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The Tris McCall Report

Critics Poll 2003 -- The Albums

For the second year running, The Vitamen (#16, 81 points) were the best vote-getting local band.

 

The headline:

A mere six weeks after I wrote that New Jerseyans don't do mope-rock, voters repudiated me by firmly placing Meadowlands atop the Critics Poll. This year's winner is one of the most wrist-slashingly depressing documents in rock history, and it's Jersey-style depressing: guitar so thick, decayed and elegaic you can almost smell the swamps and the factory soot. The Wrens's win proves also that our voters are willing to tolerate the "emo" approach as long as it's done by thirtysomething guys who've been treated badly by their record companies and who don't enjoy their temp assignments. Whining about your parents is still not okay, but whining about faded dreams of rock stardom -- now, that's true emotion.

Overview:

We had sixty-five respondents this year, not counting another twenty people who contributed incomplete ballots, one-line smartass comments or generic kvetching. That's up from last year, when we only had forty-nine, but still slighty off the high-water mark -- sixty-nine voters -- set back in '99. Not everybody who voted sent in complete top-ten lists, but that's okay: thanks to my super-scientific methodology, which won't be explained later, all inconsistencies are ironed out, and we're left with a true expression of the aesthetic valuation of our demimonde, or gang of freaks.

Who voted:

You did. Unless you didn't. If you're a frequent reader of this site, that means you're probably in a band, or you're a performer, or you're somebody who writes about performers, or is in some way part of the indie rock subculture. This gives our Critics Poll an unmistakable leg up on such institutions as Pazz & Jop, where the voters are principally graduate students or errand boys with entry-level journalism positions at commercial publications. Bwa ha. No, seriously, more on this later. The average Critics Poll voter is a person in her late twenties who has made at least one record, resides in Brooklyn or Northern New Jersey, goes out frequently, and maintains a kind of nebulous contempt for mainstream culture. One of us, in other words.

Vague explanation of the numbers:

Our top vote-getter finished with 254 points, 17 ahead of the number two album. That's a decent margin of victory, but not enormous: in '97, If You're Feeling Sinister beat its nearest competitor (Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space) by a record 59 points. Compare that to '99, when 69 Love Songs won the poll by a single point over The Three-Way by the Lilys.

 

Okay. Ready? Group, title, number of points; let's go:

No big surprises in the top five. Jack White's latest compendium of violence, incest, mother fixations and oddball humor received widespread support on the rock lists, while Stuart Murdoch's decision to stop screwing around and actually deliver on some of his massive potential won B&S renewed allegiance and appreciation from the pop crowd. Very few respondents listed both the Stripes and Belle & Sebastian, and that split is instructive -- most 2003 lists were either organized around a minimalist blues-arty aesthetic or an orchestral, poppy, and warm one. The wonky, prog-rocking Electric Version was met with some hipster revulsion upon its release, but apparently it grew on people -- for every voter who punished the New Pornographers for their decision to go full geekazoid, another was clearly impressed by the courage it took to put out a second album that sounded and felt like a Star Trek convention.

I'm saving my reflections (and some of yours) on Outkast when we get to the singles list tomorrow.

Many of you are now looking at these results (Meadowlands, Fountains of Wayne?!?!) and wondering if there's a Jersey bias at work. The short answer: of course. The long answer is a bit more complicated, and requires closer engagement with the ballots. Meadowlands received just as many out-of-state votes as Garden State tallies, and if it's hard to imagine the Wrens taking a comparable poll hosted by a writer in Brooklyn, I still feel comfortable calling their support broad-based. Support for Ted Leo, on the other hand, was almost exclusively concentrated among Jersey or ex-Jersey voters. Those who did vote for Hearts Of Oak did so ferociously; Leo topped more ballots than any other artist. But I don't think that people associate Leo with New Jersey -- I think Hearts Of Oak was just the album that best satisfied long-held Jersey aesthetic values (tight song construction, sweat and working-class muscle, spirit of defiance, and all that), and advocacy among Left Bank voters has more to do with sympathy and appreciation than allegiance.

By contrast, Room On Fire appeared on more lists than any other 2003 album, but never broke into anybody's Top Five. Support for the Strokes came largely from New York City, but even there, it felt lukewarm, downballot. This year's kings of the honorable mention were spurned by Jersey voters, who saved their mentions of The Strokes for other more unfavorable categories that we'll get to tomorrow.

James Mercer's modest exercises in formal excellence narrowly missed the Top Ten, but the Shins continue to impress respondents. In general, Critics Poll voters continue to reward outstanding small-scope songwriting; Radiohead notwithstanding, albums filled with "little gems" consistently outpoll large-concept records with overt claims to importance. Respondents also refuse to penalize albums that feel hermetically sealed from mass culture -- from The Shins to the Pernice Brothers to Dear Catastrophe Waitress, our voters supported and rewarded records that refuse to engage with current trends on hit radio. "It sounds like it was unearthed from 1972!" remains a selling point, not an insult. The sudden hipster enthusiasm surrounding Permission To Land suggests more than that the inevitable hair-metal kitsch has reached critical mass: it indicts us as hopelessly sentimental neophobes. What does it mean that so many of our favorite albums are lovingly detailed historical re-creations? Nothing good, buddy.

Justin Timberlake?!!?

The most surprising discovery of a surprising poll: hipsters dig Justin Timberlake. Many of these polls find "JT" sandwiched between, say, Califone and the Postal Service. Respondents whose lists suggest they'd rather eat a bowl of razorblades than dial into Z-100 nevertheless found space for Timberlake in their Top Tens. I don't get it. He's an okay singer but hardly extraordinary, and his radio songs were done by the same production teams that handle the rest of the Top 40. I don't see any of those records mentioned here. Beyond that, Timberlake's awkward attempt to go "street" on Justified is exactly the sort of posturing move that indie rock nation likes to slam. I would ordinarily guess that there's some star or sex appeal happening here, but Timberlake hasn't got any. Do we miss 90210 so much that we're all transferring residual affection from Brian Austin Green? I think we owe Britney Spears a big apology.

Shootout At The Sugar Factory recieved 69 points in the poll. Thanks to everybody who voted for me, but it sorta undermines the legitimacy of the poll to include your own album. Also, I can't bring myself to list Shootout ahead of some of these records. Whatever its virtues, it is not superior to Her Majesty The Decemberists.

There wasn't quite as much "voting for yourself" this year; as a matter of fact, several of my favorite local artists listed their acts in negative categories. More on this tomorrow, but I can say conclusively that none of you are Hoary Old Bastards Who Need To Retire.

221 different albums recieved at least a single vote.

Finally, Make Up The Breakdown received 67 points on last year's poll and 46 on this year's -- combining the two split scores would put Hot Hot Heat in the top ten of either year.

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Other albums receiving #1 votes:

 

I'm nowhere near where I thought I'd be, I can't believe what your e-mail has done to me.