I have about 19 of these roughly. Must be why I used to be a subscriber back when they put out a print magazine( instead of their dumb online only zine contraption). Some of these albums though have already not had much staying power for me anyway, such as the Andrew Bird or Earle albums. The Dr. John album though is quite fun.
I have 12, but extra points for 5 out of the top 10? The Lumineers makes sense to me; a nice, catchy, but not great album. Why are you baffled BT; too high, too low, or too middling?
Too high and, in a sense, too middling. While the album has good songs, it lacks breadth, and by the end of it I feel that it is formulaic. While Lumineers have potential, I feel that their album is an over-hyped demo, and I don't see how it beats out Punch Brothers, Godpeed You..., Avett Brothers, Leonard Cohen, Doctor John, and Bob Dylan (not too mention a few albums that don't fit into my musical universe, but I still feel are better realized).
I bet there's a modern phrase for my internet crankiness/unwillingness to next-paging through four or more pages of these various lists. It takes forever for my screen to populate so I can scroll down, read over it, then do it all over again. Screw that.
It was nice, however, to see Betty Lavette make the list. Whatever follows after her, I'll never know.
I technically have three, but the only reason I have Lumineers and Of Monsters and Men is because Amazon sold them for a dollar in the brief sale mid-summer and I was on the road and decided a dollar was worth it to find out what the rest of the world was listening to; I ended up not caring greatly for either of them. The one I intentionally have is the Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Of the rest the only one I'm much interested in hearing is Leonard Cohen - I heard one track of that in an airport Starbucks and liked it...
This kind of list always reminds me of the degree to which I inhabit a different musical world. More than one entry on my own year-end top twenty had a release of fifty copies. And how dare they publish the list when Taylor Deupree's new album is due out early December? (It's on my Christmas list, which means I will not be able to do my top 20 until after Dec 25...)
I could have written Prof's post, except Alabama Shakes is the one I got on the dollar sale. Also like Japandroids, but haven't bought.
The jazz critic Ted Gioia is running down his (not just jazz) top 100, and it is an intriguing list...about half things I've never heard of: http://tedgioia.com/bestalbumsof2012.html
I have 7 and have listened via streaming services to another 5. I'm going to listen to more now. Kelly Hogan reminds me of Dusty Springfield, and coming from me at least that is very high praise. BTW, it looks like there are only samples for 5 songs but if you scroll down you'll see the rest.
I listened to Frank Ocean but wasn't that impressed by it. Maybe I'll listen to it again.
Seriously, though--what, no Paul Weller? He's neither in the list nor in the reader comments, which are full of suggestions. What does a guy over 50 have to have accomplished in his life to get a little attention? Obviously more than continuing to do great work or Sonik Kicks would be here. No Neil Young, either. Others I would have included: Bruce and Lucero, who are mentioned by commenters; Joseph Arthur and Gaslight Anthem, who are not. Maybe Santana, too. Roll your eyes, but if you listen to it you might see what I mean. This is Paste, so I don't expect jazz or world music to be on their list and won't fault them for absences in those genres. Otherwise I would point out the absence of Staff Benda Bilili and Amadou & Mariam. However, they gave Folila an 8.0 when they reviewed it back in April. Maybe that was so long ago they've forgotten it. Wadada Leo Smith would be way, way beyond their readership's taste.
I prefer to boost local acts so I tried to love the Lumineers, but I can't. They're not bad, but their songs and arrangements just seem simple and obvious. They're certainly better than 303 or The Fray. I'll give them that.
Second the rec of the Giola list. He's a Jazz guy who listens to a whole lot of music, and branches away from Jazz way more than I do, so it should be pretty comprehensive. I've seen a couple Classical albums go up even (I see the announcements on twitter).
Sorry for the double input - I got a fatal error message and it then came up twice. I've tried cancelling and deleting but the second still comes back, Not worth the aggro to explore further
Idle musings this morning walking to work listening to a playlist I made of all the 2012 releases I bought, to start assembling my own list:
1. Last year a few folk did year end top 20 lists on MiG. Are some (more?) folk up for that again?
2. Top 20 lists are a relatively easy genre to write in (a sentence per album) - any non-MiG regulars fancy joining the fray by writing such a piece? (Here's an example from last year - but there could be even less text.)
3. Would it be fun/achievable/annoying/pointless/uninformative (I am genuinely open-minded as to which of these adjectives applies) to do a collective emusers list? (e.g. everyone who wants to participate submits a list of their 20 favorite albums of the year, I throw them on a spreadsheet and give 20 points for your No.1, 19 for your No. 2, etc. and we determine numerically what the top 20 are, and if one of your selected albums is on the list you have to write a couple of sentences saying why you chose it?)
4. Do we want to group--compile a top 20 free albums list again?
For reasons probably irrational, I trust the judgment of folk on here more than I do that of those at paste magazine. Perhaps partly because we are listeners first rather than critics.
I'm definitely doing a top 20. As for a collective list. Would there be any shared albums? My concern is that there wouldn't be enough to actually do a ranking.
I already wrote about some of my favorite freebies, but I'm sure I can find more.
I'm not much for year-end lists. However, I could contribute a few paragraphs on two intriguing releases, one NYOP: Jakob Lindberg's theorbo album and Maggie Rogers' bandcamp album.
I've got 16 on Paste's list with 5 in the top 10. At least 2 of those would definitely go in my top 10 (Japandroids and Dirty Projectors). But it's been a weird year for me as a number of the obvious purchases for me haven't been made yet - seriously, I haven't bought or listened to the new Mountain Goats (yet). That's pretty crazy. And a few others that I grabbed haven't quite made it into my collection yet to listen to.
If I can get my proverbial sh*t together, I love trying to make year end lists. But my listening has been so all over the place that I'm not sure it would be worthwhile coming from me (i.e. haven't regularly listened to new releases this year).
Re: MiG end-of-year. I'm with Craig on this one - I doubt there'll be much overlap. Any best of 2012 list that isn't solely classical will probably elicit mostly blank looks from me, anyway.
I was planning to do some sort of MiG post on my year's best, though this year's listening has been skewed away from new releases so it might not be a very long list. Besides, I'll have another Nereffid's Guide Awards come January.
If not a collective list, then would it be feasible to have some sort of group round-up, an "official" MiG Best of 2012 to which each of us contributes 1 item? This would allow those who don't want to do a personal list to contribute something.
May I suggest that groups of emusers could pick representative recordings in select categories: best classical, best experimental, best traditional, whatever?
Or, someone could scan the various threads here to see what recordings resonated most broadly with emusers, a sort of "what we have been listening to" meta-edition? I would think that Channel Orange and Tempest would be shoe-ins.
I am intrigued by an emusers top 10/20 list but I do see the problem that it might be too diverse to be representative. But is it worth a try for us to have a go, as GP suggests, submitting top 20 of 2012 to see if at least we can get a top 10 from that? Maybe we could also have some categories just for top 3? At least it has startd me thinking about my list. First task will be look at 2012 release dates on itunes to remind myself what is new this year
If not a collective list, then would it be feasible to have some sort of group round-up, an "official" MiG Best of 2012 to which each of us contributes 1 item? This would allow those who don't want to do a personal list to contribute something.
Insofar as I had thought it through I was imagining that a collective top 20 might in practice turn out something like this anyway - if there were no overlap then everyone's top one or two would make the list; the problem would be determining a sort order for those. If there were any overlap titles they would be sure winners. Maybe going by category would help with the sorting thing (if we could agree categories).
I really don't care about representative or whether folk spent the year listening to new releases. I would contend that the paste list or the other guy who listened to 800 albums are not representative - they did not listen to some of the titles on my list. I think the function of these lists is simply to highlight in public albums that some person with a caring ear thinks worth highlighting again at year's end, to maybe win them a few more friends. The notion that they are somehow a valid representation of the pecking order of all the new releases is a phantasm.
I really like the idea of a collective list, and it's the one thing that might convince me to actually make a list. But how about this; instead of cutting off the collective list at 20, just run it out to however far it goes. Would that be impossibly more work database wise? It would also be interesting if each item had numbers for it to show how many total points, and how many votes. That part could just be a straight list, then people could write things about the top 20.
Thinking about it, i guess it wouldn't be more work because everything has to get thrown in the blender anyway.
And Thom, if you get your sh*t together, you have to share how; I've been trying for years...
Comments
Craig
It was nice, however, to see Betty Lavette make the list. Whatever follows after her, I'll never know.
This kind of list always reminds me of the degree to which I inhabit a different musical world. More than one entry on my own year-end top twenty had a release of fifty copies. And how dare they publish the list when Taylor Deupree's new album is due out early December? (It's on my Christmas list, which means I will not be able to do my top 20 until after Dec 25...)
The jazz critic Ted Gioia is running down his (not just jazz) top 100, and it is an intriguing list...about half things I've never heard of: http://tedgioia.com/bestalbumsof2012.html
I have 7 and have listened via streaming services to another 5. I'm going to listen to more now. Kelly Hogan reminds me of Dusty Springfield, and coming from me at least that is very high praise. BTW, it looks like there are only samples for 5 songs but if you scroll down you'll see the rest.
I listened to Frank Ocean but wasn't that impressed by it. Maybe I'll listen to it again.
Seriously, though--what, no Paul Weller? He's neither in the list nor in the reader comments, which are full of suggestions. What does a guy over 50 have to have accomplished in his life to get a little attention? Obviously more than continuing to do great work or Sonik Kicks would be here. No Neil Young, either. Others I would have included: Bruce and Lucero, who are mentioned by commenters; Joseph Arthur and Gaslight Anthem, who are not. Maybe Santana, too. Roll your eyes, but if you listen to it you might see what I mean. This is Paste, so I don't expect jazz or world music to be on their list and won't fault them for absences in those genres. Otherwise I would point out the absence of Staff Benda Bilili and Amadou & Mariam. However, they gave Folila an 8.0 when they reviewed it back in April. Maybe that was so long ago they've forgotten it. Wadada Leo Smith would be way, way beyond their readership's taste.
I prefer to boost local acts so I tried to love the Lumineers, but I can't. They're not bad, but their songs and arrangements just seem simple and obvious. They're certainly better than 303 or The Fray. I'll give them that.
1. Last year a few folk did year end top 20 lists on MiG. Are some (more?) folk up for that again?
2. Top 20 lists are a relatively easy genre to write in (a sentence per album) - any non-MiG regulars fancy joining the fray by writing such a piece? (Here's an example from last year - but there could be even less text.)
3. Would it be fun/achievable/annoying/pointless/uninformative (I am genuinely open-minded as to which of these adjectives applies) to do a collective emusers list? (e.g. everyone who wants to participate submits a list of their 20 favorite albums of the year, I throw them on a spreadsheet and give 20 points for your No.1, 19 for your No. 2, etc. and we determine numerically what the top 20 are, and if one of your selected albums is on the list you have to write a couple of sentences saying why you chose it?)
4. Do we want to group--compile a top 20 free albums list again?
For reasons probably irrational, I trust the judgment of folk on here more than I do that of those at paste magazine. Perhaps partly because we are listeners first rather than critics.
I already wrote about some of my favorite freebies, but I'm sure I can find more.
Craig
If I can get my proverbial sh*t together, I love trying to make year end lists. But my listening has been so all over the place that I'm not sure it would be worthwhile coming from me (i.e. haven't regularly listened to new releases this year).
I was planning to do some sort of MiG post on my year's best, though this year's listening has been skewed away from new releases so it might not be a very long list. Besides, I'll have another Nereffid's Guide Awards come January.
If not a collective list, then would it be feasible to have some sort of group round-up, an "official" MiG Best of 2012 to which each of us contributes 1 item? This would allow those who don't want to do a personal list to contribute something.
Alexander Berne and the Abandoned Orchestra - Self Referentials Volumes 1 & 2 - experimental / contemporary classical
Private Dreams and Public Nightmares, Daphne Oram reworked by Andrea Parker & Daz Quale - experimental /electronic
Kreng - Works for Abattoir Ferm
Insofar as I had thought it through I was imagining that a collective top 20 might in practice turn out something like this anyway - if there were no overlap then everyone's top one or two would make the list; the problem would be determining a sort order for those. If there were any overlap titles they would be sure winners. Maybe going by category would help with the sorting thing (if we could agree categories).
I really don't care about representative or whether folk spent the year listening to new releases. I would contend that the paste list or the other guy who listened to 800 albums are not representative - they did not listen to some of the titles on my list. I think the function of these lists is simply to highlight in public albums that some person with a caring ear thinks worth highlighting again at year's end, to maybe win them a few more friends. The notion that they are somehow a valid representation of the pecking order of all the new releases is a phantasm.
I suppose we could just put them in tiers without a specific order within the tier.
Craig
Thinking about it, i guess it wouldn't be more work because everything has to get thrown in the blender anyway.
And Thom, if you get your sh*t together, you have to share how; I've been trying for years...