Hmm...we may have a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot situation on our hands.

Well, screw them. When The Pawn was a great album. It's well into my top 100 rock albums.

quote:

Originally posted by Bobthespirit:
Hmm...we may have a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot situation on our hands.

Well, screw them. When The Pawn was a great album. It's well into my top 100 rock albums.

I'm not a big Fiona fan personally, but I'm sure it'll get released. But I wonder if Fiona has the chutzpah of Wilco or Aimee Mann to do it herself. She seems very delicate.

yeah, decemberists are folky type, ummmm yeah, just check out the new album, if the first 3 songs don't intrigue you....well...then i have nothing to say to you. but yeah, they sound incredibly similar to neutral milk hotel. If you wanna get into that band a good starter song is 'holland, 1945' or 'ghost'. werd up.

Fiona is not for every one but she's far more interesting than 90% of the musicians releaseing discs these days. Typical Sony always sticking it to the fans.

I wouldn't say Sony likes sticking it to the fans..rather, they like making a lot of money, and whether it pleases the fans or not is incidental.

Arular might be the best dance album I've ever heard. There's something that seems a slightly bit...thin, about the music, but it doesn't hurt my ability to enjoy it that much.

quote:

Originally posted by Machols:
I'm going to call it and say M.I.A's Arular...
Best Album of 2005 as of 1:49 pm, March 29th.
All day MIA eating away at my brain. Can't stop dancing, beautiful woman everywhere. BINGO!

No to bag on you machols...but i dont understand the uproar...to me it sound slike a heavy mix of alot of different electronic sounds mixed with a heavy dose of hip-house beats.It is not all that original.

If u played me a few of her tracks at random not knowing they are hers...i would swear it sounds like l'trimm or something else along thos elines from the early botty bass miami sound crap.

Her mixtape with diplo is 100 times better.In my Opinion!!

Arular is a decent record. I think it is about as good as Boy in Da Corner.

Rolling Stone called gave it 4.5 stars. This is the same magazine that has never rewarded more than 4 stars to Radiohead or Wilco...

Call my crazy, but I don't think M.I.A. is quite as important to music as those two bands.

Another thing I noticed (to further pick on Rolling Stone) is that they did not publish an end-of-year top 10. I asked myself why they would refrain from doing this.

The Harvard Business School has removed itself from the biz. school rankings because it feels that it is in a league of its own. Surely, Rolling Stone is the Harvard of music critics!

What do you snobs think? Who should we trust if not the stone that is rolling?

quote:

Originally posted by The_Sprawl:
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Another thing I noticed (to further pick on Rolling Stone) is that they did not publish an end-of-year top 10. I asked myself why they would refrain from doing this.


What do you snobs think? Who should we trust if not the stone that is rolling?

I think they did a Year End Top 50. They always do it in the Year In Review issue. It's not ranked, though. Just the 50 records from 2004 they liked. And they did a poll of their critics and readers for a more manageable year-end best-of. I don't know if they put that stuff on the site, and I may have recycled my print copy, but I'll try to find both.

Their top ten, like almost everyone else's, can be found at www.rocklist.co.uk

Hmm, I did not find any top ten list from Rolling Stone. I think they just give a top 50 list, very vague and uncontroversial.

Recently at least I have found Rolling Stone very loath to give 5-star lavishing reviews, even to great bands like Radiohead. They seem to favor older or more established artists like Eminem, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Beastie Boys, and Beck. They gave Eminem's new album 4 stars for no apparent reason except he is Eminem...
Maybe they want to make sure they are on the "right side of history," and don't want to hype a band or album that they are not certain will be acclaimed for years to come? Who knows.

I was gonna post this in the electronic section...but after repeated listens.I have to say Venetian Snares new album is borderline incredible.This one for sure takes more after aphex...but not in a bad way.I guess it just must be the strings and arrangements that remind me of certain aphex twin tracks.This one will probabbly be in my top 10 at the end of the year.

Rolling Stone is what I think of when I hear the word 'noncommital'. They give everything a ceiling of 4 stars unless they're *absolutely sure* it's going to be a big hit with casual listeners *and* critics. For instance...the only 5 star ratings I've seen are for Sea Change and Elephant.

As for Arular...well, it just really has an enjoyable, organic sound. It may not be doing anything not being done by other bands and artists, but...that type of music usually has a tendency to feel sort of forced, and lifeless. I'd go as far to say it sounds very superficial. Arular sounds neither forced nor lifeless. It's a case of 'doing what everybody else is doing, better'. Plus critics give it bonus points for having political lyrics.

I would go further than just saying critics like Arular because it has political lyrics...they like it because it has populist, left-wing, anti-war, anti-bush lyrics sung by a minority. Now whether or not you are sympathetic to liberal causes, you must agree music journalists automatically give this sort of music more weight. M.I.A. does sound really cool though.

quote:

Originally posted by Bobthespirit:
Rolling Stone is what I think of when I hear the word 'noncommital'. They give everything a ceiling of 4 stars unless they're *absolutely sure* it's going to be a big hit with casual listeners *and* critics. For instance...the only 5 star ratings I've seen are for Sea Change and Elephant.

As for Arular...well, it just really has an enjoyable, organic sound. It may not be doing anything not being done by other bands and artists, but...that type of music usually has a tendency to feel sort of forced, and lifeless. I'd go as far to say it sounds very superficial. Arular sounds neither forced nor lifeless. It's a case of 'doing what everybody else is doing, better'. Plus critics give it bonus points for having political lyrics.

Speaking of weird rating systems, I love it how All Music Guide gives almost everything a minimum of four stars, but don't give five-star reviews to anything recent that isn't Basement Jaxx (seriously, check out BJ's review scores; I think that Rooty is the only new release so far this millenium to receive five stars). So, their usual rating scale ranges from 4/5 to 4.5/5.

Critics would also give points for literate, creative, non-pandering, intelligent, well thought out right wing lyrics. Drive By Truckers, for instance. Just, most of the country bands who sing right wing lyrics are derivative, pandering, and dispassionate, like they're singing what they think their audience wants instead of what they actually feel. (They certainly didn't penalize Loretta Lynn either)

And, whether or not that's why critics like Arular, *I* like it because it's immersive, organic, and just sounds good.

It's interesting that you call Arular left wing...there's only one song, buried after the last track that bashes Bush, and it's not anti-republican, it's anti-authority in general. Arular is neither-wing. Left wing is REM's anti-war songs. Just because she expresses sentiments that happen to go against the current republican canon doesn't mean she's bashing specifically the republicans.

In fact, I think it's a huge problem about American discourse right now that every time a person expresses a political opinion, that opinion is immediately magnetized and associated with either the democratic or republican canon. M.I.A. has her own beliefs -- she is clearly not just siding with the democrats against the republicans.

And thus, I don't think the critics' giving it points for expressing honest political opinions is specifically left-wing oriented.

Edit: And Biggles...if you think AMG never gives five stars, look at albums made prior to 1997. Just about every 'classic great' has at least 2 or 3 albums that get five stars. Also, just about every electronica artist from the early 90s has one album with a five star rating. It's only new, non-electronica stuff that's capped at 4 1/2.

Bob, that's a very well-conceived-and-written post, but I'm one of Drive-By Truckers biggest fans, and although they love America, they bash both President Bushes every chance they get. (Can't wait for Jeb to provide fodder next album.) I'll quote the songs if necessary, but I don't honestly believe it's necessary.

EDIT- Critics all have their own agendas, history and musical tastes. I wouldn't spend too much time trying to figure most of them out because I think they will sway toward the highest bidder (not all, but most...plus, I don't consider most music "reviewers" to be critics anyhow.)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mark f,

They do bash various conservative politicians, but their values are denotatively christian, family oriented, and southern.

And, George Wallis notwithstanding, when they do bash politicians they do it through narrators. Most of the songs on 'The Dirty South' are not written in the first person, they create characters in various situations to illustrate 'The other side of the story' as they profess Lynyrd Skynyrd to have done in their songs about the south in various songs on 'Southern Rock Opera'. (And when they did bash George Wallis, it was based on his pandering to racists, and racism is no longer part of the republican canon, so you can hardly consider that song to be against modern republicans.)

At most, I would say that the Drive By Truckers hold southern, conservative values, but they are intelligent and literate about it, and unlike many other conservative songwriters, they perspective-take very astutely. They objectively consider both sides of the position and generally defend the side they consider to be under-represented, which is generally the conservative side. They are conservative -- they're just also intellectuals.

It is hard to tell whether rock critics or "reviewers" are really biased in favor of left-wing lyrics because the only hardcore right wing lyrics I see belong to Toby Keith and his ilk. It is much easier to make good anti-authority music than it is to make good conservative music. I'm not even sure what conservative lyrics would sound like. "Tax cuts help long-term economic growth, galang a lang a lang lang" doesn't really roll off the tongue.

Edit: I have never heard Drive By Truckers, so maybe I am missing out on the one intelligent conservative voice in rock music? Someone mentioned Loretta Lynn. I hardly find any politicial underpinnings in her music except "adultery is bad," which I suppose could be considered conservative.

As for M.I.A., while her lyrics are not straightforward pro-Democrat, they almost all have an anti-authority tone, which I'm sure journalists love. My point is not to bash her or try to polarize her, but simply to say that a reason she is getting such high praise from critics is that they admire the political pull-up-the-people tone of her songs.

AMG does tend to be somewhat revisionist. I think this is because they see themselves as more of a consensus review site, and it takes a few years for an album to be universally (or mostly universally) considered great or classic.

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

Well, there are cultural differences. Rock, rap, and punk are generally more well liked in urban areas, which are more individualistic, anti-authoritarian, and left wing. Whereas country music is more liked in rural areas that are collectivist and right wing.

And that's probably the cause of the purported 'left wing media bias'. Simply the fact that the big cultural metropolises where most of the media resides are hugely urban areas.

So. Some pretty nice albums released in 2005, eh? I'm sorta on the fence about whether to buy Lullabies to Paralyze...because I seem to really like the tracks I have half the time I listen to them and really dislike them the other half.

My God. Which tracks don't you like and when and why?