Pazz and Jop "paste your comments here" thread.

1. Sugababes - Taller In More Ways - Island (18)
2. Trina - The Glamorest Life - Atlantic (18)
3. Lil Wayne - Tha Carter II - Atlantic (8)
4. Mariah Carey - The Emancipation of Mimi - Island
(8)
5. Sleater Kinney - The Woods - Sub Pop (8)
6. Annie - Anniemal - Big Beat (8)
7. t.A.T.u. - Dangerous and Moving - Universal (8)
8. Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree - 4AD (8)
9. Sean Paul - The Trinity - Atlantic (8)
10. Various Artists - Crunk Hits - TVT (8)

Your Pazz & Jop singles ballot was submitted as
follows:

1. Gwen Stefani - Cool - Interscope
2. Rachel Stevens - Some Girls - Polydor
3. Foxy Brown ft. Sizzla - Come Fly With Me - Def Jam
4. Three 6 Mafia ft. Young Buck, Eightball & MJG -
Stay Fly - Hypnotize
Minds/Columbia
5. Mariah Carey - We Belong Together - Island
6. Daddy Yankee - Gasolina - V.I.
7. Rihanna - Pon De Replay - Def Jam
8. Sugababes - Push The Button - Island
9. R. Kelly - Trapped In The Closet, pt. 3 - Jive
10. Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone - RCA

---

Pazz and Jop Comments, one-off lines, grumpy rants,
you know the deal:

Pity Kelly Rowland and Hogan who missed this year of
the Kellys (Clarkson, Osbourne, R.) "Since U Been
Gone" of course being the greatest crossover hit since
Nine Inch Nails, or maybe that Baz Luhrmann thing.
Personally, when I sing to myself I forget the new
wave touches and invent even more screechy one-note
guitar riffs. A serious take on what "Stroke of
Genius" jokingly conjectured, this and plenty else
leaves mash-ups feeling out-outrageoused by the
material they've come to cannibalize.

But then, Rachel Stevens and the Sugababes were just
as unabashedly great, so Britain has something the
U.S. doesn't, which I suspect is an ability not to eat
its teen-pop young before they shed their pupal stage
and emerge as adult-contemporary butterflies. Witness,
in contrast, the frenzied, class-driven clawing of the
tabloids over Britney.

R.'s soap-hopera was great as it was dropping, and
continues to be better in concept than execution. If
he was gonna do them all over one beat, why not the
"Step..." one, or even "Heaven I Need a Hug"?

Either I'm finally getting older or hip-hop lyrics are
getting... dumber, like the universe wants to prove
that Tate was right all along. While rap used to
out-verbose Dylan and Mark E. Smith without trying,
the current crop of top singles, and 50 Cent
especially, barely have lyrics at all. Kanye excepted,
and that's only because punchlines are supposed to
make up for lack of breath control, I suppose. With
Missy guesting on Ciara, the LOX with Mariah, Busta
with the Pussycat Dolls, Eve with Gwen Stefani, the
best pop raps seem to have found a better home
altogether in R&B.

Came, went, stuck around once the hipsters picked 'em
clean: Reggaeton, Screw, "Crunk", DC Go-Go (at least
in samples). Left for strip-mining (as goes Diplo, so
goes the world): baile-funk, baltimore breakbeat,
Bach. Which, come to think of it, are just what the
dipset *does* mine, so the hipster love-affair with
the overground "underground" of mass market mixtapes
has that to consider too, to the extent it considers
at all.

There's no artist this year to make us ask what it all
means, but rediscovering Sophie Ellis Bextor's "Murder
on the Dancefloor" from some time back had the same
effect on me. Handclaps, disco beats, diva vocals,
choral swoops. Why search for the next big thing when
it seems the 70s had it right all along? Music is for
music and maybe we should just grow up and look
somewhere else to justify the rest of our lives. After
all, the Kanye furor and general souring on the
current folks holding office demonstrate that politics
doesn't improve music, and oddly enough that artists
with "political" statements (with the aforementioned
exception) generally don't have much to say either.
The current mood of weariness has less made music
dangerous than just rendered the latest crop of
"statements" (back from, what, Green Day again?
c'mon!) all the more tepid and comfortable. Meanwhile,
"Welcome to Jamrock"'s great statement is just that
shooting is bad, Lil Kim's that the courts done her
wrong so just shut up, and The Black Eyed Peas that
The Man can now turn them on and off by remote. When
the field is open to Jim Jones, then you know the
going's bad. But don't go looking to indie for
transgressive kicks, b'cause, Morning Jacket, M.I.A.;
clap your hands, what else do I have to say?

I am insulted, yes, INSULTED tho I've never actually knowingly heard them, why, I don't even have a grasp of what they sound like.

Greetings, poobahs! Here’s my demographia: 28, white, straight, married, rockist, just had my first kid, still really work as trainer at a bookstore and organist/ choir director at church. I should inform you that my #2 single pick, Conjunto Primavera’s “Moño Negro,” is misspelled on my ballot due to the non-transferability between fonts of special symbols, including n’s with tildes. Just as George Bush doesn’t care about black people, so does the IT world in general (including the Voice online voting system?) not care about Latin music--not in any pejorative way, but just in the sense that it doesn’t occur to anyone that easy transferability of special symbols, like n’s with tildes, might be a good idea. But I should get off my high horse, cos for half the year I thought the song was “Moño Negra”, and I still can’t speak any Spanish to know what Mr. Conjunto Primavera (whose name I’m too lazy to look up) is singing about, besides his guitarra--but my goodness, he has the most beautiful upper range, and the accordion part is busy as all getout.

I did try to get into regional Mexican this year, and I made some serious headway--I can now distinguish between norteno (I’m giving up on the special symbols myself here), banda, and Duranguense, rather than just hearing a bunch of alternately boring and crazy polkas. But I’m still voting for a bunch of boring rock and pop records, sticking with the music that’s gotten me to where I am today. That’s Loyalty! And it’s also comfort, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with comfort. I love Rod Lee’s mixtape and all the exciting effects he pulls off, but when we were bringing baby Zack home from the hospital and were worried about his head flopping over in his car seat and what the heck we would do with him when we got home, my wife asked me to turn off the austere house mix, and I agreed--there just wasn’t enough warmth in it. Nor would there’ve been any warmth in several of my other pix, including Run the Road or the Alacranes/Lamento 2fer. They’re fine and exciting, but my musical heart (especially in an unfamiliar or crisis situation) goes for the warmth. (This is why I’ve never really loved Sleater Kinney.)

And rockist me, I find warmth in the Lightning Bolt album. Whether it’s because real people are playing it (which I don’t think is the case, cos I can’t always tell--I long assumed Alacranes and Lamento had real tuba players, but somehow having fake tuba players is even cooler) or (more likely) because it uses tools I’m familiar with, like hardcore rants and minimalist arpeggios and the title song’s “text” painting, I feel right at home in Lightning Bolt’s music, and it still manages to thrill and delight me almost from beginning to end. (Zack likes it too--thus begins my long boring tradition of “my boy likes this” boasts--along with Metal Machine Music and Stan Brakhage movies, though I really shouldn’t put too much stock in that stuff, as he likes anything that moves or makes sound.) It took me a couple more listens to feel that way about Mercenary, but now I’m convinced that Kral and Mikkel--not MIA--are the year’s most important new voices. Kral, for instance, growls while Mikkel sings like Roger from Rent, and the effect is totally stunning, as stunning as Big and Rich’s close harmonies. Fierce while beautiful, acknowledging pain while longing to escape it, these Danes’ 11 Dreams are the antidote to our government’s wastrel thuggery, an act of Platonic devotion in the face of inescapable drudgery! Thuggery and drudgery, and Mercenary’s beautiful violence counteracts both. (Notice I didn’t vote for any other metal CDs, really, because I don’t really know what I’m talking about.)

Now seems the perfect time to talk about why everyone else’s PJ votes suck. I don’t mind MIA and Sufjan and the Hold Steady so much--they probably would’ve all made my top 20. (Actually, I may have just forgotten to vote for the Hold Steady, but it’s certainly more fun having Alacranes/Lamento on my ballot, and HS would’ve only gotten 5 unneeded points anyway.) (And anyway, if you forget to vote for someone, there must be a reason.) MIA has the same warmth problem as Run the Road, but is less funny or varied. Sufjan I bought for my Pastor. Sufjan is 10x a better orchestrator than fucking Jon Brion (foreshadowing!), and manages some startlingly beautiful effects, and has created an album that is consistently well made. Whoever engineered that thing should be up for a Grammy. Some of his songs are little nothings, though, and there’s a stretch toward the end where I can’t remember what happens. So, no good for Sufjan! I eagerly await his chapter on Durango. (Arriving in, what, 2060 or something, when I’ll’ve had too much knee surgery to polka.) Who else is a contender? I didn’t listen to Fiona, who I’ve actually enjoyed in the past so she may deserve it. Bloc Party may have the best drummer outside my top 2 albums and whoever does auxiliary for my #10, so I won’t begrudge them a top 10 finish.

But Kanye! Who the hell likes this album? Oh yeah, everybody on earth. Having voted him #1 last year (and I stand by that, though R Kelly’s easier to listen to some days), maybe I was just predisposed to be disappointed, but I can really only conclude that I enjoyed College Dropout for different reasons than other people. Well, no, that presumes you have to like the two albums for the same reasons, which is certainly not true. But we’ll go with that presumption anyway! College Dropout had at least four songs that were jaw droppingly gorgeous, whereas Late Registration has zero. The closest, “Hey Mama” I suppose, is a total cliché with a tidy chord progression that’s too smiley to have any emotional heft; whereas “Never Let Me Down,” “We Don’t Care,” “Family Business,” and “Through the Wire” are lyrically inventive and self-aware (or amusingly unaware--I still dig Jay-Z’s inappropriate cameo in the first one), plus have heart-wrenching music. (Kanye’s “Hey Mama” song isn’t even as pretty as Mannie Fresh’s, which name I currently forget--it’s the one with the Band-Aids in the Escalade.) College Dropout had two songs that were sociologically (if you want) dead on and powerful, whereas Late Registration has zero. I suppose “Crack Music” is there lyrically, but what a dull song! “All Fall Down” and “Jesus Walks” sound like they’re able to mobilize a nation, while “Crack Music” is too musically esoteric or something. I hate to call it esoteric, because its “aficionados” can take that as a compliment--what it really sounds like, and this is true of most of the album, is Kanye inserting the first musical idea that popped into his head and producing the hell out of it. The musical ideas are just nowhere near as compelling as they were the first time around. And the production, while I’m sure it cost plenty, has some major flaws. The Brion Parts (what I’m calling strings and mallet percussion) in “Crack Music,” “Hey Mama,” and “Gone” sound mixed completely separate from the rest of the tracks, as though Kanye were playing the “classy music” parts over the raps. The end results are amateurish, without any connotation of refreshment or surprise. He should’ve spent another week on it. Not that that’d make up for the lack of compelling ideas. Common’s song seems a total waste, Paul Wall’s song is mildly interesting (mostly for the local geography, not for the bizarre klezmer klarinet), Just Blaze’s song sounds like Kanye recorded his rap in a sterile room--it needs backup singers or something. The only unqualified successes are “Gold Digger” (during whose reign Zack can be proud to’ve been born), the “Diamonds” songs, and the bassline in “Heard ‘Em Say.” “Gone,” despite its distracting string parts, is also good. The others I rarely think of.

So Mannie Fresh was my Kanye, and Against Me! were my Hold Steady, and Run the Road my MIA, and “Jesus Can Work It Out” my “Trapped in the Closet” (that is, my WGCI audience participation hit), and “Better Now”’s sax solo my Stones album, and I dunno what else’ll place but I definitely dug a lot of music this year; and thanks to the library system and a CD player in my car and getting paid by the Voice (hey, it’s OK if you don’t care about Latin music), I heard more new CDs than I’ve ever heard during any year of my life. So now I, too, can pretend to be a pretentious rock critic and vote for stuff none of my friends have heard of! At least I didn’t vote for Isolee.

Albums
Mercenary (30) Century Media
Liquor & Poker (15) L&P
Lightning Bolt (12) Load
Trail of Dead (10) interscope
Mannie Fresh (8) Cash Money/ Universal
Run the Road (5) 679/ Vice
Orishas (5) Surco/ Universal Latino
Against Me! (5) Fat Wreck Chords
Rod Lee (5) Club Kingz/ Morphius Urban
Alacranes/Lamento (5) Univision

Singles
Mudd (InsideOut)
Moño Negro (Fonovisa)
Music Non Stop (Century Media)
These Words (Sony)
Can’t Behave (Island)
Se Fue (Musimex/ Universal Latino)
Beverly Hills (Geffen)
Better Now (El Music Group)
Gold Digger (Roc-a-Fella)
Work It Out (ICEE)

I've never even heard Mercenary. I guess I need to give Rob Lee and Lightning Bolt another shot.

Pazz and Jop Comments:

Personal Info:
Straight white male, 32, married, just finishing up the “Year of the Baby” (which, oddly enough, is NOT an Amy Rigby song). My daughter Rosie (as in, “The record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance!”) turns 1 this month. She likes Arular an awful lot, but her record of the year is My Blue Heaven by Fats Domino, which was the afternoon father-daughter dance party record of choice at my house for all of my paternity leave. Needless to say, we were both happy to see Fats make it out of New Orleans in one piece.

I don’t want to get all think-piece-y on music and Katrina, but one of the most compelling things for me this year was watching hip-hop struggle to meet the challenge, especially on all those benefit telecasts in the weeks after. Kanye doing “Jesus Walks” (and bearing down hard on “victims of welfare living in hell here, hell yeah”) worked; his triumphant “Touch the Sky” on the next telethon not so much. What I really wanted to hear was “We Don’t Care,” which has the combination of defiance (“Wasn’t supposed to maker it past 25/Joke’s on you we still alive”) and menace (“When we get the hammer better call the ambulance”) that seemed to be proper responses to the federal government’s criminal negligence and which was later nailed by the Legendary K.O.’s “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People,” which made Kanye’s big hit most relevant as source material.

Similarly, I wanted to hear from David Banner but not from his new music, and he seemed to know that as well. It was telling that when he performed on a Katrina benefit, he reached back to Mississippi: The Album (maybe the most relevant album of 2005, even before the hurricane hit) for material, performing “Cadillac on 22s” instead of anything off Certified. But nothing captured the problem contemporary hip-hop had in responding to the Katrina aftermath than The Game performing “Dreams” on the same broadcast: I can’t imagine all the homeless in Houston, and here in Memphis, and scattered all over the region were all that interested in the Game’s desire to “fuck an R&B bitch.”

But even if hip-hop faltered, it was interesting that the genre, with all the content problems critics (myself often among them) grouse about (and the most troubling theme in mainstream hip-hop right now isn’t drugs, violence, or “bling,” it’s sexual coercion), the genre still carried more moral authority than anything else. At least with me.

Most overrated phenomenon of the year: “Trapped in the Closet,” a mind-numbingly tedious saga made all the more annoying by the knowledge that there are self-styled hipsters around the country having “Trapped in the Closet” parties who wouldn’t recognize “Half on a Baby” or “Happy People” if they came across them on the radio.

Anyway, here are some blurbs on some of the records I voted for:

Separation Sunday -- The Hold Steady:
The year’s other great records (Kanye West and M.I.A.) have tons to say about the world we're living in, but this intricate concept album from a Brooklyn guitar band mostly illuminates a world of its own creation. While his comrades are busy cribbing classic-rock guitar and piano riffs, songwriter supreme Craig Finn spins a chronologically complex, intellectually addictive, and emotionally engrossing tale about a Catholic high school girl sucked down a drug-culture rabbit hole and onto a 16-year, cross-country journey back to salvation, with Sopranos-worthy subplots ("Charlemagne in Sweatpants") along the way. Mixing up their mythologies and pushing them out through p.a. systems, the Hold Steady concoct a twisty good-girl-gone-bad narrative that plays like a rock-and-religion version of Mulholland Dr., albeit with a much happier ending.

Arular -- M.I.A.:
It was absolutely no surprise to see this Sri Lankan/British import fail to cross over into the American mainstream. No matter: Fusing Jamaican dancehall, Brazilian baille funk, American hip-hop, and British techno and grime into something as spellbindingly new as it is utterly familiar, this homemade polyglot pop is an instant dance party. Twentysomething Maya Arulpragasm may not have completely sorted out her conflicted feelings -- terrorist or freedom fighter? -- about her estranged Tamil Tiger father, but in the crossfire of global pop genres, political bullhorn lyrics, lovely double-dutch melodies, and utter confusion, she fashioned something more important: the year's most undeniably crucial album.

Late Registration -- Kanye West:
While The College Dropout was built around high-concept anthems ("We Don't Care," "All Falls Down," "Jesus Walks"), the lyrical profundity of this far sneakier follow-up is almost casual. It's in the litany of mundane social ills on the sadly beautiful "Heard 'Em Say"; the Randy Newman-esque satire of pimp-rap and R. Kelly-R&B sleaze on "Celebration"; the incredibly gentle counterpoint to Houston hip-hop's myopic content on "Drive Slow." Instead, Late Registration is more immediately bracing as music: Bringing in pop producer Jon Brion as a collaborator, this is West's attempt to make a hip-hop album with the opulent soulfulness of a classic Stevie Wonder or Curtis Mayfield disc. Mission accomplished.

Man Like Me -- Bobby Pinson:
I've long been a defender of big, bad mainstream country music against its mostly knee-jerk detractors, and I think the genre's in better artistic shape right now than ever in my listening lifetime. But even I can't imagine this individualistic, gruff-voiced songwriter having much of a chance at lasting Nashville stardom. Which is too bad, because Bobby Pinson's debut album is a wonder. More than anyone else on either side of country's mainstream/alternative divide, Pinson respects the touchstones of country music -- small-town life, simple Christian faith, high school sweethearts, family heritage -- while investigating them fiercely. And no one else in music right now redeems red-state religiosity so convincingly.

The Woods -- Sleater-Kinney:
The best American guitar band of their generation, they make a bid for reinvention by cranking up the amps and delivering the most fuzzed-out, most distorted, heaviest, and most effed-up record of their career. Less blistering and delighted than Dig Me Out and without the precision and clarity of 2003's diamond-hard and beautiful One Beat, The Woods is nevertheless a near sonic equal of those great records. It's more rattled, more chaotic, more fuzzed-out. It's where Carrie Brownstein gets to flaunt her inner guitar god, unleashing a solo on "Wilderness" that would fit in on Electric Ladyland and otherwise freaking out like she's on stage at the Fillmore back in '69, all while Corin Tucker shreds vocal cords and Janet Weiss pounds the skins like Keith Moon never went away.

Kerosene -- Miranda Lambert:
Who could have predicted that a third-place finisher on cable's Nashville Star -- a small-town Texas girl with pin-up looks -- would pen the class-rage anthem of the year? Or that, after ripping off Steve Earle's "I Feel Alright" and ripping it apart on that title single, the rest of her smart, tough, almost entirely self-written debut album would be almost as strong? Pop music: where the unexpected always happens.

Funny...I've always read her "coming back" at the end meaning that she ended up dying, kinda a nod to "long black limosine" by elvis....hm....i'll have to listen again...

Hey Matt!

But the return to the church ("She crashed into the Easter Mass with her hair done up in broken glass") seems like her very much alive and returning home. (Especially since she wakes up in the confessional on the song before)

Every time I listen to that record something new pops up.

yeah that's what made me think she was dead...who know?

[close circuit: hey chris hope you are doing well!]

its called 'squawking'

It's called a British accent.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), February 2nd, 2006.

Thanks Frank! I was hoping some anti-Kanye rant would make it in, but to no avail. Anyway, I thought to ask you, what do you like/find important about "What's Luv"? Cos I really can't stand the song, but that might fit into your point. Is it the "thug-n-slush" aspect? I haven't heard it in years, so I'm not sure I can cite examples of dislike beyond "the melody's annoying" and "the refrain sounds cutesily scripted". And I even liked Fat Joe's '05 CD!

it's also called annoying, forgotten in 2 years time, overhyped, non-selling,fodder for lonely fanboy fantasies,..........

I can't figure out if this is a dig at electronic-music listeners like myself, or electronic purists (not like myself, despite what y'all may think). Or just coincidental. But actually, 2005 was a fantastic year for techno (in the broadest possible definition of the term; you can say "electronica" if you like too, i don't care). Fucking fantastic, the great stuff just kept coming. In fact, probably the reason I heard so little OUTSIDE the electronic diaspora was that the e-music was so good (plus I am sort of lazy), I didn't feel much need to go straying elsewhere. I used to feel guilty about living in such a narrow little corner, but no longer.

Re: MIA and grime, I don't really see the connection--the rhythmic signatures are quite different, and grime's way heavier on the low end. MIA's is quite sunny music, at the end of the day; it doesn't have the same cavernous, apocalyptic qualities as grime. But then again, I haven't really heard any new grime for 18 months or so, so perhaps it's all changed; I lost interest when the emphasis shifted from beats/production to lyrics.

Maybe next year I should actually submit some P&J comments or something, so y'all don't have to listen to me thinking about loud on threads like these.

Does Lady Sovereign? (Just asking.) (I mean, I don't know that apocalyptic cavernousness is something I associate with *any* of the grime I've heard, to be honest. But obviously there are people out there, including Phil I'm guessing, who've heard way more of it than I have.)

>people who think 2005 was bad because "nothing new happened in grime/microhouse/schaffel plus that Daft Punk album really stunk"<

...may well have been a *strawman*; I'm not sure. But I *think* I heard people saying stuff like that about 2005. Can't name any names off hand though. Was I just imagining things?

re: strawmen & 2005 in techno - obviously i can't say what you may have heard people saying, but i don't think i heard anything like that (aside from, yeah, a litany of complaints about the daft punk album); maybe i just hang out with shameless boosters, but everyone i know shared my boundless enthusiasm, in real and netspace alike. and judging by what i've heard so far, 2006 is going to be even better. if people were saying things like that, chuck, fuck'em!

This makes me think of Henri Michaux, for some reason.