Music: Current count 20938 [20909] rated (+29), 591 [586] unrated (+5).
Only eight Jazz Prospecting notes in the scratch file, so I'll hold that back until next week. I do have my first 2013 A record, plus an A-. Neither will be big surprises, although both are steps up, and that's always a bit surprising. Also have my lowest-rated 2012 jazz album to date. I don't expect much else for next week, unless I break into the ECM advances. The incoming has been so uninspiring I'll hold it back for next week too.
Meanwhile, the following is a fragment that I wrote more than a week ago as I started to try to pull together a year-end comment, but didn't get very far. Part of that may be structural: do I keep going down my list? Or, do I try to pull something about of the metacritic data? I'll take another stab at it. Meanwhile, this:
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
A quick top-ten album list, good enough for the Village Voice's Pazz& Jop ballot (done December 27; numbers in bold are points awarded; numbers in brackets are counts from mymetacritic file at that point):
- Loudon Wainwright III: Older Than My Old Man Now (2nd Story Sound) 15 [23]
- Steve Lehman Trio: Dialect Fluorescent (Pi) 15 [18]
- Van Morrison: Born to Sing: No Plan B (Blue Note) 10 [15]
- Todd Snider: Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables (Aimless/Thirty Tigers) 10 [25]
- Chris Knight: Little Victories (Drifter's Church) 10 [3]
- Chiddy Bang: Breakfast (Virgin) 8 [12]
- Sam Rivers/Dave Holland/Barry Altschul: Reunion: Live in New York (2007, Pi, 2CD) 8 [20]
- The Coup: Sorry to Bother You (Anti-) 8 [15]
- Iris DeMent: Sing the Delta (Flariella) 8 [28]
- Houston Person: Naturally (High Note) 8 [3]
After another week's listening, I'm tempted to say that Live, by The Group (1986, NoBusiness) has cracked my top ten, but I'll leave well enough alone: I don't really want to bump Person, who's nearing 80 and has fifty-some years of underappreciated major-level achievement, in favor of a December release from Lithuania of a 25-year-old session by a bunch of mostly dead guys (Ahmed Abdullah and Andrew Cyrille are the exceptions, and they could use the recognition).
The mean count in the metacritic file is 16.2, 3.0 of which is due to my own evaluation (1 point for B+ or better, 1 more for A-, 1 more for top ten, a formula I apply to about 50 prominent sources, so why not me?), so Knight and Person would have wound up at 0 otherwise -- this counting hundreds of year-end lists, some with 100 or more entries. [PS: Knight actually went on a run after this, so his current count is now 10.]
I've heard 80 of the top 100 records in the metacritic file. The 20 I haven't heard break down into two lists: those I looked for but didn't find (Flying Lotus, Chromatics, Actress, Andy Stott, Ty Segall, Field Music, Taylor Swift), and those I didn't get around to looking up, possibly for fear that I might find them (Father John Misty, DIIV, Ariel Pink, Converge, How to Dress Well, Passion Pit, Baroness, Scott Walker, Deftones, Poliça, Torche, Wild Nothing, Dinosaur Jr). [PS: Since I wrote this, I looked up three more: DIIV (**), How to Dress Well (B), and Walker (C-).]
The only A- records I find in my metacritic file top 100 are:
- Frank Ocean: Channel Orange (Def Jam)
- Kendrick Lamar: Good Kid, MAAD City (Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope)
- Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel . . . (Clean Slate/Epic)
- Killer Mike: RAP Music (Williams Street)
- Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (Columbia)
- Bruce Springsteen: Wrecking Ball (Columbia)
- Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Psychedelic Pill (Reprise)
- Neneh Cherry: The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound)
- Patti Smith: Banga (Columbia)
- Vijay Iyer Trio: Accelerando (ACT)
- Jens Lekman: I Know What Love Isn't (Secretly Canadian)
That's probably about par over the last decade, or at least that part where, thanks to Rhapsody, I've been able to hear close to 80% of the top-100 critically-rated albums. (Before that I heard much fewer than 80% -- more like 20% -- because I suspected most of them weren't worth buying.) I don't eschew popularity in music, nor do I think that most critics are full of shit. In fact, I'd assert that both popular and critical taste correlate positively with good music -- not by a huge amount, but by enough to be significant. For example, of the 80 top-100 records I heard and rated, aside from the 10 A- records above, another 42 got some form of B+. A quick rundown:
| B+(***) | Cloud Nothings, El-P, John Talabot, Santigold, Daphni, Divine Fits, Sleigh Bells, Action Bronson, Burial [9] |
| B+(**) | Japandroids, Jack White, Alabama Shakes, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, DIIV, Dr. John, Bob Dylan, The Men, Lana Del Rey, Nas, Bobby Womack, Crystal Castles, Schoolboy Q, Andrew Bird, Bill Fay, Saint Etienne [16] |
| D+(*) | Grimes, The XX, Cat Power, Alt-J, Purity Ring, Hot Chip, David Byrne/St. Vincent, Dan Deacon, Ty Segall Band, Chairlift, The Shins, Matthew Dear, Robert Glasper, Lambchop, Lower Dens, Peaking Lights, Sigur Ros, Toy [18] |
I sampled all of those on Rhapsody, so assume the usual caveats: some might improve with more play, and others might slip -- I'm especially suspicious of the five records that made it into ourTurkey Shoot.
The next hundred slots in the metacritic file are comparably scattered -- the curve shifted a bit down -- but with twice as many records that I've missed (46 vs. 20):
| A | Loudon Wainwright III, Todd Snider [2] |
| A- | Iris DeMent, The Mountain Goats, Amadou & Mariam, Sam Rivers, Big KRIT (Live From the Underground) [5] |
| B+(***) | Wadada Leo Smith (Ten Freedom Summers), Roc Marciano, Pink, Jamey Johnson, Off!, Carolina Chocolate Drops [6] |
| B+(**) | Titus Andronicus, Future, Best Coast, Aesop Rock, Lotus Plaza, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Donald Fagen, JJ Doom, Regina Spektor, Elle Varner [10] |
| B+(*) | Lower Dens, Peaking Lights, Sigur Ros, Tindersticks, The 2 Bears, TheeSatisfaction, Mala, Metric, Lee Ranaldo, Yeasayer, Anais Mitchell, Neil Young (Americana), School of Seven Bells, Dean Blunt/Inga Copeland, Justin Townes Earle, The Lumineers [16] |
| B | Frankie Rose, Mount Eerie (Clear Moon), Ab-Soul, Spoek Mathambo, Fun, Calexico, Smashing Pumpkins, Amanda Palmer, Shearwater, Paul Weller, Traxman, Guided by Voices (Let's Go Eat the Factory), Beth Jeans Houghton [13] |
| B- | Rufus Wainwright, Niki & the Dove [2] |
| U | Dirty Three, High on Fire, Carter Tutti Void, Gojira, Shackleton, Richard Hawley, Ty Segall/White Fence, Thee Oh Sees, The Maccabees, Soundgarden, Allo Darlin', Dexys, Holy Other, Menomena, Redd Kross, Woods, Mac DeMarco (2), Neurosis, Beachwood Sparks, Cooly G, Damien Jurado, Melody's Echo Chamber, Muse, Dwight Yoakam, Avett Brothers, Beak>, Raime, Six Organs of Admittance, Deerhoof, Pig Destroyer, Rush, Screaming Females, Jake Bugg, Cody Chesnutt, The Congos/Sun Araw, Brian Eno, Here We Go Magic, Meshuggah, And You Will Know US by the Trail of Dead, Four Tet, The Fresh and Onlys, Cate LeBon, Of Monsters and Men, Earth, The Mars Volta, The Tallest Man on Earth [46] |
Beyond that things continue to thin out -- although once you drop below 1000 you find more jazz, specifically jazz that I received, so the ratio of blue/green lines flips. From 201-300, I have another A (Steve Lehman) and 6 A- (Madonna, Homeboy Sandman, Air, Big KRIT [4Eva N a Day], Branford Marsalis, Nicki Minaj). From 301-400, no A but 7 A- (Carly Rae Jepsen, Disappears, Dave Douglas, Kid Koala, Serengeti, Cornershop, De La Soul). From 401-500, no A but 9 A- (Pet Shop Boys, Prinzhorn Dance School, Chiddy Bang, Janka Nabay, Jenny Scheinman, BBU, Ani DiFranco, Charles Gayle, Wadada Leo Smith [Ancestors]. From 901-1000, this thins out to just 2 A- (Fred Lonberg-Holm, TommyWomack), the main difference being that the number of rated records has dropped to 14. Still, I doubt that hearing the rest would make much difference: like I said, there is a small positive critical correlation, plus there is a small bias toward my own preferences (by counting my own grades, plus those of critics with similar tastes.
The metacritic file goes on for 5354 lines -- nearly half (2560) documenting a single reference, 895 with just two. At that level, we aren't sampling opinion; we're just gathering up loose ends.
As long as I'm farting around here, let me try one more table, this time taking the records on Robert Christgau's Dean's List (link below) and mapping them into my grades (* indicates based on something other than a physical copy):
| A | Loudon Wainwright III, Todd Snider, The Rough Guide to Highlife,The Original Sound of Cumbia [4] |
| A- | *Dabke, *Himanshu (Nehru Jackets), The Mountain Goats, Bruce Springsteen, Fiona Apple, Kendrick Lamar, Karantamba, Homeboy Sandman (First of a Living Breed), Saigon, Omar Souleyman, *Plug, *Heems (Wild Water Kingdom), Leonard Cohen, Frank Ocean, Iris DeMent, Tommy Womack, Pet Shop Boys, Staff Benda Bilili, Carolyn Mark, *Thomas Anderson, Ani DiFranco, The Coup, *Big KRIT (4Eva N a Day), Low Cut Connie, *Kid Koala, Pete Seeger, *Burial, *Francis Bebey, Nicki Minaj, Madonna, *Dylan Hicks, *Ned Sublette, Janka Nabay, Amadou & Mariam, *Andre Williams, Joan Soriano, *Tha Grimm Teachaz [37] |
| B+(***) | Pink, Greenberger Greenberg Cebar, *A Place to Bury Strangers (Worship), *Big Baby Gandhi, *S/S/S, *Cloud Nothings, Jamey Johnson, *P.S. Eliot, *Sleigh Bells, Balkan Beat Box, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, *Bhi Bhiman, *Homeboy Sandman (Subject: Matter), *The Magnetic Fields, *Dobie (Nothing to Fear), *A Place to Bury Strangers (Onwards to the Wall), *Clams Casino, *Divine Fits, *Dobie (But Fear Itself), *Big Baby Gandhi, *Linkoban [21] |
| B+(**) | *Azealia Banks, *Elle Varner, *Standard Fare, *Japandroids, *Etta James, *Donald Fagen, *Best Coast, *Saint Etienne, *Corin Tucker Band, *Two Fingers, *Serengeti (The Kenny Dennis EP), *Jack White [12] |
| B+(*) | *Neil Young (Americana), *Lee Ranaldo, *The XX, *Lukid [4] |
| B | *Skrillex, Spoek Mathambo, *Beach House, *Death Grips (The Money Store), *Ab-Soul [5] |
| U | Listen . . . Oka!, Orchestra Baobab, The Human Hearts, Taylor Swift, Wreckless Eric/Amy Rigby, The dBs, Death Grips (No Love Deep Web), The Rough Guide to Ethiopia, Songs for Desert Refugees, Public Enemy, The Rough Guide to the Music of Morocco, Moreno and L'Orch First Moja-One, Allo Darlin', The Rolling Stones, Royal Band de Thiés, Khaira Arby [16] |
So, I've listened to about 85% of the records in Christgau's list, and more/less agree on about half of those (41/86), with another fourth just marginally off the mark. Some of the others are records I really dislike (Americana, Death Grips, Beach House, Skrillex), and others I just didn't spend much time with (one spin of Ab-Soul and XX way before Christgau reviewed them; same for Mathambo -- I bought a copy later but have only managed one more play, and can't find it now. On the other hand, Jamey Johnson and Pink haven't gotten any better since I bought copies. Thus far the only 2012 release I've gone back to and graded up was Burial, which was helped by combining two EPs (Street Halo/Kindred).
Conversely, the following is a subset of my2012 A-list after scratching out everything on the Dean's List plus most of the jazz (I kept Neneh Cherry as a critical crossover success and Byron because Christgau has reviewed him in the past; I also added in some compilations). The numbers just count the subset, which started with 115 albums plus 13 compilations. The 31 records here compare to 39 on the Dean's list (41 minus two 2011 releases), so one way to look at this is: Christgau finds about 56% of my non-jazz A-list.
- Van Morrison: Born to Sing: No Plan B (Blue Note)
- Chris Knight: Little Victories (Drifter's Church)
- Chiddy Bang: Breakfast (Virgin)
- Air: Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) (Astralwerks)*
- K'Naan: Country, God or the Girl (A&M/Octone)
- De La Soul's Plug 1 & Plug 2 Present . . . First Serve (Duck Down)
- Killer Mike: R.A.P. Music (Williams Street)*
- Disappears: Pre Language (Kranky)*
- BBU!: Bell Hooks (Mishka)*
- Todd Terje: It's the Arps (Smalltown Supersound, EP)*
- Ondatrópica (Soundway)*
- Patti Smith: Banga (Columbia)
- Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Psychedelic Pill (Reprise, 2CD)
- Jens Lekman: I Know What Love Isn't (Secretly Canadian)*
- Rusko: Songs (Mad Decent/Downtown)*
- Danny!: Payback (Okayplayer)*
- Zani Diabaté & Les Héritiers: Tientalaw (Sterns Africa)
- Cornershop: Urban Turban: The Singhles Club (Ample Play)*
- Carly Rae Jepsen: Kiss (604/Interscope/Schoolboy)*
- Neneh Cherry & the Thing: The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound)
- Mika: The Origin of Love (Casablanca)*
- Koo Nimo: Highlife Roots Revival (Riverboat)*
- Eric Bibb: Deeper in the Well (Stony Plain)*
- Don Byron New Gospel Quintet: Love, Peace, and Soul (Savoy Jazz)
- Ray Wylie Hubbard: The Grifter's Hymnal (Bordello)*
- Louisiana Red: When My Mama Was Living (1975, Labor)
- Occupy This Album (Razor & Tie, 4CD)*
- Can: The Lost Tapes (1968-77, Mute, 3CD)*
- Gypsyphonic Disko Nola-Phonic Vol. 2 (DJ Quickie Mart)*
- Prinzhorn Dance School: Clay Class (DFA)*
- Johnny Cash: Bootleg Vol. IV: The Soul of Truth (1975-83, Columbia/Legacy, 2CD)*
Lots of interesting music there, and hard to really pigeonhole it all.
A (small) sampling of year-end lists I somehow remembered to keep links to:
- Robert Christgau: The Dean's List 2012: Neil Young, Americana.
- Cerebral Decanting [Jason Gubbels]: Loudon Wainwright III, Older Than My Old Man Now.
- The Free Jazz Collective: Eve Risser, En Corps.
- Tom Lane: Todd Snider, Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables.
- Music & More [Tim Niland]: Paul Dunmall & Tony Bianco, Thank You to John Coltrane.
- Noisecritic's Blog [Expert Witness P&J]: Loudon Wainwright III, Older Than My Old Man Now.
- Perfect Sounds [Chris Monsen]: Steve Lehman, Dialect Flourescent.
- Xhuxk's Top 100+ Albums [Chuck Eddy]: Dev, The Night the Sun Came Up
- Ye Wei Blog aka Wild Taste [Jason Gross]: Gypsyphonic Disko, Nolaphonic Vol. 2.
- Year-End Lists: "all in one place."
- Metacritic.com: another list cache.
- Acclaimed Music Forums: another (messier) list cache.
- ilxor: never-ending list discussion.
- . . . and then there's my metacritic compilation.