I honestly have no idea. Which was one reason I didn't try to quantify indie vs not-indie in my essay.) What I tried to get around in my essay was (1) the unprecedented overwhelming domination of a single aesthetic, or what is perceived to be a certain aesthetic, at the top of the poll; (2) the poll's unprecedented overlap with a poll published by a website largely dependent on that aesthetic (i.e., my problem isn't that Pitchfork exists, but that P&J voters suddenly seem so reliant on what it's already decided counts as good music); and (3) most dumbfoundingly for me, the overlap between the singles and albums results, only with records that people associate with that aesthetic. Maybe that really is "just the way it is" now. But it wasn't always. It's something new, and it's worth figuring out.

scott: all great points, as usual! my only question would be: why do you think P4k, Stereogum, and RA are "thriving" while those other publications you listed aren't? because the former are writing to a large audience that wants to read about indie and related music and the latter were more esoteric?

(i read what you posted twice, just trying to think it through a bit more.)

In the internet-era, when there is way less guesswork about what readers want from critics, I don't see much evidence from consumers or whomever that people want to read analytical or intelligent writing about, say, R&B or modern country, or even most metal.

Is this also your reasoning for dropping the reggae/dancehall column? Monthly grime column ok, ocassional cd reviews of Afropop and r'n'b and metal and and reggae reissues ok, but nothing more.

Do Tim Finney's ocassional reviews of R'n'b on Pitchfork get less internet hits?

curmudgeon: well the main reason was that Dave Stelfox moved and that coincided with us moving from five/features a week to three -- something had to go. You could blame the economy as much as anything else.

I actually tried going back to previous P&J Top 10s, fwiw, and counting the number of indie artists in each. But it was basically impossible, because there are so many grey areas in the definition -- where do you put Portishead, Santogold, Nick Cave, Radiohead, M.I.A., Danger Mouse, White Stripes, Drive By Truckers, Modest Mouse? So I put that piece of paper away. Thing is, no matter how stringently or liberally you define the genre, no Top 10 came close to 2009's in terms of artists that people somehow associate with the genre. And by my count, there are at least five, probably six (Phoenix?) artists this year where there's no grey area at all. As far as I can tell, that's never happened before. And the singles Top 10 is way beyond any previous year's total; again, I'd be more comfortable if it at least had different indie artists on it than the album list. As is, it just looks retarded.

1978
1. Elvis Costello: This Year's Model (Columbia)
2. The Rolling Stones: Some Girls (Rolling Stones)
3. Nick Lowe: Pure Pop for Power People (Columbia)
4. The Clash: Give 'Em Enough Rope (Epic)
5. Talking Heads: More Songs About Buildings and Food (Sire)
6. Bruce Springsteen: Darkness at the Edge of Town (Columbia)
7. Ramones: Road to Ruin (Sire)
8. Neil Young: Comes a Time (Reprise)
9. The Cars: The Cars (Elektra)
10. David Johansen: David Johansen (Blue Sky)

Since I'd argue most of these albums come from what can easily be perceived as a "single aesthetic," does anyone know if this is basically what Rolling Stone was praising at the time? There's no singles chart for P'n'J yet so I don't know how much overlap there would have been.

look at all the white ppl

oh to return to those unpredictable days when top 10s looked fresh and unusual

Well, 1978 is also the year that Christgau wrote his essay about "new wave hegemony," right? He was worried then that one aesthetic was coming to dominate the poll. (Black artists did really shitty, too, as I recall, partly in the wake of "disco sucks.") I'd say that Top 10 looks more homogenous in retrospect than it did then (I'm not sure; I wasn't writing about music yet.) But his 1978 essay was to some extent in the back of mind when I started thinking about the 2009 results.

(3) most dumbfoundingly for me, the overlap between the singles and albums results

Singles used to have a somewhat objective definition - something you could hear on the radio or see a video of on MTV. Now any artist can make a video and upload it to YouTube, hence the explosion of what qualifies as a single. I think the old pattern was that critics would vote for their less mainstream favorites under albums and then the mainstream stuff would go under singles. Now the mainstream is whatever you want it to be, so there's less need to go outside your musical comfort zone for singles picks.

xp And right, there wasn't a singles poll until a year later. But in 1979, the only Top 10 single overlapping with the album Top 10 was by Donna Summer. (Not a white ppl.)

FWIW the 'research shows the readers don't want that' doctrine pretty much destroyed the NME, in terms of both readership and quality.

There were always plenty of "non-mainstream" singles in the poll, though. (In fact, the singles poll was the first place that indie label rock -- the Brains, Robin Lane & the Chartbusters, Bush Tetras, Pylon -- actually placed. None had an album that did comparably well.)

Since I'd argue most of these albums come from what can easily be perceived as a "single aesthetic," does anyone know if this is basically what Rolling Stone was praising at the time?

RS 1978:

Best Album
• Some Girls - Rolling Stones

Runners-Up
• Darkness On The Edge Of Town - Bruce Springsteen
• Running On Empty - Jackson Browne
• This Year's Model - Elvis Costello
• Road To Ruin - Ramones
• Misfits - Kinks

Best Single
• Stayin Alive - Bee Gees

Runners-Up
• Life's Been Good - Joe Walsh
• Miss You - Rolling Stones
• Because The Night - Patti Smith
• Rock And Roll Fantasy - Kinks
• Werewolves Of London - Warren Zevon
• Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty
• Just What I Needed - Cars

If "singles" were limited to songs heard on the radio and seen on MTV it would definitely be a consensus, what with shrinking playlists everywhere.

I definitely think the singles homogeneity is more concerning (i think that the "no reason to go outside musical comfort zone" has a lot to do with it) than the "homogeneity" of the album choices. The top ten is always about forming a canon, and since no one can really come up with some obvious LPs being ignored, I'd just say it was a year where you didn't have a lot of canonical LPs coming from pop, r&b, etc. But "hipster shit" tends to dominate whenever there aren't a lot of undeniable popular works outside of it - as Scott notes nobody's screaming "where are the black eyed peas???" - and this year just had fewer pre-indie canonical fogies of note to make the list look less pitchforky.

FWIW the 'research shows the readers don't want that' doctrine pretty much destroyed the NME, in terms of both readership and quality.

I don't think it's research so much as dollar votes and actual measurable metrics (i.e. hits)-- and I do think there is a lot more history of quality music writing in the UK tbh. There were far more music mags of note there, despite the smaller population.

(more defensiveness: fwiw, we don't trend toward embracing the lowest denominator anyway-- we write often about what we want to cover instead of waiting to sort out what readers might like, and we print lengthy reviews while everyone else is doing the opposite.)

There were always plenty of "non-mainstream" singles in the poll, though

Sure, there were, but they were usually limited to tracks that had a physical release as a single, like on a 7-inch. Since not every band released stuff on 7-inch, there was an upper limit on how much overlap there could be with the albums.

top 5 selling albums of 1978:
1 Saturday Night Fever - ost
2 Grease - ost
3 Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (#1 seller of 77!)
4 Billy Joel - The Stranger
5 Steely Dan - Aja

btw, for anyone who followed my attempt to review 1000 2009 releases over twitter, here are the 10 highest ranking records on Pazz And Jop and why I didn’t end up reviewing them. dunno what some of these exactly say about my "worldview" or "how I hear music"

43. Allen Toussaint – The Bright Mississippi
N0nesuch hasn’t sent me an e-mail in five years. I literally have no concept whatsoever of what’s happening over there at any given time. I literally didn’t even know this record existed until today. I saw Allen at Bonnaroo and he was amazing. What can I say?

50. Vijay Iyer Trio – Historicity
Everyone was raving about this record around September. I tried at least five times to steal a leak on the internet but “universally acclaimed jazz record” doesn’t exactly get as many Rapidshare hits as 'important' stuff like “Japandroids demos.” I literally tried but COULDNT FIND a leak of this record. Jazz nerds need to step their internet game up. I probably should have reached out to the label, but I had like 300 other records to hear and it got lost in the shuffle. I ended up hearing a copy in laaaaate December as i was in the home stretch and didn't really have room for it.

72. The Black Crowes – Before The Frost… Until The Freeze
It’s the Black Crowes. I promptly judged this book by its leather fringe, patchouli-soaked cover and avoided it entirely. Is this good? I don't believe it.

73. Loudon Wainwright III – High Wide And Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project
I respect his legacy and all but this dude’s stuff is like the Paste magazine jams that are just totally off my radar.

87. Buddy And Julie Miller – Written In Chalk
Them too.

90. Built To Spill – There Is No Enemy
Built To Spill make some of the most boring, uninteresting music I’ve ever heard. After hearing hundreds of bad indie rock bands that rip them off in 2009, the prospect of sitting through an album by them literally disgusted me. I was praying it would be just some probly-6.0-on-Pitchfork nineteenth album by some band people don’t care about anymore. But instead I was wrong and here we are.

94. Nellie McKay – Normal As Blueberry Pie: A Tribute To Doris Day
I was bored just reading the title. What the fuck

103. Vic Chesnutt – At The Cut
R.I.P., dude. I still have no idea what your music sounds like.

115 Lee Fields & The Expressions – My World
I bet I would have liked this. I never heard of it until now.

122. Franco & Le Tout Puissant OK Jazz – Francophonic, Vol 2
I need to hear more jazz apparently

1978 music consumers >>>>>>>> Pazz Joppers imo

more like Nick LOL

quick think of 10 critically popular bands that broke after 1989 that aren't remotely "indie"

xxp 43, 50, 72, and 90 are all over 140 characters.

Green Day, System Of A Down, The Roots

and with RATM you have 4

U2

oh wait, scratch that

pretty sure they broke before 1989

xpost haha

The Prodigy

PJ Harvey

yeah, she's folk, right

nah she's blues

i guess she's not a band, though

Do Outkast, Wu Tang, etc. count as bands?

PJ Harvery is a band whose lead singer is Polly Jean Harvey, kind of like how Sade is a band fronted by Sade Adu.

Harvery

saying Green Day (or RATM) are not remotely indie reeks of massive revisionism.

DOKKEN

idk wtf is wrong with my typing today

*crosses fingers in the hope that this thread devolves into a crazy bunch of posts about what is and isn't indie.*

Mastodon, Queens Of The Stone Age, Dixie Chicks (or, if they're too early, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings. Or Tinariwen. Or Kings Of Leon.)

those nu metal and post grunge bands that sold shitloads arent remotely indie.
Hootie as well.

My Morning Jacket

indie - guitars, distortion, bad singing
not indie - a vagina

Fluxblog on xhuxk's article:

This is an extraordinarily depressing essay by former Voice editor/professional contrarian Chuck Eddy. It’s like a guy who used to be principal of a high school getting really angry about the outcome of his old school’s student council election.

http://perpetua.tumblr.com/post/344479080/the-year-of-too-much-consensus

Ha ha.

Oh wait, '89? I thought you meant '99. '89 is easy.

those nu metal and post grunge bands that sold shitloads arent remotely indie.
Hootie as well.

Right, but they're not "critically popular."

wow, there's a lot of discussion going on about xhuxk's essay on Tumblr.

see T0m E.'s Tumblr: http://tomewing.tumblr.com/