The herd speaks...
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The big Idolator poll (http://pop.idolator.com/tag/idolator-pop-07/) went up today, agglomerating the results of some 454 critics. I was a participant, and if you have somehow missed my several-month-long pontification on 2007, you can check my ballot here:http://pop.idolator.com/331581/ballot-jennifer-kellyI have mixed feelings about these averagings of critical preferences, since all the interesting oddities get cancelled out and we learn, quel surpise, that a lot of people like Radiohead, Spoon, LCD Sound System and Kanye. But the ballots are cool. I could spend all day reading them, especially ones like my Harp Editor, Fred Mills', which includes a couple of fairly long essays on the state of the music world. Anyway, part of me is still astonished that anyone cares which records I liked any given year, but another part is pissed that no one pays attention to the ones I single out, ahem, Kilgour. It's an interesting combination of humility and hubris...perhaps someday my head will explode from it?I did a little better capturing the zeitgeist this year than last, though, admittedly it's a relative thing. My number 2, the National, came in 7 overall, and my #10, Okkervil River was in the 20s. Kilgour got four other votes besides mine...which seems like a minor victory. Even better, only one of my picks was a loner, which is to say, i was the only person to vote for it. Surprisingly, it was Frightened Rabbit. I would have expected to be alone on Glenn Mercer or the Papercuts, but they got two and one other votes, respectively. In the reissues category, I picked Young Marble Giants, just like almost everyone else, and Fire Engines, like a very surprising number of people. They both beat Led Zeppelin's Mothership, which says something...not sure what. But my #2 pick, the fantastic True West reissue, came in at exactly 100. No matter. They were always underdogs. They were always great.Pazz & Jop is still to come, and they skew older, so I'd look for Springsteen closer to the top but basically the same nexus of mainstream indie respectability in the money categories. Hey, how could it be pop if it weren't popular? Hey, but how about 2008, already well way for us long-advance people, and already bringing some pretty great tunes? (Kelley Stoltz, Bon Iver, Mahjongg, Magnetic Fields, Sons & Daughters, to name a few.) Out with the old, in with the new, that's what I say. Let's get on with it.
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