Year-End Critics' Polls 2011

that's nonsense!

that's really stupid

yeah i mean i don't mind the shopping at whole foods thing, or that she's writing to a generalist audience, i guess it's more that I don't get a sense of what she likes as much as a sense of what she thinks she needs to cover, all of which she's vaguely enthusiastic about, and as a result the coverage is of a fairly rote series of artists I guess? idk I guess I'd just like to see some more personality in it or something

idk I'm probably being unfair. at a certain pt. the job is covering what people are likely to care about. although i'm not sure that explains the tuneyards thing which is p niche right?

fwiw i always find her writing very insightful, this 'critique' is really about some small beans stuff

I argue twice a week with our daily newspaper's film critic, whom I like very much as a guy, but whose opinions I usually dismiss, and it's no secret. But I don't forget for a moment that in this climate -- when the J. Hobermans are losing sinecures all over the place -- the impossible tightrope a film/music critic must walk at a daily or weekly publication. How long can you inveigh against crap before readers turn on you and you get fired?

and I'm not hinting that these critics dilute their opinions or lie about them; it's just that keeping an open ear/eye on what the public consumes is a large part of the job.

I'm not the biggest Ann Powers fan, but can't the insertion of anecdotes about parenting and/or shopping at Whole Foods simply be a means of engaging the reader? If they're good parenting anecdotes--funny, observant, related to the music under discussion, however tangentially (unless they're really good parenting anecdotes, and then I don't even need that)--then great. Truthfully, I'd rather read that than close analysis of the artist's mindset.

I argue twice a week with our daily newspaper's film critic, whom I like very much as a guy, but whose opinions I usually dismiss, and it's no secret. But I don't forget for a moment that in this climate -- when the J. Hobermans are losing sinecures all over the place -- the impossible tightrope a film/music critic must walk at a daily or weekly publication. How long can you inveigh against crap before readers turn on you and you get fired?

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 4, 2012 8:33 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh yeah i mean no question & im certainly not saying she sucks or should be fired

i guess it's this sense that her engagement w/ the pop charts maybe feels a little bit like fronting? like what does she *really* want to be reviewing? and I almost would rather (and i recognize this might threaten job security) know what she just sorta naturally was drawn to

obv i'm making a bunch of assumptions here abt what she 'likes' and 'really likes' but maybe what i'd like to read about & what her paper and her audience more generally want to read about are all difft things

bleh. i mean, i could be entirely misreading her, too.

i think that last part is a really safe assumption to make

No, she really does love chart pop!

i think that last part is a really safe assumption to make

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, January 4, 2012 8:39 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

how abt sharing your ideas instead of sniping, some dude jr.?

cuz i'm watching basketball right now

I've met her twice at EMP and have known her voice since the publication of the Big Orange SPIN Book on alternative rock and she's never been shy about her populist tendencies (her husband's tastes run closer to the other end, although he likes a lot of country).

I love when you two snipe at each other tbh

also i have no idea what article you guys are talking about, so that's another issue

yah i think maybe that's just what i'm bumping up against -- i feel like the way populism enters into my ideas of music is probably v different than hers

i shared lots of ideas itt just now, leave me out of this

in that SPIN guide she wrote about John Cale and Pearl Jam.

among others; I'm just trying to suggest her breadth in 1994.

but yeah i keep trying to find what powers article we're talking about and i guess the wilson slate piece is part of a back-and-forth w/ several people and there are multiple powers pieces in the series, don't know if there's one in particular that kicked this off (xpost)

i was speaking more from a general experience w/ her writing. I think it might just come down to, I have trouble imagining what a reader of ann powers would get from reading someone who puts "top 40" as a central part of their perspective. I guess. that it feels, i dunno, obsequious to an artificial structure, and that i get the feeling that at some point anything that is *that* successful gets treated w/ a geniality that ... idk maybe i'm a bitter person ha but sometimes i like when a person meets a 'system' like the charts and then you find out where they collide and where they coincide and i don't get as much of a friction from her writing

i think that's how i'd put it

haha i just reread and that's very abstract

i suspect only lamp could possibly decode me there

I'm coming from the same place as D on this - more of a general response to her work (as I perceive it; back in '94 I was mostly reading like Forced Exposure and The Wire and Metal Maniacs and totally ignoring Rolling Stone and Spin) than to any particular article. Though that whole Slate music critics' roundtable presents such a narrow idea of what's going on in the world that reading it drives me kinda batshit.

^^^ooh yeah thats a good pt ... it felt very uninvolving to me, like i almost wish that the writers had each found a corner of the world that they really enjoyed this year & talked about it, instead of like, "here's the common ground music we were all supposed to care about" because, like, i don't really care to read what the foremost thinkers in music crit have decided about katy perry! I'd rather just hear Nitsuh tell me what he really liked listening to this year, and explain why, and maybe it would be more like the TV show Check Please! except with music instead of restaurants, so everyone tries out each other's favorite thing & then they discuss from their perspective

It wasn't describing the world -- it wasn't a CIA memo -- it was describing how their choices for best albums related to other developments.

OK, deej's point is a fair one, and it reminds me of the problems with "round tables" in general: it's impossible to control the ebb and flow once it starts.

yeah i mean you can't really gripe that a multi-perspective 'year in review' is too broad and centrist, that's the whole point

there has to be a common ground to talk about but i'd rather it be about interesting corners of the music world than the pop charts entirely

i'm sure all of them were very interested in talking about the weeknd, that's more 'interesting' than katy perry, right

well no, but one of nitsuh's fav rap records was kendrick lamar, and i think it would be really interesting to see ann powers tackle that, and i'm much more interested in reading a person that smart engaging w/ something i find interesting (and i just used that example b/c its in my wheelhouse but this could easily apply to stuff i haven't heard as well)

i mean, i guess it could easily be katy perry too, if ann felt very strongly about katy perry; i just didn't get the feeling we were reading about what the critics really liked, just what they were obligated to cover

yes it would be very fascinating if everyone talked about blog rap mo- zzzzzzzzzzz

kendrick is 'blog rap' to you, really?

everything is blog rap now -- i just mean rap that isn't fully in mainstream pop culture

im just saying i'd rather get the feeling that the critics were talking about something they were really interested in instead of centering around this idea of 'pop' as if pop music right now is the only music a big smart critic would talk about

of course in the real world this would likely end up w/ them just covering indie instead i guess so maybe ur right

but in my world, it's like, one dude suggests a jazz cd, someone suggests a hip-hop one, another a mainstream pop etc. and they all discuss those. i dunno, just thought it'd be more interesting to me than, like, well, let's tackle the pop charts.

a lot of stuff in that slate series is not very 'pop' or popular, and i don't get much of a sense that anybody is writing about pop music more than before because it's the thing to do. lots of critics still write exclusively about underground/niche stuff and always will, and people that can write about top 40 without being completely dismissive and condescending will save the others the trouble of coming down off their perches.

in one of them, powers writes about azealia banks and shabazz palaces, if you're dying to see her engage with rap that isn't on the pop charts that she's enthusiastic about

those arent rap lol

Though that whole Slate music critics' roundtable presents such a narrow idea of what's going on in the world that reading it drives me kinda batshit

haha srsly although as some dude points out the format tends to make discussions both disjointed and scleratic and so its hard to find a way to engage with the discussion, its this uncomfortable feeling of hearing someone talking abt a book you just read on the subway or s.thing

oh i didn't realise deej was getting at, like, a referendum on ann powers specifically. i love her writing and think she's easily one of the smartest critics out there, and i actually get way more of a sense of her own character and tastes than i usually do. how is her generalism any more "fronting" than, say, nitsuh's relentless reasonableness and unwillingness to really go in on an act you can tell he dislikes?

this ann powers piece on "authenticity" and "character" in pop is one of the smartest things i read last year, gonna submit it to the da capo book - http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/10/26/141735626/whos-still-jenny-from-the-block-an-examination-of-autobiography-in-pop - and it's definitely not a bland, generalist move to just go ahead and use jennifer lopez and tom waits as your examples in the same column w/o justifying yourself to r*ckist readers.

i wish more writers used quotidian anecdotes tbh (even though whole foods sucks) - it helps root your assessments in your own personal listening experience, which is how it should be, rather than pretending they exist in some vacuum of objectivity. kat stevens does this really well on the jukebox.

maybe i get more of a sense of her tastes b/c i know she's a massive tori amos stan? there aren't many of us left. (taking notice of tori amos in 2012 is itself hardly a pandering move.)

im just saying i'd rather get the feeling that the critics were talking about something they were really interested in instead of centering around this idea of 'pop' as if pop music right now is the only music a big smart critic would talk about

oh LOL at this, this is exactly what happens but the critics who centre around "pop" are few and far between. compared to the legion of critics who blindly follow ~buzz~ (whether indie or otherwise tbh, cf your own "critics must talk about x because it's in The Conversation), powers comes off like a total maverick.

how is her generalism any more "fronting" than, say, nitsuh's relentless reasonableness and unwillingness to really go in on an act you can tell he dislikes?

haha. i can't say i haven't seen this sometimes from him too -- i never claimed ann powers was the only critic i've disagreed with!

thanks for the links tho i'll check it out

oh LOL at this, this is exactly what happens but the critics who centre around "pop" are few and far between. compared to the legion of critics who blindly follow ~buzz~ (whether indie or otherwise tbh, cf your own "critics must talk about x because it's in The Conversation), powers comes off like a total maverick.

― all i see is angels in my eyes (lex pretend), Thursday, January 5, 2012 2:51 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i feel like she's just shifting the buzz towards yet another received wisdom, though, this time in favor of crowds rather than critics, so I don't really see it as an 'improvement' on people who only follow buzz at the end of the day, even if my particularly tastes are closer on that spectrum

i'd rather see how someone contrasts with a system, where the rough edges are as much as where they go with the flow; to me it's the tension between those two that makes writing exciting (& I certainly don't think Ann doesn't do that ever, or something; I guess I really just meant that sometimes I wish there was a little less "ahh genial acceptance of what is popular" & a lil more ... fight. or like, that her taste didnt seem quite as tied to pop

this is a criticism only as it relates to my relationship to her writing; it doesn't mean i think she's doing a bad job, it's just that it limits my level of interest

and again this is on a small scale, because I still read her stuff, and I think she's a great critic the same way I do Nitsuh

i don't see any genial acceptance of anything in her writing - she was one of the few critics to go against the odd future buzz early on, and she quite obviously highlights acts she's fond of within her generalist remit, so i do get a sense of her own taste constellation. (she's great on female singer-songwriters, for instance.) why is her taste being tied to pop any better or worse than if it was tied to rap or indie?

this is something that all outlets' lead writers have to do to an extent - they have to cover the biggest albums/artists out. what i hate is when they do that while obviously holding their nose, and just end up regurgitating snark at easy targets (or withholding vitriol from hyped acts). with powers i get the impression she genuinely enjoys what she bigs up, and doesn't really follow any received wisdom. if you've got examples that demonstrate otherwise feel free to link, i don't religiously read her work (though she ranks high on "writers whose links i'll click on twitter if i see them")

odd future aren't a charting pop act so that's not really what I'm talking about.

why is her taste being tied to pop any better or worse than if it was tied to rap or indie?

And clearly it's got to be one of the three, because pop, rap and indie make up all the music in the world.

I understand the emphasis on covering pop, rap, and indie, but yes it was kinda frustrating reading this roundtable and not seeing any token outliers mentioned (and I would be ok with one of them saying "hey this is not as buzzed about but i like...) --metal, afropop, mainstream rock, regional thug rap, southern soul, jazz...Nabisco mentioned briefly Austra but that's kinda Pitchforky

"hey this is not as buzzed about but i like...)"

exactly

The Voice had a similar interesting roundtable but with the same problem. One writer mentioned liking Korean pop but then went back to talking about Drake on and on and on.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/columns/sotc_roundtable/