Quick silly poll - Has 2011 been a good year for music?

I didn't find/hear nearly as many new albums I was instantly infatuated with as I did last year; in fact, most of my musical obsessions were either reissues or things I missed last year.

Although Lamb came back, that's worth a ton.

Yeah, I only fell in love with a very few things this year as opposed to the last couple years when my cup runneth over.

I have found so many things in music to love this year. So PGY for me. But that might be because I haven't allowed myself to be exposed to too many things that I hate. Also, having Spotify means I have to make less of an effort to discover things that I love.

dog latin to thread

every year is a good year for music

haha, yeah this year has been classic. i'll be writing about why over the next couple of weeks...

Oh, I found a ton of great things this year, it's just that most of them weren't released this year.

all i'm going to say is, compare this year's big records with the GAPDY banality of 2009 and suddenly the past feels like a very foreign country.

but yeah, it's all subjective innit. no one was forced to listen to GAPDY in 2009.

there hasn't been a good year for music since 1997

what was so great about 1997?

What was so good about 1997? The first album that comes to mind is Homework and that's good, but I'm drawing a blank otherwise.

OK Computer was the first thing that came to my mind JF. I always thoguht Homework was '96.

Oh god I had forgotten about GAPDY. *shudders*

I'm blanking on the G, was it Grizzly Bear?

I know the rest were AnCo, Phoenix, Dirty Projectors, Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

yeah i still haven't listened to that grizzly bear album despite being indie hype apologist #23 on here

xps Oh yeah! OK Computer.

What was so good about 1997? The first album that comes to mind is Homework and that's good, but I'm drawing a blank otherwise.

okay really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1997_albums

In addition to Homework you have:

Portishead
Baduizm
Dig Your Own Hole
Do You Like My Tight Sweater?
Hard Normal Daddy
Bently Rhythm Ace
Glee
The Fat of the Land
Happy End of the World
Homogenic
Modus Operandi
New Forms
Mi Media Naranja
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
OK Computer

... and there I stopped looking because 1997 was a fucking amazing year

what was so great about 1997?

first AMT album
The Fall's Levitate
Gravitar's Now the Road of Knives
Bardo Pond's Lapsed
Erykah Badu's Baduizm
Helium's The Magic City
Yo La Tengo's I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
Camp Lo's Uptown Saturday Night
first OOIOO album
Labradford's Mi Media Naranja
Strange Warmings of Laddio Bolocko
Electric Wizard's Come My Fanatics
Modest Mouse's Lonesome Crowded West

ps fuck OKC

The Grizzly Bear one, I know I've heard, but it was so backgroundy I may as well not have.

tbh I didn't give a shit about GAPDY domination because I loved Y and could easily avoid/ignore the rest aside from A, whom I could boil down to one song I also loved

IDGI. OKC is like the worst Radiohead album?

I remember there being a lot of not great albums by bands I'd formerly appreciated, in 1997 and almost being ready to give up on music.

(Not including OKC, mind, which is still a good album even if it's nowhere near my fave. I'm thinking of frinstance LAGWAFIS and that last abomination by The Verve.)

1997 had "Blur" and "Brighten The Corners" too, both of which I liked well.

Yeah, aside from Homework, Homogenic and OK Computer, I don't even think about any of that shit anymore (and I rarely even think about Homogenic and OK Computer tbh).

Wait, I liked _Blur_ and Dig Your Own Hole, too. But mostly, meh.

perfect from now on

smh

i think '96 and '98 were both way better for rap though?? drawing a blank here

The worst Radiohead album is still (and will always be) Pablo Honey IMO

I think maybe my distaste for OKC is down to the complete WTFness of "what has Thom Yorke done to his hair!?!??" during that period. YMMV.

The same can't be said of Spz, mind.

let's talk about 2011 again

Pablo Honey is GREBT!!!! What choo talking bout, OH NOES?

Blow Out! Thinking About You! even CREPE has really aged quite sweetly. But I guess I just had a soft spot for them as a Ride wannabe shoegaze band. Sigh.

TKOL is their worst album. Pablo Honey wasn't perfect, but at least it didn't sound like a bunch of rejected OK Computer b-sides.

is there like a music version of godwin's law where all threads end up as radiohead discussion

I never liked OKC.

So why did I dash out and buy KidA unheard on day 1? Probably because all the R fans hated it already, so figured it must be great. Was right.

Sorry. KATY B! ST VINCENT! BARBARA PANTHER! EMIKA! PLANNINGTOROCK! ACTIVE CHILD! 2011 has been awesome!

as a staunch Rhead defender round these parts I actually like OKC more than I did when it came out, but I get annoyed when it becomes the default answer for 'album-of-the-decade' if only because 1) it is patchy as fuck, and 2) there are at least ten albums from 97 alone that stomp on it.

xp smh here's something http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516KBT7FJJL.jpg

I've struggled to find whole albums i really love but it has been a terrific year for singles.

Hey you know I actually started a RH sandbox thread so we could have a place to talk about this stuff without irritating everyone in the world The Lex?

xp I used to think that until I heard the John Maus album. Weirdly enough now 2011 makes sense.

the lex is actually just a joint account used by everyone in the world

I liked the 3 albums I heard

lol singles

Actually the last time I saw The Lex, he was quite drunk in a pub telling me that he didn't actually ~mind~ el Thommo's voice when he sung in his lower register, but swore me to silence about it, and we came up with a cunning plan to have Radiohead and Britney Spears switch remixers for their next release which would probably have AMAZING RESULTS.

I mean, can you imagine?

Codex (Junkie-XL super rave hands in the air remix)
vs
Hold It Against Me (Four Tet minimal gaze ecstacy reconstruction)

That would be the most awesome thing ever.

multiple xposts but:

I love "Creep" but I have never gotten into any of the other songs on that album. In fact, I was so turned off by the rest of that album that I intentionally avoided The Bends and all of its singles and didn't realize how great THAT album was until I was ambushed by "Paranoid Android" on MTV, got into OK Computer and then saw the video for "Just".

From this year, I really really dig Planningtorock, Beyonce, Rihanna (to my complete and total shock and surprise btw), M83, Lamb, PJ Harvey and Creep. (For obv reasons I am recusing myself from listing The Mountain Goats this year) Emika is great but since I only discovered her this week I am holding off on adding her to the list.

video for Just is def what got me into the Bends and Radiohead in general

2011 was as good a year for albums as any, in my opinion, although the singles didn't amaze me as much.

I knew that actually, bcz you called 212 the single of the year

(j/k; I like that song, thx for bringing it to my attention)

all years are equally good

ha -- yeah. And even that one I couldn't give a perfect score.

there is no such thing as time or quality

i am voting classic for lack of a 'v good' option

fuck is the 'suggest ban' option?

2011 has been an excellent year for music, as every year is

it has been a pretty bad year for critics' taste (as...every year is) (except, weirdly, 2009! i know elsewhere it was GAPDY year but i remember feeling so weird that i'd voted for every album in ilm's top 6)

voting Pretty Good Year though, b/c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hepGByXLboo

mission accomplished

Diamond Mine, Bangs & Works 2, Katy B, EMA, When Saints Go Machine, Console, David Comes To Life, Nicolas Jaar, Tom Waits, Author, Ford & Lopatin, Oneohtrix, Rustie, Walls, Sully, St. Vincent, Death Grips, Zomby, John Maus, Battles, Austra, Panda Bear, Night Slugs and stuff, Gang Gang Dance, Ekoclef and quite a few others, all great-to-excellent things that came out this year, but more importantly most of these seem to be doing things a bit differently from before in one way or another.

Interesting post about a study that tries to quantify the effect of music industry profit decline on music quality:

http://timharford.com/2011/11/music-for-love-not-money/

It tries to quantify the relative quality of music produced during different decades based on longevity on the radio and sales charts. In a period of relatively weak quality, you'd expect to see sales and radio play of current releases to decline relative to "oldies". Based on this study, the 2000s (post-Napster era) were no worse than the pre-Napster '90s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVsfOSbJY0

I just listened to Rustie for the first time earlier this morning and literally have no recollection of how it went and no desire to play it again. I just discovered Austra earlier this week and want to hear them again. I love one When Saints Go Machine song to death and am ambivalent towards the rest. Zomby, I dig. Battles was weak compared to Mirrored. Everything else on Dog Latin's list, I haven't heard and/or don't care about.

you don't like katy b?

actually dan you would love the walls album i swear. its called coracle

[q="lex"]2011 has been an excellent year for music, as every year is

it has been a pretty bad year for critics' taste (as...every year is) [/q]

this

Console came out at the very very end of last year, but I reckon it counts as this year. Been playing bits of it in the Outloud room and people have been digging it quite a lot.

I haven't heard Katy B and am not knocking myself out to check her out.

walls is kind of in the same vein as the chemical brothers or underworld in case you were wondering

OH NOES is dan p?

i am fairly sure you would love katy b, dan

What I've heard of Walls (and admittedly I haven't checked out the whole album in its entirety) was more like Pantha Du Prince?

yeah OH NOES is dan p. People shouldn't hold back on at least checking oout Katy B.

I am certain I would dig both more than this relisten of Pablo Honey I'm doing right now

Katy B has been my late-year discovery.

xpost is that the one with the extra disc? some gems on that.

boo no Walls on US Spotify apparently

okay Katy B is making a great first impression

it does have a bit of that twinkly thing going on but also that sun-dappled psych chems thing too xxxxp

I really tried with Katy B, but I'm thinking the problem was with my own expectations more than anything else.

lex is gonna scream at me for this, but now the buzz/backlash has finished, I've found myself enjoying the odd track off the James Blake album. It's got some pretty rank moments on it, but Wilhelm's Scream, Limit, and the very last track are all "good" moments from this year.

FFS OH NOES, go back and listen to Blow Out at least before you spoil your earholes for anything else with the lovely Katy B.

okay I am def coming back to this Katy B album, I think I was put off by the name similarity with Jessie J

i predict "witches' brew" will particularly blow dan's mind

xp oh god i apologise so much on behalf of my nation for jessie j :(

It's all about "Broken Record" and how Katy B pronounces "record."

Oh man the James Blake album was so damned boring, sorry guys. I feel like a little variety could have spiced that up nicely. I'm imagining a decent album's worth could have been made by mixing up some album tracks with the 2010 EP stuff, but I'm not bothered enough to do so. It just felt like a chore to sit through the album proper.

"Easy Please Me" is the one I'd put on if I was asked to play a track. The Katy B album was very instant hit for me, but I soon grew a bit tired of it. It is a really good album, but after maybe 5-6 plays I just didn't really feel like playing it over and over...

OK you don't have to listen to any of the rest of the album, just Blow Out then you can go back to Katy B which is admittedly excellent and awesome.

Back to Radiohead again... someone was right about them being the Godwin's Law of music threads...

My favorite single of 2011 is still Emeli Sandé's "Heaven" and album is Born This Way. After that, everything is somewhat fluid...but I'm beginning to loosely order most of it simply for listmaking/voting purposes.

Jessie J put me off Katy B too

Born This Way is probably my biggest disappointment of the year. Ultimately, I fell that there are 4 great songs on it ("Government Hooker", "Bloody Mary", "Edge of Glory", "You and I") and the rest range from tolerable ("Born This Way", "Marry The Night") to holy fuck embarrassing ("Judas", "Americano")

yeah BTW is this gigantic mess that i expected to cohere, and never did.

unexpectedly my favourite song off it ended up being "electric chapel", which...i just did not expect that. (will rep hard for "government hooker", "scheiße" and "bloody mary" too. "you and i" and "the edge of glory" are kind of frustrating in that they're not horrible but they're just A BIT MUCH.)

I first heard Katy B last year on Magnetic Man's "Perfect Stranger," and still prefer that track to any that are on her own album. It's deece, but doesn't set my world on fire.

I like it more than you guys but I disliked every single except "You & I."

I think the messiness and incoherence of BTW is part of what makes me like it so much, or at least what fascinates me about. Even now, I still keep it in pretty regular rotation trying to parse it. Mostly I just love the songs I love and skip the couple I don't.

Anyone who doesn't mind a bit of Wolf Parade-style stringfelt mood-balladry could do worse than check out the Other Lives album from this year.

OH NOES: you should still be able to stream that very good Walls album http://dummymag.com/new-music/2011/09/29/walls-coracle-stream/.

BTW and Beyonce's record present the same problem for me: uneven yet the stuff that works is next-level shit.

I'm trying to think of an indie schmindie album from this year that I can really stan for. The Joy Formidable put me off by going "big" and I still think they went the wrong way. The Herman Dune album is great as I'm listening to it, but forget it as soon as it's finished. Milagres made a good record, but it's so monochromatic. Does Peaking Lights count? I don't really think of that as a typical indie album, even thought it's a NNF release.

Jeez, albums. I think I'm done with 'em for the most part.

Oh yeah, and the Iron & Wine album - thought it was cack compared to the Shepherd's Dog at first, but it ended up soundtracking a whole week in Barcelona for me, so that's a firm fave.

I was enjoying the Art Department/Soul Clap/Benoit & Sergio thing back at the beginning of the year, but that music is much better suited to dark nights and streetlights so I lost interest throughout the summer. I may well shove on again that excellent mix Soul Clap and Wolf + Lamb brought out earlier this year, now it's Autumn.

yeah i relistened to BTW the other day and most of it left me cold, although i've kinda come around on "government hooker". prefer the beyonce.

i had no home computer for nearly two months and i am sort of overwhelmed by the game of catch-up i'm playing, but holy shit there was so much good music this year. and like alfred this is the first time in a while where i cared more about albums than singles.

I can boil 4 down to four tracks as well ("I Care", "I Miss You", "Countdown", "End of Time") but, unlike BTW, I think those 4 songs are outstanding bordering-on-career-high-point songs and the rest of the album ranks from great to good aside from the still incoherent "Best Thing I Never Had" and the forgettable-except-for-the-horrible-swagu-line "Party"

what about "Love on Top"?

on the "great" or "good" side?

Beyonce album is so great and the only song I would cut is "Girls".

Also glad to see dog latin speaking positively about that Iron & Wine album. I know he doesn't have tons of fans around here, but there's a 70s AM radio vibe and playfulness that I really appreciate.

"party" is the only track that i'm not digging on 4. "i was here" clicked big time two weeks ago for no reason at all

I'd rank "Love On Top" as "very good"

I rate the album like this:

outstanding:
End of Time
I Miss You
I Care
Countdown

great/very good:
Run The World (Girls)
Love On Top
Rather Die Young

good:
I Was Here
1 + 1
Start Over

fucking Kanye:
Party

stop trying to do "feminist ballads", you are terrible at them:
Best Thing I Never Had

btw the thing that is really making Katy B work is how PRESENT she is in the mix, I am really really digging this

okay Katy B cribbed a sample used in the Alley Cat mix of "Charly" on "Go Away"

this is great, between this, Emika and Austra this has been a great week for me catching up on what happened this year

It was the greatest year since 1965--I made up a Top 250 easily...It was a year like all the others. There are usually 10 songs I really like each year; this year there were 11 or 12.

oh shit, I forgot; I liked that Cage the Elephant album

JF--scmindie album of the year for me was Belong's Common Era, though I def also count the Peaking Lights album, which wqas fantastic...

oh shit, I forgot; I liked that Cage the Elephant album

Is this for real? Genuinely curious, because I liked a couple tracks on the debut album but there was enough crap filler on that to scare me away from the new one.

That is for real! http://open.spotify.com/album/3eGL4oa233BAecE9cGZI4k

They incorporate a lot more Pixies into their music on this one.

was listening to that walls album again just now while i was walking the dog. maybe it was just the starry sky, but i hadnt noticed how kosmische/krauty some of it was. i take back my mention of underworld, i think i had had just lapsed into some sort of embarrassing old-man-indie-kid-talks-about-dance-music moment. anyhow, i don't think i'd recommend that anyone rushes out and actually buys the thing cos it does lack a bit of excitement imho, but it's definitely worth taping off a mate to play in the car.

how good is an 'average' year for music?

VERY GOOD

probably going to rate this year as pretty good, cos although i haven't found anything that i was into as much as the emeralds and oneohtrix albums from last year, there have been too many excellent things around for me to remember even half of them - pinch & shackleton, julianna barwick, patten, nils frahm, roman flugel, andy stott...

one psych rock record that not enough people have been repping for: skull defekts with daniel higgs

otm, that Skull Defekts is great!

indie-rock-wise, wild beasts is probably my favourite thing

I haven't found that much to like from this year, but I've been happy to enjoy some music from unexpected directions: Boy Better Know, some Ill Blu (though I still haven't found a full mix that doesn't have too much annoying chatter on it), some other UK funky in general. I like Emeli Sande and look forward to her album next year. All kinds of current Latin music genres that interest me have been disappointing, to the extent that I've heard them.

There is maybe more fringe sort of stuff around right now that I am okay with than usual, but I'm not getting past just being okay with it. Something like Oneohtrix Point Never, which sounds like a continuation of several strands of music I listened to a lot in the 80s, is a good example.

Which genre has had the best year? Not really seen anyone saying its been a classic year for 'insert genre here' anywhere.

pretty good year for psychedelic doom and this tops the lot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfNHX5k9N-A

Although I doubt the lex will like it

Which genre has had the best year?

GOP debates.

^ this

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

if i saw this, i would have given the third-vote to "above average year."

I'm on my phone: did you embed an Uncle Acid vid Jimmy R?

Bcz Windhand > Uncle Acid

i did

now do 1997 for comparison obv

oh! i missed the poll?

yes

Why I think 2011 was a good year for music

“In the early '70s there were at least ten albums released every week that were fantastic. Now you're lucky to find ten albums a year of that quality. And there are more albums released each week now than there were then.” - Elton John, 2007

elton nailed it, end of the story

pity elton didnt name some of these weeks and list the albums out those weeks to back up his 'theory'

to be fair, Drake wasn't around in the 70s

elton otm but i think he meant 1997 not 'the 70's'

The variation of music that young people are listening to now… it's just the same beat with a different melody on top...I think it's getting a bit samey-samey… it needs a bit of a change-up again.” – Geir Hongro (ILM), 2011

i remember when rock was young

^^^hah!

darraghmac otm