The Poptimists 2006 End Of Year Poll: ALBUM OF THE YEAR

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The Poptimists End of Year polls kick off with the unimportant, but still intriguing, category of Album of the Year. Thankyou for your nominations, which have been distilled to a shortlist (by the scientific means of "most mentioned") as follows:

Paris Hilton - Paris: The year's most controversial release - frothy R&B-pop from the heiress-turned-renaissance-woman.
Ellen Allien & Apparat - Orchestra Of Bubbles: Luscious electronic pop and atmospherics from German boffinette and henchbeing.
The Knife - Silent Shout: Shrieksome electro artpop from Scandinavia.
Marit Larsen - Under The Surface: Scando singing-songwriting popstrel spans country, twee and Euro-pop.
Beyonce - B-Day: Quickly recorded relationship dissections from the reigning queenbot of R&B.

You, the Poptimists Voting Academy, can grace ONE of these with your tick. Do so!

[Poll #891029]

Another category tomorrow - if you didn't nominate you STILL CAN in the other categories by going here!

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I haven't filled in any album-of-the-year slots on the various polls I've been doing - I like most of these well enough but very much for their standout tracks, with two exceptions:

- The Knife I don't like much at all, I've decided. I don't think her voice is good, and I think their 'art' impulses overwhelm their 'pop' impulses, or maybe that they're simply not good enough at the latter to justify the former. Something like that anyway.

- The Paris Hilton (which I voted for) I do like more as an album than a collection of tracks - the whole has a playful mood and the tracks taken on their own or in the context of non-Paris music often sound flimsy.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if The Knife have very many 'pop' impulses at all - there is the 'dancefloor' impulse to be considered here though...

I'm surprised at how many of these I like as albums.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i find it hard to hear knife as pop too. they are too sasha/housey to be realactual pop.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Yes The Knife are all about where the arty impulse meets the dancefloor impulse (meets the goth impulse obviously). I didn't nominate but if I did I would have nominated Silent Shout so nothing lost there.

There are three of my personal top ten in here - both the Marit and Ellen albums have some tracks that I find absolutely sublime and others I find a bit boring. I like Orchestra of Bubbles a lot but if we're on an icy, shiny German house tip I prefer Booka Shade's Movements.

[koganbot]

I don't dislike the Knife, but I called them "self-defeating" on my MySpace. They quite obviously have pop impulses (which doesn't mean that they fall into the category pop): poppy melodies, for one thing. And the thing is she's a bad singer who can't deliver on the pop impulse. But I wouldn't say like Tom that they're not good enough at the pop to justify the art. Rather, they're not good enough at the pop to justify the pop; whereas if they'd gone full-bore into art-dance, into art-goth austerity and haughtiness, they might have pulled it off. And I've not heard a lot of their tracks, so perhaps I need to remove that "if." So caveat: I may be all wrong. But my guess is that for the art-techno-house stuff, people like DJ Pierre and Andrea Doria eat them for lunch. If the Knife want to continue on as they are, they should go out and get a singer with star quality.

By the way, I've also called Teddybears STHLM "self-defeating," for somewhat similar reasons. They can't get it together with the vocals, which are occasionally great but usually mediocre, and they obviously feel an alienation from pop as such. But it's not the alienation that defeats them, though; it's the fact that they don't know how to have their cake and eat it too, how to go pop and anti-pop at once, how to use the alienation in service of the pop. They need a Mick Jagger type to front them - by which I don't mean a cock rocker; what I mean is someone who's willing as a performer to commit himself totally to the performance in the way that Mick committed himself to the untrustworthy narrators that Mick Jagger the songwriter and musical mind was busy cutting off at the knees. By the way, there are two people on my album list this year have some of this Jagger in them: Paris Hilton and Robyn, both playing a simultaneous commitment and anti-commitment one against the other. (Robyn on my list for the Rakamonie EP.) And I think Robyn's "Cobrastyle" crushes Mad Cobra's. But it's still not the "Cobrastyle" of my dreams. For that, you need someone who can absolutely and exuberantly deliver d-dangy-dang-diggy-diggy with Marcels or Sugarhill Gang passion and force - while also embodying the Paris/Robyn/Mick alienation.

badly-argued defense of The Knife

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I think with The Knife, the thing is that they're not arty, they're actually insane/socially incapable. They're like what Goldfrapp dearly love to think they are but clearly aren't, musically. I would consider them very pop (possibly aided by the fact the first thing of theirs that I heard was the Rex The Dog remix of 'Heartbeats') because they do have a lot of playfulness and a self-conscious glee in making a catchy melody. I haven't actually heard the Silent Shout album yet, because it's on my list of 'things I ought to buy but get distracted from by the Pussycat Dolls album' so they might have changed now but certainly circa. 'Deep Cuts' they're definitely pop. Strange pop, yes and slightly difficult to listen to, I find, because they go almost too pop for me in places with very nineties-sounding songs like, err, track seven I think (I don't know the track names, being a CD player sort of person and not having the CD at my parents' house) on 'Deep Cuts' but there's also some really stunning stuff in there. 'Heartbeats,' obviously but 'Pass It On' is probably actually better: 'I'm in love with your brother- what's his name? I thought I'd come by do see him again -hard to tell whether this is Karin talking about something someone said to her or something she's said or pure fantasy but it's very sinister, with minor-key steel drum sounds; I think it's the closest thing to a prelude to the bits of 'Silent Shout' I've heard and it's an absolutely stunning song. It switches between the brother-lover and the sister in perspective (at least, if it doesn't, it would seem to be about incest) and is probably in my top twenty favourite songs ever. 'You Make Me Like Charity' is another absolutely stunning song, with siren-esque string-y noises over one of their woozy beats, both Dreijers on vocals and some of the most amazing politi-sex-pop lyrics I've ever heard.

'Deep Cuts' is, though, far too long- it could do with having the stupid interlude tracks cut and being whittled down to the ten amazing songs. They are kind of awkward (as are many of their songs) but just in a shy way, more than an avant-garde way. I'd certainly rather listen to 'Deep Cuts' than a lot of 'Anniemal,' which is far more self-consciously arty, in my opinion.

...I didn't mean to go on that long. I think I may have defeated my own argument several times somewhere in that. Oh well!

Re: badly-argued defense of The Knife

[koganbot]

Go on for as long as you like. There hasn't been nearly enough Knife talk on Poptimism, considering how much support they're getting from the silent majority. "You Make Me Like Charity" is my favorite among those I've heard. Can't say that they have no sense of humor.

Re: badly-argued defense of The Knife

[koganbot]

One thing I like very much about "Charity": guitar w/ a blip-n'-boing sound out of Strafe's immortal "Set It Off." And also that - like Strafe - they are going for spareness in their poppiness. Maybe something needs to flip in my brain so that suddenly she comes across as a star, riveting my attention.

Re: badly-argued defense of The Knife

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

The Knife indulging their sense of humour is rubbish though. That veers very close to "wacky"; and "wacky" is the very worst thing that anything can be.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Bjork yet; Silent Shout isn't at all like Debut really, but on the surface its dance/art/pop split is along the same lines. And I don't think it's fair to say that Karin Dreijer has a bad voice; it's an acquited taste, like Bjork and Tom Waits, but it's hardly awful.

Re: badly-argued defense of The Knife

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I was going to mention Bjork but I didn't want to display my ignorance by lumping all these art-pop types together!

Re: badly-argued defense of The Knife

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

I think discussion of the voice is largely a red herring in reference to Silent Shout considering how rarely you hear it untreated over the course of the album. It's not Bjork that her voice reminds me of, it's Thom Yorke c. Kid A/Amnesiac - someone who could clearly sing 'properly' if they wanted to but are actively choosing not to, by mangling their voice, treating it like they hate it.

Ditto the references to "star quality" because The Knife are coming firmly from a faceless dance 'all about the music' standpoint, which admittedly is quite difficult to pull off if you have a female singer with a very distinctive voice.

Re: badly-argued defense of The Knife

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

'They're like what Goldfrapp dearly love to think they are but clearly aren't, musically.'

For the last two albums Goldfrapp have gone wholesale 'phwoarr' electropop but there's still a richness to their sound I can enjoy despite their ditching of reference points like Morricone and Barry.

But I think you have a point in that Goldfrapp have lost the sense of menace and mystery they may have had initially. But The Knife are just a whole lot weirder and more alien in the end. Maybe it is because Goldfrapp are British I dunno. I would love them to try and do something more 'out there' and genuinely malveolent like 'Silent Shout' tho.

Re: badly-argued defense of The Knife

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

On my first encounter with them they reminded me most of Propaganda, except with more current reference points to their dance element.

Re: badly-argued defense of The Knife

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

yeh I was gonna mention Propaganda again - I did this on ILM when everyone was originally jizzing over 'Heartbeats' (or the remix at least).

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

well i dunno about some of this! for a start i'm very glad The Knife seem keen to keep pop (or Pop) in view and at at least a cautious distance. i like that they're making Actual Songs in this style. i don't think it's a case of falling between two stools by blending two aesthetics (Pop and Art, I suppose, but this is not really adequate), i think the material is strong because i believe in the perceived intention and think it's a really cool, exciting and powerful thing to do. certainly i think The Knife are one of the most powerful forces out there right now in terms of the message and how it's delivered, the emotion and evocation of it all (not necessarily based on lyrics).

I don't know why people would consider Dreifer a bad vocalist/singer other than I know that some just find her voice too annoying to deal with - which is understandable. But otherwise, what are her flaws? Too much dependency on effects perhaps. Anything else?

I'm puzzled by how someone might not rate 'Silent Shout' but love 'Orchestra Of Bubbles'. Perhaps this would be because Allien is 'dancier' but the structure, themes and melodic elements of The Knife's songs makes me think of them as slightly poppier (and yet also heavier, by and large - Allien could certainly use more bass imo but then so could a whole bunch of people).