Pazz & Jop 2008

so was that walkmen album any good after all? the third one was so blah i more or less gave up on 'em.

barely anyone voted for what i voted for, which i should be used to by now, but still bums me out.

seriously, only seven people voted for Atlas Sound, including me? come the fuck on.

only place i've seen Jess's top 10 is here: http://www.citypaper.com/special/story.asp?id=17187

matos' is there, too.

Thanks. x-post

But the Deerhunter one got a bunch of votes. I read someone describe the Walkmen album as a comeback effort that should be heard, but I never got around to hearing it.

I'm pretty sure both are considered persona non grata at New Times publications.

I seriously doubt the New Times would force P&J reject their ballots, though, if they wanted to vote. (Though I could be wrong.)

I totally forgot this was still happening!

(But then, Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years.)

I know this has already been called out, but WOW.

This ILM contributer also had a comment.

Btw: Is anyone else shocked Malkmus didn't place higher?

Who else rendered a song about fucking that somehow evokes every accidental headbutt, elbow in the eye, broken bed, leg cramp, and belly fart of lovemaking like the sloppy finale, "Lover's Day"?

Was is the horns that evoked the belly fart?

Was it, rather

Love that Kathleen Edwards placed before Laura Marling, Jenny Lewis, etc.

It looks like the only NY Times writer to participate is Jon Caramanica. No Ann Powers from the LA Times.

How many non-amurican writers participate(and do they have to write for American sites or publications)? I see Tim Finney.

Anthony Easton is Canadian.

Vampire Weekend make more amusing and thought-provoking play from the signifiers of wealth and exclusivity than any rapper I've heard these past several years. (But then, Vampire Weekend has more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years.)

Even ignoring the latter part, surely Simey would recognize that the hiphopers' nouveau-riche anthems and VW's old-monied signifiers are coming from completely different places? Faulting an against-all-odds, self-made man for not exuding the trappings of wealth as properly as a priveledged trust-funder seems kind of asinine.

I think he's entirely aware of that; I take it as him arguing that old-money japery of VW is more interesting than the new-money braggadocio of hip-hop. And given how utterly fucking boring and creatively bankrupt that side of hip-hop is at this point, I can only say that I don't like Vampire Weekend either.

This is the same Simon Reynolds who was bothered by M.I.A.'s music because it wasn't real enough, aka the Simon Reynolds I stopped paying attention to.

plus she wasn't "exotic" enough (or some such) for him.

>This is the same Simon Reynolds who was bothered by M.I.A.'s music because it wasn't real enough, aka the Simon Reynolds I stopped paying attention to.

Yeah, it's important to have only one yardstick by which you measure every single artist.

How many non-amurican writers participate(and do they have to write for American sites or publications)? I see Tim Finney.

― curmudgeon, Wednesday, January 21, 2009 1:06 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Anthony Easton is Canadian.

― dan, Wednesday, January 21, 2009 2:35 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Ditto Phil Dellio, Barry Bruner, Ian Mathers, and probably a couple more I don't know. Jonathan Bradley is, like Tim, Australian. And Reynolds is, of course, British, though he lives in the US now.

the signifiers of wealth and exclusivity than any rapper I've heard these past several years.

so for us non-rock critics, this basically means dressing like "popular kid" extras in a john hughes movie?

also i heard that record and it's pretty tame rhymically to me, esp considering how Nomo fucking BROUGHT it so hard with african influenced stuff on Ghost Rock...or other bands like Gang Gang Dance etc etc

Q: what is it called when you at first really hated some indie critic's darling, but eventually reached a point where you just don't care enough to argue?

A: vamp ire, weakened

Ha

I like when VW quote Lil Jon

Heh, apparently I'm from New York now. And the way the two pages are formatted, my comment is credited on a completely separate page, so it looks like my name is paired with Michael Barthel's comments.

Yeah, it's important to have only one yardstick by which you measure every single artist.

Is this directed towards me or towards Reynolds? I can't tell if you are sarcastically mocking me for not caring about what Reynolds had to say after he accused an artist who pretty much freely admitted that she was ripping off a whole bunch of world music styles to make Western club music of not being authentic enough or sarcastically mocking Reynolds for privileging "keeping it real" above all else.

real links to your real ballots please. this thread could use some real laffs.

Laff away.

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686603

:/

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685749

yeah, i saw yours before...Coldplay was my only o_O moment there.

xxp

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686367
I honestly completely forgot about paper planes; thought it was 07!
Probably would've cracked my top 10 if i had thought about it.

Royal Flush brethren: http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/singles/2008/Um95YWwgRmx1c2g=

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686287

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686145

and here's the rest of the Yahhh Brigade

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/singles/2008/WWFoaGgh

me and ke1th harr15 had some great conversations about "yahhh" at rye playland and i'm very glad to see he is my yahhh brother.

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/686239

of the handful of things i voted for that no one else did, i'm only surprised by sprengjuhollin. would've thought it would scare up one or two more. (i suppose it would help if it were actually released, but it's on emusic, easy to get.)

JVC, your Badu blurb really stood out when I read through the comments earlier (and I didn't even know it was you). Nice work.

My ballot (heavily but not entirely metal):

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685521

And lots of stats, including voter centricity, voter similarity and album similarity:

http://www.furia.com/all-idols/2008/index.html

Am I really the first one to point out that Third came in...third?

Nice to see "It's All Your Fault" on a ballot, Glenn. I'm pretty uptight about only listing singles but it'd definitely be in my top 10 album tracks.

Mine: http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685882

I limited releases to some vague notion of roots/rock and rock/folk/countryish stuff. First year I didn't try to create some well-rounded ballot. I like how it turned out though. Made more sense to compare/contrast stuff that was a bit more related, although it forced me to leave some gems out in the cold. For example, I listened to that Jennifer Cardini mix on Kompakt A LOT. Oh well. Fun exercise.

Is it me or in previous years did VV offer a top ten reissues section? Or did I simply miss it?

In some previous years they had a reissues list but I think they stopped that a couple years ago.

Didn't the Voice poll back in the '90s and early 00's get alot more than 577 voters?

Ayyyy

0.441 Alfred Soto
0.399 Tim Finney

Unsurprising.

Last reissues tally was in 1999:

http://robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pjres99.php

Voters peaked at 795 in 2005, just before the New Times merger/changing of the guard; plummeted to 494 a year later, and is apparently still recovering:

http://robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pjres05.php

By the way, I swear I couldn't find the number of voters anywhere in the hard-copy of this week's Voice I picked up today, but maybe I just wasn't looking on the right pages. If there really are 577 voters, as Glenn says, that's exactly the same as last year; kind of curious how hard the sub-poobahs had to work at the last minute to match that number.

So has anybody mentioned Nick Cave in the Top 10? That's just crazy to me, given that, as far as I can tell, he's been making the same album for the past couple decades, and I'm pretty sure he never used to score in Pazz & Jop at all until the past few years. Talk about being grandfathered in (as an actual grandfather, for all I know). Has he ever finished Top 10 before? Last couple did okay, maybe, but I bet no Birthday Party LPs ever finished Top 300. (I voted for Kicking Against The Pricks in 1986, but I wouldn't be surprised if nobody else did.)

I've listened to "If Rap Gets Jealous" about 9 times now. Rather more charming in the original version, I think, so I don't know if that bodes well for the new album.

Haven't figured out which version (or which album, having just recently gotten the new one) I prefer yet, but I assume you know that Kirk Hammett plays on the new version, right? (Pretty sure I like it better than anything on last year's Metallica album.)

Yeah, not sure Kirk adds much, but I'll wait until I can hear a better-quality version of the new version before giving up on it.

hey, they do get into the "Stranglehold" groove there (sort of), Steve. no lie.

xp

Late to say something, but the whole Q-Tip album grows on you--I wish I'd thrown my points behind it instead of the usual non-placers. Oh, and I voted for four hip-hop albums. Didn't vote for The Dusty Foot Philosopher, but liked it.

It's interesting that Pazz & Jop got 577 people to vote, while Continuum Press 33 1/3 series got 597 FULL PROPOSALS for books last month.

Fascinating.

Well sure, but each proposal only had to come up with a single album, and it didn't even have to have made its "impact" this year...

This is beginning to feel like a dog's lost a bone.

I don’t think you’d like it but “the 59 sound” is one of my favorite records ever