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The Aura of the H-Man
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Kevin and Anita are really nice people, too, in addition to being great musicians.
That list needs more Thermals.
I love St. Vincent, and this song in particular, but without some additional context beyond an out of the blue homage, that opening was just kinda weird.
I can’t speak for the rest of her music, but her voice in Videogames just seems very detached and emotionless. That may be the point, I guess, which is fine. With those lyrics, it apparently works as a song. It’s just that detached and emotionless doesn’t really work all that well in a live setting.
Seriously. Lo-Fi is not the same thing as Lo-Energy.
Every time I hear this song, it really make me want to listen to “Nothing Ever Happened”. Mary Timony does a great Bradford Cox impression on the second half of the song.
“Both Easter AND eggs are vile”
-Morrissey
Those Darlins released a really good album, but I think it kind of got lost in the “girl-group retro-pop” (or girl fronted group) craze of the last year or so. Their style is a little different, but between Tennis, Cults, Dum Dum Girls, etc., it was easy to get overlooked.
** They are all basically easy listens**
In other words, they’re the albums most likely to have the broadest appeal among the type of people who read this site. Big surprise that they would be at the top of a readers’ poll then.
And if these are easy listens, what’s a hard listen? And if something is a hard listen, how does that make it good? I mean, Fucked Up was a hard listen for me because I can’t get past the dude’s voice, but that’s also why I didn’t vote for it. Everything becomes more pleasant over time. The Monitor was a hard listen for me at first last year, but once I got used to it, I loved it and became an easy listen, and that’s when it got “better”. It was still an awesome record. Music should be enjoyable. It shouldn’t be a tool to punish ones-self for credibility.
Complainers are funny. Here’s a newsflash: Many people who regularly read Pitchfork also regularly read Stereogum. I know that may come as a shock to some of you.
That’s kind of funny because while I thought this year’s list was pretty decent, the Monitor was my favorite album of last year by far.
Probably as close to my preferences as I’ve seen this year. I don’t really like calling this a “best of”. It’s more of a list of the albums I personally enjoyed the most, regardless of any artistic merit or critical praise:
20) Army Navy – the Last Place
19) Tennis – Cape Dory
18) Dum Dum Girls – Only in Dreams
17) Handsome Furs – Sound Kapital
16) Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost
15) Atlas Sound – Parallax
14) Destroyer – Kaputt
13) Generationals – Actor-Caster
12) Viva Voce – The Future Will Destroy You
11) the Joy Formidable – the Big Roar
10) Smith Westerns – Dye it Blonde
9) Peter Bjorn & John – Gimme Some
Eleanor Friedberger – Last Summer
7) Cults – Cults
6) tUnE-yArDs – W H O K I L L
5) Wild Flag – Wild Flag
4) Gruff Rhys – Hotel Shampoo
3) St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
2) Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes
1) PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
I didn’t put together a year end songs list, but this was my favorite song of 2011.
Army Navy has a really great video for Ode to Janice Melt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89W1iF0eLVc
And pretty much anything Tom Scharpling is involved with is pretty good.
Hotel Shampoo was criminally underrated. My Christmas wish is for a new Super Furry Animals record in 2012.
Well, it’s definitely a list. Actually this has three of my top ten in its top ten, and five in its top 34, so it probably tracks as well with my preferences as anything so far.
Is Vomit really everyone’s favorite track that album? I think Alex and Die are much better songs, or at least a lot more fun to listen to. Probably Honey Bunny, too.
Yes. That’s how I compile my own list. I see a lot of shows, so I tend to spend a lot of time listening to the bands I’m planning on seeing. The albums that end up at the top of my personal list are the ones that I kept wanting to listen to long after I’d seen their live show (or albums that I really like from acts I wasn’t able to see for some reason).
It’s an alright list. I find at the end of the year that there’s just so much stuff I haven’t had the time to dig through that if I find a handful of my favorite albums on a list like this, I’m cool with it. Though going through the ones posted so far, I think Gruff Rhys and Eleanor Friedberger have really been overlooked. I apparently also really dug Lykke Li more than most people.
And again, this was a really great year for women. I think seven or eight of my favorite albums were female artists, girl groups, or female fronted groups.
Noted. Though I think we could have figured out your opinion from the book you wrote on the facebook thread linked above.
That whole “just standing there” thing wasn’t very Thundergun.
Other than no St. Vincent, it pretty much looks like all the other lists so far (except the metal list, I guess). Also, Wild Flag must not have been a big hit across the pond.
There was a time when I was concerned that I only like the PJ Harvey album because I knew it would have the approval of a lot of list-makers. But man, I just really enjoy listening to that album. It’s definitely somewhere in my favorite 3-4 albums this year, despite being the only act I really wanted to see this year that I didn’t get a chance to see.
You mean you would have expected Rolling Stone to publish Q’s year end list and not Stereogum? OK, but that’s hardly something to get depressed over.
Because corban has the keys, and he’s infatuated/intrigued.