Pazz and Jop, 2009

It's a special treat each year when the Village Voice releases its list of the best records and songs of the year, namely the annual Pazz & Jop Critics Poll. It's been around 26 years longer than the Paulies, and in many ways its our stylistic forebearer.

And according to America's pop music critics, here are the top ten records and songs from 2009:

1 Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion
2 Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
3 Neko Case, Middle Cyclone
4 Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It's Blitz!
5 Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca
6 Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
7 The xx, xx
8 Raekwon, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...Part II
9 The Flaming Lips, Embryonic
10 Girls, Album

Songs:
1 Jay-Z (ft. Alicia Keys), "Empire State of Mind"
2 Phoenix, "1901"
3 Animal Collective, "My Girls"
4 Grizzly Bear, "Two Weeks"
5 Dirty Projectors, "Stillness Is the Move"
6 Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Zero"
7 Lady Gaga, "Bad Romance"
8 Girls, "Lust for Life"
9 Phoenix, "Lisztomania"
10 Taylor Swift, "You Belong With Me"

But much more than these lists, it was one accompanying article in the Voice that really struck a chord with me, "The Year of Too Much Consensus":

http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-01-19/music/the-year-of-too-much-consensus/

In it, the 50-year old music critic Chuck Eddy ruminates on the state of critical consensus, in particular, the Pitchfork-ification of America's music critics. I implore you to read the whole article, but his closing paragraph is pretty killer (and telling of these Pitchfork-ian times):

"For the record, no Springsteen voters also voted for the xx or Girls, and only one voted for Animal Collective. Theoretically mainstream old-guard pros like Bill Holdship of Detroit's Metro Times and Geoffrey Himes of the Nashville Scene both saw only two of their Top 10 albums place in the P&J Top 40; St. Louis stalwart Steve Pick, choosing esoterica like Dave Alvin and the Bottle Rockets and Ian Hunter, got shut out entirely. Back in 1980 in these pages, Robert Christgau divided the Pazz & Jop electorate into "the avant-gardists versus the traditionalists, the radicals versus the conservatives"—you know, Beefheart guys vs. Bruce guys. Me, I like strangeness and skronk, but I also like boogie and beer; still, my basic instincts have always been with the vanguard. But when it's mainly the old farts who seem to have minds of their own, I start to wonder."

-PGJ