#^d 2014-12-27 #^h Pazz and Jop Ballot

I voted in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll yesterday. My ballot:

Albums:

  1. Lily Allen: Sheezus (Warner Brothers/Regal) 19
  2. Steve Lehman Octet: Mise en Abīme (Pi) 14
  3. Duduvudu: The Gospel According to Dudu Pukwana (Edgetone) 10
  4. Kate Tempest: Everybody Down (Big Dada) 10
  5. Paul Shapiro: Shofarot Verses (Tzadik) 10
  6. The Green Seed: Drapetomania (Communicating Vessels) 9
  7. Jenny Scheinman: The Littlest Prisoner (Masterworks) 9
  8. The Strypes: Snapshot (Island/Photo Finish) 7
  9. Revolutionary Snake Ensemble: Live Snakes (Accurate) 7
  10. Wussy: Attica! (Shake It) 5

Songs:

  1. Pharrell Williams: "Happy" [Girl, Columbia]
  2. Leonard Cohen: "Almost Like the Blues" [Popular Problems, Columbia]
  3. Charli XCX: "London Queen" [Sucker, Atlantic]
  4. Lily Allen: "Hard Out Here" [Sheezus, Warner Bros./Regal]
  5. Iggy Azalea: "Fancy" [The New Classic, Island]
  6. Jason Derulo: "Marry Me" [Talk Dirty, Warner Bros.]
  7. Parquet Courts: "Black and White" [Sunbathing Animal, What's Your Rupture?]
  8. Peter Stampfel and the Brooklyn & Lower Manhattan Banjo Squadron: "NSA Man" (Better Than Expected, Don Giovanni]
  9. Nicki Minaj: "Anaconda" [The Pinkprint, Young Money]
  10. Sunny Sweeney: "Everybody Else Can Kiss My Ass" [Provoked, Aunt Daddy]

The songs all came from album tracks, with eight of ten on my A-list, but only one redundant to the albums ballot. The songs are overwhelmingly from major labels -- a testament to today's big pop production machine -- whereas the albums are more scattered (three majors, seven independents). Four albums are jazz, but none of the singles. The albums were carefully considered from the 1004 albums (952 new, 52 comp/archival) released in 2014 that I listened to seriously enough to grade. The songs were picked out much more arbitrarily. Jasons Gross and Gubbels generously shared their year-end song lists, but even after sampling a few things off the top of each I doubt that I've heard 20% of either list (nearly all in the context of albums, but surprisingly few appeared on albums I've heard). I also checked out Spin's year-end list, but closed it after the top two came nowhere close. I suspect that more digging would find a lot of things I'd feel bad about leaving out, but the top half of the list is likely to remain pretty solid.

The albums, of course, were much more rigorously considered. The only one on my ballot that's likely to get more than five votes is Wussy.[*] In my EOY list file, Attica! currently sits on line 347 with 6 points and only one mention so far on a top-ten list (5th on Greg Kot's Chicago Tribune list), but I know at least that many voters certain to vote for it. I was on the fence myself, slightly preferring Digital Primitives' Lipsomuch/Soul Searchin', also considering Parquet Courts' Sunbathing Animal and Old 97's Most Messed Up, and completely forgetting about the year's best compilation, Scratchin': The Wild Jimmy Spruill Story. I normally pay little attention to what other people are voting for, but it seems possible (if not exactly likely) that Wussy will sneak into the top-40, so I felt like doing that.

On the other hand, Wussy is likely to flat out win Odyshape's 2014 EW Pazz & Jop poll, so there's less excuse voting for it there, let alone need or value. So I'm making one change to the ballot above for Odyshape, replacing Wussy with the Jimmy Spruill compilation. It was, after all, an oversight, buried by my bookkeeping system down in the reissues and vault music. Had I thought of it before casting my P&J ballot I probably would have included it there.

I've long hated the top-ten cutoffs, which forcibly magnify marginal distinctions. No competent critic should be limited to ten highly recommended records in a year. When I ran a poll similar to Odyshape's in 2002-03, I tried to rectify this by allowing voters to extend their ballots: records from 11-20 got three points, 21-30 got two points, and anything past 30 was given one point. The long lists had little effect on the standings, but they added many more distinctive records to the totals. I wish Odyshape had adopted this embellishment, but they seem to regard P&J as some sort of holy grail.

I've found about 130 A- or higher albums this year (plus another 200+ high B+ records, and that list -- not my top-10 -- is the real EOY list. I've split the full EOY list into jazz and non-jazz parts -- about 60% of the new albums I've listened to this year were jazz, and they were mostly heard on CD whereas the non-jazz were mostly streamed. I don't consider compartmentalizing jazz to be either natural or desirable, but the differences in sample size and methodology, my status as an expert in jazz and a rank amateur in nearly everything else (except classical, where I'm a committed ignoramus) justifies the split.


[*] Kate Tempest's Mercury Prize-nominated album has some critical support, but thus far it's almost exclusively in Europe. She's tied for 56th place in my EOY count, finishing in the top 20 in 11 polls so far, but no higher than 8th. Steve Lehman won NPR's Jazz Critics Poll, but hardly anyone votes for jazz in P&J. Then there is Lily Allen's major label pop record, but it only has three mentions in EOY lists thus far, none higher than 46th. I expect it to do somewhat better in P&J, but a breakthrough doesn't look to be in the cards. The only other record with even one EOY list mention is Jenny Scheinman's, with just one on an unranked country genre list.