Dance music at the Grammys

This performance at the Grammys is somewhat old news, as is Philip Sherburne's fairly well-circulated take down (which has seemingly vanished from Spin's website and the entire internet, but here is a sample of what Sherburne wrote).  In case it disappears from those tumblr and other linking sites, I'll excerpt it again here:

There was David Guetta, flopping about like a Muppet behind the mixer, jabbing away at the controls in a pantomime of performance. What was all that flicking of the faders and tweaking of the knobs about? Why was he wearing his headphones over one ear, as though he were cueing up the next record? During the French superstar’s time onstage, only one song (‘I Can Only Imagine,’ from his Nothing But The Beat, which features Chris Brown and Lil Wayne in its album version) was played. Simply put, there were absolutely no services required of him that a DJ would traditionally provide. He might have tweaked a filter here or there or cut out the bass a time or two, but that was the extent of his interventions. (No matter what he’s doing with his hands, you never hear an appreciable change in the music or note any kind of cause/effect relationship.)

My rebuttal to that paragraph was written three months before the Grammys, in my review of the 2011 MTV EMA's:

David Guetta hits the stage to save the second hour of this show with Jessie J, Taio Cruz and Ludacris. I'm not sure exactly what Guetta is doing back there. He's sporting a pair of headphones (which probably aren't plugged in because he never uses them), pretends to tweak dials, and holds his hands in the air. But the laser light show is amazing, the songs are too, and the guest singers nailed their one minute each. Guys like Moby will be the first to tell you that DAT shows can rock too.  

I'm not exactly sure what Sherburne was expecting, especially since award show performances always favour spectacle and creative guest spots over musicianship.

I didn't mind that Grammys spot, sure, Deadmau5 and David Guetta weren't doing much of anything, but there were plenty of things going on (it certainly wasn't boring), and everybody was dancing (yes, they were on TV, but people do go out to dance to this type of music in real life).  There's a place for this kind of performance, and Sherburne certainly knows and respects that -- he wrote a feature on the most recent rise of dance music and DJ Culture in North America for Spin a few months ago.  

I hardly ever disagree with Sherburne, but I disagreed with him here.  Unfortunately, I have to try to recall his full argument from memory.  He wasn't objecting to the idea that people like listening to Skillrex rather than dancing at Berghain until 7AM on Monday morning.  It was not a "people prefer megastar X to semi-underground phenomenon Y" type of plea for authenticity.  No, IIRC, he was upset that far too many people will see the Grammys and think that "dance music" means this and only this, and it will never occur to them that it can also mean dancing to booming techno all night at Berghain.

To this, I still say "so what"?  Plenty of people believe that rock music means KISS -- makeup, fireworks, and sex parties.   Scenes blow up and it just creates more room for every kind of taste, and eventually those subgroups will themselves become so big that they'll never interact or even acknowledge the existence of the other.

Besides that -- and this is something that is woefully under-reported -- the scene inhabited by Skillrex, Guetta et al is far more inclusive and accessible.  One of the reasons they're so huge is because they're happy to slot themselves into the music industry's regular marketing model, where anyone can invest the time and money into buying their music, going to their shows, and watching their videos on the internet.  It's what every exec dreamed would happen when Prodigy and Chemical Brothers were hitting it big in 1997.  On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to gain admission to Berghain.  The number of people who try to get in every weekend is far higher than the number of people they can admit, but when all is said and done, most people don't get in and they can't go home and download the experience later on.  David Guetta's world is a world of hearing your favourite three minute song on the radio, the Berghain world is one where you need to invest six hours to get a taste of what it's about and you'll never find out the name of most of the songs you heard.

The Langley Schools Music Project, "Innocence and Despair"

On most weekday mornings I wake up with the radio.  The music plays, and the DJ tends to ramble on about the songs, but I'm usually not listening very carefully to either.  But music can really surprise you when you're not really paying attention and aren't expecting to hear anything special.

I was completely taken aback by the sound of a children's choir singing the Beach Boys "God Only Knows".  The voices were haunting and yet somehow uplifting.  Voice intonation would come and go, which would ordinarily ruin a song for me but in this case it didn't seem to matter. There's something so very affecting about hearing children struggling with fragile, untrained voices, singing words that you know they can't possibly fully understand.  It's exactly the same unusual quality that characterizes Daniel Johnston's best work.  Plus, the absurdly simple arrangement flies in the face of the Spectorian approach that Brian Wilson took with his mid-60's productions.  The DJ identified this otherworldly recording as something belonging to the Langley Schools Music Project.  The brainchild of Canadian schoolteacher Hans Fenger, these long lost 1976-77 recordings were rounded up and re-released on CD in 2001 with the title "Innocence and Despair".  The title is perfect -- no two words could summarize Brian Wilson's lyrics any better.   Somehow I'd never heard of this album before, even though it finished 29th in Pazz and Jop in 2003, and inspired.at least two prominent Hollywood movies (Richard Linklater's "School of Rock" and Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are".

Of course, song selection is the most essential aspect of any covers albums.  In 2001 (and today), nearly every song here was an obvious, timeless classic.  But in 1976?  The Beach Boys had been rediscovered and rehabilitated only two years earlier, after the release of their greatest hits compilation "Endless Summer".  Fleetwood Mac were only one album into the Buckingham/Nicks era, their days as an inescapable FM radio juggernaut hadn't arrived yet.  Barry Manilow is much better regarded today than he was in the late 70's and early 80's.  Pulling off songs as weird as "Space Oddity" and "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" with such fluidity --and with children -- took a considerable amount of vision.  Fenger somehow knew what would work just as well as he knew what he needed to avoid. One Bay City Rollers song is fine, but most people in his position would have overloaded on goofy, happy songs like that.

Brit Awards 2012

Thoughts on some of the performances:

Coldplay's cold opening of the show with "Charlie Brown" was pretty fantastic.  When they drop the pretentious attempts at hugeness, keep things simple and just rock out (plus a few fireworks), they are one damned fine band.  Hell, even when they want to do "pretentious", they're less annoying and crank out better songs than most other bands trying to do the same.  I don't know if I've said it before, but I have no problem with Coldplay being the world's biggest rock and roll band.  Since it's the Brits, it's appropriate to compare them to another iconic British rock band of the past twenty years: Oasis.  Let's see, Oasis released two great albums and were then content to coast on their reputations.  Eventually, most people got fed up with their antics (brotherly infighting, slinging mud at other bands every time they wanted to draw attention to themselves), especially when the quality and consistency of the music took a nosedive.  Nobody was surprised when they finally broke up, and nobody really mourned them.  Coldplay honestly seem to try harder with every new album and aren't content to simply recycle what worked for them in the past.  I keep expecting them to fail, but they keep releasing number one albums, two or three classic singles per album, and when all is said and done, they might have assembled the strongest "greatest hits" (not songs, "hits", actual, radio-saturating hits) collection of their generation.  They might be the Pink Floyd of our time, wildly popular but reviled by many critics at the time for their exaggerated sense of self-importance (at least in the years when they were all but a Roger Waters solo project).

Rihanna, "We Found Love".  Speaking of adaptable artists who are putting together one of the best hits collections ever, here's Rihanna.

If you know anyone who believes that Adele's big win at the Grammys means that American and British tastes are converging, play them Olly Murs' performance of "Heart Skips a Beat".  Dance pop + fey clean cut young males + twenty five girls in red leotards dancing in front of a set of red hearts?  Good luck bringing that to America.

Florence and the Machine, "No Light, No Light".  I love it when goth storms the charts, no joke.

Adele sang "Rolling in the Deep" and flipped the bird, and it's fair to ask whether this is any different from what MIA did at the Superbowl.  Answer: it's a lot different.  Not to condone swearing on live TV, but ...

1) Adele is the world's biggest music star, and the Brit Awards are the top music awards show in her home country.  As expected, she won all the biggest awards.  The show was about HER.  Not getting more than 20 seconds to speak after winning Album of the Year is pathetic.

MIA was a sideshow at a halftime performance at a football game. The TV broadcast was about the game, the halftime show was about Madonna.  She rode the coattails of bigger stars to get there and tried to make the show about her, when it wasn't.

2) Like I said in my Superbowl post, there's a time and a place for protesting and trying to look badass, and the Superbowl halftime show isn't it.  The Brit Awards aren't the Superbowl.  Somebody gets drunk at the Brits and creates a "controversy" every year, it's practically expected to happen every year, and nobody gets too upset about it because awards shows aren't taken as seriously as they are in the US.  The Brit Awards are a big celebration, but it's generally understood that the Grammys are more like an annual meeting of industry insiders, and more decorum is expected.  It's impossible to imagine people being OK with swearing at the Grammys or the Oscars.

As a matter of fact, it would have never happened in the US because American awards shows run long all the time (less so than they used to), so Adele would have been allowed to talk for as long as she wanted. The Brits have to run in their allotted time slot, down to the minute.

Blur were great as usual, and it's amazing to see how "Tender" has been transformed from nearly forgotten single on their most "difficult" album to their biggest big happy singalong.

Two "new" releases, the Legends Edition (II): Drugstore, "Anatomy"; Woob, "Repurpose"

Last year, I wrote a post about new albums by PJ Harvey and Mogwai, two fairly well known acts who happened to release their best new music in years.  This pairing is a little different. Both acts vanished without a trace for a number of years, only to make fairly recent and unheralded comebacks.  So unheralded, in fact, that even I had no idea they'd released new albums until a few weeks ago.

A lot of people would consider it a stretch to call a couple of relative unknowns legends.  But they both made singular, other-worldly music in the mid-90's, including albums that I believe were two of the top ten albums of that decade.  At the same time, I don't think they can be considered "cult" acts either.  Drugstore recorded a single with Thom Yorke at the height of the "OK Computer" hype. Woob was the flagship act on Em:t, which was a very well regarded label in ambient music circles.  On just about any given day, you can find Woob and other Em:t CDs fetching impressive sums for resale on eBay.   Some bands make a couple of great albums, disappear for a while, and their legend only grows with time.  But most bands that disappear for ten years are simply forgotten.  Even some of their biggest fans, like me, forget all about them.  That is, although I still love the music they made, Woob and Drugstore ceased to exist as living, breathing things for me some time ago.  Even when I knew that Drugstore had reunited over two years ago for a series of comeback gigs, it didn't seem real.  They had been out of sight and out of mind for so long, and I simply forgot to check up on new developments.

Isobel Monteiro summarized her "lost" years on her blog and posted regular updates leading up to the release of "Anatomy" this past summer.  Woob's official website doesn't say a word about why Paul Frankland decided to resurface when he did, but the past two years have seen a number of new releases, as well as the re-release of the classic "Woob 1194" album.  It's like a dream I never thought I could be having -- it's 2012, and both Drugstore and Woob are active, working musicians again.  Did their talents come along for the ride too?

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"Anatomy" is a lot less immediate than the other three Drugstore albums.  There's nothing resembling the Velvet-y fuzz rock of the debut or the stadium-sized crunch of "White Magic For Lovers".  "Songs for the Jetset" caught me off guard because it was so tranquil and laid back.  Its mellow, understated melodicism only clicked for me after a number of repeat listens. But "Anatomy" is even quieter and slower moving.  Nothing "rocks" here, even compared to the more upbeat moments on "Songs for the Jetset".  Besides a few twangy splashes of guitar on the opener (and single) "Sweet Chili Girl", the opening trio of songs crawl along so slowly, with so much empty space on the recording, that you might mistake them for a set of iTunes-only acoustic outtakes rather than the songs on the actual album.  I came around on those songs however.  Besides, the essence of a Drugstore album is never within the first few songs.  You always have to wait a bit until they slice your heart open for real.

"Anatomy" is very much the sequel to "Songs for the Jetset", in that it has the same recorded in a log cabin, stripped down, whisky-soaked feel. It could have released at any point in the past ten years.  There are no production gimmicks, nothing that does or will date this album anytime in the near future (as opposed to the treble-heavy Owen Morris-style sound of "White Magic For Lovers", which was left behind in the 90's on the Oasis and Verve albums from which it came).  It's a Drugstore album through and through, filled with all of their usual trademark song types.  There's the motivational ode to alcohol ("Can't Stop Me Now"), the mid-tempo rocking duet with a male singer ("Aquamarine"), the silly song ("Blackholes and Brokenhearts"), and all the tear-stained ballads you could ever want, featuring Isabel Monteiro's still deliciously sultry voice.  And "Clouds" is the type of soul-crushing breakup song that separates good bands from essential ones.

I'm not sure there's ever been any album quite like "Anatomy", that is, I'm not sure time has ever stood still like this.  You might expect that Isabel has the type of voice that would slowly disintegrate over the years, for example, in the same way that Kristin Hersh's has.  But time and mountains of cigarettes be damned, she sounds absolutely the same as she did fifteen years ago.  The rest of the band is new, but they've been seamlessly, impressively plugged into the Drugstore formula without a single misstep.  How often does a band take a ten-year time out from recording music, pick up at the precise moment where they left off, and still manage to sound this contemporary?  Two years ago, Drugstore were nothing but a memory, now they've reappeared out of thin air and gone straight back to being one of the world's most interesting bands. How did it happen?

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Whereas Drugstore seemingly hopped in a time machine, reappeared ten years in the future, and continued where they'd left off in 2001, Woob's 2010 comeback album, "Repurpose", is less of a continuation than a do-over of past work.  Significant portions of  "Woob 4495" have been reedited and reassembled -- it's as if you're hearing a long lost alternate mix of the album.  One problem with "Woob 4495" was that nearly every track was too short (e.g. the brooding opener "Gate") or too long (the 24-minute "Depart", too long by at least ten minutes).  "Repurpose" strikes a good balance between those two extremes , keeping the best elements of the source material and embellishing or cutting back as appropriate.

All in all, Woob's ethno-music direction fit nicely into what Em:t was releasing at the time.  Most of "Repurpose" is reminiscent of his post-1995 music, when he was comfortably nestled into the Em:t pack.  But "Woob 1194" was superlative because it was completely unlike anything else on the label. It combined warm-blooded dub with bone chilling ambient, effortlessly and seamlessly switching between styles, blissful at one moment, frightening the next.  "Repurpose" doesn't break new ground until the final track, "85 Bit", which finally recalls the anything goes spirit of the debut.  It combines science fiction soundtrack melodies, speaker rattling bass, prog rock organ sounds, squelchy downtempo beats, and a million other things into a 17-minute catalog of ambient moods and textures.

Perhaps the most flattering thing one can say about listening to "Repurpose" is that not a minute goes by when the music isn't instantly recognizable as Woob.  As a fan, you can't really complain about that, especially when an artist returns after fifteen years in the wilderness.

Whitney Houston RIP

This one really shocked me.  She had had a number of well-publicized personal problems over the years, although more recently she had claimed to clean up her act. Or maybe once her star had fallen, her problems never went away, they just became less publicized.  No news is not necessarily good news. 

The shock I felt over Michael Jackson's death was dampened considerably because I'd become so accustomed to hearing stories of his eccentric living habits and various health scares.  But with Whitney Houston, there may be a sexist element involved here -- with Amy Winehouse as a recent exception, in the 21st century we don't expect female stars to be sad junkies who turn up dead in LA hotel rooms. 

Some people have noted that two of the four megastars of 80's pop music are now gone.  Twenty years ago, Whitney Houston was unquestionably the most down to earth of the bunch -- Michael was Michael, Prince was changing his name to a symbol, and Madonna was doing softcore pornography and trying to push every boundary she could.  Whitney's reputation was unblemished, she was at the peak of her powers and about to release one of the biggest hits of all time.  Who would have picked her out of that bunch as the 80's superstar most likely to fly off the rails? 

I was never much of a fan of her music, although her influence on every R&B diva that followed her cannot be overstated.  "I Will Always Love You" might have been the most inescapable song of my lifetime.  At the time, I hated it because I heard that song, along with anyone else with even a passing interest in music in the early 1990's, more than any human being could possibly tolerate.  Michael Jackson's superstar status fizzled around the same time as Whitney's, but his influence on contemporary music seemed to vanish for a number of years, until a generation of teenaged stars (boy bands, Britney Spears) brought him back in a big way.  Whitney's shadow, however, was constant.  She's been a presence in the charts for over 25 years, whether she was releasing music or not.

Madonna and friends at the Superbowl

I don't remember hearing "America the Beautiful" sung at the Superbowl before, is this a new tradition?  Is the NFL taking cues from the WWE again?  During the introductions they also played "Written in the Stars" by Tinie Tempah Ft. Eric Turner, which was the theme song for Wrestlemania last year (I'm not sure if it was played in the stadium or just for the TV broadcast, but I think I heard it in the stadium).

During Kelly Clarkson's very capable version of the national anthem, I wondered how exactly one gets chosen for this sort of gig.  Singing the national anthem at a high profile sports event, especially the Superbowl, is just about the highest profile appearance you can get.  I understand how it works If the singer is connected to the network somehow, e.g. a Glee cast member singing at a football game broadcast on Fox, but otherwise, do record companies pitch for this stuff?  I feel the answer is obvious to most people other than me, I mean, how many high profile sports events have I seen without giving this much thought ... ?

I really enjoyed Madonna's performance, it's up there with Prince's as possibly the best Superbowl halftime show in recent memory.  Although music-wise, I much prefer Madonna to Prince, her show had a number of flaws -- some dodgy sounding vocals (a mixture of live and lip synched singing), a video floor that was bright and busy to the point of distraction -- whereas Prince's didn't really have any.  This is exactly the sort of spectacle I expect to see in a Superbowl halftime show -- part concert, part circus, part light and video show -- that you can't get from a performer like, say, Tom Petty.  You have to have a deep and varied catalogue to pull off crowd pleasing singalongs, uptempo dance numbers, ballads, a bit of funk, a bit of epic, insane choreography, unanticipated drum/guitar/voice solos, and cool guest spots all within a brief but action packed twelve minute time window.  Prince and Madonna can pull off that kind of show without even trying, whereas acts that wrote the same song over and over for thirty years (e.g The Rolling Stones) cannot. 

Cee-Lo Green sounded amazing and very nearly stole the show, which he tends to do at spectacle and awards shows such as these, Nicki Minaj was terrific as usual, MIA is of course a load of crap. Watching live, I completely missed her flipping the bird because I was thinking about her complete lack of talent as a singer or rapper, especially in comparison to fellow cheerleader Nicki Minaj, whom she had to follow.  I know that giving someone the finger on TV isn't exactly shocking in 2012, and it's not like I'm worried that this might corrupt the youth of America or anything like that.  But if you're going to brush this off with "get over it, it's 2012", then you also have to recognize that in these technologically advanced, supposedly enlightened times, there are a million ways to make a statement and get your message out, and an equal number of times and places where it's advisable to do so.  Halftime at the Superbowl is not one of those times.

I didn't think MIA could possibly do anything that would make me respect her less, but once again she outdid herself.  First off, she crapped all over Madonna, whose coattails she was riding last night, ensuring that the post-show gossip would centre on her rather than on the megastar that people tuned in to see.  But most of all, MIA is completely clueless to the fact that she's a sellout.  It doesn't get more red state, Jesus worshipping, heart of corporate America than the Superbowl.  No matter how much of a rebel you think you are in your own mind, when you accept an offer to appear at the Superbowl, then you're getting into bed with all those things whether you like it or not.  Accept it and go along for the ride, or stick to your "principles" and find another publicity outlet.  It's pathetic to see a celebrity, who married into one of the world's richest families, trying to stick it to the Man with ridiculous stunts on one hand, while living the lifestyle of the Man on the other.  What's even more pathetic is that she truly believes that this makes her every bit the rebel that her infamous father was, like she's carrying on his legacy or something.   

Pazz and Jop 2011 - the results

My first thought when I clicked on the main results page was that somebody had hacked into the Village Voice's website and put their friend's band at #1. It took about ten seconds for me to realize that the whole thing wasn't some elaborate joke. Who the hell are tUnE-yArDs? Obviously I hadn't paid close enough attention when they (or rather, she) had turned up on other year-end lists (which I admit to not having perused too carefully, other than searching for some sort of end of year consensus). So I immediately watched the video for "Bizness" and was appalled. tUnE-yArDs are horrible.

What's even more amazing is that "w h o k i l l" received nearly the same number of points (and more points/mention) than Animal Collective did in 2009 (and yes, there were nearly identical numbers of voters in those years). Does this mean that tUnE-yArDs were a phenomenon nearly on par with Animal Collective, who seemed virtually inescapable for all of 2009? In the past few days, I've seen that I wasn't the only one who was completely in the dark about tUnE-yArDs' "success". She seems to be the perfect poster girl for a year with such a surprising lack of consensus. Everyone who doesn't love her, hates her or has no idea who she is, and you could say the same about most of the P&J top ten albums this year.

Here are my top ten albums and their placements in the poll:

M83, "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" (#19)
PJ Harvey, "Let England Shake" (#2)
Wolves in the Throne Room, "Celestial Lineage" (#144)
The Caretaker, "An Empty Bliss Beyond This World" (#84)
Death in Vegas, "Trans-Love Energies" (#419)
Modeselektor, "Monkeytown" (#1670)
I Break Horses, "Hearts" (#819)
Tim Hecker, Ravedeath, 1972 (#39)
Surgeon, "Breaking the Frame" (#613)
Mogwai, "Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will" (#116)

In Centricity rankings, I was #378, roughly the median of the 700-person voter list. This puts me in a position similar to 2009, where I voted for two very high ranking albums. This was enough to put me in the middle of the Centricity rankings even though most of the albums I voted for finished way down the list. Tim Hecker at #39 is astoundingly high, even though it's been a constant in the lists on indie and electronic music sites, I don't think anyone would have predicted that it would finish in the top 40 of a generalist poll like P&J. The Caretaker also finished surprisingly high thanks to one of the highest points/mention ratios in the poll (Tim Hecker got more than three times as many mentions as The Caretaker).

The rest of my top took their fairly predictable positions. There are always enough ten or so Mogwai fans who manage to get their albums into the top 200. I cast the only vote for Modeselektor (note that #1670 = third last, behind only single mentions with six and five points), not unlike two years ago when I was one of two voters for the eponymous Moderat album. The P&J electorate simply do not care for them. If there was ever an album that I assumed I'd be the only one to vote for, it was "Breaking the Frame", but it garnered two other votes, one of them by longtime electronic music critic Todd Burns, who basically only votes for techno year in and year out.

As for my singles ballot, "Till the World Ends" had a somewhat shocking top ten finish (somehow this became the go-to Britney single), Gaga and Nicki Minaj were huge, and the rest were "songs" that only I voted for (except for "Try To Sleep", with five other mentions). I'm glad I stopped listing songs from my top ten albums list -- PJ Harvey placed eight songs from "Let England Shake", and tUnE-yArDs placed seven from "w h o k i l l". Sometimes you can't avoid voting for songs from the year's best albums, but when they clog up the songs list like this, it makes for a boring list.

Glenn McDonald noted that only four voters finished with Centricity higher than 0.7 this year, compared to 26 in 2010 (recall that a voter whose top ten matched the P&J top ten -- in content, not necessarily in the same order -- would have a Centricity score of 1). Let's quantify this a bit more, because in 2009 there were only 12 voters over 0.7, and that was the year of GAPDY (Girls, AnCo, Phoenix, Dirty Projectors, YYY) where loads of people were in arms about Pitchfork taking over P&J and everyone supposedly voting for exactly the same five indie albums.

Consider the number of voters with Centricity equal to or above the following cutoffs in 2009-11:

-	0.75	0.65	0.6	median
2011	0	13	36	0.295
2010	16	42	74	0.289
2009	7	19	30	0.233

The most telling drop off is above 0.75 -- nobody's individual taste even came close to representing the consensus, in the strictest sense. But if you take a more moderate definition of consensus, like > 0.6, then 2011 and the supposed hivemind of 2009 are very similar.

At the high end of the Centricity rankings, 2010 looks like a huge outlier, I think this is because the crazy huge number of votes for Kanye West are skewing the rankings. The median Centricity scores for 2010 and 2011 are almost identical, i.e. the outliers on the high and low end of the consensus scale balance each other out. After starting to write this, I noticed that Glenn had tabulated something similar for 2008-11. Take out 2010, and the degree of consensus doesn't change much over the past four years. His "consensus" number is clearly weighted according to the high end of the Centricity rankings (i.e. the number of voters who tended to make consensus picks), whereas his "diversity" number is probably more like the standard deviation of all the Centricity scores, which would tend to be mostly clustered around the median for that year.

Two of my comments were printed this year, which was a nice surprise, especially considering I didn't have much time to work on them. Even when there isn't enough time to work on detailed comments, I always try to fit in something about my #1 album. I figure it's my duty to at least try to justify that pick. This year they picked my "weird" comment too, although the theme of getting older and failing to keep up with new music and remember the names of artists/songs turned out to be a mildly popular one, judging by the other comments expressing similar sentiments.

I haven't read all the essays and comments yet, but Chris Molanphy's The Incredible Shrinking Album is unique and I think very important. We don't tend to talk about sales figures when breaking down these lists, which is strange because the music industry as a whole is all shrinking sales figures all the time. tUnE-yArDs' likely record as the weakest selling P&J #1 seems like it will be tough to break, but as Chris points out, in a year where two of the top twenty albums were free, downloadable mixtapes, and two of the top ten singles barely exist outside of Youtube, can we really say that with much confidence?

And finally, where art thou gone, b-factor? tUnE-yArDs scored a 6, Bon Iver an 8. Obviously this wasn't intended to be a predictive factor, i.e. just because your upcoming album has a b-factor of 20 doesn't mean you're destined for success, but a claim that an artist that does break through is quite likely to have a b-factor in a particular range. Is this what happens in years where consensus doesn't form? That is, can we expect a critical "free for all" where the usual rules of tastemaking don't apply?

Clearing the critical bar

It may have started when I wrote about M83 and Spiritualized in my Top Albums of 2011. I can't remember exactly what sparked it, but I've been listening obsessively to Spiritualized all week -- live recordings, mainly. I revisited those spine-tingling Acoustic Mainline shows from '06-'07 (and a pristine quality audio and sound recording from a special acoustic performance from a festival in Iceland in 2010). I heard a complete performance of "LAGWAFIS", recorded in New York in July 2010, that far exceeded my expectations (I'm not a fan of the complete album performance fad, but if you can count on any band to make it interesting and not just do a note for note run through, it's Spiritualized). I listened to recordings of the fall 2001 tour with the audacious 13-member band. I happily suffered through poorly recorded early gigs from 1991 and 1999 (the latter was a one-off gig, I believe, with full choir accompaniment). In the pre-Youtube era you would always cycle through the same recordings of your favourite bands every time you wanted to go on a listening binge, but now you can discover a nearly bottomless pit of new treasures -- TV and festival performances, interviews, cell phone clips, etc.

What was I thinking when I compared M83 with Spiritualized? M83 are amazing, easily the most consistently excellent band of the past several years, but nobody tops Spiritualized when they're at their best. At least not this week.

But this post is supposed to be about M83's sudden jump into elite status, judging by the unexpectedly good showing (at least to me) of "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" in many year-end polls and lists. But it could be applied equally well to Spiritualized c. 1997. And a host of other bands.

It's not like M83 were unknowns before this year. They had a healthy base of support among critics, enough to put "Saturdays = Youth" in the top 30 in Pazz and Jop in 2008, which indicates a high level of exposure but not an "everybody has an opinion on your music" level of exposure. So what exactly changed this year? Was "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" a huge step forward compared to their other albums? Not really. You can argue about how to rank their albums or what have you but most longtime followers of the band wouldn't say that their music suddenly took a jump into a different league.

A similar thing happened with Spiritualized in 1997. Now obviously the differences between "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" and their earlier albums are a lot more dramatic compared with M83 and "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming". They went from making semi-instrumental space rock to more of a free jazz/rock hybrid complete with actual love songs, so it doesn't take much imagination to understand why they became a lot more accessible to a lot more people nearly overnight. I think a band can wake up one day and discover -- not just because of their sustained run of excellent music -- that it's their time to be in the spotlight. But still, why exactly did the breakthrough happen for Spiritualized in 1997, and not before or after?

A great album and a classic album are not at all the same thing. Bands make great albums all the time. Making a great album is largely a question of talent, and being able to reach the right audience who will appreciate that talent. But classic albums are much rarer. These are the albums that people other than the band's usual fans will hear and remember. It's not just about who has the most talent. It's also a question of timing.

There might be no better timing than the release of a debut album. Everyone loves debut albums. They're about the thrill of hearing a great new band for the first time, or the collective experience of discovering and getting excited about them at almost the exact same time as everyone else. The band will never be that flawless ever again, over time they'll hopefully make a lot more great music but they'll also make a ton of mistakes and missteps. But with their debut album, without the burden of having to overcome past screw-ups or reputations, they couldn't be more perfect.

On the other hand, the sophomore slump is real. That saying about how bands have their whole lives to write their debut album but only 18 months to write and record the follow-up is true in the sense that the second album almost never seems to be the best in any band's catalog.

By their third or fourth album, a band is somewhat established and has built up some name recognition. They have enough of a following to justify keeping the band going at least on a part time basis, so they're not likely to fold up shop for lack of money or interest. Each new album will be hotly anticipated by fans, and critics don't want to get behind an obvious failure. By album three or four, you're fairly comfortable in saying that a band will have a sustainable career ahead of them. It would be a bit embarrassing to heap loads of "album of the year!!" praise on a band and album that ceased to exist one year later. They also don't want to laud some journeyman band that's been around forever but has never achieved much success. You want to get behind a band when they're about to reach their peak, not after they've already peaked, and not after too many years when you're still waiting for them (perhaps hopelessly) to peak.

Further down the road, once a band has been around for a number of years and released a bunch of albums, overfamiliarity sets in and they aren't as newsworthy anymore. They reach the point where they cater mainly to their existing fan base (which nonetheless may be large and extremely loyal) but don't pick up many new fans. Non fans, including critics who are familiar with their music but wouldn't necessarily listen to it in their spare time, see them as a band to be respected but not adored or fawned over. They can be very successful, but not a phenomenon in the critical sense.

A picture is starting to form of two "sweet spots" in a band or artist's career. The first is the release of their debut album, and the second occurs about 5-7 years and 3-5 albums.

So let's consider the following simple formula:

(# of years since debut + 1) x (# of albums)

I couldn't think of a funny acronym (CRIt-LOve Peak Prediction factor = CRILOPP factor ... ugh, forget it) so I'll call it the b-factor for now.

"Years since debut" is the number of years since the band's debut album was released. I thought about using the total number of years the band had been active, but most bands toil away in obscurity for a while without anyone really knowing who they are. The debut album marks the first time that a larger audience can be made aware of their music, and that's what we're trying to capture here. "Number of albums" is fairly self-explanatory, although one might need to differentiate between "proper" studio albums and other releases such as live albums, EPs or mini-albums (particularly for a new band), compilations, soundtrack work, etc. Obviously there is room for interpretation here, but I tried to stick closely to official studio albums as best I could.

A debut album, therefore, always has a b-factor of one. Very large b-factors (we'll try to quantify this later on) indicate that a band is past their likely peak, or at least past the time when they can reasonably expect a critical or popular breakthrough. Going by the sweet spot estimation of 5-7 years and 3-5 albums, we'd expect the ideal time for critical blowjob end-of-year chart topping success to occur for b-factors of 25 +/- 10.

[aside: I think it's more realistic to weight the two halves of the b-factor differently. (# of albums) feels more discriminatory than (# of years since debut), i.e. over-familiarity comes more from releasing a lot of albums than by taking a lot of time between albums. So maybe it would be better to use something like (# of years since debut +1) x (# of albums)^(3/2). But in the interest of keeping the calculation basic (something that doesn't require a calculator) and for using nice, easy to remember integer numbers, we'll stick with the simpler formula for now.]

As a test, here are the b-factors for the #1 albums on Pitchfork's year-end critics polls, from 1999-2011:

Year	Artist	Album	"Years"	"Albums"	b-factor
2011	Bon Iver	"Bon Iver"	3	2	8
2010	Kanye West	"My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy"	6	5	35
2009	Animal Collective	"Merriweather Post Pavilion"	9	9	90
2008	Fleet Foxes	"Fleet Foxes"	0	1	1
2007	Panda Bear	"Person Pitch"	8	3	27
2006	The Knife	"Silent Shout"	5	4	24
2005	Sufjan Stevens	"Illinois"	5	5	30
2004	Arcade Fire	"Funeral"	0	1	1
2003	The Rapture	"Echoes"	0	1	1
2002	Interpol	Turn on the Bright Lights"	0	1	1
2001	Microphones	"The Glow Pt. 2"	3	5	20
2000	Radiohead	"Kid A"	7	4	32
1999	The Dismemberment Plan	"Emergency and I"	4	3	15

Out of thirteen albums, four are debuts, and another seven fall within a fairly narrow b-factor range from 15-35.

Getting back to the examples discussed at the start of this post, M83's "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" has a b-factor of 55 (note that I didn't count "Digital Shades, Pt. 1") and Spiritualized's "Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space" has a b-factor of 18. If we consider recent Pazz and Jop polls, we see many of the same patterns: 15 for TV on the Radio's "Dear Science" (2008), 50 for Outkast's "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" (2003), and 32 for Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" (2002) (discounting the Woody Guthrie covers albums with Billy Bragg, but even if they were counted, YHF would only score a 48). The numbers seem to suggest that bands peak and/or have their critical breakthrough at b-factors in the 15-35 range, with a significant tail of the distribution extending up to around 50-60.

I doubt I'm the first to notice all this, in which case, consider this article to be my musings on the subject.

Obviously this is not meant to be some kind of grand theory of music crit everything. There are a number of instances where the reasoning behind the b-factor wouldn't really apply, for example:

-- Side projects or solo records from established artists. Example: Michael Jackson. "Thriller" was his sixth solo album, but his second as the "adult" Michael that became a megastar. However, we was already a household name with the Jackson 5 before that. Defining his "debut" is a murky issue. A different example: LCD Soundsystem. "Sound of Silver" (#1 on P&J in 2007) has a b-factor of only six, but James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem had been around for years prior to their official debut album, making their name via singles and DFA Records.

-- Megastars in general. Kanye's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" falls into the 15-35 range, but all his albums have been critical and popular smashes. Bon Iver may fall into this category as well.

-- Career resurgences by artists such as Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, or PJ Harvey's "Let England Shake" (b-factor 160, which would be higher if you count "4 Track Demos" and the John Parish collaborations). However, you could easily argue that an artist making their second, third, etc. breakthrough is already in a different category, and that b-factors should only be relevant for an artist's initial breakthrough.

What would be a "large" b-factor, where overfamiliarity sets in and a breakthrough becomes extremely unlikely? Based on the examples considered here, anything over 50-60 is already unlikely to break through, a safer bet would be about 100. You can argue that Animal Collective are an exception because they're not a "band" in the usual sense of the word (members come and go from album to album, and most of their albums don't feature everyone in the collective), but I'm not sure I'd subscribe to that reasoning. "Merriweather Post Pavilion" and its extremely high b-factor (90) may the kind of breakthrough we won't see again for a long time.

Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 7, A 2011 mix

I've been making year-end mixes for the past few years, but this is the first time I've posted any of them anywhere. And now that Mixcloud has gotten rid of the 100 MB size limit, I'm going to be using them as my platform for posting mixes in the near future.

I like these year-end mixes to have a decent flow to them, which I have to map out the track selection and ordering fairly precisely, contrary to my usual preferred method of making mixes. The idea is to fit in a bunch of different styles of music, and go beyond my known favourite albums and songs, i.e. not to take just the best tracks from my top ten lists or whatever. It's more of a "what music sounded like to me in 2011" mix.

Tracklist info is in the comments, and on the mixcloud page!

Chapters are required - A 2011 mix by Bruiserfs on Mixcloud

Biggest Tours of 2011

Pollstar published the year end top 25 tours for North America and worldwide.

Bands are always ranked in order of total gross ticket sales, but wouldn't it make more sense to rank them in terms of total number of tickets sold? Total gross is largely reflective of how much ticket prices are, and if Celine Dion wants to gouge her fans by charging an average of $166 per ticket then that's more reflective of what the typical Celine fan earns in a year, not how "big" her tour was or how many fans she has. On the North American list, her tour finished 10th in money but only 23rd in total tickets sold.

U2, Taylor Swift, and Kenny Chesney were far and away the top N.A. tour performers in terms of money and tickets sold. But Jason Aldean, Journey, Katy Perry, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra finished 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th in total tickets sold and the top money earners among them were Journey at #15. They have huge fan bases and they made an effort to keep prices affordable. They deserve some credit for that.

Even average gross per show would be better than total gross as an indicator of how "big" a band was in a given year. IOW, did they tour constantly and make their money from playing arenas, or are they big enough to play in the world's largest stadiums? U2 easily topped the chart in that category, earning more than $7M per show, followed by, oddly enough, Dave Matthews Band Caravan jam band traveling circus.

Kanye West and Jay-Z somehow got away with charging more per ticket than anyone except Celine Dion (whose fans are mostly rich white people), Paul McCartney (possibly the biggest legend touring today, who only played nine N.A. shows), and the Dave Matthews Band Caravan (which was a series of three day festivals so it doesn't really compare). Congrats to Kanye and Jay-Z for loving money so much.

Cirque du Soleil have three entries in the N.A. top 25. Really? This made me realize that average tickets and gross are calculated per city, not per show, which is also a bit odd.

Worldwide, U2 are once again the biggest, and there aren't too many surprises except for maybe Foo Fighters. Are they really the 12th biggest band in the world? I wouldn't have guessed (and with one of the lowest average ticket prices on the top 25). Everyone outside of N.A. is probably looking at the list, scratching their heads, and saying "who is Kenny Chesney?" (at #8, he was the highest ranking act who didn't play a concert outside of N.A.).

The Take That reunion tour grossed just $8M less than U2, and played to nearly as many fans. Just, wow. And Elton John, who is no spring chicken, played 110 shows in 2011, more than anyone on the top 25 except for Katy Perry and Cirque du Soleil (which is really a category unto itself).