Year-End Critics' Polls '07

A pretty big chunk of the NME list is debut albums, Geir

18 of them in fact. 19 if you count 'Mirrored' as being Battles' debut album

I suspect Geir may deem the work of Battles as amelodic and rhythm dominate.

That came out in January, everyone forgot about it by now. :-p

This kills me every year. I make a point of 'remembering' albums that came out between Jan. and Apr...and then those end up dominating my year-end lists.

weirdness of the vibe list has a lot to do with fennessey's mp3-addled m.o i'm supposing, that glazed-over indifference where any song could be anywhere in the chart

not that i can really talk

yeah, i mean..."Feel Like Dyin'"?

but yeah besides that and 'make me better' (just...wtffff, awful song) it is not all that crazy a list really. maybe they shouldve dispensed with the numbering.

also, i was expecting that fabo song where he sings about spaceships. if fabo's album comes out it will be the worst critical rigmarole in years.

since the clipse, anyway

Other Music's top 25 (I'm pretty sure these are staff favorites, not top sellers):

1 TINARIWEN Aman Iman
2 PANDA BEAR Person Pitch
3 BURIAL Untrue
4 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Strawberry Jam
5 PANTHA DU PRINCE This Bliss
6 NO AGE Weirdo Rippers
7 VARIOUS ARTISTS Skull Disco - Soundboy Punishments
8 M.I.A. Kala
9 JAY REATARD Blood Visions
10 MAGIK MARKERS Boss
11 KING KHAN & THE SHRINES What Is?!
12 VARIOUS ARTISTS After Dark
13 THE CAVE SINGERS Invitation Songs
14 ROBERT WYATT Comicopera
15 ERIC COPELAND Hermaphrodite
16 SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
17 BAND OF HORSES Cease to Begin
18 BLACK LIPS Good Bad Not Evil
19 VAMPIRE WEEKEND EP
20 EFDEMIN Efdemin
21 STUDIO West Coast
22 THE FIELD From Here We Go Sublime
23 CHROMATICS Night Drive
24 ST. VINCENT Marry Me
25 OH NO Dr. No's Oxperiment

top reissues can also be seen on that link

i like the OM list.

WTF! WHY DO PEOPLE ACTUALLY LIKE BAND OF HORSES??

Every time someone listens to Band of Horses, god kills a kitten.

Or even a small horse.

Or both.

stephen I kiss you

They're sort of a watered-down Built to Spill, so maybe residual love for that band has something to do with it.

The indie rock's been worshipping one watered-down Built To Spill or another (Modest Mouse, Death Cab, etc.) more than BTS themselves for damn near a decade now.

haha "the indie rock" was a funny way to phrase that, sorry, subtract "the" or add a "world/community" at the end.

teh indie rockz

who is this band the Indie Rocks and where can I buy their music

Why hasn't Ricardo Villalobos been mentioned in any of those lists? Is it because it was not an 'album' or that no one listened to it or (scary?!) that no one liked it?

Was there a new Ricardo Villalobos this year that got a lot of hype? (Last year he was on a bunch of lists...)

Fabric36, I guess?

that or fizheuer

fabric 36 never quite lived up to its pre-release hype. i liked it - but didn't love it like some of his other work.

Some debut's on NME sure, but NME doesn't count as NME only likes debut albums. It is a well-known fact that NME hates anyone who has released more than 1 album and 2 singles.

Panda Bear is the worst music I've ever heard.

Reverend is a god among men.

why is glasvegas mentioned on this thread? people are weird

amused to see my #1 of the year isn't on any list at all.. still got it

i don't really like person pitch all that much but rev hating an indie album being backed up by the dude who likes mickey avalon and skye sweetnam is shocker non-shocker of the month for sure.

it doesn't really seem like hateable music to me. it's just... there. resenting its critical love, maybe. but idk. it's kind of like wallpaper or something.

No it is not wallpaper. It is earsplitting. (And actually I don't hate indie, just the way it gets privileged so much.)

(Well, that's to say I don't hate indie on principle. I certainly hate that particular example thereof.)

idk dude whenever i listen to it i just get kinda bored. way too may stretches where nothing really happens. i like the overall mood, but i most def do not get how anyone could really love person pitch.

so you chaps who don't get person pitch - how do you feel about animal collective?

i doubt rev has heard any animal collective, but i think panda's two songs on strawberry jam are better than anything on person pitch besides maybe "i'm not"

I haven't heard Animal Collective, actually. I only downloaded Person Pitch after reading that if I liked LCDSS I'd like Panda Bear. Suffice to say, that wasn't true. Maybe after the cd I'm listening to is done, I'll pull them up on the U-Toob.

xp haha

idk if you'd like them. i don't have a great handle on what indie rockier music you might like. the new album is way more song-y than panda bear if that means anything.

Indie rock albums this year I love: LCD Soundsystem, Charlotte Hatherley, Spoon, Gogol Bordello

Indie rock albums this year I like well enough: Battles, New Young Pony Club, the Hives, the White Stripes, Grinderman

Truth is, I like a lot of indie music. The National, Iron + Wine, and (well I don't know if indie has claimed them but) The Noisettes are all on my year end lists. I just don't like Animal Collective, Panda Bear, St. Vincent, or Joanna Newsom. I actually hate them, and I've put the time in listening to their albums (Newsom I listened to about half a dozen times) to try and get what's going on there. And I just don't get it.

Jinx. Oh yeah, I like the Hives + the White Stripes album. I liked a bunch of indie albums this year. Sorry for not liking whiny freak-folk.

rev you might like this but all those albums kinda groove in an SFJ-type way which doesnt surprise me since your tastes seem to skew more towards rap/r&b/reggaeton (yeah?) and animal collective are kind of like weightless on the bottom end and really compressed. def more indie pop than anything you mentioned.

newsom blows and new animal collective is def not folk, but i have no handle on what you like mordechai but it seems like you would/do hate the fuck out strawberry jam.

Thing is, I like a lot of folk. Or rather, I like music that possibly has some folk resonances. I like Iron + Wine. A ton. Woman King EP is on constant replay in my apartment. It's just that the stuff I just mentioned doesn't click for me. I wish it did because a lot of people are really passionate about it, and I wanna get in on that. But there's something really unpleasant about it. (I don't like Andrew Bird either.)

Also, vis-a-vis Band of Horses, I saw them open for Iron + Wine once and they were horrific. Like people were actually talking through their set because of how painful the music was. The only time I saw a more negative reaction was when Coco Rosie opened for Sufjan Stevens and half the place walked out.

i most def do not get how anyone could really love person pitch.

I do, my roommate doesn't. He loves Strawberry Jam though, and said that the reason I love PP so inordinately is because I also like the Beach Boys a lot more than he does. Which is probably accurate. I can understand why people dislike it though, especially given the all the adulation (I dub this the "Destroyer Effect").

I like those OM and Rockarolla lists more than anything else on the thread so far. A lot of my fave stuff (Edward Ka-Spel, Nurse With WOund, etc.) usually misses out in these polls. Good to see a list for jazz reissues also.

It's also really nice to have all this yearend stuff on one thread.

Discovering Tokyo Jihen and Lansing-Dreiden have made me more interested in looking for more current rock bands I might like, but there's such an overwhelming amount of the stuff that I don't like that it's nearly impossible. I just thought I would mention that. I need to try doing a Tokyo Jihen station of Last FM again, but I know what I'm going to get. I'm going to get a lot of j-rock and j-pop that I either don't like, or that is just okay, but that I won't love or care about.

My top ten is changing about every hour on the hour. I heard too much great music this year.