Pazz and Jop.

and lo, the horny dads shall inherit the music criticism

They’re phrasing it as feminism

Apparently there's some discontent within that group over the final results according to the organizer. I can't find any details though - anyone know what that's about?

Consensus choices for 90s and 80s Anglo rock adaptations largely which I like , but in 2023 I liked other genres as much or more and they’re way down —SZA at 51 , Rosalia at 31, still looking for Bad Bunny, Rema, Asake,

Did see Kruangbin w/ Vieux Farka Toure way down in the 100s

I didn't participate because in December the results already looked like they were going to glaze the eyes.

X-post - one participant said he liked the initial Wet Leg single but he called the album “a piece of sh-t” in a way that some perceived it as sexist, and so others got mad at poll administrator for not quickly condemning/removing the troublemaker. The administrator said he does his best.

The Horsegirl album seems like a real outlier. It was #85 in the Uproxx poll and #47 in Album of the Year's year-end list aggregate.

(Fontaines DC was even lower in the Uproxx poll but #7 on the Album of the Year list, probably because it included more British critics.)

I didn't participate because in December the results already looked like they were going to glaze the eyes.

Same here, more or less. The albums I actually listened to and liked best this year would have had zero impact on the final list, so why bother?

X-post - one participant said he liked the initial Wet Leg single but he called the album “a piece of sh-t” in a way that some perceived it as sexist, and so others got mad at poll administrator for not quickly condemning/removing the troublemaker. The administrator said he does his best.

― curmudgeon, Monday, 9 January 2023 14:04 (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao, clowns

nice to see Spoon sneak in amongst the 'feminism' though, old habits eh

still, it's nice to have results that are so conservative and boring they'll make ILM's look exciting by comparison

(hopefully)

The Horsegirl album seems like a real outlier

An outlier in terms of having not done as well in other 2 lists you mentioned, but aesthetics wise the group which has covered a Minutemen song and has widely proclaimed their love for 80s and 90s Anglo rock in interviews and a Spotify playlist or 2 , fits right in with Spoon, et Al.

Looking at their previous polls, it looks like the results usually end up moving in that direction.

the horsegirl album is good

tbf it is, yeah

but it's very much a tentative debut, much more to come from them I'd hope

but it's very much a tentative debut, much more to come from them I'd hope

― imago, Monday, January 9, 2023 9:35 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

agreed, feels like good things ahead

i don't care about polls so i don't know how it stacks up but it's one of the only of the numerous recent 90s revival albums that had the *feel*

yup. goon as well, a few others

not familiar w.goon will check them out

horsegirl recalls scrawl sometimes a band i haven't thought about in a long time

and well surface to air missive just continually, quietly putting out 90s-inflected greatness (that tbf doesn't truly sound of any time) - consider that my primary recommendation here, latest album good place to start

likewise, will investigate scrawl...

I remember enjoying that Horsegirl record a lot on first listen, but it also felt a bit derivative the more I played it.

On a slight tangent, I was thinking the other day how even great revitalizations in rock tend to revive older sounds. With the Beatles (and the British Invasion), it was reviving the first wave sounds that had receded (Chuck Berry, Little Richard et al). The punk movement was virtually by design hitting the reset button and drawing on older rock, even covering so many of those songs. Nirvana's a bit more unique because they tapped into underground bands that were NOT popular with the mainstream, though quite a few of the biggest alternative bands actually drew heavily on classic rock (Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, etc.)

There are later pioneers who really do break new ground - sometimes they're so far ahead of their time that they don't sell many records (the Velvet Underground probably the most famous example) - but I want to say that's usually on an individual basis and that big sea changes in music usually have some revival element that's central to it.

An outlier in terms of having not done as well in other 2 lists you mentioned, but aesthetics wise the group which has covered a Minutemen song and has widely proclaimed their love for 80s and 90s Anglo rock in interviews and a Spotify playlist or 2 , fits right in with Spoon, et Al.

― curmudgeon, Monday, January 9, 2023 9:23 AM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh yeah, definitely. "Outlier" was probably the wrong word to use. But it's the entry that's most revealing of the biases of the voters in this poll.

one participant said he liked the initial Wet Leg single but he called the album “a piece of sh-t”

― curmudgeon, Monday, January 9, 2023 8:04 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

+1

Don't know if this would make any converts, when I went to see Wet Leg at Webster Hall, pretty much every single track came off better live. (And the still-unreleased slow number "Obvious" was amazing.)

I like that Facebook group/poll fine, I found some interesting things off individual ballots. The final results are right in the center lane, but ... stones, glass houses, etc. I totally missed the apparent blowup, and happily too.

yeah same, v little interest in the final results but i keep up with the group bc i enjoy seeing & chatting about lists posted by friends who are not writers & otherwise wouldnt be prompted to share a list like that. i dont spend hours on it but i can usually find some interesting stuff by surfing the individual lists & avoiding the whitebread vinyl dads.

ultimately, it's too bad some established, not-going-anywhere publication/website didn't work with the Voice to move the real Pazz & Jop (including their voter email list) to a new home. doesn't seem like it would've been *that* hard.

Ended up tonight thinking about Pazz & Jop album winners that have one down the most in estimation over the years. I suppose Sandinista! has always enjoyed a special relationship with American rock critics (even the recent RS 500 albums list failed to see it gone. In fact it went up), but these are albums I probably had to do a double take the first time I saw they topped P&J, which would have largely been before I began familiarising myself with RS, Spin, the VV etc and their tastes over the decades: Little Creatures (insane), Ragged Glory (just seems quite arbitrary?), the first Arrested Development (I suppose few albums have fallen the distance this has), Play (especially as this was before it properly blew up commercially), Modern Times (I mean I get it: Dylan), Dear Science and Whokill (feels like years since I last saw anyone mention it tbh!)

I'm always astonished by xgau's singles pick in 93 being Plastic Dreams.

Ragged Glory (just seems quite arbitrary?)

Should be 'seemed', sorry. With that one in particular I just recall being surprised it topped it ahead of Sinead and Public Enemy, who I would have instinctively expected instead. Probably was an important lesson in establishing how seriously Neil was taken even at that point.

Ragged Glory topping the list makes sense to me as it was the consolidation of his comeback the previous year with Freedom.

Didn't Xgau have some sort of temporary break with Marcus over the Public Enemy and the Terrodome controversy?

The appeal of Little Creatures eludes me beyond the singles, but looking at the entire P&J list for 1985 it was a fairly dismal year and a distinct comedown from 1984. I mean, Mellencamp and Fogerty in the Top Ten? (New Day Rising would have been my pick).

Hounds of Love? Tim? Steve McQueen? Up on the Sun? Promise? Lots of good stuff that year.

Fables of the Reconstruction…

I’ve always been surprised at how underrated Ragged Glory was until the last couple years when it’s finally started to get its due…glad to see that it got its due somewhere at least. I was too young in ‘90 to know how it was received at the top but I do know that by the late 90s-00s it wasn’t really a Neil release that anyone had much to say about.

And of course that should say “at the time” rather than “at the top”.

Huh. I felt like it was solidified as the last truly great Neil album even back in the 90s.

NME's 1985 albums list https://www.nme.com/features/1985-2-1045389

Two 1960s recordings in the top ten, as I'm not the first to point out. But other than Mad Not Mad and So Many Rivers (and what drastic exceptions those are) the rest of the top ten remains stealthily canon.

This Neil Young conversation feels like it's taking place in an alternate dimension. Ragged Glory is pretty much the last Neil Young album people unanimously agree on. (Maybe Harvest Moon.) The tour was a huge success, it earned him an entirely new audience/reputation when he brought out Sonic Youth as his opening act... it was a whole Thing. Did he diminish its impact by releasing 75 albums in the years since? Maybe, but every time he puts out a Crazy Horse record it gets compared to Ragged Glory, so how anyone could see it as anything but a major, major part of his discography is beyond me.

Didn't Xgau have some sort of temporary break with Marcus over the Public Enemy and the Terrodome controversy?

He did, yes--more Marcus, I think--but long since resolved.

Ragged Glory now has its title now expanded to Smell The Horse and its body expanded by three bonus tracks--the one I've heard is very fine---but so far this edition only available in a box set, alongside standard reissues (no other bonus tracks in there, apparently).

Little Creatures is amazing but there probably is that sense of “Amazing conversation-driving band releases another very good album at the height of their fame” that pushed the scales that don’t make as much sense in hindsight

See also Imperial Bedroom, To Bring You My Love,Speakerboxxx/Love Below, Late Registration, Dear Science…

(I almost mentioned Speakerboxx, whose status I think has diminished over time, but no I can't imagine (back whenever this was, 2010?) I was surprised to see it topped P&J, not least because I was barely aware of them pre-Stankonia at that point.)

(Sorry for making the cardinal sin of ignoring the superior disc there.)

I like all of those albums - regardless of whether they deserved the top spot, they're all touched with greatness and I'd say most of them are great. Even "Tennessee" is unimpeachable IMHO, a towering single on Arrest Development's fine debut, even though parts of the album gets too on the nose for my taste.

FWIW, I understand certain albums aren't heard about often except by those who were there at the time, but I've never bought into that as a failing of the work itself. It may be a reflection of evolving trends in the culture, and I get how that's a big part of the discourse surrounding pop music, but a great album is still a great album no matter how overlooked it may have become.

*Arrested

If Wiki is to be believed 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... also topped the Wire's critic poll for that year.

Mellencamp's The Lonesome Jubilee is good and belongs in the top twenty.

er, Scarecrow, that is. But TLJ too!