P&J '05?

I think you've got Guero a bit high, Gimme Fiction a bit low, and overestimate Fannypack's appeal- I'd be surprised (but happy) to see them make the list at all...

Metacritic is usually a good barometer (kinda falls off on the albums that haven't penetrated the mainstream, but there you go). The top 10 most critically fawned over this year are:

1 Antony And The Johnsons- I Am A Bird Now 88
2 M.I.A.- Arular 87
3 Edan- Beauty And The Beat 86
4 The Go-Betweens- Oceans Apart 86
5 Sleater-Kinney- The Woods 86
6 Andrew Bird- The Mysterious Production Of Eggs 85
7 LCD Soundsystem- LCD Soundsystem 85
8 System Of A Down- Mezmerize 85
9 Eels- Blinking Lights And Other Revelations 85
10 Spoon- Gimme Fiction

Er, no it's not. At all, really.

>kinda falls off on the albums that haven't penetrated the mainstream<

Huh? I don't get this either...you mean like antony & the johnsons and edan and andrew bird and lcd soundsytem (and hell, pretty much everything in the current metacritic top ten give or take system of a down)? oh wait....

Bizarre that nobody (including Metacritic, which is no surprise at all) has mentioned Common (which could *easily* make the top ten, and might finish a lot higher than that.) and i wouldn't be totally surprised if the perceptionists beat out, i dunno, new pornographers or sigur ros that fiery furnaces EP or neko case or art brut (whoever they are) either.

queens of the stone age may not finish at all (does anybody even care about them anymore?) and no way will antony & the johnsons finish that high.

And just noticed NIN up there, wow...I've had the impression that people give even less of a shit about that one the QOTSA one. But maybe I'm wrong.

charlie poole??

Chuck's right about this: the precise reason why Metacritic isn't a good barometer for P&J is that if five critics really, really like the Junior Boys, then they'll have a high Metacritic rating, despite the fact that nobody else has heard them. Come P&J time, what counts is less whether a small number of people love an album and more whether a large number of people kinda-like an album.

And metacritic gets ruined by boneheads like certain pitchforkers who will give a record a 3.1 or something, thereby flushing its score down the toilet.

Acclaimedmusic.net has a much more accurate yearly rating system (although none are perfect, obviously)

jaymc is probably right about vitalic. i had no idea that they were instrumental, even! but yeah, instrumental electronic albums tend not to do well at all.

Top 100 rated albums of 2005 on rateyourmusic.com
http://rateyourmusic.com/top_albums?year=2005

Top 20 at the mo:

1 Sufjan Stevens:
Illinois

2 The Decemberists:
Picaresque

3 The Mars Volta:
Frances The Mute

4 Bright Eyes:
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

5 Andrew Bird:
Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production Of Eggs

6 Sage Francis:
A Healthy Distrust

7 Antony and the Johnsons:
I Am a Bird Now

8 Porcupine Tree:
Deadwing

9 Bloc Party:
Silent Alarm

10 Low:
The Great Destroyer

11 Eels:
Blinking Lights And Other Revelations

12 Architecture In Helsinki:
In Case We Die

13 Dark Tranquillity:
Character

14 Black Label Society:
Mafia

15 System of a Down:
Mezmerize

16 Beck:
Guero

17 Ryan Adams:
Cold Roses

18 Doves:
Some Cities

19 Queens of the Stone Age:
Lullabies to Paralyze

20 LCD Soundsystem:
LCD Soundsystem

*This offer void.

2005 Albums
http://rateyourmusic.com/lists/list_view/list_id_is_14969

(rapos4, my gmail is all fuct, if there are any baseball things going on put my other email on there and attach me)

(And I may vote for it)

I don't think hardly anybody has ever even heard of Magic Numbers or Dead '60s or Arctic Monkeys (two of which I myself have never heard of). None of them will finish, unless one winds up being Arcade Fire.

Both rateyourmusic and metacritc are so indie-rock-intensive it creeps me out. porcupine tree but not common? that's just plain goofy.

xp

dead '60s are sort of... um, a bad ska band or something. they're the ones that i heard of before, too. i even made it through 2 songs on their album!

The Magic Numbers album will go top 5 in the UK, there's an off-chance it may even make number one if its released in a quiet week.

That probably means nothing because P&J is based in the US though. So that was a pointless post.

Costello won in '78, Graham Parker in '79, the Clash in '80 and '81. After that, I forget if anybody from the land of tea and crumpets has won, but there's a good chance somebody has who is slipping my mind.

(um...did u2 ever win? seems like they should have, at least once. but maybe not. sinead o'connor finished second once, as i recall.)

>I'm also curious whether there's a tendency in P&J to skew toward things released in the second half of the year <

not really, i don't think. maybe more so on the singles list, actually. albums that come out in december rarely do all that well.

what i'm wondering if is anybody will not vote for m.i.a. BECAUSE they voted for *piracy funds terrorism* last year. with me, that may be a possibility -- but i usually wind up with so many good albums to choose from (which will *definitely* happen this year) that i often use i-already-voted-for-them-last-year as a factor to weed out albums i would might otherwise have given 5 or 6 points to. all things being equal, artists who already had their turn often go by the wayside.

I'm starting the Bobby Crosby For AL MVP Campaign (Sponsored By Jayson Stark).

x-post - he's only 16!

(BTW, I was wrong - he's 19.)

And Harden Harden Harden (tho both he & Halladay have been waylaid by injuries, and I heard - from that OTHER board - Halladay might be back pretty soon).

He's gotta pick up a few more wins, though. The ERA is mindblowing, but with only 9 wins right now, you can bet that some voters are going to vote for Carpenter. (Even though wins are a meaningless stat, yadda yadda.)

Damn - Pedro's got an ERA 1.4 runs larger than Clemens, w/ almost similar non-run stats (excepting 5 HRs), including a LOWER WHIP! Also, Clemens only has 8 wins. (John Patterson only has 4! He's totally Cy-worthy, too!)

in the al, halladay's been appreciably better than anyone else (save harden, but he missed too much time). and injury aside, he's an innings-eating machine. buerhle places second, i guess.

And Arular is looking like the 05 pazz & jop winner, unless something comes out this fall, which may very easily happen.

Let's not forget Pettitte! He's been fantastic this season! Not Cy-worthy, though. If Clemens maintains that ERA and wins 15-16 games, I don't think there's any way they can't give it to him.

As great as Clemens is, Carpenter is still better. IN the last six weeks he's seemingly mastered the game of baseball. That could all change this afternoon, but it's not likely.

Is it really that exorbitant to predict that he may have made a really strong album that (particular given the 'plays all instruments himself' angle) could be a surprise mature/dinosaur/critical favorite that could go top 40 in p&j?

(I will remind you that you liked Driving Rain, btw.)

put Pedro's name at least in the cy young conversation.

Do you think my favorite record of the year, "Black Forest" by A Frames, will place well in the P&J poll?

A Fan,

Fetchboy

P.S. I think you should vote for it!

Cy Youngs: Oswalt and Barry Zito (if his whole second half is like his past 10 starts)

and if I were voting P&J today I would submit only a singles ballot, no albums ballot.

http://koji1972.cocolog-nifty.com/yappari/ichiro_suzuki_08.jpg

Hell yeah!!!!

I Think "Since U Been Gone" Is Great And I Think She Could Probably Do A Great Version Of Russ Ballard's "Since You've Been Gone" In A Rainbow OR A Cherie & Marie Currie Vein As Well

Joining the conversation way late, but this is an incredible release. Too bad no one seems to be paying attention.

#34. Did you see them at Lollapalooza, Josh? I was kind of bored with the two new songs they played.