So Is It Just My Imagination Or....

I've been saying this for months! It's scary how much they look alike.

Somebody needs to punch Clay Aiken so his eye goes all crooked. For science.

"The Kevin Coyne of the '90s."

So.... is he's going to be replacing Ian Astbury as lead singer of The Doors then?

all the same person

Baby's got the bends...

I think the record has a whole (both discs) is one of those records that'll critics will overrate on the basis of its accomplishment and its fascinating intellectual strands ... these two bright young musicians are actually in the same band and here's what each brings to the table. It's a macro classic (if it doesn't win Pazz & Jop, I'll be amazed) with some faulty songs if you look at it on a micro basis. Recent examples of this include the Bright Eyes disc and Springsteen's the Rising from last year, the Marshall Mathers LP from 2000 and Biggie's Life After Death from 1997. None of those records, as a whole, are nearly as amazing as their press suggests, but they get canonized from what they say and about the cults of personality they embody. Another way of saying, "aren't critics supposed to like good SONGS?"

Dunno, Chuck, seems to me Moby (from '99) and Outkast and PJ Harvey (from 2000) deserved to scale the top of the P&J unequivocably -- those albums are all classic from start to finish. Same with Dylan the next year. So to me it depends on the year (like, this one, there aren't a whole lot of truly great records, just a whole bunch of enjoyable ones) and on the *uniqueness* (or whatever you wanna call it) of the album in question. There definitiely has never been an album quite like Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. And Wilco winning last year (tho I personally love it) was the direct result of no one else being able to eclipse it for uniqueness, i.e. it was sort of a default pick.

But what the hell do I know? I ain't a poobah. :-)

Albums sort of like *Speakerboxx/The Love Below,* off the top of my head: *Sandinista* (which was better, and which won Pazz and Jop for the same reason the Outkast album probably will); *Use Your Illusion* (okay, that was two albums, sort of. But whatever.) And probably some Prince and George Clinton and Zappa albums I forget. Lots of people seem to say *The White Album* too, but I wouldn't know about that.

Or (again) MAYBE THEY JUST DON'T AGREE THAT THOSE CLUNKERS CLUNKED!

if there were a 10 song outkast sampler of the new one, i would buy it for 5 bucks. i wish people would do something like that nore often. we need to usher in the new era of the E.P.

(I really like listening to all of Sandinista! however cuz I really like the balance of things going on with it over the duration; none of the songs don't stand out so much, but the overall vibe-pattern of the album itself > almost any of the songs on the album.)

Consistency has a place. I like it because I like being able to listen to something all the way through and get a sense of flow; one track speaking to/building on another; beginnings and endings. Plus I'm lazy and it saves me skipping tracks or rearranging the order.

But of course I like inconsistent highs and making my own playlists too. Unfortunately Speakerboxx/Love Below has neither consistency nor very many highs! (or rather, the highs aren't as high as most other Outkast stuff).

PS Scott you are missing out on some kickass stuff on sides 3 and 4 of 1999--Lady Cab Driver, All The Critics Love You in New York...

The Clash, by the way, were one of those rare and valuable artists whose every album was worse than the one before; i.e. The Clash > Give Em Enough Rope > London Calling > Black Market Clash > Sandinista > Combat Rock > Cut the Crap > Whatever Crap They Did After Cut the Crap Assuming They Did Any. (I believe you can do the same thing with Patti Smith, or at least her first five albums.)

This all just my view and my theory as to why, say, hte Magnetic Fields' record would do so well in a national poll, when out of 69 songs, maybe a third of them (in my opinion, mind you) are silly, or not real songs, or are just bad. Yes, the great stuff on that one are POSITIVELY GREAT, which is why, had I been voting back then, I'd have put that on my list.

And why shouldn't I or anyone else view albums as a whole when evaluating whether to put them on a top-10 list? Albums, to me, are no different than books or paintings -- they're a single entity.I've put albums on my year end lists I wasn't blowing my load over to note the fact they are consistently good and occasionally great, that they have no down moments or genuine filler. Coldplay's last record was like that for me. Cat Power's is like that this year (and there's no guarantee she'll even make it to my list at this point).

I also agree, though, that if there's a record with some absolutely amazing stuff on it that I kept gravitating toward an was willing to put with the off moments (ex: Eminem), that it oughtta be considered for top 10 on the fact it was important and compelling enough to keep you listening. That's an accomplishment. So it's case by case.

And yeah, I'll take a 31-minute Dirty Mind over a double album any day of the week. The shorter, the better.

And Chris: One thing I *don't* get is why you think the # of "great" or "merely enjoyable" records in a given year has any bearing AT ALL on the Pazz and Jop results. (Unless you always more or less agree with the consensus, which'd make ewe the dullest species of sheep.)

I like good tracks/songs,
I don't mind me some filler;
long disc, good value!

more skits, more hit/miss,
more indulgence! I'm not afraid
of commitment!

(i like new outkast,
not as much as nick but much
more than some out there,

not because it's "new"
or "innovative"--I just
like several songs)

Not really avoiding your point; if I was, my bad. OF COURSE there's people who think all 69 songs are great. There's probably also folks who think all 69 stink. I'm just trying to read the CONSENSUS, which, yes, might be a little silly. But I'm thinking -- why else would a Mathers finish so high when so many writers bemoaned it in print for the tone/content and lots of folks mentioned some of the filler stuff that they felt didn't quite work? And why else would an album as sprawling and massive as 69 (took me a long time to absorb the damn thing fully enough to have an informed opinion) finish at #2.

By the way, keep in mind I finished 10th out of 690 in last year's P&J critical alignment scoring, right behind Tom Moon and Robert Hilburn ... so maybe I'm pre-disposed to this kinda making pop music into empirical scoring shit to begin with ...

1. I thought I was being indiependent when I finished 10th in that scoring last year. Had no idea it was clusterfuck heaven. God, I don;t wanna be a sheep when I grow up.

2. As for my "just a bunch of enjoyable records, so that's why Wilco finishes #1" shtick, we're critics, and I think universally we know 'em when we see 'em. If an Exile on Main Street or Blood on the Tracks comes out, everybody'll have that one on their list. If they don't, then they're either in an extremem niche or just not that astute. Without a no duh? we gravitate toward one that we feel comes closest, or we vote for we just fucking loved (my bet is way more people do the latter in that case).