If you are a music fan and you looked at this list of Record Store Day releases for 2012 you probably thought to yourself "my goodness that is a load of crap I don’t want."  But let’s be charitable, borrow a little PR-lackey spin-talk, and say that’s because of the "incredible diversity of this year’s releases."  Let’s also go so far as to paraphrase an imaginary press release addressing this issue and say that: "At 284 officially sanctioned exclusive releases, Record Store Day’s annual offering  of incredible music has evolved to the point where you simply can’t like ALL the amazing music out there!"  Right guys?  I mean, that’s as nice as we can possibly be about this.

What if there was some objective way to quantify exactly how crappy this bloated corporate fleecing of vinyl fans has become?  Enter the number crunchers at Chunklet Co. with this handy breakdown:

Out of the 284 "exclusive" Record Store Day releases this year…

82 or 29% are listed as released by a major label or major label subsidiary.
72 or 25% are listed as released by an independent label which is currently distributed by a major label or major label subsidiary (this includes major-indie labels like Merge or Sub Pop or Domino or Thrill Jockey)
34 or 12% are self-released or vanity-label projects controlled by an artist who currently or formerly appeared on a major label

Throw those numbers together and you’ve got 188 or 66% or two thirds of all Record Store Day releases from which at least a part of the proceeds go to somebody who probably has plenty of money already.  Does that equate directly to the music being shitty?  Don’t ask us.  We’re just spewing facts here.  We’re not judging.

Brad Rosenberger from Omnivore Records, what bathroom-related function does your record company resemble most?

If we were judging, we’d say that of the remaining "true independent" releases, many are on "rip your balls off and shove them in your eye sockets"-level bad labels like Victory, Bloodshot, Omnivore, Dangerbird, and we swear we are not making this one up, Jealous Butcher Records.  If you’re not familiar with Victory Records, they very clearly wrote their own Wikipedia page including a hilariously feeble publicity-grab over their signing of “the worst band ever,” and are putting out a limited-edition Snapcase reissue.  Snapcase has sucked since way back when Snapcase was Snapcase.

To get an idea of the caliber of organizations now getting involved in Record Store Day, check out this quote by the "CEO" of Brookvale Records, which actually has major-label distribution: “I started this little record label a few years ago but never dreamed I would be working with such amazing bands as 311, Dream Theater, and Ace Frehley.” -Karl Groeger Jr., CEO/President Brookvale Records.  That is a direct pull from the guy’s own website.  He wrote that down and put it on the world wide web for all to see without a hint of irony.  THIS IS WHO IS PUTTING OUT RECORD STORE DAY RELEASES.

What’s left that we might actually like?  There’s a reissue of the first Pussy Galore 7”, a Nobunny EP on Goner that’s like medium interesting, the Trouble In Mind covers 7” EP with Apache Dropout doing a Monkees/Nilsson cover on it, The Dan Melchior 12” on Moniker, a Sacred Bones comp, some Sundazed 7”s that seem initially exciting until you realize you’re standing in line for 45 minutes for a Blue Magoos 45, some Vanguard folk/blues reissues that might float your boat or get your hopes up about a Japanese insano-dude overbidding on eBay, some reggae your favorite record store probably won’t have anyway, a Devo live LP (just kidding, we don’t want it), a Lee Hazlewood comp, a reissue of Little Richard’s first album that’s already been reissued a bunch of times, a Tinariwen double LP you could buy if you don’t already have more Tuareg Rock than you know how to listen to, A Deep Fried Boogie Band/Colossal Yes split 7” on Jackpot, a 4-way split 2xLP on the Expo 70 label if you’re into “experimental” (read: boring pretentious) music, a Jeff the Brotherhood live 7” and a Smoke Fairies 7” on 453 Music, a v/a comp on the Bardo Pond label, a “lost” Joey Ramone solo 7” of stuff he recorded in the 90’s, and an electronic covers of Dinosaur Jr. thing that we can only assume is a novelty record.  That’s (probably) it.  Like 20.  Out of like 300.  Just a hair over 7%.

The ubiquitous logo from Snapper Music, the “Indie” label respobsible for this year’s Small Faces 7″s

And those are just the “does not immediately induce coma” releases.  We’re not saying we’re over the moon excited about any of these. There might be other good stuff in there too, some of which falls into the highly subjective “already have it” category, some in the less subjective “just not into it” category, and much more in the “additional investigation would cause me to break down and cry at this point” subdivision.

Is that list exciting enough to make you want to deal with the crowds of consume-o-nerds that you’ll have to wade through if you want a chance (none of these is guaranteed) to get your mitts on one of those releases?

Keep in mind that the crush of humanity surrounding your nearest and dearest record store will likely also contain people who might be interested in, most egregiously, a limited 311 (yes, the aforementioned 90’s band) 12”, a Black Keys “limited to 6,000 numbered copies” version of the album they already put out 6 months ago, a Common (the rapper) LP,  a 12” by the drummer from the New Bohemians (of Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians – because the drumming on “What I Am” is “start up a new band 20 years later” level intense), a 7” from the new band formed by the singer from the Deftones, a Coldplay 7”, a fucking Jamiroquai double 12” with CD, a Bruno Mars 10” for fans of both mainstream radio and 10” records, some Widespread Panic and Phish LPs, three 7”es on the Pearl Jam vanity label, a reissue (!) of Lou Reed’s “Transformer” (!!) that is “exclusive on Record Store Day (!!!) but will be released to other retailers in the future,” (which is an EXTREMELY odd way to use the word “exclusive”), and a MOTHERFUCKING GARBAGE 7” by the band “Garbage” and not by a probably much better nonexistent band called “MOTHERFUCKING GARBAGE.”

This list of the worst offenders (20 or so, or 7%) is of course accompanied by the “maybe I could buy this and flip it for $50 on Discogs real quick” limited Arcade Fire 12”s and “I guess I’m glad Leonard Cohen is getting into this whole Record Store Day thing but I’m not sure this record needs to exist” Live EPs and “Hey, it’s the fourth best Destroyers album, that’s cool, I guess” or “I guess somebody out there likes Uncle Tupelo” reissues that make up the bulk of the not 100% horrendous/not exciting middle part of the Record Store Day release spectrum.  Which, scientifically if we’re still keeping track, is 86%.

So there you have it.  Mathematical proof that Record Store Day is 93% horseshit.

We’re not saying you shouldn’t support your local record store, here.  This is a really big sales day for some of the best local businesses in the country, and you should by all means get out there and have fun with it.  What we are saying is that it’s also a really big sales day for some of the worst local businesses in the country, and if you don’t believe us, try record shopping in some shitty record store full of $30 Smashing Pumpkins reissues and entire sections full of Brian Wilson “That Old Lucky Sun” LPs, located in a giganto state school college town near you.  You will find plenty of Bruno Mars 10”es there well into 2015 if they haven’t, as they would so richly deserve, had to close the place the fuck down by then.  We’re waiting for that collapse with baited breath, because we can’t wait for Good Record Store Day.

You’ll have to forgive me guys, I’m a little starstruck.

Y’know, having a baby makes it really hard to just throw stuff up on the Chunklet site to entertain and amuse you, but that’s not to say that I’ve not been busy. The Codeine box set is done (!!!!) and The Jesus Lizard "Book" project is nearing completion. Also, the Indie Cred Test [Penguin edition] is due out in August…..

So how do I try to encourage you and yours to help free up some space here at Chunklet HQ? With a 25% discount at the Chunklet store, that’s how!

Until the end of April, enjoy a 25% off discount on all purchases at the Chunklet site. Vinyl. Books. Mags. Shirts. Everything.

All purchases will also receive "We’re All In This Together. Except You. You’re A Dick." and "Vinyl Is Killing the MP3 Industry" stickers for FREE. Yes. We’re that stupid nice here.

Or just stupid. Your call.

Hey stranger. How goes it?

Well, I’m sure many are wondering (or possibly trying just to ignore) what’s going on over at Chunklet HQ. All I can say is ‘tons’. Working on new records, the Indie Cred Test for Penguin, the Codeine box set design, and of course, The Jesus Lizard "Book" project. So yeah, busy. And did I mention I’ve got an 11 month old demon-in-training?

In the interim, the jokers at Vice have asked for us (meaning Chunklet contribs) to poison their vice.com site. And hey, what do we have to lose? So a handful of writers (including yours truly) have penned venom for those Viacom stooges. And yes, they pay, like, way better than any alt-weekly ever has. *cough*

Death to Norwegian Black Metal

Local Music: The Genre

Snobby Record Store Clerk Therapy: Portland

Slayer Has Some Cool T-Shirts

How To Sell Records Like The Smiths

Sports

The Sad Cult of Steel Panther

What If Rock Music Were A Board Game?

Record Store Clerk Therapy: It’s An Adventure

Bring In The String Section: AxCx

Bring In The String Section: Obits

Anyone looking to go to the movies this weekend? Ghost Rider looks promising. Or maybe you feel compelled to give more money to George Lucas for something you don’t want. Some young girls told me The Vow is a thing.

Or if you live in New York or Providence, you lucked out. You can go see a screening of Kill All Redneck Pricks, the KARP documentary. I got a chance to see it when it screened in Brooklyn last month. It’s really good. So good that I bought a copy of the movie I just watched. Then I went home and bought up the band’s discography.

I’m a little ashamed to say that I wasn’t super-familiar with the band before seeing the film. And if you’re not either, don’t worry. It won’t detract from the film at all. The really cool thing that separates this from other band bios is that it focuses more on the friendship and struggles of the band members. The fact that Jared, Chris, and Scott were in KARP is almost incidental.

It’s also very relatable (even if you’ve never toured the world in a rock and roll group). It’s told in a down-to-earth way that makes you feel like you know the guys. I’m assuming if you’re in a position that you’re watching a documentary about KARP that you probably had a larger interest in some sort of rock music when you were in high school. The film captures the goofiness of youngsters starting a band and balances it with seriousness of addiction and death. The final 30 minutes almost feels like entirely different film, but the tone shifts seamlessly giving a really beautiful kind of outcome.

After the screening I caught up with film director William Badgley and discussed the film and the band.

The line going down the steet at last month’s Brooklyn screening.

First off, how did the making of this documentary come about, and what are your connections to the band?

I grew up in the early ‘90s in Yakima, Washington. We could go to Seattle or we could go to Olympia. And we usually went to Olympia because what was going on seemed a lot more tangible. Seattle was already established as to what it looked like and what it sounded like. Olympia was the total opposite. It didn’t sound like anything and was more defined by heart. There was a spontaneous artistic explosion. So you got this scene that ended up being a really incredible grab bag that contained bands that (looking back) were leaders of their own enclaves all playing on the same bill. Out of the bands I was watching, KARP was the immediate favorite.

After KARP broke up I started Federation X and that’s how I got to know Jared. We played with all his subsequent bands. I knew him through that. Scott passed away in 2003 it was the first time it occurred to me that maybe this is a story that could be told. And then when Jared and Cody started Big Business was when I pretty much decided to do it. But it didn’t start until 2007. The cherry on top being when they were asked to join the Melvins which KARP idolized as youngsters. I finished it October of 2011.

The film focuses more on the friendship than the band. Was that a conscious decision or did the footage kind of dictate that?

Definitely a conscious decision. Usually you have to know a band personally to know if they’re cool. You didn’t have to with KARP. You knew that they were cool from watching them play. There was a quality in their friendship. They were doing so much sketch comedy between songs. But it wasn’t planned out. It was just tomfoolery. Their relationship was kind of pure in some ways that it was always going. When you first see it you think that they’re doing it for you, but then you see them continue it off the stage. It is the band. You realize that it was going on all the time.

Years later when it became an issue to make a film it seemed a pretty obvious road to go with it. You always have to pick the storyline within the context of whatever you’re covering to follow a thread. This was the obvious one from the very beginning. You can kind of guide the interview subjects a little bit, but you make it easier if you make a thread that makes sense and has a natural flow into the topic.

There’s a line on the DVD: “KARP is the biography of a friendship…because ultimately the sound a band makes is the sound of their friendship.” It’s kind of a hokey statement but I kept it because I felt it was pretty functional and communicated that idea pretty clearly. It’s something that’s incredibly important to me, and it’s something very important about the Northwest. It’s such a beautiful culture that isn’t defined by who can play this well or hired guns or whatever. These albums are really documentations about these friendships and families.

It’s very relatable to people that were maybe outsiders or just really into rock music during high school.

We showed it in eight (soon to be nine) countries, and the overwhelming comment that we’ve gotten is that because of the way it’s structured you don’t have to know or even like the band or that kind of music to enjoy the film. That was something I was hoping for from the very beginning.

It was a film about loving the thing that you do and loving the people that you do it with. Usually band docs are not terribly story driven. They’re usually a combination of exploratory footage organized around a topic. But there’s usually not a linear storyline.

And the Tight Bros From Way Back When are interviewed in the film but not really mentioned. Were there time constraints or did it just not fit for one reason or another?

I had a Tight Bros scene and it was kind of a stillborn. It just didn’t make sense unless you already knew about it. And I don’t feel that that’s a good way to make decisions. The film has to be like a survival kit and contain everything you need to understand it. You bring all your own experiences to dissect things and make it mean something to while logistically containing what you need.

Basically I felt that if I had content that would make those scenes make sense then I would put them in there. In my estimation it would have been stuff like, “It was really cool. Jared was continuing on but he wasn’t playing bass.” It was tangential to the storyline which was about what was going on between the three of them.

Does Chris ever do anything music-related anymore?

He becomes this separate storyline and Jared keeps it tied together because it ends up being about music. Scott doesn’t get that chance obviously to continue that path although it was very clear that he would have having given the opportunity. Chris continues to go in a very opposite direction even in sobriety. So that’s the way I portray it in the movie because that’s the understanding that I have.

Basically he explained it like this “In an alternate reality had I not done all of the initial crappy things that I did, I would still be doing that. It would still be what I’d want to do. Having gone down the road so far off, I’m not interested in treading backwards.”

How has the reception been in other cities? Brooklyn was packed to the brim.

It’s been really great. Usually the cities are about 60-100 people and the smaller towns are smaller groups. It’s been pretty solid and I’m pretty happy with it. We had a few that were much larger. Like 180-200 at one screening.

Are people familiar with KARP outside the Northwest? How about other countries?

Oh yeah. People who learned of Jared through the Melvins have just followed the timeline backwards to Big Business to the Whip to Tight Bros and all the way back to KARP.

After this weekend it’s playing some one-off shows around the country, and eventually going to Australia. So check out or their website or facebook page for show info. If it’s not playing in your city the movie’s available on DVD. It’s worth it. There are a couple live shows in the bonuses. And check back with the site in the future. There are plans to add a chronicle of the band to it.

The only rare KARP stuff I have was downloaded from this site a couple years back. It’s the original demo tape (as seen in the film). You can download it here.

LA marquee.

About three months ago, somebody from Penguin purchased a copy of The Indie Cred Test from our website. And, well, I didn’t think anything of it. However, two weeks later, they emailed me and we started discussing having them release it worldwide….and really, who am I to say no?

The Indie Cred Test will be coming out on Penguin/Perigee in the fall! Yep!

So that’s the good news for Chunklet, and this is even better news for our readers. Seeing as how we’ll be unable to sell our edition in a few months, we’ve decided to bundle up all three of our books for a special discounted rate.

For $29.99 you get the Overrated Book (Last Gasp), The Rock Bible (Quirk/Chronicle) and The Indie Cred Test (Chunklet). Yes, that’s over 500 pages which comes down to, like, a penny a page or something (I was never good at math). In addition to the three books, we’ll also throw in some of the "We’re All In This Together" and "Vinyl Is Killing the MP3 Industry" stickers. Like, for nothing!

The Indie Cred Test was voted one of SPIN’s top 10 books of 2011, Aquarium Drunkard seemed to dig it, The Village Voice tolerated it and even the jokers at Pitchfork interviewed me about the book. Yes, contrary to many a local press writer, I can actually write. Or, er, kind of.

I know we should’ve announced this deal to you back in November when you were trying to figure out what to get that special someone, but we couldn’t announce the Penguin deal. So, well, time to buy early for Valentine’s Day, I guess. Deal with it.

Best of the Best of 2011: Top 10 Grimy, Scuzzy, Noisy Indie Rock Albums of 2011 by David Malitz, Washington Post "Click Tracks" Blog

Holy fucking shit.  It’s got more qualifiers than a credit card contract (I imagine an editor saying, "…and could you put ‘grimy’ in there too?  Legal is worried about lawsuits by fretting Jewesses in Chevy Chase whose middle-school aged sons are deathly allergic to distortion"), it’s buried on some seldom seen blog-only wing of the website, and I disagree with maybe half of it, but here it is.  Evidence that somebody at some kind of an actual reputable content provider has some semblance of an idea that there’s such a thing as rock music in 2011.  I feel like I hit the lottery.

I mean, look at this.  Press.  For OBN IIIs.  Sure, they’re not the best band in the world, but they’ve got to be equally not the best band in the world as Florence and the Machines, right?  You’re gonna tell me that Florence and the Machines is as good as Billie fucking Holiday?  Ok, so then they’re not the best.  OBN IIIs?  Also not the best.  They’re probably closer to the original best of what they’re doing (The Stooges, natch) than Florence and the Machines is to Billie Holiday, but I guess that’s an argument that reasonable minds could disagree on.  Saying Florence and the Machines is one of the top 10 best albums of 2011 is a little like saying that Rickie Lee Jones is one of the top 10 albums of 1979.  It does nothing for anybody except make people say "Really?  Nobody knew any better?" 20 years later.  There have been an average of three exact Rickie Lee Joneses per year for the last 40 years.

For the record, my Top 10 Rickie Lee Joneses of 2011 are:

1. Adele
2. Florence and the Machines
3. St. Vincent
4. PJ Harvey
5. Feist
6. Rickie Lee Jones
7. Lykke Li
8. Gillian Welch
9. Tedeschi Trucks Band
10. I can’t believe I still have accurate additional options for this joke

Maybe my real beef is I’d like to see all of these lists as highly qualified as David Malitz’s.  That’s the only thing that would make any sense.  Rolling Stone can do the "Top 50 Major Label Releases That We Can Talk Ourselves Into Telling You We Like Because We Know What Side Our Bread Is Buttered On."  Pitchfork can do the "Top 50 Victory Lap Cash-Ins By Us Of Promoting The Current Active Rosters Of Merge, Sub Pop, and Matador While Gladly Taking Their Ad Sales Money Because They Owe Us For Using The Internet To Tell People That Spoon Is A Good Band, And In Return We Get To Pretend To Still Be Technically ‘Indie’ Even Though Music Distribution Doesn’t Work That Way Anymore In The Post-Digital Era."  The New York Times can do the "We Care So Little About This Shit We Put It In A Podcast Top Whatever Whatever Leave Us Alone Here’s A Check For $1,500."  Chunklet can do "For Some Reason People Still Don’t Know That We’re Fucking Kidding And We’re Constantly Shocked That People React To Anything We Say Because We’re Just Regular Dudes Who Like Both Music And Joking Around About It And We’re Not Even A Real Thing And The Fact That We Can Get A Rise Out Of Anybody Means That People Need To Fucking Relax Top Nothings Of Forever."  And that way everybody will know what they’re getting themselves into.

In the interest of full disclosure, here are my Top 10 Albums of Music I Liked In The Tiny, Tiny Subcategory Of Music I Actually Liked, The Noisier End Of Rock Because That’s What I Like And Not Because I’m Racist, And It’s Not As If I Expect Anybody In The Entire Universe To Give A Shit About My Opinion, 2011:

1. White Fence “White Fence Is Growing Faith” (Woodsist): January release on what appears from nomenclature to be another (more popular) band’s vanity label by a nondescript band name in the now ubiquitous “Adjective Singular Noun” tradition (Wild Flag) with forgettable album art.  This poor fucker doesn’t have a chance in hell of winding up anybody else’s list but it’s the album I listened to most and enjoyed most in 2011, which is what these things should be all about, and I’m not sure it would have had the time and the space to marinate had it been rushed out during the October/November insanity.  Let’s take back January, you guys.

2. Mikal Cronin “Mikal Cronin” (Trouble In Mind): A classic pop rock album that really got me thinking  about the state of the music biz these days.  It’s pretty effing weird indeed that an album as self-evidently enjoyable and “no reasonable person could have a bone to pick with it” as this one, basically “It’s A Shame About Ray Part 2” can just be completely bulldozed by the hullaballoo machine without so much as a backward glance. You know shit is jacked up when anybody, particularly me, thinks of 1994 as “the good old days.”

3. Divorced “Separation Anxiety” (Untapped Resources): I don’t ask for much, folks. Just some thunderous guitar sound and deadpan delivery of the most idiotic lyrics you can possibly come up with.  I don’t know if that’s actually hard to do, but it sounds easy as fuck and I love it the MOST.

4. Thee Oh Sees “Carrion Crawler/The Dream” (In The Red): Finally  the best band in America puts out an album that sounds like itself.

5. Royal Headache “Royal Headache” (R.I.P. Society): Apparently the guy (singer “Shogun”) hates this album, which I imagine is due to some arcane recording technique beef and not an actual content issue.  Because album opener “Never Again” is as sure of a upbeat party destroyer as “A Town Called Malice,” except, you know, with balls attached.  I would dance to it if dancing were not outlawed still for some reason.

6. Kitchens Floor “Look Forward To Nothing” (Siltbreeze): Very Nirvana-esque vibes here, except we’re dealing with one of those scary suicidal anti-depressant reactions instead of raw nerves, ghost ulcers, and heroin.  Plus it’s deconstructed an extra layer.  Just in case you might have been worried that the guy doesn’t know he might be coming off like a sad sack, he’ll revert to nonverbal grunting just to drive the point home that he’s sicker of himself than you could ever be.  It’s so downer it transcends “downer” and becomes a heartbreaker.

7. Total Control “Henge Beat” (Iron Lung): Another total headscratcher of a "why isn’t everybody talking about this?" record.  It’s a Joy Division energy recapture without the direct tonal thievery of an Interpol, and it’s getting NOTHING.

7. Apache Dropout “Apache Dropout” (Family Vineyard): There’s an 8-minute version of “What Goes On” on the VU Quine Tapes that I heard for the first time this year, and it’s Apache Dropout.  This diminishes nothing from anybody, but: Holy Shit right? The Velvets, amirite?  The fucking VELVETS, people.  STILL.  I’m cool with new permutations forever.  Let’s do another 50 years after this one.

8. The Men “Leave Home” (Sacred Bones): I grew up around Washington DC, and in like 1997 every band on EARTH (i.e. Dischord) sounded like this, except not as good. Hearing it again now is like “what TOOK you so long?”

9. Obnox “I’m Bleeding Now” (Smog Veil): “Totalled” might be the best track of the year. It sounds like somebody blasted some Lenny Kravitz megasmash hit out of a clock radio, then loaded it into a canon and shot it into a vat of boiling lard, then set it on fire. Never has pop that pop been so thoroughly and willfully destroyed.  It’s exhilirating.

10. Folded Shirt “F/S” (Fashionable Idiots): I can’t tell if this is the best thing ever or the worst  thing ever, but I’m going to have to put it on here just in case. It’s so aggressively terrible it’s like it doesn’t even exist, and instead inhabits some other dimension of nonmusic where it is the exact spastic boneless vomiting Bo Diddley all the glue-huffing kids have been waiting for.

I’m going to be honest with you guys, doing this is completely fucking impossible.  It’s excruciating.  Try to read all of these actual lists, then try to have an actual opinion about each of the releases listed on them, and then try to express that opinion like four or five different ways, according to how many times somebody lists Bon Iver.  Go ahead.  Give me eight Bon Iver jokes.  I dare you.  See?  Impossible.  There are not eight funny things about Bon Iver.  There is maybe the fact that a guy whose music is a go-for-broke attempt to get laid has a dumb French name that he gets all pissy about mispronouncing.  It’s supposed to rhyme with "Bone Eater."  I don’t know for sure that he’s trying to get laid.  I just assume.  Maybe he’s trying to convince you that he feels something first and then getting laid later by seeming accident.  By dint of not wanting to think everybody is a total puss, I prefer to think that’s what all sensitive singer-songwriters are doing.  Which is fine.  I prefer the go-for-even-broker method of a Mötley Crüe, because they’re not only trying to get laid, they’re trying to get freak nasty.  And they have a sense of humor too.  But that’s me.  That strikes me as at least being honest.  Anyhow, that "Bone Eater" thing is like maybe 75% of one funny thing.  It’s a stretch.  I’d much rather listen to a band called "Bone Eater."

Holy shit.  Check out this YouTube.

I would rather watch that trailer on a loop for 3 hours than listen to any one Bon Iver song all the way through.

So.  As you will soon see, I’m stuck making the lamest joke I can possibly make and moving on because the alternative is actually listening to these things enough to understand their essence, then making THE joke about them, and then moving on to the next one and doing it all over again.  AND THEN moving on to the next list and doing it all over again again.  For the sake of my own sanity, I have no choice but to just say, "Fucked UP?  More like Fucked Out of $20, am I right?!" and hope you’ll forgive me.  Put yourself in my shoes.  This music is fucking awful.  Even if it’s good, it’s awful.  Because I resent it.  I resent choosing to do this to myself.

50. The Lonely Island "Turtleneck & Chain":  Let’s say I knew a few people who work on a TV show and I visited the set earlier this year and then partook in some TV network’s free transportation service, during which we saw a giant billboard of the Lonely Island guys in a certain high-publicity zone of real estate, and the consensus in the car at the time was "boy it’s great that a vodka company paid for their entire giant billboard, what a great windfall?"  Would you A. think I was being a starfucker for telling you this, B. believe me when I told you that it filled me with revulsion and dread, or C. rightfully assume that making a bunch of comedy joke songs about "what if us nerds were rich and young and attractive and famous" when that’s actually what you are is kind of not that funny?

49. Wavves "Life Sux EP":  You know what?  This guy is great.  Not his fault he’s a total pussy who got propped up by the hype machine without paying his dues.  He’s got guitar tone.  Electric guitar tone.  So what if it came from Garageband?  There’s no right way or wrong way to do it and we need all the help we can get these days.

48. Charles Bradley "No Time For Dreaming":  New rule: if you’re going to do a soul revival album, you have to be older than 60 so you’ll have some memories of actual institutionalized racism rather than just a black cultural take on the same inequality of opportunity and poverty cycle that poor white and Hispanic folks also face (and that hip hop is the official music for).  Otherwise you’re just going to sound like a musical equivalent of that "my parents were fucking awesome before they had me " blog.  Which is always like "yeah, you’re right, I want to go hang out with your parents instead of you."  Charles Bradley invented this new rule.  It’s the Charles Bradley Rule.  Charles Bradley was, and is, fucking awesome.

47. PJ Harvey "Let England Shake":  What is the retirement package like for people like PJ Harvey?

46. White Denim "D":  A joyful outburst of exuberance.  I am describing the fart I just busted.

45. Tedeschi Trucks Band "Revelator":  I had never heard of this.  I’m not sure how I would have heard of this without specifically looking for it.  Maybe it’s idiotic of me not to have heard of this.  I just looked it up on Wikipedia.  Two musicians from Jacksonville.  So what.  They seem like the kind of people you see by accident at a State Fair while you’re visiting your cousin and that make you wish there was such a thing as chair pants.  On to YouTube for testing this theory.  Yes.  Turns out it’s impeccably produced Bonnie Raitt-esque pleasant and empty porch-swing songwriting in the shitty nihilist tradition of the Eagles.  Example chorus: "I’ve been thinking, yes I’ve been thinking, I’ve been thinking, oh about you baby, oh such a long long time."  Great investigation, me.  You just destroyed 15 minutes of your life trying to figure out the deeper meaning of the musical equivalent of a framed saying in a truckstop gift shop, and you had a feeling that’s what it was in the first place.

44. Raphael Saadiq "Stone Rollin’":  Sorry bud.  You are in violation of the Charles Bradley Rule.

43. The Kills "Blood Pressures":  I always thought that The Kills were just some record company version of White Stripes like how Stone Temple Pilots and Bush were more easily controllable approximations of the also-bad first wave of grunge.  Like "hmmm" these hacks have some sort of social code where they have to pretend that it’s all about the music," let’s find some hacks who don’t have that issue.  Now that I’ve listened to this, though, I know.  I no longer think.

42. Destroyer "Kaputt":  It’s great that Dan Bejar is finally making fun of being as boring as he actually is.

41. Little Dragon "Ritual Union":  Yet another synthy pop album that begs the question "Are there men in Sweden?"

40. Gary Clark Jr. "Bright Lights EP":  Unlike his namesake, he is not a diminutive speedster who stretched defenses vertically to open up secondary lanes in the running game for Ernest Byner, intermediary passes to Art Monk, and huge swaths of ground in the middle for slot receiver Ricky Sanders.  Gary Clark was a completely underrated part of two Super Bowl Championship offenses as well as a four time Pro Bowl selection and member of the 10,000 yard club over an 11 year NFL career, and as such has a legitimate claim to the Hall of Fame.  Gary Clark Jr. is basically just Lenny Kravitz again.

39. Kurt Vile "Smoke Ring For My Halo":  I’ve got no beef with this.  This is crazy: do you realize that Keenan McCardell is 25th on the all time career receiving yards list?  How’s that for under the radar?  Keenan McFuckinCardell.  Huh.  I’ll be damned.

38. Mastodon "The Hunter":  Is the Metallica Black Album the worst album of all time?  I feel like it is in a certain category.  Like "worst album by a band that kicked total ass then the best band member, the bass player, which is never a good sign anyway, was crushed in a bus crash and then they still kicked some ass but then decided to stop kicking ass and started releasing moody chart-friendly brooders with the same name as Clint Eastwood movies."  The Hunter is "worst album by a band that kicked total ass but also was always kind of weird anyway because they did like these really obtuse concept albums at the same time as kicking total ass, and anyway there’s probably only so much metal-riff shredding you can do until you get bored so even though this album is a bunch of chart-friendly moody brooders they get a pass as keepers of the flame."

My son sounding like Lenny Kravitz is FEAR NUMBER ONE!

37. Panda Bear "Tomboy":  "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" was a medium-funny movie.  The best part was when he got really into acid and grew a beard and they basically just wailed on Brian Wilson.  The fake music they recorded for it, where Matt Besser’s like, "This is not a good song.  It’s like five songs on top of each other at the same time?"  Brilliant.  Also: Panda Bear.

36. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks "Mirror Traffic":  Lil’ Chunklet history.  In issue something something back in nineteen ninety never there was an contributor application quiz that was pretty funny.  Best joke on it: "When did Pavement start to suck?"  I loved that gag.  It reveals so many layers of music fan.  The best answer is "right away."  The rock music nerd answer is "right after Drag City."  If pressed, I’d go for "the nanosecond Stephen Malkmus realized he was fronting Preston School of Industry."  Anyhow, we can all agree there’s been some sucking.

35. Dawes "Nothing Is Wrong":  I once went to a party where the kitchen was full of shrill, desperate-to-seem-like-adults young women in Urban Outfitters clothes and the couch was full of dudes sitting smoking a pot vaporizer and watching "The Last Waltz" on Blu-Ray.  I instantly felt a white-hot rage at my girlfriend for working part time at Gymboree and therefore knowing these people in the first place.  I’m glad to know there’s an album for that.

34. SuperHeavy "SuperHeavy":  Is there an unholier cross-genre alliance than hip hop and jam bands?  What about if you threw some reggae in there?

33. Josh T. Pearson "Last of the Country Gentlemen":  Soulful, bare songs of redemption and loss which… HEY!  Titty on the cover!

32. Big K.R.I.T. "Return of 4Eva":  To summarize; I’m black, I like having money, I like to display the amount of money I have, I smoke pot and drive cars, I’m inconsiderate of other people’s feelings, I like to fuck women, I have a recording contract which pays me a large amount of money to tell you about all of this.

31. Miranda Lambert "Four The Record":  I put this on and it’s the last thing I remember before waking up on the kitchen floor with a throbbing headache.  I was worried something was wrong so I called the doctor and he was like, "This is very important.  Was it contemporary popular country?"  And I was like "yeah."  And he was like "Are you an idiot?"  I said "hey man, I’m asking you for medical advice here, I didn’t call you up to be insulted."  And he said, "no, that’s a medical question, not a rhetorical question.  Are you an idiot?"  And I said, "Oh, I see, no.  No I am not."  And then he was like, "Then don’t listen to contemporary country or injuries like this will happen.  Basically, you listened to idiot music and your brain immediately fell asleep.  It’s very dangerous."

30. Tom Morello, The Nightwatchman "World Wide Rebel Songs":  The Clash : Rage Against The Machine :: Big Audio Dynamite : this.

29. Pistol Annies "Hell on Heels":  Ugh, why am I on the Kitchen Floor?  My nose is bleeding.

28. Das Racist "Relax":  Das Racist are the Animal Collective of hip hop.  At first you’re like, "Oh, maybe this is interesting," and then you’re like, "What is this feeling?  Oh, right, it’s tension.  I’m being annoyed right now.  That’s what that is."

27. Florence and the Machine "Ceremonials":  I liked Florence and the Machines a lot better the first time, back when they were called Annie Lennox.

26. St. Vincent "Strange Mercies":  I liked Florence and the Machines a lot better the first time, back when they were called Annie Lennox.

25. Beyonce "4":  Beyonce emerges with an album that predicts her final resting place on the attractiveness scale.

24. Frank Ocean "Nostalgia, Ultra":  I kind of love how this album is listed on so many best of lists but always in the 10-30 range.  It’s like every critic got together and said, "You know what, you guys?  That Frank Ocean album was medium good!"  "Yeah, it really was medium good!  I thought when I got the promo copy that it wouldn’t be any more than medium bad, but it really was better than that!"

23. Tom Waits "Bad As Me":  He’s 62 now.  You mean to tell me that at age 62, this guy is still "spooky and dangerous?"  My Dad is 62.  He falls asleep at 9 pm.

22. Drake "Take Care":  Drake doesn’t look like the same guy who’s making this music.  He looks like his real name is Ricky and he works at a cell phone store but goes clubbing on the weekends and pretends he’s actually an awesome dude.  We’re all living in a "Weekend Ricky" universe that exists only inside of Ricky’s mind.  I feel like somebody should whisper, "We love you Ricky.  We love you Ricky, Ricky, Ricky, Ricky…" so he’ll wake up to his Mom shaking him and telling him to clean up the dog puke in the kitchen.

21. Bone Eater "Bone Eater":  Crushing, massive guitar riffs that can not, will not be denied, plus pummeling, unbearably intense drums and bass which despite all the ruckus still manages to insert a modicum of funky sexiness to the proceedings.  Archly humorous lyrics delivered with a D.O.A. deadpan that speaks volumes without giving anything away.  Opposite day.

20. Foo Fighters "Wasting Light":  Includes a painful farewell to Kurt Cobain.  Just like every other Foo Fighters song ever.

19. Eric Church "Chief":  The tragedy of meth is that it robbed some of our country’s shittiest areas of an entire generation of shitty people that really helped to make those shitty areas as shitty as they were.  Now those areas have been decimated and the only survivors are self-righteous Jesus freak types who wouldn’t know fun if is blasted them in the face with a bazooka.  But you know what?  It looks like there’s a new generation of shitkickers in country music, espousing the "get drunk as shit and high on weed but don’t fuck with meth and you’ll be alright" ethos, and Eric Church is apparently leading the charge.  It’s good.  Our south needs its shitkickers back.  It’s been too long of you guys have looking like complete fucking tightasses to the rest of the country.

18. Feist "Metals":  Huh, Feist put out an album this year but it wasn’t on anybody else’s list.  I find that strange.  I find that to be a Strange Mercy.

17. TV on the Radio "Nine Types of Light":  If you spend an entire career throwing new musical elements into the mix and never ever being one thing, you might just be able to make a lot of money without ever actually doing anything well.  You just have to be really really good at subterfuge.  That’s what TV on the Radio is good at.  It’s their one type of light.

16. R.E.M. "Collapse Into Now":  I’d say "Good band, bad era: influenced Guided By Voices" as a fairly accurate epitaph for these guys.  They were in existence for 31 years.  It was a long bad era.  Also, Guided By Voices is so fucking good.

15. Cage the Elephant "Thank You Happy Birthday":  My brother got backstage passes to see these guys at some outdoor festival in Philly, and after looking at their YouTubes for like 20 minutes I decided, "You absolutely need to steal their beer."  They are the ultimate "Worth getting kicked out for getting caught trying to steal their beer" band.  I want to take the stolen from Cage the Elephant stolen beer taste test, where you get a nice cold free Bell’s Third Coast and then a warm Coors Light stolen from Cage the Elephant.  I’d take the warm Coors Light, and keep ’em coming.

High resolution image scan of prolonged exposure to Contemporary Country

14. Beastie Boys "Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2":  "We’re the Beastie Boys, a jugga jugga jugga!  Jugga jugga jugga, a jugga jugga jugga!"  Ch-ching!  BEST JOB EVER.

13. tUnE-yArDs "Whokill":  You know what Adam Ant needed more of?  The completely delusional swagger of a "really good" college A Capella group.

12. The Black Keys "El Camino":  With this album I celebrate my 10th year of deciding not to force myself to have an opinion about the Black Keys.  I’ve been not there since the beginning.  I’ve not cared much through thick and thin, through triumph and tribulation, and now here I am, completely indifferent to the success of a band that had to work for it the old fashioned way: by playing music I didn’t care about.  Congratulations, you guys.  I still don’t care.  But you know what?  You really earned it.  And not a lot of bands I don’t care about can say that.  Not that I would care if they did.

11. My Morning Jacket "Circuital":  These guys are the America to Radiohead’s Neil Young ("Everybody’s Rockin’" era).

10. Robbie Robertson "How To Become Clairvoyant":  I had MTV growing up.  It’s nice to hear that the genre of "music I fucking hated when I was 8 years old but nonetheless tolerated because there was a model with a tanktop in the video" has not gone away.

9. Wild Flag "Wild Flag":  Wild Flag is a fun band.  Ok?  You got me.  I like a thing.

8. Wilco "The Whole Love":  Oh, they did like some electronic things on this one.  Ok.

7. The Decemberists "The King Is Dead":  I just see this and I feel like Edward Gunsforhands working at the barrel-of-fish factory.

6. Lady Gaga "Born This Way":  I don’t care that I’m wrong, I still think there’s a chance she’s just kidding and I want to love her for it.

5. Radiohead "The King of Limbs":  Don’t get me wrong, it’s great.  It’s fucking amazing.  I’m not saying it’s not amazing.  It’s Radiohead, so you know it’s amazing, just sight unseen.  I’m just saying, and I hate to say this, but this is not the best Radiohead album, you guys.  I’d say it’s probably like the 4th best Radiohead album.  If pressed, I would maybe put it in the 5th best spot, AND DON’T LAUGH, but I would maybe even put it behind "Amnesiac."  Call me crazy, you wouldn’t be the first, okay?  Ha ha ha, yeah, thanks man.  I was real worried about putting myself out there like that, but I knew I could trust you guys to understand.  You’re the best friends a guy could ask for on a Radiohead-forum message board on the internet.  The idiots over at Yahoo! Answers all have their heads up their asses.  Their RADIOHEADS up their asses, I should say!  LOL!!!!

4. Fleet Foxes "Helplessness Blues":  The YouTube user who posted the title track says, "I really think these guys deserve more attention."  It has over a million hits.  If you can post a million-plus hit YouTube and still actually think that the Fleet Foxes deserve more attention, the problem is not that they’re not getting enough attention.  The problem is there’s not enough attention to give.  Worldwide.  It’s as if everybody’s so insecure and needy they feel threatened by the fact that only a million people like something they also like.  That’s runaway attention inflation, and it’s causing a worldwide attention deficit.  Right?  I eagerly await your opinion in the comments section.

3. Paul Simon "So Beautiful Or So What":  I actually love this album.  More for the between the lines stuff than the songs, although I think that Simon’s writing is as good now as its ever been.  I just also think that the fact that his songwriting is so sharp now is a gigantic fuck you to the Tune-Yardses and The Very Bests and the My Morning Jackets and the everybody else who’s not Paul Simons of the world.  This album is a 2011 whip my huge dick out move by Paul Simon.  "FUCK YOU, I INVENTED BORING ROCK."  He even looks grumpy nowadays.  His face went meek, meek, meek, meek, MEEK, GRUMPY.

2. Jay-Z and Kanye West "Watch the Throne":  These two are gonna be surprised as hell when they die just like everybody else.

1. Adele "21":  Am I just the most myopic person alive, or does it seem like even the most popular music is as hard to keep track of as anything else these days?  Maybe I’m doing everything wrong, but I had honestly never even heard of Adele until I started doing all of these lists.  And like 2 million people ACTUALLY BOUGHT her album this year.  That’s fucking crazy.  Until like three weeks ago I knew as much about Adele as each of those 2 million people still and probably always will know about Apache Dropout.  It’s pretty indicative of my singed neurons that I can hear something like this and be like "I don’t know, it just sounds like MUSIC" as much as my Mom can hear my favorite song of the year and tell me it just sounds like noise.  But that’s what it is.  It’s music.  For people who are like "OH GOOD, I LOVE MUSIC" whenever they see something that says "Now That’s What I Call Music" on it.  And she’s got a great voice.  She’s very good at singing music.  I think I hate music, you guys.  I’m, like, almost worried about it.

My name is Ricky and I’m going to sell you a phone today.

BEST OF THE BEST OF 2011: JIM FARBER, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

JIM FARBER WINS.  I’m sorry.  When you list the "Top 40 CD’s of 2011," you are officially the coolest motherfucker on the face of the planet.  You know about how there’s a "cassette resurgence?"  Well, Farber is on the forefront of the CD resurgence that both hasn’t happened yet and also will never ever happen.  He is the guy who’s going to stick with the format to the point of referring to album-length releases as "CD’s."  I hope he also has a movie library full of laserdiscs and refers to them constantly as "laserdiscs."  As in "I dunno, why don’t we just stay in and watch a laserdisc?  Have you ever seen ‘Logan’s Run’?"  I am being simultaneously dismissive and envious.  As ludicrous as the hypothetical is, I desperately want to have a best friend who has "Logan’s Run" on laserdisc.

His is actually a boring list.  I’m not even gonna go over it.  It’s got the same stuff on it as anybody else’s list, more or less.  In the singer-songwriter pop writ large AOR mold.  Not for me.  I struggle to understand who it IS for, but I’m sure there are people in the world who buy CD’s (albums on a CD) on the recommendation of the guy from the New York Daily News.  They are the kind of people for whom it is either A. no surprise, or B. exciting news that Glen Campbell is still alive.  But that’s the content of Farber’s list.  The content does not matter.

It’s the delivery, you guys.  This thing is the comedy hit of the year.  It’s punctuated by a bunch of uses of the word "CD," often preceded by a chronological modifier.  Example sentence: "The son of Richard and Linda Thompson once again proved he’s his own man on his fifth CD."  What a gutbuster!  This guy is out there counting Teddy Thompson CD’s!  In public, no less!  What a kook!  What a fantastic example of a guy being exactly only himself! 

Of course with the "New York Daily News" credentials, he’s probably a composite devised from the PR desk of some megalithic dinosaur of a record company, but imagine if there were such a person!  Genuinely excited about the fifth Teddy Thopmson CD!  Proud of the product of such legendary progeny emerging, yet again (!), as a significant artist in his own right, despite the dual obstacles of both unreasonable expectations and near-universal indifference to his ability to meet them.  It’s a real heartwarmer of a story, and Farber tells it straight.

By God, it’s the recording industry. I had no idea this was still here, Logan.

You know what, Jim Farber?  I’m gonna give this Teddy Thompson CD a listen.  Hmmm.  About what I expected.  Boring in a kind of Lyle Lovett meets Rufus Wainwright way.  But you know what, Jim Farber?  Thanks to you I know I shouldn’t give credence to lazy first impressions.  Not as far as Teddy Thompson goes.  After all I haven’t listened to his previous four CDs.

And hey, you also put that "Those Shocking, Shaking Days" comp on there too, which is tough to find fault with as far as spiking the punch a little.  So I get it.  You’re not preaching to the converted and you’re cashing a check or two, provided you actually exist in the first place.  Good work.  Your sweetness and positivity once again have eroded all of my bitterness, Jim Farber.  I am not at all mad at you.  Shine on, and keep clinging to those crumbling fringes of the remaining music-press infrastructure for dear life.  Long may you run.

Not at all a spoiled legacy brat, Teddy Thompson has recorded FIVE CDs.

What’s that?

"The triple-threat songwriting tag-team in Gomez continues to ensure their CDs contain only their cream."

HA HA HA!  YOU ARE THE BEST, JIM FARBER.

GRADE: A+

These tasty boys give us nothing but their cream.

BEST OF THE BEST OF 2011: PITCHFORK’S TOP 50 ALBUMS OF 2011

50. Youth Lagoon The Year of Hibernation [Fat Possum/Lefse]
Reason: Accidental initial 8.4 rating was elephant in the room.  As Marisa Tomei is allowed to hold on to her "My Cousin Vinny" Oscar, so too must we include Youth Lagoon in the 2011 top 50.

49. Wild Flag Wild Flag [Merge]
Reason: We had to include it, but where?  Someplace controversial, that’s where.  Guess what, shitheads.  We liked 48 albums more than Wild Flag in 2011.  That should put the kibosh on any pandering claims right here and now.  Wild Flag.  America’s own Wild Flag.  Clocking in at number 49.  Barely made the list.  Why?  Because we’re badasses, that’s why.  And also there was some ad revenue conflict this year with a banner that Merge backed out of.  But mostly we’re badasses.

48. Toro Y Moi Underneath the Pine [Carpark]
Reason: We used the term "chillwave" too many times this year not to use it again.

47. Sepalcure Sepalcure [Hotflush]
Reason: Our techno guy told us to, and we’ll do anything just to shut him up.

46. Cults Cults [In the Name Of/Columbia]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

45. Kendrick Lamar Section.80 [Top Dawg]
Reason: Just wanted to remind you guys, we know about hip hop.  Not a single one of us could ever win a fist fight, but we do collectively know about hip hop.

44. Colin Stetson New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges [Constellation]
Reason: Including a popular session saxophone player’s experimental electro-jazz album in our list allows us to reference LCD Soundsystem, Bon Iver, and Arcade Fire in an entry that’s not even about any of those acts.  We get paid by the mention on those guys, plus we get brownie points for being experimental, so it’s ideal.

43. Lykke Li Wounded Rhymes [Atlantic/LL]
Reason: For the ladies.  Real talk.

42. SBTRKT SBTRKT [Young Turks]
Reason: Look.  We DJ on the side.  All of us.  You know how much money that can pay if you just give up and play some butt-moving techno shit like this from a laptop?  Some.  Some money.

41. Liturgy Aesthethica [Thrill Jockey]
Reason: Contrary to popular belief, we do a comprehensive scientific analysis on our ratings systems, and it turns out this is the exact 41st best album of 2011.

Colin Stetson recorded with Arcade Fire. Arcade Fire. Arcade Fire.

40. AraabMuzik Electronic Dream [Duke]
Reason: The more we tell you to like techno, the funnier it’s gonna be when we go "ha ha, just kidding" in 2015.  We’ve been buying up limited-release punk/psych/garage stuff for like the last 5 years, and we are all gonna make a KILLING on eBay when we start telling the world it’s good.  Watch.  The best thing is: by then we’ll be wrong.  HA HA HA.

39. The War on Drugs Slave Ambient [Secretly Canadian]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

38. Sandro Perri Impossible Spaces [Constellation]
Reason: Did Dirty Projectors come out with a record this year?  NO?!  Shit!  Find me an approximation.  NOW.  This slot is already published, you guys.

37. Iceage New Brigade [What’s Your Rupture?]
Reason: These guys are teenagers from Denmark.  Did we mention that?  Teenagers from Denmark.  Remember that.  Tell it to other people.  And if you want to put icing on that cake, say "I dunno, some people say it sounds like a mess, but people said the same thing about Land Speed Record."  That’ll REALLY make it sound like you’re getting in on the ground floor.  Oh, and if somebody tells you "Land Speed Record IS a fucking mess."  Just say "I KNOW" like you agree with that and also you think messes are great.  That person will accept you as somebody who has opinions about music AND probably also stop talking to you about music.  So it’s win-win.  Lil’ tip from your buddies over at good old P-Fork.  You’re welcome.

36. Kate Bush 50 Words For Snow [Anti-/Fish People]
Reason: You’re not allowed to be older than 30 and like rock music and not also be somewhat of a Kate Bush fan.  Them’s the rules.  We made ’em.  We follow ’em.  Kate Bush.  Kate Bush, you guys.

35. Frank Ocean Nostalgia, Ultra. [self-released]
Reason: You know what?  Sometimes it’s just FUN to hype up something that doesn’t really deserve it.  You remember how much FUN Odd Future was at first?  Sure, they’re basically the second coming of Onyx, but "Slam" was fun then and yelling "Wolf Gang" for no reason is also fun.  What the fuck, we’re not allowed to get drunk and be idiots?  No?  Why, because we’re too busy overanalyzing everything with a pseudo-academic air, even if it’s completely mediocre?  Oh shit, you have a point.  Guys!  They’re onto us.  Smoke bomb of words!  Hmmmrr, actually we like this stuff.  It’s a part of a "movement" of "something something."  RUN!  …We lost ’em.  That was close.  Man, did you see that one guy with the Squirtle t-shirt and the AK-47?  HA HA HA.  WOLF GANG!  Oh man I’m going to vomit.  I should not have had those 7 lavender-infused vodka tonics that were provided free of charge by the fine people at Hyundai.  Remind me to never stop telling people how good that music was even though that was fucking horrible.

34. Katy B On a Mission [Columbia/Rinse]
Reason: We just want you to give us credit for REALLY sticking with the whole "pop is music too" anti-snob-backlash-cum-neu-snob-frontlash thing.  I mean it was kind of fun for a while there in 2003 to blast Billy Joel "Uptown Girl" at a party, but we took that ball and just fucking RAN with it.  All the WAY, even.  Look at us.  Still.  You know?  I mean, wow, right?

33. Fucked Up David Comes to Life [Matador]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

32. Panda Bear Tomboy [Paw Tracks]
Reason: Do we have to come right out and say it?  We painted ourselves into a corner with all the Animal Collective fawning, ok?

31. Ty Segall Goodbye Bread [Drag City]
Reason: We can’t really vouch for anybody who’s actually good unless it’s their least good album.  Sorry, our hands are tied.  What can we say?  We’re shitty.  We want things to be shitty.  And we take special pride in making unshitty things a little shittier.  That’s just what we do.

30. Tim Hecker Ravedeath, 1972 [Kranky]
Reason: Will this help you take us seriously?  It’s not all pop with us, people.  Sometimes it’s groaning ambient anti-pop "important" music.  See?  We pander from both sides.

29. DJ Quik The Book of David [Mad Science]
Reason: Ok, so we like writing descriptions about 42 year old hip hop producers that make us sound like old friends.  So sue us.

28. Cut Copy Zonoscope [Modular]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

27. Beyoncé 4 [Columbia]
Reason: We were going to mention the Kelly Rowland album here, but a bunch of thugs shoved our Editor in Chief into the back of a van.  One of the goons showed him a Kelly Rowland album and a picture of his family with a knife through it, and another guy held up a Beyoncé album, and a gym bag full of cash.  They said "the choice is yours" and dropped him in the middle of the Dan Ryan.  We would have just taken the cash without all the theatrics, as usual, but message received.

26. The Field Looping State of Mind [Kompakt]
Reason: When Duster came out, we were like, "Great medium-good band, guys.  How about exactly this but 15 years later and techno?"  So this is just kind of a "told you so."

25. Gang Gang Dance Eye Contact [4AD]
Reason: Did you know there’s a black market stock market?  There is, and we are up to our nuts in cocaine futures.  Like scary-level committed.  Way overextended.  All we have to do is promote shitty party music in order to artificially drive demand for like 2 more years, and then we’ll get out.

24. Julianna Barwick The Magic Place [Asthmatic Kitty]
Reason: You ever watch a movie that’s gunning super hard for an Academy Award but just falls totally flat?  Like "Cold Mountain."  "Cold Mountain" is fucking hilarious.  Well, that’s kind of the music we’re into.  Anything that aims to convey a sense of profound meaning without ever actually communicating anything, so much so that you have no idea what you’re even supposed to be so emotional about, and then you’re momentarily confused enough to forget that you’re out $12?  That’s what this is, except you can totally download it for free so it’s just more like a lighthearted goof.

23. Bill Callahan Apocalypse [Drag City]
Reason: "Whatever Bill Callahan just shat out at the 23 slot" is a good old fashioned "no bones to pick" choice.  Not even Ben Johnson can come up with a reason why this is a dopey move.

22. The Caretaker An Empty Bliss Beyond This World [History Always Favours the Winners]
Reason: When Pitchfork first started it was back when "Glitch" was kind of the big pretentious thing de jour.  God, we miss it.  It was so easy to write about as if the people doing it were actually accomplishing something.  Old habits die hard.

21. Jay-Z/Kanye West Watch the Throne [Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella/Roc Nation]
Reason: Okay fine, you got us.  We’re starfuckers.

20. Nicolas Jaar Space Is Only Noise [Circus Company]
Reason: Not even we like what we’re doing.  We’re trying to make it plain to you people how much we suck with little messages in the bottle like this, but it’s not easy.  Apparently there’s no limit to how gullible you are.

19. Danny Brown XXX [Fool’s Gold]
Reason: Our favorite subgenre of Hip-Hop is and always has been Nyah Nyah Nyah Rap, and it’s been a while since the heyday of Aesop Rock so we’re biding our time with this.

Gang Gang Dance’s Biggest and Only Fan

18. Atlas Sound Parallax [4AD]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

17. Clams Casino Instrumentals [self-released]
Reason: It’s a self-released "mixtape."  You can just see the stinkwaves of cred seeping out of this like one of those old time cartoons where the smell from the pie on the window sill grows hands and slaps Bugs Bunny in the face, then grabs him by the nostrils and floats him over.  Check out that word, "mixtape."  It’s like we got it on an actual cassette tape!  Right?!  Like instead of multitracking some sample-based watery downtempo house on Garageband and then instantly sending it everywhere on the internet, we got a TAPE in the REAL LIFE MAIL?!  Man, that would be CRAZY.  THE MAIL?  Yeah RIGHT.  And a TAPE?!  They don’t even MAKE those things anymore.  We’re pretty sure they don’t even make those things anymore.  Ho ho man.  Check out this underground self-released MIXTAPE we have.  We get things like this all the time because we’re pretty cool dudes, and we liked this one more than all but 16 of everything this year that we heard this year.  No biggie.  Wink.  (CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!)

16. Kurt Vile Smoke Ring For My Halo [Matador]
Reason: We’re allowed to like Kurt Vile now that he’s Neil Younged out all his earlier rocking.

15. Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues [Sub Pop]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

14. Shabazz Palaces Black Up [Sub Pop]
Reason: It’s good.

13. EMA Past Life Martyred Saints [Souterrian Transmissions]
Reason: We love 90’s movies about virtual reality that display a complete lack of knowledge about what computers are and what they do.  The only thing better is the music in the one scene where they try to convince you that the youngsters that know about how to do this stuff are, like, dangerous and cool.  That music always really spoke to us, because we always knew a lot about computers, and we were nerdy as shit at the time.  So when nerds make kind of nerdy Depeche Mode electro-industrial-guitar music that could conceivably be made to look, through the magic of hiring extras on the set of the movie "Hackers," like it’s some sort of edgy hedonistic sex rave, it awakens deep memories of pretending the reason we’re alone at our lunch table in middle school is we’re too tough and edgy.

12. James Blake James Blake [A&M/Atlas]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

11. St. Vincent Strange Mercy [4AD]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

10. The Weeknd House of Balloons [self-released]
Reason: Drug sales kickback.

09. Real Estate Days [Domino]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

08. Drake Take Care [Cash Money/Young Money/Universal Republic]
Reason: This is just our way of saying that we approve of the idea of turning on the radio.

07. tUnE-yArDs w h o k i l l [4AD]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

06. Oneohtrix Point Never Replica [Mexican Summer/Software]
Reason: We don’t want to totally ignore the "underground," so we decided to include a randomly selected album on Mexican Summer, a smaller label that we like for a number of reasons, chief among them the fact that they’re shameless.

05. Girls Father, Son, Holy Ghost [True Panther]
Reason: Comedy.

04. PJ Harvey Let England Shake [Vagrant/Island Def Jam]
Reason: Just to prove that we know who she is, really.

03. M83 Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming [Mute]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

02. Destroyer Kaputt [Merge]
Reason: Ad sales kickback

01. Bon Iver Bon Iver [Jagjaguwar]
Reason: Ad sales kickback.

Can you IMAGINE?! LOL.

BEST OF THE BEST OF 2011: JIM DEROGATIS, AUTHOR "LET IT BLURT," NPR’S SOUND OPINIONS

Hi everybody!  I’m lazy as fuck!  Here’s a list of some promo albums I got this year that I then wrote some words about:

1. Le Butcherettes, Sin Sin Sin (Rodriguez Lopez Productions); 2. Wild Flag, Wild Flag (Sub Pop); 3. Das Racist, Relax (Greedhead LLC); 4. The Feelies, Here Before (Bar None); 5. Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi, Rome (Capitol); 6. F*cked Up, David Comes to Life (Matador); 7. Bewitched Hands, Birds and Drums (Look Mum No Hands); 8. tUnE-yArDs, WHOKILL (4AD); 9. The Decemberists, The King Is Dead (Capitol); 10. The Go! Team, Rolling Blackouts (Memphis Industries); 11. Shabazz Palaces, Black Up (Sub Pop); 12. Wilco, The Whole Love (dBpm); 13. Ponytail, Do Whatever You Want All the Time (We Are Free); 14. Raphael Saadiq, Stone Rollin’ (Columbia); 15. Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop); 16. The Cool Kids, When Fish Ride Bicycles (Green Label Sound); 17. Beastie Boys, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (Capitol); 18. TV on the Radio, Nine Types of Light (Interscope);  19. Kate Bush, 50 Words for Snow (Anti-); 20. Mastodon, The Hunter (Reprise); 21. Van Hunt, What Were You Hoping For? (Godless Hotspot); 22. Sons & Daughters, Mirror Mirror (Domino); 23. Lucinda Williams, Blessed (Lost Highway); 24. Drive-By Truckers, Go-Go Boots (ATO); 25. Gorillaz, The Fall (Virgin); 26. Lydia Loveless, Indestructible Machine (Bloodshot); 27. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Mirror Traffic (Matador); 28. Lupe Fiasco, Lasers (Atlantic); 29. Radiohead, The King of Limbs (self-released); 30. Damon & Naomi, False Beats and True Hearts (20-20-20); 31. Steven Wilson, Grace for Drowning (Kscope); 32. Trombone Shorty, For True (Verve Forecast); 33. Wye Oak, Civilian (Merge); 34. Mannequin Men, Mannequin Men (Addenda); 35. Lykke Li, Wounded Rhymes (Atlantic); 36. Beats Antique, Elektrafone (Antique); 37. Smoking Popes, This Is Only A Test (Asian Man Records); 38. North Mississippi Allstars, Keys to the Kingdom (Songs of the South); 39. Marketa Irglova, Anar (Anti-); 40. Smith Westerns, Dye It Blonde (Fat Possum)

Let me just catch my breath here in the middle of the street

As you can see, I didn’t break a sweat making this list, which is impressive for me because I break a sweat doing ANYTHING.  For inclusion on future lists like this one, please send promos to: Jim DeRogatis c/o Job He Still Has For Some Reason, Navy Pier, Chicago.