ILM's Top 77 ALBUMS of 2011

#1 album

http://i.imgur.com/1b6qp.png

YOUR RED FINGER IS NULL AND VOID

FUCKING DESTROYER

YOU BORING BORING INDIE CUNTS

GET THAT SHIT OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM BY NEXT YEAR

I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU CAN LIVE WITH YOURSELVES

I PITY YOU

http://i.imgur.com/cLzjy.jpg

http://knightnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/3-13-11jorts.jpg

Lex I want to apologize for not listening to LES til after my ballot was cast. If I had listened to it beforehand I wouldve voted it #1 and it would've placed higher than Destroyer.

THE MORAL VICTORY CONFIRMED

I CAN SLEEP NOW

have a good night dude

yeah uh maybe this could be a general take it down a notch moment yall

and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a track behind (xp)

yeah uh maybe this could be a general take it down a notch moment yall

― Thu'um gang (jjjusten), Thursday, February 2, 2012 11:35 PM (1 minute ago)

lex is just drunk and messin around man, no one's feelings are hurt or anything

Lex, i will be your ally.
fellow Canadian be damned - i think he sings stupidly.

this list hurt my feelings

very disappointed in u guyz

oh loool i meant that jorts img for the kevin smith thread

thx for the hint k3v i get so confused sometimes

LOLOLOLOL Lamp!

I am very happy I decided to check this thread tonight!

lmao ally

I agree with this, and further I also think an important part of this process is that people actually fess up to their listening strategies, and say (where necessary) "I'm listening to this through X ears".

I was thinking along these lines as I browsed the thread earlier in the evening, wondering why so many records in the list didn't strike me, and I think one of the main things that prevents me from being taken in by something is the sense that it's aesthetically unsure of itself, or middling, or half-assed, or somehow meek in its presentation. I think this is actually *always* something that's bothered me about certain strains of indie, and although it feels somewhat fascistic to articulate, I think I gravitate to music that sounds sure of itself and confident in its aesthetic choices.

I would rather hear the single-minded and masterful articulation of an aesthetic that doesn't quite make sense to me than someone dabbling in a field I ostensibly like but in a sort of unsure, gently exploratory manner. That's something that immediately turned me off to Nicolas Jaar, and I find it interesting/funny that Lex so vehemently criticizes Destroyer for being "meek" upthread yet is a big fan of Nicolas Jaar, who to me so *clearly* comes off the same way in his music--tentative, noncommital, afraid to lean into it. Music like this tries my patience, and at my worst almost offends me in that it asks me to come along with it even though it doesn't know where it's going. "Wait, we're miles into these dark woods and you have no idea where the fuck we are and never did?!"

I almost said something like "I miss music being more balls-out virtuosic", but that's not quite right. I mean, I do think basic technical fluency (and I'm talking songwriting-wise as well as instrument-wise) is something that sooooo many hyped musicians today just totally lack; in fact, as much as I enjoyed the Destroyer record, one of the main things that makes all those Steely Dan and Roxy Music comparisons ring false is that those older bands could really freaking PLAY, but not in an ostentatiously virtuosic manner so much as with a fluency that was so effortless it was nearly invisible.

This spreads to electronic music, too, in a way that I need to focus harder to be able to articulate. But when I think of my favorite producers, there's a sense of self-assuredness to their tracks, a feeling of authority and a sense that they know what the hell they're doing with their hardware/software--in a way that allows them to trascend it, sort of. I don't want to hear someone tinkering, and the Jaar is too close to that for me to be able to feel it. Granted, I should give it more of an effort given how many people whose taste I admire that like it, but that sense of pensiveness put me off immediately.

http://lauriesims.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/maracas.jpg
http://timeoutchicago.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/timeout_492x330/716.mu.Destroyer1.jpg
http://lauriesims.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/maracas.jpg
http://timeoutchicago.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/timeout_492x330/716.mu.Destroyer1.jpg
http://lauriesims.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/maracas.jpg
http://timeoutchicago.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/timeout_492x330/716.mu.Destroyer1.jpg
http://lauriesims.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/maracas.jpg

how long did you spend looking for a picture of bejar with maracas before you gave up and went w/ the tambourine photo

not long enough apparently!

http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-googleganger-2.jpg?w=640
http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-googleganger-2.jpg?w=640
http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-googleganger-2.jpg?w=640
http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-googleganger-2.jpg?w=640
http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-googleganger-2.jpg?w=640
http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-googleganger-2.jpg?w=640
http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-googleganger-2.jpg?w=640

daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer

also, I just listened to the Nguzunguzu remix of that Ayshay EP and O_O

just listened and YES!

but wait

http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-1.jpg?w=640
http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-1.jpg?w=640
http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-1.jpg?w=640
http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-1.jpg?w=640
http://danielbejar.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/daniel-bejar-destroyer-performing-with-maraca-and-beer-1.jpg?w=640

That looks like a piece of fruit to me.

one of those is the impostor Dan Bejar

I was thinking along these lines as I browsed the thread earlier in the evening, wondering why so many records in the list didn't strike me, and I think one of the main things that prevents me from being taken in by something is the sense that it's aesthetically unsure of itself, or middling, or half-assed, or somehow meek in its presentation. I think this is actually *always* something that's bothered me about certain strains of indie...

― Clarke B., Thursday, February 2, 2012 8:44 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's an interesting point, especially as relates to contemporary indie culture, which often seems organized around a fundamental thread of meekness & uncertainty. you're absolutely right that there's certain strain of indie that prizes qualities like prettiness, softness, nostalgic regret, wounded sensitivity, self-doubt, defensive irony, poignant failure and the holiness of human frailty. it's music for the painfully self-aware. i'll go a little further, to suggest that this is not a trivial thing, merely one thread among many. imo, it's one of the core qualities that defines what we've come in the 21st century to call indie as a genre.

we can perhaps reduce it to "i was not made for these times", both the phrase and the song: an insistence that the world is too much, too harsh, that the only possible response is to turn away and inward. this sensibility unifies much of the music that contemporary indie congeals around: the beach boys, simon & garfunkel, nick drake, arthur russell, the pastels, sebadoh, belle & sebastian, cat power, godspeed you! black emperor, etc.

like, to appreciate it properly, you have to be willing to accept confusion, questioning and passive uncertainty as virtues of a sort - or at least as the foundations of a valid aesthetic. given that american indie is arguably a culture of white privilege, this sentimentalizing of powerless passivity raises some interesting questions, but that's probably grist for another thread...

I believe those to be pretty big generalizations and I don't know what value there is in dwelling on them.

oh yeah, generalizing like crazy. but i've been indie since forever, and these are the things i think abt.

add the smifs and built to spill to the list above. and neil young. and the more sensitive sides of bowie and the VU. and

that's an interesting point, especially as relates to contemporary indie culture, which often seems organized around a fundamental thread of meekness & uncertainty. you're absolutely right that there's certain strain of indie that prizes qualities like prettiness, softness, nostalgic regret, wounded sensitivity, self-doubt, defensive irony, poignant failure and the holiness of human frailty. it's music for the painfully self-aware. i'll go a little further, to suggest that this is not a trivial thing, merely one thread among many. imo, it's one of the core qualities that defines what we've come in the 21st century to call indie as a genre.

we can perhaps reduce it to "i was not made for these times", both the phrase and the song: an insistence that the world is too much, too harsh, that the only possible response is to turn away and inward. this sensibility unifies much of the music that contemporary indie congeals around: the beach boys, simon & garfunkel, nick drake, arthur russell, the pastels, sebadoh, belle & sebastian, cat power, godspeed you! black emperor, etc.

like, to appreciate it properly, you have to be willing to accept confusion, questioning and passive uncertainty as virtues of a sort - or at least as the foundations of a valid aesthetic. given that american indie is arguably a culture of white privilege, this sentimentalizing of powerless passivity raises some interesting questions, but that's probably grist for another thread...

― his hands are a dirty fountain through which lives spurt (contenderizer), Friday, February 3, 2012 12:43 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I really like the way you articulated this. I mean, I can be painfully self-aware, and I sometimes feel "I wasn't made for these times", and I don't even feel it's necessarily bad to engage with those sorts of feelings in artistic endeavors. But sometimes I can't help but feeling as if certain strains of indie (and, to tie in another realm, contemporary fiction for sure) straight-up fetishize things like "the holiness (good word for how this comes across) of human frailty" and "wounded sensitivity"--and that's where I get lost. The "ears through which I'm listening" (as Tim put it) want to transcend this "all-too-human"-ness, to immerse myself in something greater, or for God's sake at least something more abstract and ineffable than my species' sad little problems. Music can do *so* much more than that, but I feel like so much of the indie you describe is content to just stop there and wallow. I mean, there's a video of a guy on YouTube playing "The Trooper" by Iron Maiden (amazingly fluently) on a harp. Is anybody really ever going to be inspired to do that with a tUnE-yArDs song or a Girls song or even a Destroyer song?

Funny, I'm just listening to The Age of Adz for the first time right now and however someone might fit that into some kind of paradigm of indie personality, it is in no way "aesthetically unsure of itself, or middling, or half-assed." Imo, that's also true in a big way of Have One on Me, which is the indie record I've liked most from the last couple of years.

I'm not happy with how general my statements are; they feel right to me and they ring true, but I need to dig more and substantiate them better. I'm just curious to see if others at least feel the way I do on a broad level...

to tie in another realm, contemporary fiction for sure

OTM, and that's why i went out of my way to describe indie as a culture and not just as a musical genre. it's evident in literature (the mcsweenyizing of contemporary fiction), film (the graduate and its discontents), even in interior design (put a bird on it).

i will, however, defend the straight-up fucking badassness of tune yards. on a technical level, what she's doing is as impressive as hell, and her POV is much stronger and more personal than ppl sometimes give her credit for.

you're absolutely right that there's certain strain of indie that prizes qualities like prettiness, softness, nostalgic regret, wounded sensitivity, self-doubt, defensive irony, poignant failure and the holiness of human frailty. it's music for the painfully self-aware. i'll go a little further, to suggest that this is not a trivial thing, merely one thread among many. imo, it's one of the core qualities that defines what we've come in the 21st century to call indie as a genre.

so its both a 'certain strain' and a 'core quality' that defines the entire genre? and im not really convinced by this list of qualities, grouped together this way, that it really even describes music for the 'painfully self-aware', nor that they would be the primary (only?) audience for such music. and the list of artists you identify w/this sensibility seem to... not have that much to do w/these qualities, on the whole.

i mean i guess its an interesting way of describing what you see/what you get out of this music but i dont think it works v well as a more objective description of contemp american indie, really

Funny, I'm just listening to The Age of Adz for the first time right now and however someone might fit that into some kind of paradigm of indie personality, it is in no way "aesthetically unsure of itself, or middling, or half-assed." Imo, that's also true in a big way of Have One on Me, which is the indie record I've liked most from the last couple of years.

― timellison, Thursday, February 2, 2012 10:07 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well yeah, indie is a very big tent at this point. joanna newsom and sufjan stevens are important artists because they exemplify the qualities i'm talking about almost perfectly, and they do so without sacrificing strength of character and clarity of artistic vision. i'm not trying to say that indie's fetishizing of weakness is a bad thing, though it does often strike me as cloying. at its best (arthur russell, for instance), this kind of uncertainty can be almost overwhelmingly beautiful, and it speaks to an important and too often denigrated part of the human condition.

contenderizer:

jaar pox

wouh
a time for us
love you gotta lose again
marks
the bees - winter rose (nicolas jaar remix)
ellen allien - flashy flashy (nicolas jaar remix)
russian dolls
el bandido
space is only noise if you can see
no regular play - owe me (nicolas jaar remix)

― irina-camelia begu (lex pretend)

Oh this list is amazing Lex. The album didn't really made an impression on me and there's still some of his stuff that doesn't really vibe with me (too lethargic for my taste sometimes) but when he hits the spot he's really good and your POX is a great example of him at his prime.

I'd add to the list the yet unreleased 'With Just One Glance You' and A1 of his Darkside side-project.

Can I double-emphasise the absolute importance of "Her String", Jaar's track as part of Clown N Sunset Collective.

so its both a 'certain strain' and a 'core quality' that defines the entire genre? and im not really convinced by this list of qualities, grouped together this way, that it really even describes music for the 'painfully self-aware', nor that they would be the primary (only?) audience for such music. and the list of artists you identify w/this sensibility seem to... not have that much to do w/these qualities, on the whole.

well, it's all pretty subjective, obviously. i'm speaking of the semblance of meaning in culture from where i stand, and i hardly imagine that everyone will share my perspective.

anyway, yeah, i'd say that this "certain strain" is a "core quality". i tried to clarify by saying that the latter point (mine) extends the former (clarke's), but maybe that part got lost in the mail.

Also I was listening to the Ayshay music loud in the afternoon and my neighbor gave me the weirdest look when I bumped into her in the elevator. She must have thought I was into black magic and shit.

Lamp, I don't know if I'd call it so much music *for* the painfully self-aware as music *by* the painfully self-aware, as in the sense that I get when listening to lots of indie in this realm is that they're unsure of themselves--but my original post was attempting to speak more to the music itself than to the emotional framework and lyrical thrust. This is going to come across as blatantly Carduccian, but so many indie bands just cannot convincingly play together in any sort of energizing, galvanizing way. It's a distortion of the original and once-liberating idea that you don't have to be a virtuoso to pick up an instrument and play--sure you don't, but having a sense of the way music works helps. The best punk bands weren't good *because* they were technically non-proficient, they were good in spite of it--because they were musically inclined and could churn up a convincing and energizing racket. There's a lot of music out there that just feels like it doesn't work somehow on some very fundamental level.

joanna newsom and sufjan stevens are important artists because they exemplify the qualities i'm talking about almost perfectly, and they do so without sacrificing strength of character and clarity of artistic vision.

Although I don't really like either of these artists, it's not for the reasons I tried to articulate above, and I grant that each of them do have fairly developed and confident and clear aesthetic visions--the fact of which I admire, if not the way it plays out in their music. (I find Newsom too ornate, plus I recoil at her voice; Sufjan is similarly too baroque for me, and his aesthetic I just cannot feel or identify with.)

could you cite some examples of "unconvincing indie"

yeah, i'm not really in love with either, though i do respect their ambition, focus and mastery of craft. had prolonged moments with both illinoise and milk-eyed mender, but lost interest quickly.

Can I double-emphasise the absolute importance of "Her String", Jaar's track as part of Clown N Sunset Collective.

― Tim F

Ah yes this is also amazing.

well, it's all pretty subjective, obviously. i'm speaking of the semblance of meaning in culture from where i stand, and i hardly imagine that everyone will share my perspective.

i guess my 'problem' is that even as a subjective interpretation of indie's dominant aesthetic is contradictory and flawed. i mean i think even the idea of the music/the artists/the audience being 'painfully self-aware' is p fraught as a way of connecting all these qualities together? also the reading of these qualities as 'weak' bothers me

This is going to come across as blatantly Carduccian, but so many indie bands just cannot convincingly play together in any sort of energizing, galvanizing way.

enh

Jaar is one of those 50/50 artists for me in which I hate half of what he does and love the other half. I have high hopes that he'll win me completely over in a couple of years.

simon reynolds beat happening

Like many of our indie bands, Beat Happening use incompetence as a springboard to glory ... [T]he way they've been recorded captures the sounds of the music being made - the creak of the strings and plectrum, the rustle of percussion. Voices are creased, sometimes they fail. My friend CHris says this sort of thing is important because when you can hear the group struggling with instruments they've yet to master, when you can hear the concentration, you know they care. Fluency means less feeling, because it's the result of rehearsal.