ILM's Top 77 ALBUMS of 2011

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.

That paragraph is all sorts of ridiculous...

"The way they've been recorded captures the sounds of the music being made - the creak of the strings and plectrum, the rustle of percussion." As if technically competent music doesn't feature things like, well, the sounds that instruments make when played?

"Fluency means less feeling, because it's the result of rehearsal." That's like saying literature better conveys feeling when it's written in a language that the writer is barely competent in and is not pre-meditated at all.

I dunno, I'm sure listening to really amateurish music once provided some thrills because there was so little out there like it; it must have felt bracing and exciting, like some sort of act of voyeurism to listen to it. The idea that someone had the audacity to lay something so raw and amateurish to tape and release it undoubtedly carried a lot of potency before it ossified into an aesthetic of its own and spawned a million crappy bedroom recordings...

I've often read about you being unhappy with a lot of current music...

I think if you listen to any great album—whether it be a singer/songwriter from the ’60s, Leonard Cohen, "Metal Box" by PiL, the work of Ian Curtis, or even Meatloaf for God's sake, without any nostalgia, look at them actually as their work, look at the quality of the writing, the intensity of the production, the freeness of investigating sonic atmospheres... I just can't hear that nowadays. Perhaps I'm not hearing the right bands, but that means there's something drastically wrong with the media not supporting people with interesting ideas. I think there are great songs that have been written [in the past] that wouldn't get through [now].

that's a geoff barrow quote, btw

maybe u just don't get the vibe of the paragraph xp

i think there was and is a lot more to it than novelty or thrilling obscurity, including the exact thing described in the last sentence

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?

well, to the extent that i'm defining an important thread in contemporary indie as the endpoint of a line drawn from "i was not made for this world" - through the likes of nick drake, bowie's "quicksand" and the smiths - up to sebadoh, built to spill, cat power, elliott smith, NMH, belle & sebastian, and sufjan stevens, it seems appropriate to speak of the difficulty of doubtful self-awareness. the difficulty of smart, youthful, and often oversensitive self-awareness, not to put too find a point on it. i think that aspects of this core sensibility stretch out to encompass lots of other artists who aren't so easily or completely defined by it, even the sorts of non-indie artists that indies are often attracted to. there's also the cinema (wes anderson) and literature (catcher in the rye) that runs parallel to this, as mentioned above.

"find" = "fine"

just got around to the results after being out most of the day. not too thrilled with the #1 but this is still a better and more interesting albums list than most EOY lists i saw. thanks to all who organized!

^yeah that seems right. I was v happy with the whole thing until, well...but even so, great great list!

you know what was a fantastic 2011 album? quilt s/t mexican summer

I've still never heard a note of Destroyer, maybe it's finally time for me to give him a listen.

I love the fact that "Ravedeath, 1972" has done well in so many year-end polls. I didn't expect it to finish so high on ILM though ... how did that happen? I started a Tim Hecker thread seven years ago and it still only has about 100 posts on it. There were a lot more avant garde/experimental albums on the poll than in past years, so I guess that (partly) explains it.

Eleanoora Rosenholm was on my ballot, thanks solely to hearing her several times in outloud. Wish she would've cracked the top 77, but oh wells.

For what it's worth, Eleanoora Rosenholm is the name of the band, not the lead singer. IIRC "Eleanoora Rosenholm" is a fictional 1920 mass murderer who appears in their lyrics, or something like that.

I am kind of suspicious of these poll results

I like how "shook" is being illustrated with a picture of a dorky guy drinking beer alone is his bedroom. Very apt.

finally caught up with this thread. so glad Destroyer won, as I haven't loved and played a new album so much for years.

whereas I've listened to the PJ album one and a half times.

I should point out that Sound of Silver won the ILM poll in 2007 and that's clearly a rock record.

incompetence as a springboard to glory

STUPIDITY THAT NEEDS TO STFU

Anyway, back to the most important thing. A ROCK ALBUM FINALLY WON OUR POLL! lol it rocks about as hard as a single gym sock in a dryer full of towels. But, technically, it's the work of a WHITE MALE WHO PLAYS MULTIPLE INSTRUMENTS PROFICIENTLY AND HAS A BEARD.

― Johnny Fever, Thursday, February 2, 2012 9:59 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I should point out that Sound of Silver won the ILM poll in 2007 and that's clearly a rock record.

― Matt DC, Friday, February 3, 2012 9:50 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Rock music - the work of a WHITE MALE WHO PLAYS MULTIPLE INSTRUMENTS PROFICIENTLY AND HAS A BEARD?

Anyway the rest of the top 10 is pretty great - I should probably give Uncle Acid another go. So stoked that Katy B finished so high.

I suppose the one advantage of Destroyer winning is that both the 'ARGH YOU CLOTH-EARED CUNTS' crew and the the 'waaah why aren't more people respecting this widely-acclaimed indie dude?' crew get the opportunity to be simultaneously butthurt.

The top six range from 'okayish' to 'pretty good' for me - I think I had GGD and Kate Bush low down in my ballot because both had some really great moments. I feel I should revisit 4, I remember liking bits of it on first listen but it didn't leave much of an impression. Also Destroyer's Rubies>>>Kaputt.

Own on CD: Robag Wruhme, Laura Marling, Tom Waits, Azari & III, Radiohead, Cut Copy (bit of a dud purchase though), Panda Bear, Oneohtrix Point Never, Nicolas Jaar, tune-yards, Katy B, PJ Harvey.

Heard in full, like: When Saints Go Machine, War On Drugs, Nguzungzu, Lady Gaga (well, bits of it at least), Rustie, Beyonce, Destroyer.

Heard in full, neutral: Lykke Li, The Weeknd, Ford & Lopatin, Bon Iver, M83.

Heard in full, dislike: Low, Frank Ocean.

Heard in part, like: ILX presents Lulu, Drake, Junior Boys.

Heard in part, neutral: Barbara Panther, Toro y Moi, Austra, James Ferraro, John Maus, Britney Spears, St Vincent.

Heard in part, dislike: Liturgy, Joy Formidable, Jay-Z/Kanye, Kurt Vile, EMA, Tim Hecker, Gang Gang Dance.

Never heard: 33.

I get pissed at the reductiveness of "indie" here, I'd like to see the term entirely discarded, "DIY pop" / "DIY rock" so much better sums up what indiepop and indie rock are/shd be about, and makes mislabelling look stoopid.

People interpreting 'visible straining' as some kind of authenticity? That's bullshit! This is amateur pop music, if anything that should be interpreted as 'you can do this too, and you should'. It's a political aesthetic, and it's liberating.

Eleanoora Rosenholm = a great record, I only heard it after Christmas when emil.y got it on teh vinyls, if I'd heard it before I think it'd have been in my 25.

I'd like to see the term entirely discarded, "DIY pop" / "DIY rock" so much better sums up what indiepop and indie rock are/shd be about

yeah, it's certainly not like ppl get defensive about what does or doesn't qualify as 'DIY' so it should be plain sailing

Notforprofitpop

Putting up shelves is marginally more exciting than most of the music so I feel DIY is being done a disservice.

I think when you've released as many records as someone like Destroyer has you can't sensibly be called an amateur any more, even if you still sound amateurish. At some point it stops being democratic and just starts being plain lacking in talent.

The Lex took it well I see

had another listen to Destroyer and i dont get how its so loved but there's nothing to hate really. I assume the hate comes from the hype and its placings in other EOY polls?

i would like to publicly state, now that i am sober, that i rescind NOTHING of what i said re: destroyer. so many posters have disappointed me on this matter.

Something that struck me about the conversation upthread with Contenderizer is how indie is being framed in terms of frailty, self awareness, uncertainty etc... because other than a handful of key examples (The Smiths, Belle & Sebastian), these tropes seem to be peculiar to indie's post-1998 US strand, whereas it's not necessarily a default in the UK. In fact one of the traditional complaints about UK indie is how bolshy and self assured many of these bands are compared to the quality of their actual output. It makes sense that it's Belle & Sebastian who are the go-to British band to soundtrack US indie filmmakers' movies.

Just as well the SB option was removed in time for this poll otherwise it may have been carnage.

because other than a handful of key examples (The Smiths, Belle & Sebastian), these tropes seem to be peculiar to indie's post-1998 US strand, whereas it's not necessarily a default in the UK

It certainly was once upon a time in the C86 tweepop era.

that's a point - i'm not so familiar with 80s indie. once you get to the nineties, you can't really call the Mondays, Oasis, the Libertines or whoever "self-aware" or "frail".

I mean, sure there are probably dozens of examples of fey indie bands from the UK, but it's not the default aesthetic, whereas according to posts made upthread, it's come to define a certain stream of modern US thinking.

It certainly was once upon a time in the C86 tweepop era.

Yeah my impression of the '80s is that it was completely the other way around - the US indie scene of that era seemed to be a lot more noisy/rocking in comparison, more macho even.

A lot of what I'd been trying to say upthread about the indiefication of other genres and the dominance of these was expressed much better in Tim F's last few posts.

I'd say that's broadly true, Gavin, but I'm not trying to stan for the whole SST aesthetic either. I suppose, if anything, I'm valorizing a sort of pre-indie sensibility. As far as Craig's comments above re: DIY, I can again see how that's a liberating thing, how it operates politically, but the problem with politicizing art objects is that you're in danger of sacrificing your ability being able to approach them in a more unadornedly aesthetic light. DIY allows worthwhile voices to be heard that may not have reached an audience before, but when the feeble-ness and "hearing the stitching" (home sewing/etsy pun fully intended) aspect becomes fetishized, becomes the whole point, that's where I get lost. Again, going back to Tim's initial comment that sparked me thinking about this, we should be able to admit when we're "hearing with X ears" that are getting off on the politically liberating aspect of the music, and not stretch/distort it to say that "rehearsal makes for dead art" as that SR/Beat Happening quote seemed to. In fact, as much as I love SR's writing, my main criticism throughout all of his career is that I sometimes get the sense that he gets off more on the political thrust of music than on what he's actually hearing.

No problem with lo-fi or a lack of technical ability if it's justified. What I really don't like it's when it's being obviously affected. It's the musical equivalent of distressed interior design I guess.