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Music: Current count 26017 [25987] rated (+30), 396 [394] unrated (+2).
Ratings down a bit due to the holidays -- I cooked traditional family fare for my sister and nephew on Xmas Eve, then next day drove out to a nearby farm for dinner with a cousin and his wife's family -- and also due to the Pazz & Jop ballot deadline. After kicking some things around, I filed the following ballot a day early:
Albums:
- Lyrics Born: Real People (Mobile Home) 16
- Irène Schweizer/Han Bennink: Welcome Back (Intakt) 14
- Sleaford Mods: Key Markets (Harbinger Sound) 12
- Blackalicious: Imani, Vol. 1 (OGM) 10
- James McMurtry: Complicated Game (Complicated Game) 10
- Laurie Anderson: Heart of a Dog (Nonesuch) 8
- Courtney Barnett: Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (Mom + Pop Music) 8
- Paris: Pistol Politics (Guerrilla Funk, 2CD) 8
- Henry Threadgill Zooid: In for a Penny, In for a Pound (Pi, 2CD) 8
- Heems: Eat Pray Thug (Megaforce) 6
Songs:
- Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth, "All Tomorrow's Parties" (from Epicenter, Clean Feed)
- Tuxedo, "Do It" (from Tuxedo, Stones Throw)
- Ezra Furman, "Ordinary Life" (from Perpetual Motion People, Bella Union)
- Lindstrøm & Grace Hall, "Home Tonight" (Feedility)
- Aesop Rock & Homeboy Sandman, "Get a Dog" (from Lice, Stones Throw)
- Kendrick Lamar, "King Kunta" (from To Pimp a Butterfly, Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope)
- Ashley Monroe, "Dixie" (from The Blade, Warner Music)
- Death Team, "Fucking Bitches in the Hood" (no label)
- Gwenno, "Chwyldro" (from Y Dydd Olaf, Heavenly)
- Jason Derulo, "Want to Want Me" (from Everything Is 4, Warner Bros)
I'm reasonably satisfied with the albums list, although you might note that the Threadgill album is higher (6 vs. 9) on my official 2015-in-progress list than several non-jazz albums on the ballot, and four more jazz albums are on the list ahead of Heems:
- Schlippenbach Trio: Features (Intakt)
- Mike Reed's People Places & Things: A New Kind of Dance (482 Music)
- Joe Fiedler Trio: I'm In (Multiphonics Music)
- Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth: Epicenter (Clean Feed)
I don't like the idea that Pazz & Jop should be the non-jazz (actually, rock/rap-only) forum it effectively is, but I've already touted the jazz records above in the Jazz Critics Poll, but at the moment felt like spreading the action around a bit. (Actually, I doubt that I'll be the only person voting for Schweizer/Bennink or Threadgill in Pazz & Jop, and might not have been the only one for Reed and Lightcap, although I will be surprised if any of the others clear a vote.) I've been keeping separate Jazz and Non-Jazz EOY lists for several years now, but I don't think I've ever skewed the scales before. This may just be a temporary aberration, but it also has something to do with the way I've been working, which keeps me from really falling in love with practically any of the records I've been recommending.
At this point, I still only have two full-A records for 2015 (whereas Christgau has 9 plus 1 A+, not counting anything he has in reserve, and Tatum has 7 plus 3 A+, not counting Courtney Barnett [number 4 on his P&J ballot]). I did manage to play six of my ballot picks this week, but didn't move any of them up from A- to A -- most years I move 4-5 up, so I can't say if this is the records or me. (I also rechecked 4 albums I had filed in the B+ range, all records that Christgau had A-listed, and did move three up to A-, which helps even out the Jazz/Non-Jazz lists -- currently 71 to 59. The straggler was Jamie XX's In Colour, certainly a fine album but not enough so to get me to do all the associated paperwork.)
I also replayed the consensus record of the year, Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, but never gave it all the time it seems to demand. And while I flagged it as a very solid A- the first time I streamed it, it's never cohered enough to move on up. No chance it won't win Pazz & Jop -- it's way ahead (577-381-320-285) in my EOY List Aggregate, and no other record has any late momentum like D'Angelo's Black Messiah last year, or any identifiable demographic advantage -- so it felt like it would be a wasted vote. So I nudged Heems above it: not sure it's the better album, but it might be, and is the more interesting choice. Among other things, it makes for two Asian-American rappers on my list. (For what it's worth, Heems will do better in P&J than it has in my EOY List Aggregate: its support is almost exclusively concentrated among Christgau's Expert Witnesses, who amount to a block of 20-30 voters. The effect should be about midway between Wussy and Withered Hand in 2014, where Wussy rose from 66 to 24, and Withered Hand from 100 to 92, but note that I'm working with final metafile tallies for 2014, which already include a lot of individual ballots from the Expert Witness poll. Currently I only have a few of them -- and haven't counted any points for Christgau, Tatum, or myself -- so Heems at 142 is probably a bit better than Withered Hand was at the same stage. I predict it will get 15-20 P&J votes and end up in the 50-70 range. Last year Wussy got 29 and Withered Hand got 8.)
On the other hand, I have no confidence in my songs list. I almost didn't bother, but wanted to tout Chris Lightcap's Velvet Underground cover -- especially since I skipped over his album. It then occurred to me that I could pick songs from other albums that missed the cut -- Lamar, of course, plus Furman, Gwenno, Monroe, and especially Tuxedo (the year's most memorable single). I looked a couple friends' lists, and watched 10-15 videos (more than I've done all year), picking out songs that seemed good enough. I wound up with two non-album singles that Dan Weiss likes, and one choice cut from an album that otherwise I don't much care for (Jason Derulo's). Also the standout track from one of the few EPs I graded A-.
Certainly a decent list, but one that I'm sure could have been improved had I spent a few more days checking things out, especially if I considered cuts from my top-ten albums ("Free People" would easily have made the list, and very likely "Flag Shopping"). I sort of get the appeal of "best songs" lists on two levels: I grew up in an era when we first heard music on AM radio (KLEO was my station) and bought 45s, so it seems perfectly natural to me to segue "Wild Thing," say, into "Woolly Bully." Until 1965 I didn't even have a record player that could play LPs, and I doubt that I bought twenty of them through the end of the decade. On the other hand, by the early 1970s we came to think of LP sides as integral works of art, meant to be consumed whole, and from 1970 up to about 1977 I doubt I bought a single 45 -- good chance the record that broke that streak was "God Save the Queen."
I also approve, at least in principle, of the idea of programming your own playlists, something that home computers made accessible to the masses. However, I've never gotten the hang of the technology, not so much because I find it incomprehensible as because it doesn't suit the way I work. Even streaming, I rarely bother with anything but album-length chunks, because that still makes sense to me as the unit to write about -- and for today, at least, I mostly listen to write. I can imagine at some point turning back inward and starting to reduce my collection to its rare finest moments, but that's mostly to eliminate clutter. (At some point I suspect all collections decay into clutter.) Nor am I sure that constant exposure to brilliance would be such a good thing. I suspect I'd get too used to it.
The other thing that bothers me about "best songs" is how much they are tied to videos. I hated MTV when it started to exercise its tyranny over popular music in the 1980s. My initial complaint was how it added an extraneous and expensive obstacle for music to reach the public. Moreover, it worked to select popular music by how photogenic the musicians were. Of course, since then music videos have been democratized (and amateurized) with the usual mixed bag of results. My research this year consisted of nothing more than watching Youtube videos, which were equally divided between nonsensical collages and Bollywood-worthy dance numbers. (Conceiving singles as studio product, I didn't bother with the third great class: live performance documents.) So inadvertently I bought into the notion that it's not a song unless it comes packaged in a video.
I've also been invited to participate in El Intruso's 8th Creative Music Critics Poll. I think it's based in Argentina, and the focus is avant-jazz. About half of the 40+ critics are Americans I recognize. Instructions call for no more than three answers in each category. Most of those categories are instruments, which raises all sorts of awkward problems -- it's hard enough to rank albums, but I don't really believe in ranking people, so the names I jotted down below are just ones I thought could use some extra recognition. Also note that the instruments themselves weren't created equal: I could reel off the names of twenty tenor saxophonists (and fifteen altoists) before I could get to a third soprano or baritone. Also, while there are quite a few good acoustic bassists who also play electric, I hardly ever recognize them as such. Final point is I spent less than half an hour doing this, mostly by looking back over last year's notes file. Anyhow, this is what I sent in:
It would, I think, be more interesting if they did more of a record poll, especially if the ballots could extend beyond a top ten.
Probably the first week ever where everything in the newly rated list came from streaming. I did play several records in the new jazz queue but didn't get around to writing them up. My first impression is that Allen Lowe's In the Diaspora of the Diaspora would have easily added up to an A- had he packed them into a box, but releasing them individually is making me do more work. Steve Swell's Hommage à Bartok is also certainly an A-, but he begged me to write "more than your usual" and nothing slows me down like that.
Also spent a lot of time adding to the EOY List Aggregate files, but have no time left to write about them. Maybe next week, or when Pazz & Jop comes out (January 13). As of this moment I have 318 lists compiled, referencing 3126 albums. Still working on it, but I have a pretty good idea how it all sorts out (Kendrick Lamar, Sufjan Stevens, Courtney Barnett, Jamie XX, Father John Misty, Tame Impala, Grimes, Julia Holter, Bjork, Sleater-Kinney, Vince Staples, Kamasi Washington, Joanna Newsom, Oneohtrix Point Never; 4-5-6 are pretty close but fairly stable; 9-12 are even closer and more volatile; 14 is gaining, but has too much ground to make up to bump 13; the rest of the top-20 are Kurt Vile, Carly Jepsen, Blur, Drake, Alabama Shakes, Viet Cong, and they're still likely to change).
New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Grade changes:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week: