listlessnesslessnesslessness

(albums edition)

[but first, a metacritic update: and their refinement of the decline dropped from #2 to #4 thanks to the addition of this justifiably incredulous but still horribly written 1.5/5 review (presumably underweighted.) i still haven't heard it (though i want to) so not sure why i'm so keen on reporting about it, except that i want to make up for my initial skepticism of tired sounds of. (i have now heard untrue, or at least most of it, and am not entirely convinced.)]

i don't really believe in compiling finalized year-end lists until at least the end of the year. but it is certainly time to start getting my thoughts together, for mix-envisioning purposes (really not sure about that, but i do have an ostensibly working optical drive now), or if nothing else for the twin critics polls, which both have next friday as their deadline (a relief, as i'd thought one was this friday.) don't want to end up with another 2005 on my hands.

still, stuff's tough. years are just too long, for one thing, and this year feels especially poorly defined, both personally and musically. it's hard to even know what counts as '07 sometimes.

technically '06 albums i'll probably count anyway:
sally shapiro, disco romance (released dec '06 in europe; oct '07 in canada - dunno about u.s.)
joan as police woman, real life (released in uk/feted online '06; released us '07)
long blondes, someone to drive you home (similarly)
keith urban, love pain and the whole crazy thing (released november '06, so it's fairly questionable, but i didn't hear it until early '07 and loved it.)

albums that i considered for '06 (and mostly didn't like at the time) and therefore don't seem like they should count (even though i like several of them a lot more now) although they were released here in '07 (in what felt like a total onslaught):
the pipettes, we are the pipettes
peter bjorn and john, writer's block
lily allen, alright, still
amy winehouse, back to black
i'm from barcelona, let me introduce my friends
fujiya and miyagi, transparent things
cornelius, sensuous (the only one i'd consider possibly including, since i may have given it an unfair shake last year.)

some of my favorite albums of the decade (that have never been on my year-end lists) which i could probably fudge as '07 if i wanted to, even though it would be totally unfair:
robyn, robyn (sweden release '05. uk release april '07. uk re-issue august '07. us release december 4th, allegedly???)
rachel stevens, come and get it (uk release '05. american itunes-only release june '07 wtf.)
marit larsen, under the surface (norway release '06. but for some reason i didn't fall head-over-heels for it/her until this year. and it is maybe possibly maybe going to get a u.s. release sometime maybe soonish? probably not in '07 though i guess. maybe '08?)

other '06 albums that i only heard/got in '07 and would otherwise have listed:
aberfeldy, do whatever turns you on (but nobody heard it. amg review forthcoming)
extra golden, ok-oyot soundystem
sid and susie, under the covers, vol. 1
hot chip, the warning (i know, i blew it.)
regina spektor, begin to hope (ditto)
justin timberlake, futuresex/lovesounds (heard '06; loved '07 - by dint of the singles one could theoretically decide to count it, but actually i refuse to even count the '07 singles.)
nôze, how to dance (pretty left-field - but i'm diggin' it.)

additional confusion:
radiohead, in rainbows (okay, it was "released" in '07. and is indisputably an '07 album, perhaps the zeitgeistest of them all. but it's also an '08 album, since the u.s. physical release date is january 1.)

as for albums which i can't actually invent qualms about voting for, well, i can at least wring my hands about comparing apples with oranges whose appeal stems from totally different places. (and don't tell me oranges don't have stems and apples don't have peels.) roughly in order of preference in each category:

indie (rock?) about which i give at least a damn:
low, drums and guns (a strong #1 contender - it's old and lived-in now, but that shouldn't count against it too much.)
okkervil river, the stage names (i tend to give them too short a shrift, but they still haven't managed make anything as immediate and pleasurable as the wonderful don't fall in love with everyone you see again - i get the sense they haven't really been trying.)
the national, boxer
the clientele, god save the clientele
lucky soul, the great unwanted

(indie?) rock, about which likewise:
spoon, ga ga ga ga ga
pop levi, the return to form black magick party
the new pornographers, challengers
maxïmo park, our earthly pleasures
the ark, prayer for the weekend
arctic monkeys, favourite worst album title

some sweet-ass hipster dance albums:
lcd soundsystem, sound of silver
justice, †
m.i.a., kala
simian mobile disco, attack decay sustain release
a-trak, dirty south dance
bonde do role, with lasers

electronica or something like it (mostly listeny, not dancy)
caribou, andorra
pantha du prince, this bliss
gui boratto, chromophobia
strategy, future rock (just got it, but really liking it so far)
the field, from here we go sublime

rootsy/folky/country/soul/ABM ladysingers:
devon sproule, keep your silver shined
alice smith, for the lovers, dreamers and me
miranda lambert, crazy ex-girlfriend
patty griffin, children running through
feist, the reminder
bettye lavette, scene of the crime
mirah and spectratone international, share this place
sharon jones and the dap-kings, 100 days, 100 nights (eh...to be honest i'm kinda getting over the whole dap-thing. hopefully seeing sharon on friday will re-excite me.)
taylor swift, taylor swift (haven't actually really listened to the album, but i think i know i'll like it)

[why no menfolks? you tell me. mostly my listening prejudice - haven't given much of a fair shake to iron and wine, donnie, nick lowe, or other possible contenders here. though these categories fudge and bleed anyway.]

sentimental favorites from back in the day (an auspicious category):
tracey thorn, out of the woods
the good the bad and the queen, the good the bad and the queen
they might be giants, the else/cast your pod to the wind
the apples in stereo, new magnetic wonder (it feels like a guilty pleasure just when i thought i was immune to them. i think they planned it that way.)
jarvis cocker, jarvis

[elliott smith's new moon probably ought to be on here, but for some reason i didn't listen to it all that much.]

jazz?
the bad plus, prog (?)
jason moran, artist in residence (?)
floratone? nels cline singers?
(oh, what the hell: )
battles, mirrored
the budos band, ii

rap?
hmm. not sure. lethal bizzle (the new sway for '07)? devin the dude? aesop rock/el-p? yeah, ok whatever. should listen to dizzee and weezy and jayzee s'more.

so far that's all well and good, but it really gets confusing when i try to rank those against pop, which is getting to feel like a fundamentally separate interest, with separate tendencies and listening habits from the kind of music that other people who think they like music think they like. hm hm.

pop albums that are better than their singles
aly & aj, insomniatic
the veronicas, hook me up
hilary duff, dignity
will.i.am, songs about girls

pop albums that may well be at least as good as their singles
britney spears, blackout
linda sundblad, oh my god
roisin murphy, overpowered
sophie ellis-bextor, trip the light fantastic
kylie, x

pop albums that aren't as good as their singles, but are still pretty great (and/or the singles are so good it doesn't matter):
r. kelly, double up
rihanna, good girl gone bad
amerie, because i love it
skye sweetnam, sound soldier
amy diamond, music in motion
sugababes, change
avril lavigne, the best damn album title
katharine mcphee, katharine mcphee


fairly disappointing but still somewhat interesting albums that i wish i liked more, and should probably listen to again, just to make sure:
tunng, good arrows [=not as good as their first two albums]
patrick wolf, magic position [=not as good as its singles]
shins, wincing [=really not as good as their first two albums]
of montreal, hissing fauna [eta: actually, this is a lot better than i gave it credit for.]
sondre lerche, phantom punch
colleen, les ondes silencieuses [really wanted to like this but no dice]
bjork, volta [really wanted to like this...it works better when i'm not trying so hard]
jens lekman, night falls on kortedala [omg what was he thinking?]
von südenfeld, tromatic reflexxxions [omg what was i thinking?]
chemical brothers, we are the night [...yawn...]

sparks & spears & sophie & so on (cont.)

a couple more things, still riffing on jordin sparks.

first, to correct an oversight (you might want to read the last post first if you haven't...if you care...if you dare): even though it was mentioned on the teenpop thread, i neglected to note/recognize that "see my side," which i mentioned as by far the sweetest (almost wrote sweedest, ha) of the recent bloodshy/avant crop, was written not just by karlsson/winnberg and åhlund, but also by r. carlsson. which is of course (not me, though i am also r, carl's son!) but robyn, of robyn fame. (of whom discogs has more images than it has credits - well, under that version of her name.) (sorry tapestore - is that someone i know? - but i'm pretty sure the connection probably came via bloodshy and windbag, er, i mean, since apparently they'd already submitted the track to britney. nice thought though - let's keep working on that.)

which, come to think of it, makes perfect sense, because it has an extremely similar sensibility to robyn's heartbreaking closing trilogy, particularly "eclipse" and "anytime you like" - it's not quite as achingly gorgeous as those two, but it's close, and i can imagine robyn doing a pretty stunning rendition of it. (actually, as long as we're getting particular, robyn didn't write "eclipse" - she didn't write "robotboy" or "handle me" either; åhlund did. she does have the third co-credit on "anything you like" with two people i don't know - how significant do we think order of credits is? but the point holds.)

meanwhile, "young and in love" is (in addition to b&a and their frequent crony h. jonback) by cathy dennis, who is a bona fide legend in this game - behind hits from basically everyone in uk chartpop starting with spice girls and s club 7, peaking with kylie, and recently sugababes ("about you now" - with dr. luke!), sophie ellis-bextor ("catch you") and roisin m. (non-album tracks only) and a legit artist in her own right. her previous co-writes with b&a include rach stevens' "sweet dreams (my lax)" and, oh yeah, "toxic."

besides jordin's album, i've been following the links and connecting the dots for sophie la-bex's trip the light fantastic and for kylie's x, both of which i've only started to listen to recently, and about which i feel much greater capacity to care. which is partly because they're almost certainly better albums; partly because i have a much better sense of who sophie and kylie are, as artists and people - tho you can blame that on the no tv if you like i guess. how much those two factors are linked is a crucial question i want to get into a little bit later. anyway, trip has cathy dennis/greg kurstin (who till has no wiki entry, amazingly), pascal gabriel and hannah robinson, xenomania, the guys from sneaker pimps, the feeling, and the b-52s...though, imporantly, sophie has a co-credit on every song except the dennis/kurstin "catch you." x, with minogue credits on just over half the tracks, has dennis, hansen/jeberg, calvin harris, freemasons, karlsson/winnberg with karen poole (of alisha's attic), kurstin/minogue/poole, and, if wikipedia is to be believed, which i doubt, kurstin producing a bloodshy/avant/poole/minogue/quant co-write.

also kat mcphee's album, which in stark contrast to sparks' has no scandinavian names - and the difference is quite audible - but does have six kara dioguardi credits and six nate hills credits (five overlap.) and "open toes" is written/produced by the clutch (along with those two and kat herself), who also did "ice box," "like a boy," dave's two favorite keke palmer songs, and blackout's "radar" and "freakshow" (the latter, interestingly, britney's only writing credit on the album)... both of which are bloodshy/avant tracks, not danja tracks.

which is interesting, because it means the scandinavians electro-pop crew were working together with the american r&b crew (the clutch, which seems to be a slightly loose collective, are timbaland proteges or something; at least they include keri hilson.) though knows how directly they were working together - actually, the liners reveal that all of the bloodshy tracks were recorded partly in the states as well as in stockholm. well whatever.

it's really hard to say what any of this means. how do these songs get written? how much of the way credits are presented is based on legal/contractual considerations that don't necessarily accurately reflect the creative process? in the vast majority of the cases i've been looking at, the producer or producers are credited as among the writers of a given song. which in plenty of cases probably makes sense, especially for sonically inventive/electronic-based music where so much of the song's essence comes from the production rather than the writing per se. but to what extent are songs usually finished before they go into the studio; or to what extent do "'songs" sometimes get fleshed out after the creation of the beats and backing arrangements (which counts as "production.")

i've been fairly focused on songwriting credits lately, in my amg pieces as well as these posts here - calling attention to it, for various reasons, in my reviews of albums by the veronicas, rachel stevens, skye sweetnam, and marit larsen - and while it makes sense as an interpretive key of sorts, it also feels strange to be so fixated on. i do feel in some ways that my interest in pop has been taking a turn for the academic ... that at least a lot of the recent stuff i've been listening to hasn't managed to excite me quite as much on a musical level as some things in the past - or, certainly, to engage me on an emotional level.

indeed, as much as i enjoyed listening to and familiarizing myself with the skye and 'ronnies albums for review - and i stand by my (respectively) generally positive and enthusiastic assessments of them - neither has shown exceptional sticking power. certainly neither has compelled me (so far anyway) to keep listening and re-examining the way rachel and marit's albums have (in both cases i came to fundamentally new shades of understanding in these most recent revisitations.) meanwhile there's been this whole series of teen-pop and dance-pop albums - most of which, admittedly, i only have as itunes playlists - that i've been enjoying, to a greater or lesser extent, but that have so far largely failed to stand out as especially distinctive. that'd include the new ones by sugababes, roisin murphy, keke palmer, ashley tisdale, amy diamond, vanessa hudgens, and the aforementioned sparks, mcphee, kylie and sophie e-b, and aly + aj (though that one is making major strides - probably shouldn't be on this list anymore.)

admittedly many of these will require more listening, though some are simply not going to be worth the effort - my overwhelming impression of a lot of this is that it's, well, overwhelming - just too much, too fast, that's all impressively good but not quite great. and though of course there are some stylistic distinctions among these various albums, i'm struggling to distinguish them more fully. so i guess i may be delving into the minutiae of credit information, in part, as a shortcut to understanding them.

but i'm also on some level trying to link these lackluster impressions to the effect of having too many cooks, as it were. as fascinating as it is to realize how incestuous and intertangled the world of mainstream pop/r&b/dance/etc. can be - especially when the behind-the-scenes players intermingle internationally (well, across scandinavia, the u.k. and the u.s.) even though the public personas often don't - it grows increasingly harder to know what to make of all this prodigious cross-collaborative output, let alone to keep the endless but recurring array of practitioners straight.

many of the albums i listed above have quite a hodge-podge of writers and producers working on various tracks, as i've sort of demonstrated in exhaustive detailed. insomniatic is a clear exception, and is decidedly stronger for it - as are the veronicas and skye album's (though the latter is pretty scattershot even with the same producers/writers on 9/12 tracks) - though it should be noted that all of these are much more pop/rock than anything else on the list, despite their dancy frills. (same goes for ashlee's two albums, primarily the work of the sorely missed simpson/dioguardi/shanks trifecta.)

some other (slightly less recent) albums that are primarily written and produced by the same people: linda sundblad's oh my god [all songs sundblad/karlsson - a different one - with a couple adding others - max martin on one, klas åhlund on "lose you"], sally shapiro's disco romance [the possibly fictional sally herself doesn't write anything, but mr. johan agebjörn wrote all but two songs and produced everything], and the work of bertine zetlitz, especially her last two albums, which were produced entirely by fred ball [aka pleasure] and written entirely by zetlitz/ball. (two people...made the whole album? is that even possible?) the shapiro album and zetlitz's rollerskating are two of my absolute favorite albums at them moment - and the sundblad's pretty great too - i'll hopefully have reviews for all three up on amg shortly.

so those are some scandinavians (there's also annie and robyn, both of whom are starting to get seriously overdue for new albums - but though they do co-write most of their material, neither of them write all of it, and both of their celebrated albums had a fair range of different producers involved, which is interesting to note in light of how auteurist their public personae tend to be.) then there's madonna's confessions on a dancefloor [all madge co-writes; all with stuart price and/or mirwais except for two bloodshy/avant tracks] and hilary duff's dignity [a handful of producers, including, hilariously, richard "humpty" vission, but 12 out of 14 cuts are by dioguardi/duff, often with the producer as a third co-credit] - both solid if not amazing, but certainly stylistically cohesive.

and then there's blackout. it's telling that this album has, by far, fewer producers (or, maybe more relevantly, fewer production teams) than any of spears' albums since her debut - either five or six, depending on how you count the clutch, but basically only two for 3/4 of the album. to recap: four tracks are produced by bloodshy and avant (two with the clutch co-producing) and five are produced by danja. that leaves one by the neptunes, one - "heaven on earth," very possibly my favorite track - with music by onetime (?) ambient electronica duo freescha and vocal production by kara dioguardi, and one - consensus weakest-link "ooh ooh baby" (though i kinda like it; possibly too bad they didn't actually sample the turtles) by dioguardi and "fredwreck" nasser, who also did something on the mcphee album. anyway, as i think i've established, it's quite cohesive sonically and consistent song-wise, and, well, it just keeps growing on me, even though my interest in it has relatively little to do with britney herself.

i'm happy to continue absenting myself from the controversy over the extent of her actual involvement, as fascinating as it is. as far as i'm concerned, as long as the job is done and done well, i'm not going to complain - and whoever it is that's behind blackout has accomplished something pretty remarkable, just by virtue of creating an album that stands out from this season's teeming pack. i will point out, however, that there is only one person listed as executive producer for this album. and that's britney, bitch.

one disclaimer, and one final question. just to be clear, i certainly wouldn't want to contend that a record needs to have a reasonably consolidated writing/production crew to work well as an album. my review of rachel stevens' come and get it - which just might be my personal yardstick for the entire genre - should make that evident enough (even though it's definitely not the album-iest album.) similarly, kylie's fever - an obvious touchstone of an '00s pop album if there ever was one - is cobbled together from a surprising array of talent (truly, surprising - i'd always assumed it wasn't so much, because the sound is so consistent, but nope.) and then, of course, i'll always have paris ... the presence of many sets of writers and producers did little to stop me from erecting a grand glittering interpretive edifice to its conceptual perfection. and i don't think i need to say any more about that.

but as a general rule - and as one would imagine - albums with fewer writers and producers do tend to hold together better as albums. the exceptions generally have some other overarching unifying element - a clear shared stylistic approach, or a front-person with enough individuality, vocal/lyrical distinctness, or sheer force of personality to make everything hold together.

so my question is this: what is the historical context for albums with songs by many different writers and producers? i know it's a longstanding pop tradition in some ways (tin-pan-alley, brill building, motown, what-have-you), but it seems like there's been a resurgence and an intensification, probably just within the last 15-20 years, and possibly increasingly over that span. it seems at least partly related to the rise of hip-hop and r&b (and even in those genres it has gotten far more pronounced - even when the black album came out it was a big deal that each track was by a different producer, which i guess would still be noteworthy today, but i think less so.) if there are discernable trends along these lines, can we link them to other trends in the nature of pop albums?

and, more broadly, what else can be said about the historical development of the pop album? admittedly, it's a somewhat academic, limited question - in pop, albums will always be secondary to singles and songs - but as both a confirmed poptimist and albumist, it speaks to a very present tension in my musical exploration, and as year-end album list time grows ever nearer, it's also timely one - and i'm gonna keep on teasing it out.

it's poppin'

okay, liveblogging as i listen to jordin sparks' self-titled first album for the first time. and browse wikipedia musing on the tangled connections in the pop universe. 'cuz, why not.

first track/first single "tattoo" - written/produced by stargate, the same norwegian team behind "so sick" and "irreplaceable" and "hate that i love you" (and three more songs from good girl gone bad) and it sounds exactly like those songs, which makes me realize how much they sound like each other. (stargate also did mis-teeq's "scandalous" which sounds most different from these of anything i recognize in their discography.) it's not bad - the title metaphor (he's written on her heart like a tattoo) sort of continues the trend somebody pointed out of everyday objects (lip gloss, open-toed shoes, vans i guess) taking prominence lately over namechecking big brand names.

doesn't feel like it should be the first song on the album - it's probably not good enough for one (though, i haven't heard the rest of it yet), but it has that kinda epic vibe that comes on too strong off the bat. irreplaceable (from which the drum groove is lifted verbatim, with added open hat or two) was track 9 on b-day (b'day, get the punxuation right) until the bollixed deluxedition when it was moved to track two (after new track beautiful liar, which is also by stargate. think they're hot right now or something?

scanning the writing credits, every song except for maybe three has at least one writer with a conspicuously scandinavian name.

track two - "one step at a time" - really love the footsteps sound for the beat - surprised that hasn't been done more often. especially before the rest of the beat kicks in, but i like how it's still audible throughout. lovely lilting harp riff very reminiscent of ryan leslie's production for cassie. (i guess i'm thinking of "just 1 night" in particular.)

ok, good, production credits here. (should discogs and wiki merge?) (they're my top two resources for amg bio research.) so the producers/writers are jonas jeberg, who also has credits on vanessa hudgens' V (under the name Jay Jay) and mitch hansen, aka cutfather, who hasn't done much since the new jack era, apparently, when he used to work with soulshock (aka carsten schack), the dane best known as half of the duo behind, well, all kinds of things, including more recently-ish, leave (get out) and some jamelia stuff. [eta: and skye's "kiss a girl"] and also robbie nevil, an american who's apparently been around forever (had a song on the cocktail soundtrack) but doesn't seem to have much connection to current stuff. jeberg and hansen also worked together on a track for kylie's X (working their way from the end of the alphabet i guess?)

"no air," duet with chris brown, about whom i have managed to remember nothing so far, though i guess he's supposed to be important somehow. his name sure sucks. producers/writers are eric "bluetooth" griggs, who has no other credits that i can find, but does have a good name, and the underdogs (whoa, harvey mason's son!) who have been around and worked with lots of r&b names, and pink, britney, and kat mcphee in case they don't count.) ok whatever. not norwegians.

"freeze" is by stargate again. not too impressed.

"shy boy" on the other hand, is neat-o, with snaky synths snaking all over the place (sometimes into midi-ringtone arpeggiator territory, but that's cool) and bleeps and vocals and whatnot. and a minimal (hyphy-ish, i guess) boom-bap and processed vocals. it's by bloodshy and avant.
produced by them; written by them (aka christian karlsson and pontus winberg, whose name sounds like pompous windbag) and the bassist (?) j honback, and klas åhlund of teddybears.

bloodshy and avant are half of the reason i decided to write this in the first place. they are responsible, of course for ("toxic" as well as) four of the key tracks on blackout, the album that's been fascinating me more than most these days. (åhlund also has a co-credit on "piece of me," which means another coup for the robyn/teddybears camp, although i haven't yet been able to notice robyn's b. vox on that song.) according to their very interesting wiki article, B&A wrote more songs intended for blackout that were rejected and subsequently given to sparks (three songs including "shy boy") and to jennifer lopez (the title track of her new album brave)
and to kylie (two of them appear on X - a-ha, another connexion - the very ones tom ewing complained about in pitchfork as sounding like nu-britney. er, also the one he said sounded like ol'-daft punk.)

yeah, bloodshy & avant (what names, right?) have a knack for smashing productions that almost totally obscure the artist "fronting" the track in the process. "toxic" never really sounded like britney to me one whit, i can barely even recall what she sounds like on it. actually of this recent crop j-lo may fare the best - she sounds reasonably like herself on "brave," which makes sense since she possibly has the strongest (in character, not quality) voice of the four. also there's enough harmony in the song that it doesn't feel as frosty as many of the others.

of the jordin tracks - actually of all ten in this crop - "see my side" stands out as the most sweetly touching - music-box harp lines, simple melody, gently pleading "see my side and i'll see yours better." the chorus has funny big boom-bap beats that don't quite fit but don't quite disrupt it either. "young and in love" is more in line with the other tunes - it frankly sounds like a blackout reject. need to hear it more to know if there's anything worthwhile in it; doubtful.

i've jumped ahead and gotten off my album-sequence reportage schedule. which is okay, because i never really cared about the album in the first place. the other half of the reason i'm writing this, in case you were curious, is that two of the tracks were co-written by espen lind, a one-time tourmate of one-time norwegian idol finalist alejandro fuentes (chilean-born, unlike josé gonzález who's only argentinian by parentage), who i don't care about really but i was gonna write a bio on him for amg. but i didn't because i wrote this instead. oh yeah - lind co-wrote "irreplaceable" too (and a ne-yo song, and an elliott yamin song), and stargate produced one of these two songs; the other one was produced by 'espionage' which i'm guessing is lind's producer-hat moniker.

okay, just for the sake of completeness: two of the other tracks, "next to you" and "permanent monday" were produced by one emanuel kirakou (what kind of name is that?) who did two songs i don't remember for kat mcphee and one ("love me for me") for ashleey tisdale, and were co-written with an l. robbins who's connected to people whose names are vaguely familiar (melissa o'neill, anastacia.) and the last song is by a friend of hers, which might be worth paying attention to, but i don't have time now.

i guess the thing to get to, eventually, is the question of what all of this does to the identities of pop artists and pop albums. it's no shocker and no news that albums are (often) cobbled together from the work of multiple songwriters, producers, etc. and hence often don't have a lot of personality - that's where the weakness of a sparks or a mcphee comes through; not having enough force of personality to make a record cohere when there's nothing otherwise coherent about it. i guess having a good executive producer or whatever has to be important, but you never hear anything about that.

but when the individual producers and writings have such strong styles - and especially when those styles are as dramatic iconoclastic as bloodshy & avant's recent work - that you recognize them as they crop up again in lesser and lesser variations across the albums of second- and third-tier artists, we end up with a handful of interchangeable albums that are familiarly, systematically piecemeal.

"toxic" sounded fairly out of place on in the zone; the producers of blackout were savvy enough to run with b+a for much of the album, so that the style ("sliced up" vocals, among other things) is now, already and probably inevitably, shorthanded as "nu britney," since we heard it there first and best and most. and, better, they aligned those tracks with the sympathetic style of danja + co (who do essentially the r&b take on the same basic premise), and a few other producers who seem to be on board with the general concept. i don't know how it came about, exactly, but clearly there was a concerted effort to put together something stylistically cohesive and fresh-sounding. the fact that the style they came up with for it is also has this curious and unsettling effect of distorting the singer (to the extent that she becomes enmeshed within the production rather than riding on top of it) is either convenient or consciously confundatory or both. it's tremendously provocative either way, and blackout is almost certainly the most innovative pop albums of the year, as well as one of the most enjoyable.

jordin sparks on the other hand, frequently sounds fantastic...but leaves me with next to nothing. scandinavians are magic, as is well known. but even magic can only do so much.

plug tuning, pt. 2

i'm not enitrely ready yet to commence the year-end listing, and all the soul-searching, self-imposed self-conscious listening that entails - to say nothing of the year-end mixmaking - though bedbugs' fairly comprehensive '07 teen-pop round-up makes a good inspiration/starting point. but here goes i guess the last mix-tape i made in regular season play this year, which will stands as a sort of informal beginning to that process, since it rounds up many of my favorites from the first two-thirds of '07 (and the last half or so of '06); and i'll use it as a way to begin commenting on those artists/albums/tracks, as seems appropriate.

it's possibly the most 'conventional' mix i've made in ages, which is to say that, even more than its mood-based predecessor (which drew from a wider array, temporally speaking) it has no especial theme or organizing principle other than to survey recent highlights in a way that makes an enjoyable, relatively cohesive listen.

Title: Musician Plugs II (subtitle: paren(t)heses)
Format: 2 CDs
Date: September 2007
Packaging: similar to the design of the original, with inserts made from that same calendar, but in a long, DVD-size jewel case (the fancy kind that allows two discs to fit on the spindle.) this time it's ingrid bergman on the front/inside cover, and humphrey bogart on the back cover, and for some reason i decided the track listing on the calendar squares should be upside down with respect to the numbers. so it's pretty hard. i won't even bother showing you a picture of the track list for the first disc (which is in the tray, underneath the cd) - look down to see the list for the second disc (which is inside the 'booklet'.)

incidentally, the critics have been raving:

"Your musician plugs covers are works of genius."

- my dad

DISC ONE

1. LCD Soundsystem, "Someone Great"
2. Caribou, "Sandy"
3. Patrick Wolf, "Overture"
4. The New Pornographers, "My Rights Versus Yours"
5. Battles, "Leyendecker"
6. Keith Urban, "I Told You So"
7. Miranda Lambert, "Guilty in Here"
8. The Blow, "Parentheses"
9. Spoon, "Finer Feelings"
10. Pop Levi, "Flirting"
11. The Long Blondes, "Weekend Without Makeup"
12. Okkervil River, "Black"
13. Hot Chip, "No Fit State"
14. The Ark, "Let Me Down Gently"
15. Gui Boratto, "Xilo"
16. Aberfeldy, "Hypnotized"
17. M.I.A., "Paper Planes"
18. Oakley Hall, "Living in Sin in the USA"
19. Patty Griffin, "I Don't Ever Give Up"
20. Feist, "1 2 3 4"

DISC TWO

1. Low, "Hatchet (Optimimi Version)"
2. Margaret Berger, "Naive (16)"
3. Lauryn Hill, "Lose Myself"
4. Junior Boys, "Count Souvenirs"
5. Regina Spektor, "Better"
6. The Good, The Bad and the Queen, "Behind the Sun"
7. Maxïmo Park, "Books From Boxes"
8. The National, "Fake Empire"
9. They Might Be Giants, "Climbing The Walls"
10. Arctic Monkeys, "Flourescent Adolescent"
11. Andrew Bird, "Heretics"
[alternate selection: Joan as Police Woman, "Eternal Flame"]
12. Joanna Newsom, "Cosmia"
13. Ellen Allien + Apparat, "Way Out"
14. Tracey Thorn, "Falling Off a Log"
15. Amy Winehouse, "Tears Dry On Their Own"
16. The Hold Steady, "You Can Make Him Like You"
17. The Gothic Archies, "The World Is A Very Scary Place"
18. Beirut, "Scenic World"
19. Barbara Morgenstern, "The Operator (Single Edit)"
20. The Bird and the Bee, "Again and Again"
21. John Vanderslice, "New Zealand Pines"
22. Jarvis Cocker, "Black Magic"
23. Marit Larsen, "Solid Ground"

[stay tuned for commentary on the tracklists]

metastatic

or, stars of the burial field, and their untrue refinement of the sublime

i've got a question, it's serious as cancer. ok, it's not, but it's mildly interesting: why are the top three slots on metacritic's best-reviewed albums of 2007 list occupied by three obscure electronica albums? one german, one american, one british. all decidedly obscure to the general public, as compared to for instance current top-five runners-up robert plant and radiohead. and all relatively unheralded, at least until recently, even in online music circles; only one of the three even has an amg review yet. (whoa - it was a billboard #2 new age album.) (and, admittedly, i've only heard one, though i know essentially what the others sound like.) so what's going on here?

is 2007 a banner year for techno? has last year's impressive showing of support for the knife's silent shout blossomed into a full-on resurgence of interest in electronic music. possibly so - did i actually get around to trumpeting the return of big beat? (more vulgarly known as electro-house or blog house or, i guess, new rave - yknow, justice and simian and dgtlsm and that?) cuz i'm pretty sure nobody else did.

but this is something else anyway - atmospheric, minimalist, not really dancey at all. nobody uses the term IDM anymore (almost nobody?) - which is a good thing - but it used to be synonymous with "ambient." "minimal'"s become meaningless (and is something else again.) john schenk and the kölnizers call it pop ambient, bedbugs calls it naptime, and i've been taking a cue from lullatone and thinking of it as pajama pop. pajambient? [i really enjoy the notion that this kind of music could be "pop" despite not foregrounding melody, harmony, or even rhythm.]

apart from the motley reigning trio - and if you want to get specific, burial's technically dubstep; stars of the lid are truly minimalist drone artists; and the field could reasonably be called trance or some hipper modifier thereof - eluvium's copia (#21 on the metacritic list with a metascore of [84]), pole's steingarten ([82] - it recently fell off the top 30), and pantha du prince's this bliss all occupy this general genrescape. (copia's probably the least similar - it's essentially non-electronic music made by an electronic artist. on that note, susumu yokota and colleen also released records this year.) the boundaries are blurry, but then so is the music.

but i'd contend that these kinds of electronic or electro-acoustic mood music, ambient/drone/what-have-you, are always around, as it were, in the background - or have been for decades, anyway - albeit only occasionally attracting attention. they were never likely to find mass appeal - a trend of widespread popular interest in them would just be illogical, although i suppose "new age" had its heyday. and it's such personal, intimate music (almost always made by individuals), and so subjective anyway in terms of quality, that it's difficult to construe in the context of a movement or a socially significant scene. if there is a phenomenon afoot - which i'm definitely skeptical about, even though i have personally been taking more notice of this stuff recently myself - it's hard to imagine it as anything more than an incidental waxing of critical interest.

which is of course all that metacritic intends to represent anyway. after all music guide and wikipedia, meta (as my bookmark shortens it) is probably my third most frequently visited site in my insatiable quest for music-related knowledge, even if the actual information it contains is relatively limited. if the other two take their authority from self-declared expertise and the democratic process, respectively, metacritic's is founded on something close to science (with a side helping of the other two.) unlike that other mathematically-calibrated barometer of critical consensus, the more credible but less idiosyncratic pazz'n'jop poll (and its new doppelganger, the idolator critic's poll, nee jackin' pop), metacritic bases its aggregate rankings on actual reviews as they come out, rather than critics' pre-meditated, self-mediated year-end lists.

which makes it a lot more unpredictable, and generally less beholden to tastemaker consensus - it sometimes reads as less relevant, but who's defining that anyway? and it fluctuates constantly. my austinite erstwhile roommate and i will occasionally track and discuss the shifting rankings as if they were sports statistics - for a long time we were debating whether anything would manage to upset from here we go sublime, which a firm lock on the #1 spot for over six months, peaking at [95] if i remember correctly. gradually, additionally overwhelmingly positive reviews (in the 90 range) diluted that down a few points, and then and the refinement of their decline was added to the list, months after its april release, holding the top spot until untrue's unearthing a couple weeks ago. (incidentally, the only overtly dance-based electronica album i can remember even touching the top 30 is justice's opposite-of-ambient † [81] - unless you count lcd soundsystem.)

my inkling at the time was that the metacritic method skews towards niche albums - records in genres with a supportive core audience but that are unlikely even to be reviewed by critics without a specific interest in the genre. it's a reasonable bias, and even a desirable one (vs. p'n'j's tendency to favor least common denominator), which helps to highlight forms with limited audiences, like underground electronica (is there any other kind left?) and world music (such as last year's #1, ali farka touré's savane.) but it also, maybe counterintuitively, favors more broadly palatable, "adult"-leaning selections of the sort i sometimes call ABM or dad-rock, which the hipper blogs and 'zines will often ignore - hence strong showings this year from patty griffin, richard thompson, suzanne vega, and nick lowe, among others. it's a narrow line - albums must be reviewed in a sufficient number of publications even to appear in the database, but once included, they're all on roughly equal footing regardless of the number of reviews - and fewer reviews can often be an advantage.

burial [92] and stars [91] have 11 reviews each, as did farka toure [94] last year; the field [90] still only has 14. radiohead [88] have 40 - obviously it's not always a disadvantage. there were no electronic albums on last year's top thirty - has the entrance policy consciously diversified to allow this crop in? - although '05 had isolée's wearemonster at #3 [89] with 12 reviews, and also kraftwerk, the books and konono no. 1, if any of them count.

based on the admittedly rough indicator of percentage overlap in their top tens, metacritic has become an increasingly accurate predictor for pazz'n'jop over the past seven years, possibly because the burgeoning blogosphere has helped to consolidate critical consensus - there were five overlapping picks last year and six in '05, but only four the two years before that, and three from '00-'02.

at this point, i'd say it's unlikely that more than three - maybe four - of the top ten overlap with pazz'n'jop, or jackin' pop (though those two will surely overlap substantially, especially since they're both calling for ballots early this year.) frankly, the metacritic top ten is a bit of a mess right now - the top three are causing a collective freakout in the user comments, les savy fav feels bizarrely fluky, and the upstart physical release of lcd soundsystem's 45:33 upstaging its own artist's actual '07 album by six places is simply poor form. it was much neater up until a month or so ago; more plausible when radiohead, the arcade fire, and sound of silver were among the top 3, and at least more interesting when patty griffin, miranda lambert, battles, and panda bear were.

but hey, a weird year for critical consensus could well indicate a great year for the critical community, and for music in general. i certainly have no complaints; even as i find myself looking farther and farther afield for contenders for my own list, i'm already sitting on a pile that it will be somewhat torturous to choose among. and i better get on it... it's getting to be that time. meanwhile though, i've been painstakingly polishing off reviews of many of my favorites c. 2005-06, for amg - hopefully i'll make it through that batch soon too and can start tossing things off with somewhat less excruciating care. see you soon.