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by Gustave Doré |
With 25% of the year remaining, Decibel writers must turn in year-end Top 20 lists today. Such is the curse of long lead times. As I’ve said before, I’m not into year-end lists. I do them out of obligation, but I frankly don’t care about other people’s tastes. Year-end lists are useful to gauge the zeitgeist, I suppose, and to see what one has missed. But I don’t take the glee other writers have in ordering apples and oranges. (It’s such a male thing to do.) Right now, I’m trying to decide between two records – which do I like more, sweep picking or odd meters? (You can probably guess the bands.)
(Here is one band on my list.)
The Rotted – Get Dead or Die Trying
Another headache in list construction is criteria: personal preference or quality? In an ideal world, both would align. But in the real world, I enjoy some crap, and I dislike some gold. (I think Led Zeppelin IV is the most perfect rock record ever made; I never listen to it.) This time, I went with my personal preference, since I’m the world’s authority on it. What criteria drive your year-end lists?
I don’t write year’s end lists and when I was on staff at a mag and we were ‘required’ to write such I turned in a half-assed top 5 (where other people made 20odd entry lists) which I still regret simply because I no longer listen to one record out of that five. How were I to know it wouldn’t age well when I had been listening to it only for a few months? (it was a Doomsword record, by the way) It’s a disingenuous practice and I dislike the underlying “christmas buyer’s guide” bent to the whole thing. The primary function of any music critic is not to get people to buy shit, it is promote discussion – and therefore a more nuanced appreciation – of art. How does a list of ‘what I liked this year’ achieve this?
If such a list absolutely has to be made, I suggest one should go with their personal preferences and not some ill-conceived outside concept of ‘objective merit’.
Criteria: desperation, frustration. A profound sense that I’m totally missing the obvious.
objective merit and how many times i can listen to it without hating it…..
helm, people prefer certain publications because they prefer their writers in filtering taste, or in making reading time worthwhile. Of course, “what I liked this year” doesn’t mean anything coming from a stranger; it does coming from someone/something with an air of authority/quality. In today’s endless s@#$storm of releases, the role of filter is more important than ever. On one hand, people can download and make their minds up for themselves. On the other hand, they don’t have unlimited time to do so. As you pointed out, the role of writer must then shift from arbiter to quality to leader of discussion.
Writers, for their part, often confuse personal preference with objective merit. Such confusion has polluted the world with self-importance and bad writing.
dave – totally with you there.
l.ron – that’s a good test, though it’s hard to do in a trade where one listens to hundreds if not thousands of releases per year.
I think year-end lists are bittersweet, because I care about them, but often get pissed that a certain record would make it on the list, while others are neglected?but these lists often do their job, which is to strike discussion…am I wrong?
I have a very strong feeling that Nachtmystium’s Assassins will make it on this dB list..I cringe. But I also have a gut feeling that Plague Bringer’s Life Songs will too, so that makes it all better. That’s what I’d like to see. The latter album is choice?I just can’t get enough of it. I think the album is action-packed, full of raw emotion that I don’t think they’ve ever captured before.
[my dB predictions were made with the help of Mark Evans. haha].
I won’t deny it, I always find year-end lists fun. It can be hard doing a magazine list in September, but 2008 has shaped up in a way that there aren’t many November/December releases that have a chance at making my 20 anyway.
When doing my annual blog list, it’s absolutely personal preference, but for the magazines and webzines, it’s always objective merit. With metal, there’s always the question of bold and innovative vs. adhering to a formula exceptionally well, and come year-end time, the former always dominates my lists.
2008 has quietly turned into a very good year for metal, as I discovered I had to leave off at least a dozen worthy titles of my own ballot. Plague Bringer among them, sadly!
jess – the “job” of such lists depend on whom you ask – for magazines, it’s a “consumer’s guide” that drives sales to people who desire consumer guides; for writers – who knows; for readers – of course, discussion, but what kind? Why *do* you get pissed off if something gets left off or not? If it were Revolver instead of Decibel, would it matter?
Plague Bringer I didn’t mind, though the production didn’t do it for me. I’ll have to revisit it again to see if that still holds true.
Adrien – interesting that you would put formal aspects over personal preference in “official” lists. Absolutely nothing wrong with it (in fact, less selfish than going w/ personal preference), though it opens the possibility that you like releases further down your list more than your top picks.
Well of course, I have to actually LIKE my top picks, which I do, big time. But come year’s end, I’m always thinking, ‘Just how much forward did the genre go this year? Who led the charge?’ As much as I enjoy the new ones by, say, Motorhead and Metallica, for me anyway, if a set-in-stone formulaic metal release is going to crack my top 20, it’ll have to be extraordinary. Disfear, The Gates of Slumber, and Amon Amarth are three 2008 examples.
Innovation vs. classicist is always an interesting thing to ponder in metal.
There are only two metal albums that will crack my Top 20 of the year: Lugubrum and Urfaust.
i’m going with personal preference. i have no desire to find the “critics choice” in music. much like critically acclaimed movies….not a lot of ones you want to see more than once and what fun is a record if you never listen to it?
i never get upset about lists. i just use them as information. most of the time to check out things i haven’t heard. i distinctly remember metal maniacs in the 80s using dudes from bands to put lists and i would always go check out the bands. same with thank lists in records and cassettes. it’s good information to have. nothing more.
thanks for this blog…i’ve discovered and rediscovered some bands.
Cosmo, I hear your point about how a person whose taste you appreciate making a list might be a good point to start a discussion. But wouldn’t you say that the records in the top 10 of such a person ought to be have been – or be – reviewed proper by them and those more in-depth pieces would be even more of a starting point for nuanced discussion?
But these lists are ubiquitous. The question then reverts, just what purpose do these lists fulfill besides the ones covered by critique work proper? The answer is of course, none other than ‘christmas buyer guide’. This is why Decibel asks you to turn in your lists well before the year is over and this is why people turn to them primarily. As consumers, looking for stuff to buy that critics agree is good.
evanz – Man, that Lugubrum record looks interesting. I will have to check it out. And I’ve been meaning to get around to Urfaust, geez.
ben – “Critically acclaimed” can be a valid criteron; you just have to find the pool of critics that works for you. Maybe film critics don’t suit you as much as say, your friends or the blogosphere, etc. Thanks for reading.
helm – Of course: lists are shorthand. Ideally, people treat them as starting points, not endpoints. But for various reasons they don’t – laziness, lack of time, etc.
Condensing of information isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I much prefer rottentomatoes.com, an aggregator of film critic scores, to reading their actual reviews. The aggregate score reflects my experience almost 100% of the time, and since I’m not as invested in film as I am in music, I’m content to drill through the commentary and run with a numerical score. Plus, I don’t trust critics individually.
Read a book called “The Wisdom of Crowds” if you ever get the chance, it’s relative to why aggregate scores tend to reflect reality better than just individual critic opinion.
I don’t think you should trust anyone’s taste really. The wonderful internet has made it so you can listen for yourself and make up your own mind before you buy something. Critical analysis about art serves a different end, that of human communication (what is going on in this commentspace for example) and the refinement of an experience towards something more essential through reflection. I read your reviews to get a sense of what you felt about what you listened to and how that reflects on how I feel about the same thing I’m listening to.
Oddly enough, I like making lists. I’m not sure why, though it probably has more to do with some mild form of undiagnosed Aspergers than any half-assed explanation that I could delve into regarding my devotion to music or some shit.
But I go with personal preference with a little consideration for diversity (not that I’m try to purposely diversify them; I’m not that pretentious and I know that no one really cares anyway). I like when my year-end lists have a good mix of metal, psych, jazz, rap, soul, classics, etc and every album belongs there because I played the crap out of them. And also because it reflects how much I explored and discovered that year. The most disappointing years for music for me have always been the ones with the least of this type of diversity.
My year end lists (I write occasionally for places, but not so much anymore) are usually based on this criteria:
–if it’s an established band, comparing it to their other work and how this record differs from their others; either intentionally or unintentionally and judging the merit on both past works and their new work as a separate entity
–if it’s a new band, I evaluate it on how well it channels it’s influences and/ or deviates from them. I love alot of bands because they pull off a somewhat or very overly derivative sound with great attitude and conviction; I also try to take it as it’s own sound if it’s doing something off the beaten path, or is doing something different from it’s obvious influences. Really, in 2008, most sounds have been done before, and you run the risk of being too authentic to a particular sound; but you also run the risk of being too unspecific in genre. Alot of readers and fans like to know exactly what fits into a genre, most acts benefit from comparisons in assessments.
Also, like someone had pointed out, some places/ writers are forced to do year end lists, and that may be the stuff that currently moves them, not necessarily the stuff that they think that will hold up five or ten or 50 years from now or whatever.
I think a better system is a “what moves you this year?”. Plenty of old acts and old albums get forgotten in the deluge of new, and I come more from a standpoint of what really blew me away from *any* year. Most places are too hung up on calendar year releases, and I know myself, even this year, i’d said to myself “Caribou’s ‘Andorra’ is from last year”, but i’m throwing it in my top albums of 2008 anyways. I didn’t hear it until 2008! The best albums always do well past their calendar year, anyways–look at the continued chart sales of “Dark Side Of The Moon”, for example.
Usually, there’s only a handful of new albums that really blow me away each year–there’s quite a few that are almost to that level, but the distinction of “true classic” is transcendent.
I have never put together an end-of-year list and I probably never will. I don’t read too deeply into them as being particularly ‘definitive’ or as guides with which to align my own tastes. However, I do find it interesting and useful to check out end-of-the-year lists to make sure I didn’t skip over anything interesting. I try to keep in mind what subgenres people favor when I read their lists so I don’t even going ‘what?!? how did you not mention _____!?!’ Simple as that.
helm – That book looks right up my alley. Will definitely check it out.
xoxobra, ryan, onerode – Your comments raise the possibility that last.fm most-played rankings are the truest indicators of priority. They also reinforce the fact that ordinary music listeners are much more sensible than critics.
I’d just go with personal preference myself however like you pointed out the problem is with writing reviews is the critic is more exposed to more new music than their readership and is expected to pick stuff that has merit over the sea of shit.
Surely the fact that you like an album enough to play it over and again gives it more merit than something that is stunning in musicianship but only gets one or no post-review play before being lost in the CD stacks.
I like metal lists basically because they inform me of what to listen to. It sounds like I can’t think for myself but I don’t have the time or resources to get to hear all of the music I like. Lists are a quick way to (1) check if the reviewer is close to what I like and (2) give me new choices to listen to. Hell, I’ve used this website to buy several albums because of the trusted resource.
A year end list is a big advertisement of the writer to their fans of what they missed. (BTW, it would be cool if Origin’s Antithesis was on there!)