Year-End Critics' Polls '07

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.

I have to commend you for having such an international scope.

FACT Magazine Top 100 Tracks of the Year!

http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/da/66290

person pitch is way too distanced to even register half the time with me. the only song i really love on PP is "i'm not" cuz it's really emotional, like all those sampled voices just hanging in the air. it sounds like old choral or like gregorian chant music. it's the one song on the album that actually has some power.

is FACT like the fader of the uk?

lol @ "groove in an SFJ-type way"

I'm listening to "Peacebone" right now. (This is from their new album, yes?) The weird intro is cool, but when it gets into the actual tune it completely loses me.

I'll check out "I'm Not," Jordan. I like Gregorian Chant music when I hear it (I hang out at the Cloisters every now and then). I'll seriously give anything a shot. If you can recommend something on Strawberry Jam, I'll try that too.

The FACT list is really obnoxiously hip, and I like a lot of the things on it.

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

-- sleeve, Thursday, December 13, 2007 5:48 PM (Thursday, December 13, 2007 5:48 PM) Bookmark Link

Three hats.

from straw jam, listen to "fireworks" (it's a single) and um maybe "for reverend green". my otehr favorite songs are the panda ones but if you guys really ahte person pitch i wouldn't bother. "chores" is like that same drunk/stoned underwater beach feel of person pitch but an actual song. way punchier. i love it.

yeah this FACT list is good.

They seriously have a song called "For Reverend Green"?!

FOOOOOOOOOR RODN3Y GREEN3
AAAAAAAAND CALLE THIRTEEEEEEN
FOOOOOOOR ROOOOOOOODN3Y GREEN3
AAAAAAAAAAAND CALLE THIIRTEEEEEN

^this is the chorus

I'm listening to fireworks. I've got the same problem with this as I have with all their music... The music seems pretentiously weird (weird for the sake of weird?), and the vocals aren't strong enough to really make up for that for me. And it really goes on way too long for me. And seriously, "the frightened babies poo"?

No, I'm saying the FACT list is way too "mp3 of the week".

xp haha (Actually Kanye West has overtaken Calle 13 as my album of the year. Shit seriously gets better every listen,)

FACT is a free (half-size) print mag right? But their website has really blossomed this year. Kiran Sande does a very nice monthly round-up of all things electronic in his 'Contemporary Fix' column. He's not afraid to dismiss the hype which is refreshing.

"Fireworks" is alright except for the horrible singing (so far).

too bad about "fireworks". i had hope. i like graduation less every time i hear it. just seems way less accomplished than his other albums. still very good though. would be in my top 20 if my list expanded that far.

Actually, the background vocals are fine, it's just the lead vocals that are awful. Otherwise, it sounds a lot like Battles.

I love 'Stronger.' It's on my top 20. Too bad everyone only wants top 10 choices :(

funny that you say that it's trying to hard to be weird mord, cuz i think it kinda hits that perfect balance between weird (the percussion being actual fireworks or whatever) and an actual almost-pop song. i like the vocals a lot. the lyrics are whatever, there are little bits that hit really hard to me and others that are kinda shitty.

This "I'm Not" song is pretty fucking amazing though. Kinda reminds me of (). Good call, Jordan.

I don't think Graduation quite hits the peaks of his first two, but there isn't any fat like there is on Dropout (actually, Dropout doesn't peak quite as high as I remembered) and it isn't 75% awful like Registration. I'm pretty sure at this point it's my favorite Kanye album. I've listened to it five times in the past three days.

Okay, fuck this Animal Collective stuff. This guy needs to STFU.

Well, at least you tried, Reverend.

i think basically everything on dropout is amazing, half of late reg is amazing and graduation is kinda... more even keel and it's way less exciting in that manner. the songs are still great but it's the first ye album that sounds unimportant to me. i like it though! and "stronger" will be in my top 10. i just get nothing out of like "drunk and hot girls" or "barry bonds" or "big brother" etc.

but i got nothing out of "roses" or "bring me down" or "addiction" but besides "stronger" the best stuff on graduation isn't as good as "gone" or "drive slow" or "touch the sky" etc.

I should say, I wasn't particularly impressed with Graduation the first few times I heard it. It just seems so much more nuanced than Kanye's previous albums, or at least he seems less eager to please and less prone to shoving everything that's going on in your face at once.

This guy needs to STFU.

Okay, I think I have completely different taste in Kanye then you, judging by what you think of those particular songs.

(Except for "Addiction" (shut up and stop being such a needy ass) and "Drive Slow" (one of his best songs)

1. stronger
2. good life
3. champion
4. can't tell me nothing
5. glory
6. good morning
7. flashing lights
8. barry bonds
9. everything i am
10. i wonder
11. big brother
12. homecoming

if that gives you any idea where i'm coming from

Does that mean you don't even rate "Drunk & Hot Girls"?

I'm not going to rank them, but I think every song on the album except maybe "Good Morning" is wonderful.

And "Good Morning" itself is fine, just not particularly exemplary.

haha 13. drunk and hot girls i forgot about it. i like how kanye goes "a-ROUSED" but that's about it.

"a-ROUSED" is from "I Wonder". "Drunk & Hot Girls" is actually probably one of my three favorite songs on the album. "Barry Bonds", too. Those two and "Can't Tell Me Nothing" form this great, dark, fucked-up mid-section.

there's lots of good uk indie i've only heard of little of/forgot existed on that FACT list: cajun dance party, foals, wild beasts.

I have massive issues with Stronger. I thought the fun of the Daft Punk song was its structure. How the words get 'faster' and finally dissolve into that beautiful riff towards the end is one of my favorite moments in music. It begs and answers whether the words or the sounds are more important. To make it a rap song misses that. The Kanye version is a bunch of ill conceived couplets -the guy can't rap, he really can't- over a version of a song that, to my mind at least, has had the soul ripped out of it. Which is how I feel about most of his music. It also irks me when people sample from songs that are mostly samples which Kanye does more than once, pretty sure he uses Public Enemy in a couple of places. And the line "You can be my black Kate Moss tonight" also unsettles me for some reason. I don't think it's a race thing, it just, I don't know... very upper middle class and a little stupid, a lot like collaborating with Chris Martin.

So I don't like Kanye West and I don't find his music particularly compelling. I'm all about soul music and his samples are are often a little too obvious. 'Touch The Sky' is Curtis Mayfield's 'Move On Up', Gold Digger is 'I Got A Woman', My Way Home is 'Home Is Where the Hatred Is' by however many people covered that. If you are used to those songs you feel a little put out of place, like the musical equivalent of film's uncanny valley. I have a feeling a compilation of all the sampled songs would far better than any Kanye Album. Steely Dan, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, Can, Luther Vandross, Chairmen of the Board, etc, etc. They are all fantastic and not particularly obscure masterpieces shoved aside so Kanye can rap something trite, slightly smug, very poorly written and not fighting anything but his own ego.

Well said. I'd pipe in, but I feel bad about his mother.

I put Panda Bear on my MP3 player and listened to it again on the plane today. It's confirmed, the vocals really bug me. They sound distant and puny, unintelligible and annoying. Garbled vocals can sometimes work, like with Burial. But on Person Pitch the only emotional impact is irritation.

More pleasantly, I enjoyed these:
Modeselektor - Happy Birthday
Chloe - The Waiting Room
Muscles - Guns Babes Lemonade
Apparat - Walls
Matthew Dear - Asa Breed
Dan Deacon - Spiderman of the Rings

I think I might end up preferring them all over the LCD Soundsystem. I picked up a Rolling Stone at the airport for some mindless reading, laugh and cry at their top 50 albums. The Good 'n' Bad, Idolator stylee-

Good - Er...No real pleasant surprises until you get all the way to #16, Les Savy Fav, and #23 1990s. I nearly forgot about that album, good times. Of Montreal #41.

Bad - Let me count the ways. In a transparently insincere bid to remain hip and relevent, M.I.A. is #1. Rilo Kiley, Against Me!, NIN, McCartney, Linkin Park, Maroon 5, Smashing Pumpkins, Fall Out Boy, Dropkick Murphys, etc... Basically a list socially engineered for their demographic. Christgau, Fricke, Hoard and Sheffield list their personal favorites that would never be allowed onto herr Wenner's Masterlist. My favorite forced and contrived entry is Sheffield on The Liars - "These Berlin-based art-twat noise pervs sound like they're actually attempting to write catchy rock & roll songs - and listening to them try is even funnier than watching Manny Ramirez chase pop-ups." Nice Rob, wouldn't want to come off as too sincere. You like it as comedy, gotcha.

"a-ROUSED" is from "I Wonder". "Drunk & Hot Girls" is actually probably one of my three favorite songs on the album. "Barry Bonds", too. Those two and "Can't Tell Me Nothing" form this great, dark, fucked-up mid-section.

-- The Reverend, Friday, 14 December 2007 02:36 (4 hours ago) Link

haha, that's interesting, for me that whole section (really, everything after "Champion" and before "Flashing Lights") is one big no man's land where I'm either bored or annoyed and generally wishing I wasn't listening to the album at all.

^ i feel this way about everything post "flashing lights" except for "the glory"

I kinda agree with that too, but "Everything I Am" really grew on me and in general the last stretch is more pleasant at its worse than how much the middle section grates on me.

basically, wanted to love the album, thought i did, now idk i think it's 3.5/5. definitely a strong third album, but ive def heard at least 10 better records this year.

same here, except i kinda knew i wouldn't love it based on the advance singles, and only thought I did for like 2 listens.

I dunno, I've kind of had a really weird reaction to this album. For the first two months after it came out, I had the same kind of middling response that you guys have (hold up - didn't you have this in your CP top ten, Al?), but then it started making sense in ways it hadn't before. Even a month or so ago, when I first started trying to puzzle together a top ten, I had it posited at maybe 9 or 10, if it made the list at all. But then it got to where I want to listen to it twice in a row every day, and I never do that with albums. It's kind of freaking me out, really.

I feel he's found not necessarily found the perfect mid-point between the aw-shucks warmth of Dropout and the international assholism of Registration, but rather mastered their use, learning how and when to perfectly play them against each other or completely drop one for the other. (Note, that last third he pretty much cuts the ego out entirely and thus is the most sympathetic he's been since his debut.) And the production just fucking slays me. The synthesizers are so fucking audacious and in your face, but its always buoyant or sensitive or intense enough that it never feels cold and repellent the way the back half of Registration did.