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

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.