Reynolds' Pazz & Jopp essay

dHarry

Well-known member
well I wasn't implying that, MBV's rockingest member was bass player Deb Googe! more to do with subverting binaries , they get melted down and intermingled, like... metals creating new alloys?
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
Gek, I’ve re-read your original post now, and I don’t quite understand what you mean by this:

He also presumes that the pop-picks before weren't chosen on pop-positive rockist grounds of progressiveness, sonic ingenuity, auteurism (ie all the Timba-love) etc etc, rather than the pure popist position he imagines being corroded by dubstep, metal and noise.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
well I wasn't implying that, MBV's rockingest member was bass player Deb Googe! more to do with subverting binaries , they get melted down and intermingled, like... metals creating new alloys?

i like that idea. there's something kind of molten or smoldering about the sexuality in MBV. we had a long discussion of them somewhere else where i talk about not fully buying into them, but part of that definitely has to do with their over-zealous cannonization on the part of U.S. indie diehards.
 

dHarry

Well-known member
i like that idea. there's something kind of molten or smoldering about the sexuality in MBV. we had a long discussion of them somewhere else where i talk about not fully buying into them, but part of that definitely has to do with their over-zealous cannonization on the part of U.S. indie diehards.
metal, geddit? and that's why I said "I might be preaching to the unconvertable here" ;)
anyhow, back to the topic...
 
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nomadologist

Guest
now i do! i'm slow this morning, no coffee in the break room :(

i probably agree with Sloane re ketamine rather than weed, but one thing I'll admit is that too much gauzy textural droney music requires some sort of attention-span lengthener for me. downers. muscle relaxors. i don't know if i could listen to this hipster metal clean and sober. not that i ever am, but still. there's an element in the hipster metal of vague druginess that i can't pin down. do these guys do drugs? what are they like?
 

tht

akstavrh
THT: Like that song. Wouldn't have thought to apply the lyrics here, but it works.

that was a little facetious sorry! just thinking about your dismissal of their sub nietzschean lyrics (correct) and the superimposed exegeses to be found in this thread
 
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nomadologist

Guest
here's another question: what is Pazz & Jopp, anyway? I'd never heard of it till last year, and I remember being linked to this rather large bunch of compiled articles, most of them just the same old efforts on the part of journalists to define a culture based on a few calendar months worth of its music. I don't like the whole "year end" definitive sort of listing the music press gets so into. Makes me sleepy just thinking about having to trudge through 300 writers opinions about what was *really* the most "important" album of 2006.
 

shudder

Well-known member
can't quite tell if you know, but:

P&J has been for years a huge critics poll, as well as having many essays too. Each critic is sent a ballot where they can vote for their top ten albums (I think they can allocate a finite number of points between 10 albums) and ten singles (similarly, I think).
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Its the village voice's yearly critics poll. Its irrelevant really, what was interesting were the tangents suggeted (somewhat healf-heartedly) in Reynolds' piece.

Gek, I’ve re-read your original post now, and I don’t quite understand what you mean by this:
When I said... "He also presumes that the pop-picks before weren't chosen on pop-positive rockist grounds of progressiveness, sonic ingenuity, auteurism (ie all the Timba-love) etc etc, rather than the pure popist position he imagines being corroded by dubstep, metal and noise."I'm getting at the distinction between pop-positive rockists (as I think Reynolds' himself is) and pure-popists-- (ie those after a disposable fancy to entertain them now, with zero reference to who produced the track, or any questions of authenticity beyond immediate instantaneous pleasure). If the former is the reasoning why "hipsters" listened to timbaland or whoever before, then the same reason lies behind why they now listen to metal or dubstep or whatever- that they were pop-positive rockists, not real popists. As soon as you add a degree of self-awareness and need for context, pure popism is impossible, in my view...
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
I’ve read the original text now, and I don’t find anything particularly queer about it. I cannot comment on the ‘hipster metal’ thing, but the other parts seem about right. I definitely agree that there seems to be less love for contemporary pop out there compared to how it was just two or three years ago. But that is more because of chart pop having got worse, than a general change in preferences, I think.

I would argue that hip-hop has become less poppy over the last three years (I’m mostly thinking of crunk here), and, as someone said in the r&b thread, current r&b is mostly hip-hop beats with singing instead of rapping (= great beats, but bad song-writing). Commercial house, too, has become less song-based, and more loop-based (it has been for a long time, but real, original, songs are getting rarer by the day, I think) often = less pop, most of the time (see also all those awful hook-from-a-60s-song-plus-Benni-Benassi-beat songs that every conehead here insists on playing). I don’t agree with Gek’s argument that the ‘new’ techno scene is poppy (if that was what he meant). I think ‘Put Your Hands Up for Detroit’ (from the chart below) is a good example of how the new ‘techno’ (or, electro-house, or whatever you want to call it) songs manage to chart despite obvious, traditional, pop attributes (the same goes for ‘Yeah, Yeah’).

Here’s the grim list of 2006 U.K. Number 1s:

1026 28 Jan Arctic Monkeys When The Sun Goes Down 1
1027 4 Feb Notorious BIG featuring Diddy,Nelly, Jagged Edge & Avery Storm Nasty Girl 2
1028 18 Feb Meck featuring Leo Sayer Thunder In My Heart Again 2
1029 4 Mar Madonna Sorry 1
1030 11 Mar Chico It's Chico Time 2
1031 25 Mar Orson No Tomorrow 1
1032 1 Apr Ne-Yo So Sick 1
1033 8 Apr Gnarls Barkley Crazy 9
1034 10 Jun Sandi Thom I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair) 1
1035 17 Jun Nelly Furtado Maneater 3
1036 8 Jul Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean Hips Don't Lie 1
1037 15 Jul Lily Allen Smile 2
1038 29 Jul McFly Don't Stop Me Now / Please Please 1
rere 5 Aug Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean Hips Don't Lie 4
1039 2 Sep Beyonce featuring Jay-Z Deja Vu 1
1040 9 Sep Justin Timberlake Sexyback 1
1041 16 Sep Scissor Sisters I Don't Feel Like Dancin' 4
1042 14 Oct Razorlight America 1
1043 21 Oct My Chemical Romance Welcome To The Black Parade 2
1044 4 Nov McFly Star Girl 1
1045 11 Nov Fedde Le Grand Put Your Hands Up For Detroit 1
1046 18 Nov Westlife The Rose 1
1047 25 Nov Akon featuring Eminem Smack That 1
1048 2 Dec Take That Patience 4
1049 30 Dec Leona Lewis A Moment Like This 4
 

shudder

Well-known member
re: the interesting tangents in P&J (and Jackin' Pop), check out this site which show how typical each ballot is (i.e. points out which ones are most and least like the consensus)
 

dHarry

Well-known member
btw I presume (guessing) that it used to be "Jazz & Pop", then someone decided that that had to go, and some wag came up with "Pazz & Jop"?
 
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nomadologist

Guest
I see: that's what I thought P&J was, but couldn't be sure. People just get so into the results I figured it must have some sort of wide circulation or something, but maybe not?

Haha. Shudder, this list reminds me of the Colbert report episode where he talks about "Wikiality" and our new consensus reality mode of deciding what's "true." I don't see a list of votes for another person's list of votes is very interesting when the sample of the population doing the voting is from such a self-selected and narrow slice of predictable demographics. Do they think that if you can get enough people to agree that x album was ingenious that means it is (even if participants are journalists who professionally follow this stuff)? I just don't see what this kind of "measuring artistic merit through consensus" mentality does for music.

Guybrush, I don't think the pop tracks on that list are bad. I like a lot of them. It's the rock on there that's pretty dire.
 

shudder

Well-known member
Well, it's probably always more useful to look at it as a measure of the state of criticism rather than as a measure of music itself. In that respect, it can be pretty interesting.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
True enough. Though that leads to another question: does music criticism affect the marketplace/industry at all? I would say, especially in the last few years, that criticism has very little if any effect on who buys what music. There's just no way critics can clamor loud enough to drown out all of the noise from new media channels that are used to promote music to wider audiences. If something like Christina Aguilera's new album comes out, whether the critics like it or not, there are pictures everywhere, videos everywhere, the single plays in every clothing shop, she has a new line of urban streetwear out, etc. No one cares anymore what Christgau or Klosterman or whoever says about music, if they know who Christgau and Klosterman are at all. Well... maybe should I say, very few know or care. There is always the hyperconsumer hipster elite (aHEM) that gorges on information that finds the time to know and maybe care a little.

Oddly enough I think this schism is wider in music than in movies. I take the reviews of a film pretty seriously into consideration before I decide to go spend $10 to see it.
 
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tht

akstavrh
that's a 17m mp3 you got through in less than 10 since i posted it

further proof of the destruction of newtonian space time, in new york at least :)
 
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