Question:
I'm thinking about posting some other albums later on, but what about taking our Users' Results and doing an experiment? Which of these five albums (which scored the highest in our recent poll) do you feel is the best one? Make comments and feel free to discuss others. But everybody should be able to vote for ONE of THESE (listed alphabetically.) Thanks.

Choices:
My Morning Jacket "Z"
New Pornographers "Twin Cinema"
Sleater-Kinney "The Woods"
Sufjan Stevens "Illinois"
Wolf Parade "Apologies to the Queen Mary"

 

I'm standing by Wolf Parade. Of these 5, that's the one I think I'll listen to most years from now.

Sufjan Steven's album is so dense and rewarding that it almost requires OCD style listening.

In Defense of The Woods as Number 1.

Reasons...

1) Best Heavy Psychadelic album since the early 70s period.
2) Highest Front-to-Back Standard of Song Quality of any album released this year.
3) The Mix - some people hate it, some love it, but the reason everybody's talking about it is because it takes such dramatic,chances...doing several things even many sound mixers I know think is wrong(because it's so ingrained in their thinking that brickwalling to such a high level is just plain wrong). In short, the mix isn't just a delivery device for this album, but a very active player...another instrument employed creatively, sometimes even contentually...as in the negation of lyrical sentiment in Modern Girl and Rollercoaster.
5. Aesthetic completeness...There have been other equally ambitious albums (Illinois, Black Sheep Boy come to mind)...but both of those albums suffer from the excess of youth...It would take a doctorate level dissertation to break it all down, but suffice it to say, in all my years of listening, I don't think there's every been an album as completely in control of it's subtext and themes as The Woods...for all the talk about it's loose, jamming sound, it is actually one of the most carefully crafted albums I've ever heard. Even the drone in verse 3 of Entertain isn't just a drone, it's Channel 2 Timecode, which Film/Video/Advertising people will recognize as the sound that was striped on one channel of VHS tapes in the 80s/90s so that composers could time their scores to Commercials and Music Videos. My point is, there isn't an off hand moment in The Woods, not one...ever damn little moment has a million hidden statements tied up in it.

There were other great albums, but none, even Illinois, hold up to the detailed aesthetic analysis one can give The Woods without breaking down.

This alone doesn't make it better, if the songs suck, who cares how carefully crafted they are, but the fact that The Woods has better songs than any of the other candidates, coupled with it's intricately and masterfully layered subtext, makes it clearly, in my eyes, the best of 2005.

quote:

Originally posted by Illiniq:
In Defense of The Woods as Number 1.
Reasons...
1) Best Heavy Psychadelic album since the early 70s period.

You didn't like My Bloody Valentine's Loveless?

I chose My Morning Jacket. I haven't heard the Sleater-Kinney album yet, though it's on my used-cd want list. I liked about half the Wolf Parade album and a third or less of the Stevens cd. These albums aren't growing much more on me with repeated listens, at least for now. I enjoyed Twin Cinema more when it was first released than I do now though I haven't replayed it much lately. My favorite album of '05- by a landslide- was White Stripes Get Behind Me Satan. Had the Iron & Wine and I&W/Calexico eps from last year been released as one full length album, that would've given the Stripes fierce competition for my top album pick.

Filmore Holmes.

I do like My Bloody Valentine's Loveless a lot...

But while it has a spacey feel, I neither consider it a psychedelic album in the traditional Hendrix/Iron Butterfly/Jefferson Airplane sense of the word, or like it nearly as much as The Woods...to be honest I think Loveless is a touch overrated, brilliant conceptually with a truly original sound, but not truly great moment-to-moment.

I don't think I'd consider My Bloody Valentine or Sleater-Kinney "psychedelic", but I guess I see the influence a bit more on "The Woods".

Of those five albums, I'd probably choose Wolf Parade, although the MMJ album holds up surprisingly well with repeat listens. I think the other three are a tad overrated, although all fine albums.

One album I wish would've made the top 5, and I'm surprised it didn't, is Spoon's "Gimme Fiction". It's a rare album that's great upon first listen and only gets better. I like that Spoon has also crafted a style that's distinct, but at the same time completely timeless. Along with Radiohead and Wilco, I think they're one of the finest bands making music right now.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: EricG75,

I voted for "The Woods" too. I thought it was effing sweet, that's all.

And yes, I did put "Z" at the top of my list, and two weeks ago I would have voted for "Black Sheep Boy" as a write-in. My ears just hadn't adjusted to S-K and I was unable to fully appreciate it until recently.

To answer a question posed to someone else, I would much rather listen to "The Woods" than "Loveless" (though I have been listening to that a lot lately). Nonetheless, I appreciate the latter and understand that it is the 'better' album.

quote:

Originally posted by dubs:
To answer a question posed to someone else, I would much rather listen to "The Woods" than "Loveless" (though I have been listening to that a lot lately). Nonetheless, I appreciate the latter and understand that it is the 'better' album.

See, now I don't understand that, Dubs. If you would rather listen to The Woods than Loveless, how can you say that Loveless is the better album? If we don't judge albums by how good they sound to us, then what are we judging them by, and why? I see a lot of this kind of thing, and I just don't get why people always say it. When I say which albums are the best of any given year, I can only say which ones sound the best to me. It's like Mark Twain said in Life on the Mississippi: "I think a body’s got his hands full enough if he sticks to just what he knows himself, without going around backing up other people’s say-so’s."

I suppose you might say that because more critics liked an album that that album is 'better' than another one, even though you liked the less critically acclaimed one better, but by the same logic you could say that more people liked the latest Mariah Carey album, so it is really 'better' than an album you personally liked more.

quote:

Originally posted by RavingLunatic:

See, now I don't understand that, Dubs. If you would rather listen to The Woods than Loveless, how can you say that Loveless is the better album? If we don't judge albums by how good they sound to us, then what are we judging them by, and why? I see a lot of this kind of thing, and I just don't get why people always say it. When I say which albums are the best of any given year, I can only say which ones sound the best to me. It's like Mark Twain said in Life on the Mississippi: "I think a body’s got his hands full enough if he sticks to just what he knows himself, without going around backing up other people’s say-so’s."

I suppose you might say that because more critics liked an album that that album is 'better' than another one, even though you liked the less critically acclaimed one better, but by the same logic you could say that more people liked the latest Mariah Carey album, so it is really 'better' than an album you personally liked more.

I think it's quite possible to acknowledge that something is great without liking it, or to love something even though you know it's not really that good. There is a difference between your favorite albums and the best albums, and it's always important to distinguish the two. In fact, I think it's pretentious to believe that there is no difference, though I don't mean to call you pretentious because I know that's not the case.

Loveless is a classic album that still significantly impacts current music even though the genre to which it belongs was not especially important as a whole. I recognize this, but right now when I listen to it I'd say my enjoyment is about 7/10. The Woods is very good but probably not a classic by most definitions. But I effing love it. My mp3 player came loaded with like 50 classical compositions by Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, etc. I've never listened to them, because most of it bores the crap out of me. But if someone wrote "Fur Elise" today its metascore would be an even 100, unless filmore trashed it on TMT because he felt it was derivative. I still wouldn't listen to it that much.

quote:

Originally posted by dubs:
I think it's quite possible to acknowledge that something is great without liking it, or to love something even though you know it's not really that good. There is a difference between your favorite albums and the best albums, and it's always important to distinguish the two. In fact, I think it's pretentious to believe that there is no difference, though I don't mean to call you pretentious because I know that's not the case.

I'm with RL-- If you hate something, don't be afraid to say it, even if everyone else seems to like it. Personally, I think Loveless is one of the most overrated albums of the 90s. Yeah, I guess it was pretty different from what others were doing in '91, but I can name a half dozen better and more influential albums from the same era.

quote:

I think it's quite possible to acknowledge that something is great without liking it, or to love something even though you know it's not really that good.

But if you're not judging the music by how good it sounds to you and how much you like it, then what are you judging it by? By how much critics like it? By how much it influenced future artists?

I don't really like the idea of just following critics' opinions of an album or really anyone else's besides my own. And while I would trust the recommendation of a critic more than the recommendation of your average person, I don't think their opinions hold any special status. I wouldn't call the most critically acclaimed album the 'best' album anymore than I would call the best-selling album the best album from a given year.

I think part of the problem here comes from individuals trying to make grand statements about music in general that individuals just aren't qualified to make. I know that sounds abstract, so here's what I mean: I can only say which albums sound best to me. I can go no further than that. You could select a group of people and have them vote and tally up the scores, and then say, "for these people, this album which had the highest score was the best." But that solution has problems too. For one, how do you select the group of people? Should it be a select groupo of people, like music critics? And if so, why is their opinion more valuable than another person's?

Another problem is selecting a voting system, which could affect the outcome. Also, how do you know that each person's enjoyment of a given ranked album correspond? It could be that one person really enjoys their #3 album much more than another person does.

I also have problems with evaluating an album by their influence on future artists. For example, I really don't like Animal Collective. They're definitely different than anything I've ever heard, but I don't like them. Suppose that they become so influential that they inspire an entire generation of artists to create music similar to theirs. I would not consider this a good thing, because I don't care for that kind of music. Far from considering this a merit, I would consider this a reason to dislike the band even more.

I'm not trying to pick a fight here. I just think this is an issue that comes up a lot, and I think it needs clarified.

Haha...imagine if in twenty years people are going crazy about the freak-folk revival. That'd be awful.

I guess this is a matter of opinion at heart. I think that for an album to be great, there should be a consensus among serious fans and some group of people who are paid to criticize music. I think that for an individual to like an album, all it takes is for that person to listen to it and dig it. As for one person resolving the two, I think it's simple.

I don't look to critics to tell me what I like and don't like. I don't like Animal Collective, and I really don't like Deerhoof. With Deerhoof especially, it's difficult for me to accept their critical acclaim. Albums whose place in history is established are a little different. If you look at my audioscrobbler, you won't find much late 70s punk (unless you count Talking Heads), but I sure am glad punk came along.

I don't know, I feel like I'm trying to make the same point over and over. I think that what matters is recognizing that there is a difference between what you like and what is good. Matters of taste wrt virtually anything are very complex psychologically, and there is definitely a social influence component. If anyone thinks they're not influenced by the general critical opinion, they're probably kidding themselves.

I wish I were an academic psychologist so I could study these things. Imagine a study like this: two participant groups, one of which reads a praise-heavy review of Loveless, the other doesn't. They both listen to it and rate it. Think the scores would be different? This is such a slam dunk that it would be boring to carry out.

Let's face it: it's rewarding when we find that someone else likes something that we like, and especially so when that someone is a significant group of people who are paid to criticize that thing. Likewise, it's aversive when we find that something that we like has been trashed by critics, unless we respond by saying that the critics don't know what they're talking about/I know more than the critics.

Is it possible to reconcile our opinion with the critics'? Yes: familiarity breeds liking, this is the psychological underpinning of people calling an album a 'grower.' Rats exposed exclusively to Schubert will come to prefer Schubert to Mozart. If you can honestly say that your first MBV experience was like an epiphany, then, well, I'd be surprised. Is it desirable for us to reconcile our opinions with the critics'? Insofar as we like to have our opinions affirmed (trust me, we all do, though to differing degrees, and even if we make a point of being different from 'everyone else'), then yes. But it's also important to like what you like or you become a robot. I don't like Deerhoof, I do like the Killers, so be it.

Sorry this post got so out of hand. You can all call me a critic-whore now, because I know most of you disagree.

Has anyone noticed that the quality of writing in these forums (with the exception of standard music fans like myself) is getting better by the week? This one especially. It makes me think of a question I asked last year - how many of us are really in the music journalism industry....or journalism alone?

Anyway, doesn't matter - its a pleasure to read you guys.

There is not much more you can say about The Woods, which I voted for, so I'll leave it at that. I saw Sleater Kinney at the Merideth Music Festival a few years ago just after they released One beat. They blew everyone away with pure intensity, and quality music. They tour Australia.....shit, as we speak, and I cannot wait to see how the "mix" comes out live.

First off, in response to Backcountry's question, I've done some entertainment journalism in college and beyond, though it's not my current profession.

As for the vote (which I believe was the original topic of discussion, though I do love the digressions) I went for My Morning Jacket just as it's my personal fave at this current moment, though I love "The Woods" and "Illinois" (haven't heard more than a song or two of the others, so my vote is a little off.

Of course you can admit something is good even if you don't like it. Somebody who doesn't read anything that isn't science fiction probably wouldn't find much of interest in "Ulysses." Nor would most literary academics find much of value in Frank Herbert or Philip Jose Farmer. If each audience judged the other's favorite work by their own personal standards, they would both end up with wrongheaded opinions. You don't look for cool alien worlds in Proust, you don't look for powerful artistic reflection in Phillip K. Dick. Saying you like one and not the other might work for your own purposes but it doesn't allow for any fair critical assesment of either's values.

I agree that judging an album by who it influenced or by how well it sold or how acclaimed it was misses the point, unless you are writing history rather than criticism. But this doesn't mean you should only trust your initial reaction to something that has garnered some amount of popular or critical success. Doing that quickly becomes reflexive and damaging.

I heard "Loveless" without knowing anything about it and loved it. I heard Jay-Z and disliked his music right off the bat. Still do, but I can appreciate why people like it. I can appreciate the technical and lyrical achievements of his albums even if the music doesn't do anything for me. And of course I have to examine why I don't like the music and maybe move beyond my intitial impression, the same way I will occasionally evaluate why I like an album that I know has serious flaws.

The opinion of an individual is not the end-all of what makes good music. Mozart was a musical genius regardless of how often I listen to his compositions. And I disagree with the example of the rats that listen to nothing but Schubert not liking Mozart, which is like saying that if you had listened to nothing but Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass in your life you would not like Miles Davis if you heard him. Davis was the more gifted composer and player, though Alpert was more popular at the time, according to album sales.

Of course it's a good idea to buck popular opinion every now and then. I don't think "Sgt. Pepper" was the best album of the 1960s, I don't think Charlie Parker was an interesting as John Coltrane, I think Bob Dylan is an overrated lyricist, I think "Nevermind" is nothing more than a solid rock album, etc. etc.

But this boils down to looking at the history of popular music through a highly personal lens. I couldn't begin to discuss the late 1960s music scene without talking about "Sgt. Pepper." There would be no Coltrane as we know him without Parker. The lyrics of popular songs would be missing a great deal of depth if Dylan hadn't opened so many doors. "Nevermind" made more of an impact on popular music than the whole ten years of underground bands that led up to it.

As with so many things, you need to find the middle ground when evaluating art, the line between the objective facts of the music (its compositional complexity (knowing that even a simple composition can be complex), the performance, the lyrics) and your own personal reaction to it. You have to be able to evaluate something for what it is even if you personally don't like it. Jay-Z's "The Black Album" is, in the context of rap music, an excellent album. Is it on my wishlist? Nope. But I'm not conceited enough to say it's a bad album just because I don't like it.

I still don't agree that you can personally recognize that something is good or great without liking it. When you say that you recognize something is great without liking it, all you are saying is that you recognize that other people like it. You can talk all you want about analysis of the music itself, but there is no way you can tell if something is good just by analyzing its structure. Some really complicated stuff is horrible. Some really simple stuff is great.

The greatness of a piece of music cannot be recognized by any other way than actually hearing it and seeing how it makes you feel. You can look at a piece of sheet music and tell if it's complex or subtle, but you can't tell if it's any good. There are no set, concrete rules on what makes good music. In fact, I think such rules are fundamentally impossible, because if such rules were recognized, music artists would simply follow that set of rules to make "good" music. If music was so well understood, then there would be nothing special about great music.

quote:

But I'm not conceited enough to say it's a bad album just because I don't like it.

I don't think that one individual is capable of making sweeping statements about what is good and what isn't. You can say what is good to you and you can say what is good to most music lovers or critics, but that's as far as you can go. You cannot make some definitive general statement about what is great.

Thought experiment: Do you think that if a "great" album that you do not like were to come out tommorow, you would be able to tell that it was great? You may protest that it takes time to recognize the greatness of something. OK, then you can have ten years to listen to it, but you can't read any reviews or any comments about the album. Do you think you could recognize it as being great?

quote:

Originally posted by RavingLunatic:

The greatness of a piece of music cannot be recognized by any other way than actually hearing it and seeing how it makes you feel. You can look at a piece of sheet music and tell if it's complex or subtle, but you can't tell if it's any good. There are no set, concrete rules on what makes good music. In fact, I think such rules are fundamentally impossible, because if such rules were recognized, music artists would simply follow that set of rules to make "good" music. If music was so well understood, then there would be nothing special about great music.

Great music is the result of genius, plain and simple. If there were a formula for great music (and the majors recognized this), then most music would be great, but the Yorkes and Albinis and Cobains and Shields of the world would make transcendent music anyway.

quote:

Thought experiment: Do you think that if a "great" album that you do not like were to come out tommorow, you would be able to tell that it was great? You may protest that it takes time to recognize the greatness of something. OK, then you can have ten years to listen to it, but you can't read any reviews or any comments about the album. Do you think you could recognize it as being great?

Yes, given that I:
a) like the type of music in question (I'd never know it if the greatest rap album ever was released tomorrow)
b) understand the place of the particular album in history
c) and of course, dig the album.

So you're right, in the sense that if I don't like something, I won't recognize it as greatness, unless a large, diverse, trustworthy section of people tell me so. If they do, I feel I have to take their word for it.

PS This is fairly unrelated but the experiment with rats and Mozart and Schubert was performed in a psychology lab and the results were statistically significant. This is not to say that repeated exposures to something can't make you like that something less, but this is atypical (in part because if you dislike something to begin with, you will avoid repeated exposures). But you'll understand popular music a lot better if you realize that people liked Limp Bizkit because they were on MTV all the time (and not just because they were so pervasive that there were few alternatives). That statement is at least as true as the converse, that Limp Bizkit was on MTV all the time because people liked them. On some level we probably all understand this, but it took some time before I was able to forgive the people who bought Limp Bizkit's records and made Fred Durst impossibly wealthy (for someone of his talent).

I'm just going to throw some random points out since I'm a little tired and don't feel like stringing this into something coherent.

Take all the music you listened to as a pimply teenager. How much of it was great at the time? How much of it do you look back on and blush that you could ever have listened to such tripe? Is it still great music? Was the music great when you listend to it then and not great now? Was there some quality in the music that changed or was it just you? Since the answer would of course be that you changed, does this mean that there is something inherent in the music that could be judged as being good or bad?

Next, do you consider the sound of a refrigerator motor to be beautiful, and would you listen to it all day long? How about a guy scratching his fingernails up and down on a chalkboard and calling it music? Since I'm going to make the assumption that the answer is no to those, and that most people would say no, then does this mean that there is some sort of standard outside of individuals by which music can be judged? Such as say, rhythm, mood, melody, lyrical structure, motif, compositional depth, originality, etc.?

If you think Limp Bizkit is great, does that mean they are great or that you just have crappy taste in music?

Isn't the purpose of a critic to make sweeping statements about what is good and what is not? Aren't critics (professional or just your everyday appreciators) the ones who say "this is a great album and it should be recognized as such"? And isn't this how our culture comes to define what we consider the great albums?

We are all entitled to our own opinions, but there comes a point when you have to concede to the popular opionion. Example: I love Coltrane's "A Love Supreme." If someone said they didn't like it, I would be fine with that. If someone said they hated it, that would be okay. If someone said they thought it was a crappy jazz album, I would call them an idiot. because it's a great jazz album by any legitimate standard of what a jazz album should be.

As for RL's thought experiment (no offense dude, but just call it a hypothetical question next time), I wouldn't listen to an album I didn't like for ten years regardless of its qualitities. I wouldn't listen to it more than once, if that. But fortunatly, since I don't live in a vacuum, I have people around who might have appreciated it on first listen and who would influence my opinion and maybe convince me to give it another try, to look at it in a new light. And maybe I would like it, just like maybe how someday I might give Jay-Z another chance. And doors will open and I will progress as a human being. Just like maybe someday you'll suddenly hear an Animal Collective song somewhere and something will click and you will suddenly wish they did spark the next wave of popular music.

Doubtful, but it could happen.