So I have a number of beefs with the end of the year albums and singles lists at Pitchfork and The AV Club, which I will get to momentarily, but a few things first:
Check out the new audioplayer (“Audioklept” on the sidebar) that WordPress has kindly made accessible. I’ll try to update it regularly with awesome-to-moderately awesome tuneage. Now playing: the sweetly saturated sonic screams of Emperor X: the true indie rock.
Ricotta Park has had a makeover. The site looks great, and it looks like Nick will start posting regularly again. Check it out.
Some of the most enjoyable reading I’ve done lately comes from The New York Times Magazine Year in Ideas, via Tomorrowland. Highly recommended!
You can now easily access the marvelous adventures of Dr. Van Keudejep in one place, courtesy of Troglodyte Mignon. Very nice.
Dr. Van Keudejap ’s interrupted suicide – He lived happily ever after, thanks to the tiny troglodyte.
On to the lists. For the past few days, Got to be a Chocolate Jesus has been counting down the year’s best albums. I’m in accord with most of his top five, posted today: TV on the Radio, The Fiery Furnaces, Destroyer, and Joanna Newsom, all faves of mine made the cut, as did The Mountain Goats, a band I’ve never really listened to. If you were to swap out The Mountain Goats with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s fantastic comeback LP, The Letting Go, I think that would be my top five.
So yes and well now my beefs: first up, like many of you (I’m guessing), I hate hate hate Pitchfork; nonetheless, I visit those jerks daily, as I have for the past seven or eight years. This is the site that gave a “0.0” to The Flaming Lips’ aural odyssey Zaireeka without even listening to it. My major beef with P-fork is that The Fiery Furnaces’ Bitter Tea wasn’t recognized at all; neither did their Top 100 tracks of 2006 find room for Neko Case’s “Star Witness,” which was the best song of 2006. Sure, there were plenty of places where we intersected, but on the whole, their list reaffirms my belief that, in addition to being hacks, these guys have no taste (I blame the editor–some of P-fork’s writers, like Dominique Leone and Drew Daniel have true talent).
Now, The Onion’s AV Club really let me down–generally I love these guys: they’re way less pretentious than most of the music and media blogs, and they tend to have a critical approach fashioned more in the tradition of Creem or classic Rolling Stone. However, they chose The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in America–a completely overrated, derivative, and ultimately boring piece of trash–as album of the year. Furthermore, The Decemberists–a band repeatedly given the undeserved descriptor “literary”–also cracked their top ten. Defenders of these loathsome bands usually say that the haters “don’t get” the “meta-cool” of The Hold Steady or the “hyperliterate” Decemberists: they’re wrong: there’s nothing to get: these bands are boring. Just because somebody calls bullshit on something you like doesn’t mean that they “don’t get” it–in the case of the aforementioned hacks, I totally “get it”: these bands lack originality and talent.
Now, on to an artist that I truly “don’t get.” The Liars’ Drum’s Not Dead topped many year end lists, and plenty of my friends loved this album. I didn’t hear what the fuss was about, although I’ll certainly give it a second shot. Maybe it’ll click (that’s how it went down with TV on the Radio). Any fans out there who “get it” and who are willing to explain it?
Biblioklept 
great post…agree wholeheartedly about pitchfork. despite utter disdain, i still check it pretty close to daily, shamefully. as far as liars’ album goes, i’ll say before this album i was only a halfass, “eh, they’re ok” kind of fan, but this album was different. start with “the other side of mt. heart attack”, which is linked on my list and work your way into it from that, as it’s easily the best and most accessible track on the album. doesn’t mean you’ll like it or grow to, but i dug it and sounds like we have similar tastes. and as far as the furnaces, p’fork has sort of lead the charge of hating on their former darlings ever since they started. i understand it’s not for everybody, but to say they’ve fallen off their game is just spoon fed indie media hogwash. bollocks, i say. anyway, thanks for the link and cheers.
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while i dig the Liars album, it’s not much more than a “neat” listen. i think too much was made of the fact that they apparently moved to and recorded the album in Berlin.
most “art rock” fans know the legend of Bowie’s stay in Berlin and can easily see how that shift in place coincided with a tremendous (albeit temporary) shift in his approach to music. in this case, though, i think that critics were far too eager to draw the same parallel between this young, new band and the venerable, established artist. the difference is that Liars were already kind of “edgy” (though that’s an easily debatable adjective) and this album, more than anything else, tones down their sound. tracks like “the other side of mt. heart attack” strive for beauty but fail to get there.
in short, it’s worth a listen – for perspective’s sake – but you’re not missing anything.
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i don’t get why you get to say that bands like the decemberists are “boring” and lacking in originality or talent, yet say that others are just dismissing your opinion. what exactly is boring, or talentless? if people who like the band can’t get away with just saying that they are, you shouldn’t try to get away with just saying they aren’t.
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Mr.B:
1. I get to say whatever I want because it’s my blog and I’m a total prick.
2. Boring = causing boredom. Boredom = lack of interest (e.g.– “This Decemberist’s CD is boring, can’t we please listen to something else?”)
3. Talentless = lacking talent; devoid of creative spirit or ingenuity (e.g.– “Those talentless hacks sure are making Baby Jesus cry”)
4. Your last sentence is a little confusing (“they are [?]”, “they aren’t [?]), but I think you’re making the (completely valid) argument that I’ve dismissed the opinions of fans of The Decemberists and The Hold Steady in perhaps an unfair way. I actually don’t care at all if people like these bands; my real gripe is being repeatedly told in the so-called blogosphere that I “don’t get” them, like somehow if I were just a little bit smarter or hip or something it would all fall into place. I don’t begrudge any music fan any joy, to be honest. My real beef is over the Furnaces not getting their due, and is summed up best in micbk’s comment: “[…]to say they’ve fallen off their game is just spoon fed indie media hogwash.” I think that many indie hipster dorks jump on and off of bandwagons and worry about what is “cool” way too much, and true art suffers. Simply put, I think that bands like The Decemberists and The Hold Steady are posers (or poseurs, if you prefer). That said there are hundreds of bands out there that I don’t think are anything special: I don’t attack them because there’s no reason to. Why attack Spoon? People like them, people hear something in them that moves them, okay, sure. So why attack The Decemberists? Well,
1. Mostly to get a reaction, I suppose but also
2. It goes back to that “don’t get” thing — I really don’t see Colin Meloy doing anything new or innovative, or even melodic or moving. I chose to discuss Liars in the context of this post because they are a band that I “don’t get”–that is, I believe that there is something there to get, that they are doing something that may be new and innovative and challenging, but I haven’t gotten my ears around it yet.
Again, Mr. B, I see your point: my argument is weak in the sense that I have (seemingly) arbitrarily devised criteria for what is “gettable” and “not gettable” and expected others to fall in line; but isn’t that what all of the bloggers have done for so many bands (think Tapes n’ Tapes, Clap Yr Hands, etc.)?
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