The Pitchfork Top 20 of 2001

Loosen the reigns, kids. Really. Music is a bigger picture. The culture of the inclusive ain't no big wagon.

Might as well read the SPIN mag top 100, where half the people they choose won't be interviewed by their Captain Morgan ad-banner ass.

hey hey sorry, it's late and i'm groggy

more late night grouchy talk. sorry again

For some reason I'm much more forgiving of lists generally than I was before, maybe because it's increasingly difficult to imagine being totally satisfied by any of them.

Ethan's Prefuse summary is cool too - although I hope he doesn't plan to limit himself to *just* gimmick pieces from now on.

Am I the only one on ILM to dislike lists, period? Don't see much use in reading them, don't like making them.

Jeez, Jim, I feel bad for you then--you're missing a lot of goodness.

One thing that emerges from this year's list is a strange sort of tension within the Fork camp. I don't get the same sense of "we're all behind all these records" that I got last year (maybe I was just paying attention more this year). A phrase from Ryan's Microphones piece is especially telling: "The Glow, Pt. 2 is the year's most beautiful release, without ever resorting to rock's tired orchestras or stuttering glitchcraft"--as if "resorting to stuttering glitchcraft" is a really obvious thing to do when you want to inject some "beauty" into your music. It's almost as if he's specifically commenting on Fennesz being at #2.

And worse yet, he brings up the same tired-ass cliches in that piece that people dis the Fork for all the time: "The Glow, Pt. 2 is to big- budget rock epics what camcorded home movies are to sci-fi Hollywood blockbusters: infinitely more affecting and sincerely moving"--YAWN YAWN FUCKING YAWN!!! Also: "Best of all, the Microphones have managed all this without pretense." It is impossible to make a record without pretense. If you have the gall to think people will give up hours and hours of their time to listen to your creation, you have at least a shred of pretense. And if you don't have the gall to think that, you aren't ambitious enough to make good music, anyway.

I should have clarified, I like looking at different people's lists.

But any sort of "official" list, like NME or Spin or ILM, doesn't really interest me -- since it's done by committee, you don't get any sense of the passion for music and there usually aren't many surprises. It's more fun to poke around someone's individual obsessions and idiosyncrasies.

But that's exactly why they're so boring. If a mag/site/what have you has been telling you all year how great a certain album is, why is the audience supposed to care when they do a year-end list? It's already been said, why bother saying it again?

i dont think anyone is supposed to care. they are just fun to make, but people do seem to respond (i wont say care) to them, so they keep getting made. probably because they are a semi-tangible way to represent taste and are easy to debate.

And am I the only one that read the memo clearly stating that _Mass Romantic_ came out in the Year of our Britney 2000?

I do sort of agree with this, at least when it comes to all-time- best-of lists. But as something of a list freak (as anyone who’s seen my site knows), I must say that for me a lot of the interest in a list does come in what’s picked, and where it’s ordered, especially for year-end lists. Look at The Face’s year-end lists, particularly the singles--they tend to read like a reflection of a handful of people’s very idiosyncratic tastes, rather than what they think the magazine’s picks should be. (Maybe I’m wrong about this, but that’s the way it looks to me.) As much as I love Pazz & Jop, The Village Voice’s poll, the results themselves are usually pretty bland; as a friend once put it, there’s a lot of white men from the Midwest who vote. (The fact that both he and I fit that description, of course, doesn’t count, ahem.)

Reactions to Pitchfork end of year poll - "Yawn, bor-ING."

It was the best it could have been. As usual my personal hackles rose in a couple of places - in 2001 it seems more than perverse to describe something that sounds like The Wonder Stuff circa "Size Of A Cow" as "the first great straightforward pop record of the new century" or whatever they said about the New Pornographers. Ryan S. should put guidelines on use of the word "pop" into his style guide I think. And the Strokes write-up was designed to annoy and did annoy (and I'm putting that album a lot higher than #15 in my EOY list!)

But as someone commented above it was a more interesting, more varied and more humble list than usual. Good stuff I think.

Are the Microphones any good, then?

As for polls in general, Nicole is right and this is why there won't be an official balloted FT list.

Anyway I still would like an official ILM Top 20 albums poll done by e-mail coordination (to avoid bias) - then collated - list published - plus individual lists - when 2001 is over.

All these attempts of lists so far, have been done in October, November and early December. I can imagine that a fair number of people will be buying additional albums for Christmas/ After Christmas.

So how about votes start at Jan 1st to up to say Jan 7th then poll published a few days/ week later..and get someone who can be trusted to collate it - if the individual lists are also published this should not be a problem.

I'm going to be too busy with the site redesign and relaunch to help with an ILM poll but by all means do one - can I suggest that there's a singles category too though? (Or just do what we did with the top 100 and say 'records').

Unfortunately I have a busy schedule ahead in early Jan and will not be able to coordinate a poll.

Re Pitchfork poll - ethan's Top 10 is interesting. I'd like to see some blurb from him on why #2 thru #10.

1. http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/top/2001/15.gifCool new cover for The Strokes album!!!
2. Really groovy review of Prefuse 73's elpee: "+87aZ{{skZixmZRJ+tbeatBY[:%?F&6&*;11))!!kccZRR{{kkscc1î{cRRasmMRMJCACD?IE)W\7;.-4%&/,51($$(6"... and that's just the first line!!! Who knew reviews in obsfucated Perl could be so cool!??!?!?

Old Fart!!!!!!

Right! I got into an argument with a fan of a certain garage rock band the other day aboot this. This fan has gotten into garage rock lately 'cause it doesn't have any of the 'pretensions' that bands like Radiohead and Mercury Rev have. As if spending a good deal of time in the studio to get your voice to sound somewhat 'vintage' or like one of your heroes is any less pretentious that putting a bowed saw on a song. It just depends on what 'type' of pretension you prefer, but it's all pretentious in the end. Even improv can be pretentious.

ba dum dum.

I am going to record me gutting a live goat over a sample of ABBA's "Dancing Queen." I will run it through three DSPS, manipulating it to death. I will label the tape "Strokes bassist side project." I will send it to pitchfork. I will await critical acclaim.

Judging by your fondness for Piano Magic, I think you'd quite enjoy It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water -- (although you shouldn't take that logic to imply that there's anything more than a general tonal similarity between the two) -- and, by most accounts, the new one is better. Beautiful stuff, and if nothing else, completely free- thinking; conventional shapes are pretty much immediately thrown out the window, and you feel quite powerfully the fact that you're being presented not with what fits the form, but what fits the logic of the record in Phil Elvrum's head.

Closest sonic reference points I can come up with are: Eric's Trip, His Name is Alive, Neutral Milk Hotel in a heaven for Eskimos, tape hiss, falling asleep next to a loudly steaming radiator, Danny Elfman in his tinkly Edward Scissorhands mode, frost on windows.

1) Microphones, the glow pt. 2: the little I heard didn't make me eager to further investigate

2)Fennesz, endless summer: only an IDM freak would like this record... horrible

3)Avalaches, since I left you: the single was ok but I don't usually spend my money on disco music, I don't have a disco at home!

4)Unwound, leaves turn inside you: not my cup of blood but I guess it's more than ok

5)circulatory system, s/t: I had big expectations about this album, sadly they were bitterly disappointed

6)radiohead, amnesiac: ok, we all know that radiohead are the most overrated band in the history of music. by the way, does anyone actually like them?

7) Mum, yesterday was dramatic, today...: don't know much about this record but I don't think I'd like it

8) Whites Stripes, ...: I really wanted to like this album but maybe their music is just TOO stripped-down

9)New Pornographers: I love this one!

10)Prefuse 73: it's just background music for me

11) + 12) autechre + mouse on mars: same as above

13)Les savy fav: nice one

14)dismemberment plan: very nice

15)strokes: I really hate to repeat myself but... nice one

16)jim o'rourke: pretty good

17)cannibal ox: what's the fuss about indie hip-hop? I like some parts of it, nearly adore other ones but... bah, I remain skeptical

18)Beta Band: didn't listen to this one

19) Dntel: same as above but it looks alarmingly like yet another idm release

20) fugazi, the argument: I've ordered it the other day

When I listen to Cannibal Ox, specifically Vast Aire's booming voice, I don't think 'indie hip-hop.' A couple of songs from that album like "F-Word" and "B-Boy's Alpha" strike me as singles that would get airtime if radio stations had guts and weren't all owned by Clear Channel communications. It doesn't sound anything like, say, cLOUDDEAD or the Hood tracks with Dose One on them.

and I'm curious, do you like any electronic music? is 'IDM' a disqualifying factor for you?

Anyway, all of this is just and excuse to say how perfect the Microphones record is. I'm having a hard time coming up with an argument for it based on anything tangible, but I've been listening to it regularly for the past five months or so and I still have the desire to play it again.

Sure. :-)

You'll just have to take our word for it that there's more to IDM and "electronica" than you're engaging with. I realize you're being deliberately dismissive, but "bips and clicks repeated ad nauseam" is a pretty disingenous reduction ... just as much as "three guitar chords and some guy shouting" would be a disingenous reduction of rock. Similarly "I don't have a disco at home" is like "I won't listen to arena rock because I don't have an arena at home" or "I won't listen to West African pop because I don't have Kinshasa at home."

It seems like the divide for you is between hearing clear human involvement in music and, well, not, insofar as electronics screen the creator into an abstract background?

Personally, when I'm dancing, I'm usually thinking about thermonucleardynamics and disco balls remind me of subatomic particles in a centrifuge, as the dance floor splits up into pairs and groups, flashing strobes always remind me that the speed of light was actually breeched a few times recently and I wish Einstein were here to comment. I wonder if beyond the event horizon there are some sort of blips, clicks and tones that intertwine as they stream out, creating all varieties of music and everything else, too.

I don't like dance music, either. It's too sterile for some reason. Robot music is sort of a novelty act to these ears.

ehm, yes... maybe you should call for a doctor...

Now seriously: this kind of bullshit (oh, poetic bullshit mind you...) could be said about clouds. You see a simple cloud and you imbue your description with abstract nonsense but at the core it remains a cloud. IDM IS ten minutes of bips and clicks, you can come up with beautiful and tempting descriptions about how the second bip reminds you of the ineluctability of death and the third bip is the starting point of a spiral... but deep down in your heart you know those interpretations are ultimately absurd. It takes more than a bip to make evoking music, if you see images flowing through your brain is just because you have an hyperactive imagination! not a bad thing at all but you probably don't the need the aid of idm to make it work.

what in the hell is "evoking music"?

and more importantly what's the alternative? you know...that "evoking music" you speak of? potholed theories and faulty logic are probably not the way to convince a largely pre- converted audience. offer us some alternatives goddamn it to our oh- so-soulless clicks and bips.

I love pt. II of the Köln concert, by Keith Jarrett, that's evoking music. oh, someone mentioned carla bley not a long ago... and what about witchi-tai-to by Jan Garbarek? (please don't be bithcy about the ECM sound, any attempt to dismiss it as new age fluff would be pathetic)

Besides, I'm curious as to whether you'd apply that argument to the Prefuse 73 or Avalanches records, both of which are organized pretty much like the music you consider "proper," and with, in fact, less repetition that your average rock record.

I think that my arguments go a bit further than a statement such as "IDM is shite". That's my thesis not my argument! Besides they sound a lot more convincing than what your summary would make one think... It's you who didn't offer counter-arguments... :-)

I'm not trying to convince you that IDM is good, or anything -- only trying to point out that there's a lot of content to much of it that, based on your writings here, you don't seem to be engaging with or even detecting. That's not a criticism, merely an observation I feel you should take into account when making critical arguments about these sorts of records.

However, there's no reason to think that any music is inherently meaningful - the only reason why classical or rock "means" anything to us at all is that we've inherited an understanding of a Western musical tradition, so certain chords, certain couplings of notes, certain combinations of instruments etc. synthesise with the contextual knowledge we bring to the table.

IDM hasn't benefited from the historical and social pre-eminence that classical music or rock has, so a lot of people, when approaching it for the first time, literally have to invent the context as they go - this is why new listeners usually tend to start from relatively straightforward IDM and progress into the more avant/experimental/wanky stuff (depending on how you look at it). But the idea that a style that doesn't have historical or social pre-eminence is therefore empty is preposterous, and from your overly-defensive introduction of ECM into the argument I would have thought you'd be well aware of all this.

The Unwound? Okay, if you've been asleep the past nine years... White Stripes? Their first alb said it all. The third is redundancy city. Prefuse73 - more bad 'Wire'-isms from an Atlanta-based Tortoise wannabe... Fugazi? PLEASE!!!

Anything on Kill Rock Stars or K? Flush 'em.

Beta Band? NO! Beck will die a horribly slow death for his part in all this...

Good albums in 2001? NONE. Such a wash-out. Two decent singles, maybe... The Sightings debut stunned, and uh, okay, maybe one decent single...

I'm a very picky girl, and I have NO TIME for ostriches. Heck, the Britney/Neptunes "Slave" collaboration was 50x better than anything on the list... There is NOTHING remotely avant-garde about IDM.

Happy Holidays,

Laura

also, i trust this means that i'll awaken on the 26th to find the raucous sounds of banjos on fire pumping out of every teenagers jeep in middle america via our good friends at clear channel. bluegrass, the sound of sneering adolescent angst for the y2k2?

Maybe one great, or at least semi-great album - Andrew WK's "I Get Wet." He's channeling Island-era Sparks, of course, but ramped up to absurd, brazen lengths. "Ready to Die," "Party Till You Puke," "Take It Off," and the BIG BIG BIG BIG single "Party Hard."

It decimates everything on Pitchfork's fey lil' list...

Over and Out,

Laura

I have grave doubts as to my holiness - I'm quite certain that you are far more equipped for the burdens and august responsibilities of sainthood than I.

As to the NME, I could care less if Andrew WK's rabid management team greased a few hairy Brit palms. For me, "cred" is the most absurd of conceits, and is an obsolete concept. Get with the program.

Genre means even less to me; hype is a mere business by-product, and should be taken no more seriously than an infomercial.

Andrew's album isn't perfect, but it fucking delivered the goods. I could care less who endorses it -- I ENDORSE IT, and that's good sufficient for this gal.

These are threads of opinion, bnw - my contributions are of fixed value - two red cents.

Sincerely,

Laura N.

(Regardless of content, that was a stellar piece of writing right there.)

I mean Anthony Easton, obviously.

You mean Anthony Sanderson, don't you, Nitsuh :)?

Music is as evocative as one is trained to hear it. If one trains up the ear to hear beauty in clicks and bleeps, or guitar chords, or avant jazz or whatever, then one allows the sounds to be read as more than merely sounds, a surface language, but as an internal one. One can then begin to differentiate in qualatitive terms perhaps.

Thus Autechre rock, whilst Fennessz (or however you spell his name). bores. And its not IDM, chances of dancing to it = 0 Electronics, laptop music, probably better titles for it anyway.