I don’t know how much value Matt Yglesias bashing will have to the proceedings, but I would do it for zero clicks, so my aims are pure.

Anon.

For your musical displeasure:

Repost of our previous. (Lyrics at the link-o)

Matthew Yglesias Battle Rap Demo

Matthew Yglesias Battle Rap Single Remix (courtesy of Mendacious D, original post here)

The only think we fear now that the internet is disgusted with Our Matt is a backlash backlash. More mascara for the original lashes, here’s hoping they go for miles.

Why do we saw the same old with regard to Our Matt? Why do repeat ourselves?

I can’t get into the greatest nutpunches the world has received from this marginally successful yet hugely unlikeable pratfall on actual ideas and discourse. But Mattsplaining is STAGMC. Behold this recent and glistening work product. It doesn’t even make sense.

Charles and David Koch are reporting considering buying the Tribune Company (owners of the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, and others) prompting a great Garance Franke-Ruta piece on why big city newspapers’ editorial staffs invariably lean left.

That said, I don’t see this as reason for skepticism about the merits of the Koch venture. It’s actually why it makes sense. The “liberal media” is, as Franke-Ruta argues, largely a product of the free market. Certain niches—talk radio and cable television—are very friendly to a conservative editorial product but others are not. Which is exactly why what conservative media needs is a couple of extremely rich people to buy a newspaper company and lose a ton of money building a great conservative media product.

After all, the big problem with right-leaning media in America isn’t that it doesn’t exist. It’s that it’s terrible. There is a large audience out there that’s so frustrated with the vile MSM that it’s happy to lap up cheaply produced content from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and you can make lots of money serving that kind of thing up. By contrast, to build a great media company that’s top-to-bottom staffed with conservatives is going to be very expensive. The possible talent pool of great reporters is tilted toward liberals. The talent pool of great photographers and graphic designers is probably even more tilted toward liberals. Finding the great conservatives out there and hiring them is going to be relatively costly, and there’s no real economic point to doing so. Is your much worse cost structure going to get you a larger audience than Rush? No, it won’t. It’s a bad bet.
But the Kochs have plenty of money. If they want to see it happen, they can make it happen. And America would be better off for it.

GOOB

Update: when did we get a polaroid thing on our picture things? Where am I?

Second Update:

When we rescue Yosef, we take this:

Qua?

Unrelated, I just got an email that reminded me of our delightful heyday. VERY funny. I miss everyone and hope all is well in our world, though I remain more than perturbed at the possibility of Mad Max franchising locally if not nationally or internationally. I also don’t want to rely on the fact that I might not taste good to ward off zombies. I can’t quite see how taste-aversion would protect me once my brain were sampled in even the tiniest of portions.

Interesting notes: an out and about young person was filled with the Spirit and was moved to say something nice, but slightly hilarious about myself and The Goob. We were nicely walking in Nature and she stopped and said we reminded her of thinking about The Father ministering to His Son or something else culturally capitalized. It was meant as a nice sentiment, and I expressed this to her for her kind words (in her way), but I could only think abouttelling you yahoos about it, and the chorus of inevitable Trollypantses saying “Christ, What an Asshole”

And I made some Korean BBQ and found out that the backup Ssamjang had changed colors and was actually two years expired.

CONSTANT DEGRADATION, and probably oxidation.

I double dog dare K. to order a Bud Black Crown some time at the local. Then she can hand the barkeep a marker to write on her shirt “yes” to its trendy, “ironic” “DO I LOOK LIKE A COBAG?” FRANKIE SAY RELAX QUESTION

Bun B is an H-town legend. Just kills it. Love that flow.

Spill the Wine was on the radio.

Any other requests for the evening, either song or cocktail?

Stay safe, peoples.

What about St. Peter/Pearly gates thing- can we have him complaining about being so busy “like “goldarn Bushmaster!!”- any issues with church groups? Could be a humorous take. Maybe get Wilford Brimley? Is he still working?

I need to be honest, this feature is less fun for probably two reasons, one UC doesn’t make me laugh nonstop anymore, though I know he would if he could, but also that the music this last year seemed just so boring. The inexplicable and the terrible have been replaced by the sadly predictable. Minimally, if we are gonna stay in this game, we should at least bring back this feature- where the mean record store clerk gives an internal monologue for your purchases. The best part is we could all hammer our favorite albums

The 2011 Track List at Pitchfork

Previously:

2010

We previously sprung the rest of the Top Tracks of 2010 as placed on a Ritz cracker by Pitchfork back in surprisingly April. The list was here, but maybe it is so old it might 404?????

2010 Numbers 20-1

2009

Pitchfork listo here. Our previous 100-81 here. 80-61 here. 60-41 here. 40-21 here. Somebody should graph our output over the year. Diminishing returns? I think not. UC delivers! Suck it, All Music Guide!

2009 Numbers 20-1

2008

It is done.

Previous here and in links.

2008 Numbers 20-1

2007

Here, here, here, here, here.

2006

Here, here, here, here.

2011 JUST IN TIME FOR 2012! And here. we. go.

100. Thundercat “For Love (I Come Your Friend)”
PP says: The intro on this is very free-form Spinal Tap jazz odyssey. Now I am wondering if this is a Destroyer-level joke/awesome ironic/serious take on something, but now I feel like it is cool kid irony reversal, make something so uncool that you can reverse direction on a dime and declare it cool when nobody is looking, guaranteeing that you will lead the charge. My feelings on this: jazz fusion is either great forever, or mostly never, but it is one or the other, and if you can’t explain it without using the context “no, this is cool now because it isn’t cool” then it is probably just a noodly wank. Novelty mixtape trashbin material, but inoffensive.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

99. Ill Blu “Meltdown”
PP says: I’ll be honest. I have never liked jungle, or drum and bass, or dubstep. I am a certified loser, plus this sounds so dated- not even good Speak and Spell. It isn’t even terrible, but it is like a glitched up version of a song that sounds exactly the same called “Meh-ltdown”- wait— is that this song? They sound so alike, I can’t tell the difference between them.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

98. Unknown Mortal Orchestra “Ffunny Ffrends”
PP says: LIKE. Kind of ramshackle and bouncy, you’ll do some subliminal dancewagon around this. Nick Neyland writes it up well, too.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

97. Fever Ray “The Wolf”
PP says: I think we have already established, that instant chilly and creepiness is automatic from Karin from the Knife and Fever Ray, but without an ultra-creepy video to go along, this song is a veritable hug and hot cocoa compared to her other situations, where the aesthetics of the videos and songs turn into volcanoes of plural malevolences. This has enough extra stuff on it that it comes across as Trent Reznor-esque. I expect he would be a fan.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

96. Peaking Lights “All the Sun That Shines”
PP says: I know we do the same thing when we say some band you’ve never heard of actually sounds like several other bands you’ve never heard of, and it is annoying because it gives zero meaningful context. Oh, you mean like:

A love song for the cavemen, “All the Sun That Shines” is the first big pop move from the post-Excepter school of psychedelic seekers (Sun Araw, Eternal Tapestry, et al). The rippling highlight of Peaking Lights’ album 936, this track finds Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis in full-on devotional mode, chanting its single-line mantra skyward over a mesmeric wriggle of synths and snaking guitar. It’s a hypnotic performance, with Coyes and Dunis’ voices meeting in odd places as they attack the song’s central statement from all angles.

Easy, turbo. Oh, wait, I’m hypnotized. Actually, the song might sneak a little wiggly in there. I do not imagine cavemen copulation, however.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

95. Kendrick Lamar “A.D.H.D.”
PP says: Sometimes comes across as a Dan Bejar of rapping. Laid back, kind of out of it. The wev of verses. Has a little bit of accent not clear where it is from. Little bit lifeless and tiresome. Understand why the kids might like it, but have to go grampa pants on it and feel all bored and been there. Sorry Kendrick, but you don’t care anyway, so it’s all good.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

94. Sepalcure “Pencil Pimp”
PP says: I always want to know of the hundreds of techno tunes every year, what differentiates the ones they pick for this list and the ones they don’t. This one sounds like it has vocals by Antony from Antony and the Johnsons cut up over it, but I don’t know- didn’t get the media packet. Undistinguished. A UC KIL-LER for sure.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

93. Wild Flag “Romance”
PP says: Love the sound on this- just pieces of sound all over the track. Feel like it doesn’t really come completely together- like wedges of ideas were pasted together into one song that are really 4 songs together. Don’t like the chorus/refrain, but some of a couple of bridges are good. OK.

92. Jacques Greene “Another Girl”
PP says: HAHA- this song writeup references the one where we went to YouTube commenters for (Girl Unit “Wut” at 17). This is much better than that, but roll the tape:

holy fucking? tune.
btyo1234 8 months ago

100afromullets, you saw it there first bitttchheeezzzz gz? @thisisluckyme
curlyboy1992 8 months ago 15

when sbtrkt dropped this=heaven?
meeshymoo2 2 weeks ago

I FUCKIN LOVE THIS? SONG!!!
JordanMitch 1 month ago 7

this song is so beast!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?
Nephtice808 1 month ago

amazing tune. can’t? like it enough !
kamgornia 3 months ago 4

Physically cant start listening? to this track without listening to the whole thing! :S
Jozzef458 4 months ago 3

Jeeeeeez! This is one of the greatest tracks I’ve ever heard. Everything? is just perfect – lovely production and all.
kidkustom 6 months ago 13

55555555?
wertyoo 7 months ago 4

what an incredible tune… layer on layer of the reason we listen to this stuff… on? repeat!!
SPB157 7 months ago 9

This? one really works – love it
MickeysHits 8 months ago 3

wow!?
HugoDesMusic 8 months ago 3

UC, I beg you, do not listen to this.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

91. Thee Oh Sees “The Dream”
PP says: I love Thee Oh Sees- classico psychedelic garage revivalists, but their own thing too- kind of a surfy/scuzzy speed on top of the retro stylings, so viscerally underivative for some reason. They are hard to keep up with because they come out with new albums every 4 months it seems. Not sure how this ranks with the rest of their output this year, but they ride a groove on this one that takes the song into an almost krautrocky place. Good.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

90. Grimes “Vanessa”
PP says: Vamehssa? 10 year old Kylie Minogue sings on this. It isn’t too bad, and I think it could grow on me. I lack a certain excitement. I feel dead inside. Music used to do the opposite. It’s not you, Grimes, you might be OK. It is this infernal list!!!!!!! Also, perhaps the hyperbole of saying some over the top BS about the 90th best song of the year that next year people will misremember as another song on the list, is a wee bit muchola.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

89. SBTRKT “Wildfire [ft. Little Dragon]“
PP says: Basement Jaxx on ‘luudes. Nate Patrin, namechecks Ginuwine’s insane “Pony” so it can’t be all bad. PATRINN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also, NP, “So, yeah” linkies to long-time nemeunfriendisis, Tom Ewing hahahahahaha-ing that only people that write on websites about musico can comment and lowly howling about year end lists is just so. not done. Don’t even comment- YOUR COMMENT IS PREDICTABLE AS IT IS SAD. YOUR VOICE IS NOTHING BUT INSIGNIFICANT BUZZING. WE PROVIDE YEAR END LISTS FOR YOU TO DIGEST IN SILENCE, NOT EXPECTED YEAR END CONVERSATION STARTERS. THEY ARE CONVERSATION ENDERS. END OF LINE. MORE BABPUPTEN. END OF LINE. Also, you did this in Twitter form two years ago.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

88. Cities Aviv “Coastin’”
PP says: Rap over some ultra smooth easy listening John Barry-esque bedroom yacht eyes. Really good, and infinitely superior to Kendrick Lamar above, but that is more that Lamar was not my bag rather than being terrible. More like Lameh-r. I could definitely listen to this again. BATTLE RAP POWER* *this is not a battle rap, but it has effortless swagger. Kind of love it.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

87. Zoo Kid “Out Getting Ribs”
PP says: Total throwback. A lo-fi Felt plus, as Stuart Berman mentions, a thick accent-callback to a Billy Bragg. Nice to see a song completely lacking in novelty and pretense on the list.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

86. Blawan “Getting Me Down”
PP says: Pitchfork on dance music is weird to me. Not that I care. It seems like they are very picky about being just a certain amount of credible, but they’ll go for pop from certain artists that is also allowed to be popular, and this isn’t something they do for dance music, so we’ll never see something cheesy, though fun, with 45 million YouTube hits- like I don’t think they ever went for Duck Sauce’s “Barbra Streisand” or some such undeniable crowd pleaser. Just stuff like this. Something offputting and thin in this track- like the hint of a dogwhistle on the high end in the production, or at least the YouTube version. It is, indeed, getting me down.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

85. Junior Boys “Banana Ripple”
PP says: This is OK, but it doesn’t have the spark that “In The Morning” had. These guys just do what they want- I’m sure this song is exactly how every blop an splort bleeped in their head. It is on that fine line between catchy and forgettable.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

84. Iceage “You’re Blessed”
PP says: Damned+Wire+Cure? Very early 80s evolving punk into post-punk. Oh wait, Danish youngsters? Carry on. Novelty, but good novelty.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

83. Tiger & Woods – “Gin Nation”
PP says: Something about the ol’ dance track. It’s gotta be eight minutes long. Now, I do kind of love the old school extended mix of the old faves, but that was taking something awesome and just making it awesomer. This is a track that I don’t know anything about, don’t know that it is basically a remix of something else. I do know that it is much more accessible than the usual track of this ilk.

I see that the latest youtuber on this:

this song’s awesome because? you can take a pee break & still make it back for the best part.

stills4589 6 months ago 33

It is OK, but jjjjjjjjj

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

82. John Maus – “Believer”
PP says: The Cars the band + Dream Academy + free reign at the planetarium + retro baseline plus showery synths. Kind of good, but as a usual lover of the derivative if it is done well, I am increasingly feeling the emptiness of highly mannered tracks like this. Basically, I’m not respecting myself in the morning.

I liked this:

@vbmatak He professes a strong belief in exploration of expression and language, in his duty as an artist to ‘make intensive use of a major language’. An oracle is a genius, an authority, someone sage, someone who invokes the concepts of broader agency accessible to them through? study and inquiry into the minds of many via language. Considering the essential axia of many cultures, individuals, steeps a person to the point of perspicuity. He’s like Noam Chomsky or Steven Pinker.

daftrhetoric 4 days ago

@daftrhetoric What the? hell is a language obsessed oracle? How do oracles have anything to do with language obsession, and why “ought” these language-obssessed oracles be deep? I’m confused. But I love this.
vbmatak 4 days ago

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

81. Yuck – “Get Away”
PP says: People have a hard time remembering all the bands this sounds like, so they say stuff like Sonic Youth (true-ish) and mention that it is a early 90s scuzz sound, and they mention Sebadoh (true-ish), but this particular track reminded me most musically of Bettie Serveert. A lot of retro-ish bands that I enjoy are grounded in more of a genre and not exact aping of sound. This song is well done for what it is, but seems like a costume. I like this one better, which goes for the Yo La Tengo.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

80. Fucked Up – “Queen Of Hearts”
PP says: When she comes in (the woman from Cults) on the duet is when it gets awesome. His screaming just says mannered to me because it falls just the other side of the plain shrill/emotive shrill divide. That being said, the band really gets into it for the last minute and compels me to feel excited. I say exciting as hell 2B but thrown out at 3rd. OR possibly 3B with a run scored on an error. I don’t know what I am saying. This might be a grower.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

79. Kelly Rowland – “Motivation” (Feat. Lil Wayne)
PP says: Takes the latest in generic icy production and does it like a throwback slowjam, where it would normally be a dude just singing about doing it, but instead of using metaphors, just being explicit. But instead of the come on from the guy saying “this is what I’m gonna do” Kelly is all “this is what we are currently and will have been doing” so I guess she takes it from a boast to keeping it real.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

78. Sandro Perri – “Changes”
PP says: Everything new is a rearrangement of something old. Sounds like a more-than-vaguely proggy Grizzly Bear, but now with many more tasteful decades of record collection to plunder. Kind of nice, but I become increasingly cynical. Is it more than the sum of its parts, or is it less because of the frankenstein way they are put together?

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

77. Cults – “Abducted”
PP says: The girl group+ boy/girl distilled through the shoegazer aesthetic should be 100% right down my alley, and the only thing keeping me from loving every single piece of Cults is that they picked the super trebly Slowdive shoegaze aesthetic that keeps me at a distance. Too trebly and thin- and I love the song.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

76. Julianna Barwick – “Prizewinning”
PP says: Kind of like a female Panda Bear, not to be offensively reductionist. I think Seitz and UC will both like this. Swirly sound collage of goodness.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

75. Washed Out – “Amor Fati”
PP says: I loved this kind of crap the first time around. Something about retro this derivative is that it feels too on the nose, or too calculating, that it is hard to love the second time around. Chintzy electronics are now an affectation not really just the result of what the band could afford. I think this song, which I like, would be superior in a remix that weren’t so cynically constructed from stereotypical ingredients. It is still good.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

PP says:

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

74. Dum Dum Girls – “Wrong Feels Right”
PP says: Yet somehow, this on the nose retro I love- perhaps I am sensitive to the aping of 80s New Wave in ways I’m not for the sounds of any other decade. I love this gal and her band. I like the A-side here (“He Gets Me High”) better. Also think they killed it on “Coming Down” from Only in Dreams, out later in the year.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

73. tUnE-yArDs – “Powa”
PP says:
Different little things going on here. Not gonna explain- very good. Sometimes sounds a little Prince, sometimes Nina Simone, but really is its own thing.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

72. Britney Spears – “Till The World Ends (The Femme Fatale Remix)” (Feat. Nicki Minaj and Ke$ha)
PP says: Amy Phillips drops a serious turd with the writeup here of an even more anonymous remix of a supremely anonymous Britney club track. A review of Femme Fatale mentioned that while the album was laden with entertaining songs, they all had a generic sheen. There is nothing here, and Nicki’s crazy delivery is becoming more and more predictable rendering it just as generic. Also, this is not the best Britney since “Toxic”- that would be “Womanizer”. This one features Meh$ha.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

71. The Men – “Bataille”
PP says: A lot of fuzz punk on top of a more swirling, less direct guitar. The clash of influences makes this better than the seeming simple sum of parts. I like it.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

70. Holy Ghost! – “Jam For Jerry”
PP says: Joe Jackson “Stepping Out” and the song even says “stepping out” in it, then goes into some New Order-esque places, but really Joe Jackson. OK, disposable, 80s term-paper.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

69. Neon Indian – “Polish Girl”
PP says: Lacks the then unexpected charm of the debut album, and the undeniable “6669 (I don’t know if you know)”. I think this is OK, but I’m probably at my limit for this sort of thing- do I feel like they are mocking, or taking the piss? Well done pastiche.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

68. The Joy Formidable – “Whirring”
PP says: Arcade Fire spawned a little big thumping earnest sounding spark. The bass into the rising guitar is what is most 120 Minutes, though, not the chorus as Phillips stabs at. The bigness of the swirly outro is where they let go of the paint by numbers thing they are doing and is the reason I like the song.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

67. Rihanna – “We Found Love” (Feat. Calvin Harris)
PP says: Unstoppable nanobot army destroying all resistance to everything anywhere. The Vengabus is coming and it will mow you down. I’m more partial for the cheese factory that pumped out Flo Rida’s excellent Etta James (now terminally ill- very sad)-sampling “Good Feeling”- but that doesn’t have the instant backstory of Ri Ri. This song gets old very quickly on a 2Hr radio rotation (Radio? What’s that?).

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

66. DJ Quik – “Killer Dope”
PP says: A pretty skilled flow going on. Just don’t know how much I’d want to listen to this after maybe two times. Definitely has some good lines, outside the tossed off gay baiting. I would not beef with this dude, you have the feeling he would be pretty mean. I wouldn’t even want Annie to beef with him, though there’s a 50/50 chance she tears him up.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

65. Fleet Foxes – “Grown Ocean”
PP says: I recognize that this sounds wonderful, and tasteful and has that open/full spacious sound without emptiness so it still sounds organic and not overrefined.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

64. Toro Y Moi – “New Beat”
PP says: Opens like it is going to be the Charlie’s Angels theme, then it morphs into the space funk band from Buck Rogers, then turns into indie disco, but played by the funk band from Buck Rogers. I think it is OK, but the song doesn’t transcend the cynical construction for me. All the sounds are too on the nose, and “New Beat” is just F*CK YOU ironic a titch. Toro Y Meh? I CAN’T BELIEVE I MADE A PUN OUT OF THE WORD MEH. IT IS NOT PREDICTED. DID I READ ABOUT DOING THAT ON TOM HOGAN PATRIN’S TUMBLR. Someday, Tumblr will become the Riunite on ice of blogs. Yes, it is a BLOG. I SAID IT.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

63. Bon Iver – “Perth”
PP says: I have been completely absent from any interaction with Bon Iver this year. Bon Iver and myself are like conversations about water sports to Luke Wilson in Bottle Rocket. I guess I read somewhere that the sounds were a little easy listening on this platter. Everything about this track says neutered bigness. This isn’t hopping on the anti-Bon Iver band wagon, but the sounds are thinned out, and rendered in a manner tha would be consistent with tasteful new age jamming. It almost sounds like- hard to explain- I heard a little bit of the Twin Peaks theme in this, but I can’t say it is bad or uninteresting, but it doesn’t feel effortless in execution or conception. It has a whiff of wank about it.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

62. Liturgy – “Generation”
PP says: I hope I don’t offend Liturgy by suggesting that I hear Smashing Pumpkins in this. Marc Masters nails it with the genre-dropping. I’d call this math metal. Tool sped up without the Tool bass. Or Maynard. But non-linear, more spiral. Boring to many probably, but comes out like these guys just went for exactly what they wanted. And what they wanted was to play this song, not construct it from tastefully selected pieces of focus-grouped sounds. Better than Bon Iver above.

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

61. Eleanor Friedberger – “My Mistakes”
PP says: Uh, awesome. Super awesome. Lyrically effortless, and just bounce along terrific. The kind of song you want to hear and experience live and secretly hope would be just as awesome as it is right now when I hear it for the first time. [added- you know what? Lyrically this comes off as a less oddball Dan Bejar- it is in the same league. Really love this]

UC adds:

Seitz adds:

60. Adele – “Someone Like You”
PP says: “Rolling in the Deep” was last year, and I’m sure that “Rumor Has It” would be knocked as too Winehouse-y, and wasn’t released as an official single, though it went to radio, and I like both of those tracks better than “Someone Like You.” There is something to be said for the believably honestiness that this song conveys. It is true that it doesn’t come across as so much bullshit as these ballads can, and Adele can sing. I don’t think my opinion has any meaning here. I’ll say that when it comes on I usually turn it, and I wouldn’t say that about the other two Adele songs I mentioned.

59. Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire – “The Last Huzzah! (Remix)” (Feat. Despot, Das Racist, Danny Brown & El-P)
PP says: Novelty retro, but super crazy flow. Basically lots of of lines for people to write about in reviews. Not quite a banger and I wonder how long this lasts as interesting when the novelty wears off. Totally baroque and over the top, but to what end. Kind of OK, but what kind of person can play this at a party?

58. PJ Harvey – “The Words That Maketh Murder”
PP says: Pretty intense and sounds great- with the folky acousticy Joanna Newson-esque bits interwined makes it a little bit edgy. Good.

57. The Weeknd – “House Of Balloons”
PP says: Seriously derivative, but well done I guess, but also just seems like an exercise in style. Leaves me cold. Then the talky rap part is just kind of dumb. Again, maybe if everyone were totally wasted or high or something I could get over being embarrassed at playing this in public. The production is phenomenal.

56. M83 – “Intro” (Feat. Zola Jesus)
PP says: M83 does a slowed down New New New Wavey Arcade Fire. And Zola just kills it. The fuzzy happy space planetarium waves crashing for an inevitable credit card commercial or maybe Olympics montage make me fatigued, but on another day I might say huzzah and feel reflective and sad!

55. Destroyer – “Chinatown”
PP says: I just can’t say anything about Destroyer. Dan is a genius, but I think this one just goes to novelty. I wonder if this is so steeped in aesthetic that it lacks some sort of permanence. I think the name of his next album should be “Heat Signature.” I think Deusner gets it wrong.

PP says:

54. Jamie xx/Gil Scott-Heron – “I’ll Take Care Of U”
PP says:This doesn’t work for me a la Johnny Cash doing Nine Inch Nails. I feel like the rhythm treats Scott-Heron like a puppet because instead of his own rhythm he’s chained to the familiar backing tack-the only time it gains any traction is when he gets chopped up in the remixy bridge. Ill-conceived.

53. Real Estate – “Green Aisles”
PP says:Guitars smack between Johnny Marr at his most languid and Felt at their reverbiest and Stone Roses at their most whispery. This seems dialed in for my immediate love affair. Barely misses my heart, but nicely done.

52. Action Bronson – “Larry Csonka”
PP says:So much creativity directed towards the age old “suck my d*ck”. Maybe a few laughs but pretty boring at the end of the day.

51. Todd Terje – “Snooze 4 Love”
PP says: “Any problems?” “No, everything seems fine” “How long since your last cleaning?” “8 months.” “Let’s get these shined up. Just lay back and relax.”

50. Atlas Sound – “Mona Lisa”
PP says: Pleasant, nice, as usual good stuff from Bradford.

49. Katy B – “Broken Record”
PP says: Sub-Karmin (I mean that) pop nothingness. 1/100,000th as good as “Call Me, Maybe” (which came out last September). Apparently this is “amazing” because it is a little bit drum and bassy with some other dance stuff in it. What a very low bar.

48. Kreayshawn – “Gucci Gucci”
PP says:The whole list is this song. Worth a couple laughs but is basically a Choco Taco* *meant in terms of being an ice cream novelty, but perhaps I just invented a new category of combination insult? Maybe more of a Jello Pop.

47. Battles – “Ice Cream” (Feat. Matias Aguayo)
PP says: Battles’ mathy crunch and spurts are interesting, and you feel like you’ll be bouncing and crushing in a festival crowd. They are just doing their thing. I’ll shout out to UC “Meh-tias Aguayo?”

46. Ty Segall – “Goodbye Bread”
PP says: Nice little tunaroni. The Mr. garage band guy guitar kind solo of reminds me of Neil Young a la Mr. Soul era- and maybe took me out of it a little because it was so retro. Good stuff.

PP says:

45. Drake – “Headlines”
PP says: I don’t love Drake, but this song is great for what it is- and it is both different and the same old, but they know they know they know kills- and in each case it is a different angle for what it is that they don’t know, and what exactly that means. Larry Fitz just kind of gets it exactly right, the beat builds effortlessly to nowhere, but it doesn’t matter because that is the facility of it all. This is a great and funny song, and wittier than you give it credit for.

PP says:

44. Nicolas Jaar – “Space Is Only Noise If You Can See”
PP says: I guess it is OK for one listen, but I can’t seen ever wanting to listen to this again. Kind of like Luke Wilson’s character in Bottle Rocket RE: water sports.

43. Panda Bear – “Last Night At The Jetty”
PP says: I never found time in my life for a new Panda Bear album, though I loved the last one so much. Like a star falling back to earth, I forgot that I even bought this. I like it but doesn’t seem as compelling as it could/should be?

42. Jay-Z & Kanye West – “Otis”
PP says: Terrible. Would rather have had “…In Paris” on this list 50 times, like Jay and Yeezy playing it over and over in concert, because even with Kanye being kind of crap on that track, it still kills. BANG ON. This is nothing and will be forgotten. Also could have gone with the Frank Ocean AMAZING hook “No Church in the Wild” from this album. OTIS isn’t that bad, but doesn’t even use the once in a lifetime sample to any benefit. Kanye kind of sucks on this.

41. Frank Ocean – “Novacane”
PP says: This song this low shows how Pitchfork doesn’t really have the guts to be on a trend until it really blows up. You just have to hear this song once to realize this guy really is different. Never got added to the rotation on the R/B/Hip-hop station in the Big Tex, but would hear it on the H-town station when out and about. Really good, as a reworking of the usual usual.

40. Burial – “Street Halo”
PP says: Kind of like the sound on this. More there than the usual. Think this would be pretty cool in a club. Wish the vocals were less generic or something creepier or chillier- or even better- put Frank Ocean on this track. Kind of has some rolling distant thunder feel. Will I remember that I ever heard this?

39. Shabazz Palaces – “Swerve… the reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding)”
PP says: I am turning into UC. Like I am this high powered exec just shooting down pitches. “NEXT!” That is how UC is!!!!!!

38. Purity Ring – “Ungirthed”
PP says:Oooh bloop bleep doop dooop. Carrie Battan makes this seem more amazing than it is. It is really for your headphones, but it seems generic. Indie mishmash of electrop pieces.

37. ASAP Rocky – “Peso”
PP says: This is just maybe a calling card for someone doing the same old thing in a new way or with a different take on the production. This is all about the sound because the content is nothing and it is not clear that the flow does anything either. Outro is nice for two reasons, it sounds good and it is over.

36. Jamie xx – “Far Nearer”
PP says:I do love love love steel drums. doritos57 goes a little bit overboard on the youtube comment “I dont see why justin beiber gets so much abuse when shit tracks? like this exist?!?!??!?!?!??!?! Come on guys, lay down your hipster caps and macbooks and admit this is a bit bollocks.” Kind of funny. This song seems a little NYC Starbucks or maybe Abercrombie/Fitch changing room.

35. Charli XCX – “Stay Away”
PP says: Lindsay in the review says “80′s flecked”- yeah, I would say T’Pau+Sheena Easton+Siouxsie, but too straight up. Give me more Danielle Dax and I would be all over it. Needs more Goth.

34. Cut Copy – “Need You Now”
PP says: Still waiting for one of these 80s revisiters to really get me- will Cut Copy do it? Listening now. I do love my 80s. I feel like these guys know what they want and they can pull the ol’ Waver strings. This is worthy of my inner teen mixtape dreamer. Works in that cinematic driving at night John Hughes movie fake world where they cut to the highway lines flying by the car the wind in the hair the passengers sitting back listening thinking their teen angsty feelings. GOOD. His voice has a tiny bit of the OMD guy’s- just a little bit. Oh New New Romantics!!!!!!!!!

33. AraabMuzik – “Streetz Tonight”
PP says: So on the YouTube of this, half the commenters are burning down the house because this remix is like barely a remix apparently. All I know is that the original of this barfs up on one of my Pandora stations every now and then and it is inoffensive, and the only way a remix of it could be one of the best songs of the year is to be a completely new song, and not the exact same song that it is. Straight up trolling, Nate Patrin! KUE DOZE.

32. Cold Cave – “The Great Pan Is Dead”
PP says: Basically an Arcade Fire triumphant aesthetic filtered through an 80s mashup with some romantic gothicness. Tom Ewing mentions M83 in his writeup rightly, but it is as if the M83 guy watched some different movies or maybe more calculatedly picked his chocolate and peanut butter- less a futuristic museum piece recreating an unreal idea from the 80s, than a synthesis of two kinds of feelings. Like doing a cover in the production style of another era.

31. The Field – “Then It’s White”
PP says: In my ancient decrepitude, I realized I don’t have the infinite time that youth has to enjoy chilling out to winding blips of almost nothingness. The spacey music that fits the generic visuals projected on the club wall. Water dripping into a pond, clouds in sped up time, flowers growing and dying, you know the video. This is the music of a long subway ride when you are too tired to think. It is pleasant and unremarkable, but requires you bring your own issues to the table. It is a blank slate. The write up is BARF.

30. Clams Casino – “Motivation”
PP says:This is a beat that needs something happening on top of it, but you can imagine your own compelling track. It might be a killer. Or it might be some usual bullshit. Subtly cinematic, but still boutique shopping music without something more. Wish I had the money to shop at a store that would play this, but I would look ridiculous wearing these clothes.

29. Jai Paul – “BTSTU”
PP says: Triumphant production, both a novelty and a decent beat and hook. Everything is trend. This is Deep Blue concocting mysterious cool from an extremely sophisticated algorithm. I feel nothing. Respect at the technological marvel- especially the horns outro- killer.

28. Danny Brown – “Monopoly”
PP says: The flow is mysterious and kind of old school- weird- maybe a cross between Method Man and Cypress Hill? Words are execrable, but the track is a total killer and the beat is like an uptight Army of Me by Bjork on some sort of gas. Unlikable, but just totally sick, in the way where sick means “wo”.

27. The Rapture – “How Deep Is Your Love?”
PP says: Not compelling. Rapture, I like the idea of you in principle but not in practice. You’re cut, shushy!

26. Beyoncé – “1+1”
PP says: B just does whatever the hell she wants and her vocal tics become increasingly annoying, though her vocals seem more and more straight takes- that is the tics are not the usual, and they might give someone a feeling of genuineness. What I love is that previously B was in the P-fork lists as a straight up pop situation, but her last album was a pretty big fall off- it just wasn’t an unstoppable machine, but here she still is, beloved by all her P-fork fans. There is something more raw and real about this that the average ballad by far, but it seems a little bit of a mess. So for old times, 1+1=meh.

25. Soulja Boy – “Zan With That Lean”
PP says: Heh. So terrible. Like a Fisher-Price drugs/money float along. This would kill UC. Glad there wasn’t any better song that could have been here!

24. Kurt Vile – “Jesus Fever”
PP says: I feel like I really do like Kurt Vile, but am always worried about the musical chintziness wearing away my like if it were to grow old after a bunch of songs. This is OK, but it’s not “Freeway”.

23. Adele – “Rolling In The Deep”
PP says: Really an unstoppable pop masterpiece. Slag it all you want, Adele has got something.

22. Bill Callahan – “Riding For The Feeling”
PP says:This is good and it grows. Have to see it all the way through. Not my bag, but really kind of like.

21. Drake – “Marvins Room”
PP says: I can’t argue with this. A huge song that has more than a millimeter of depth or if not still resonates, even if it is mining the sorry for himself shtick that could get old fast. Drunk dialing is just so goddamned compelling- I’m serious. Good, not too heavy, great sound. Hats off to Drake and to old 3B nemesis Marc Hogan, with whom we agree completely about this song. Though, maybe just a teensy bit too heavy on the “poor me” and less effective in the non-clean version, and after a few drinks, that goes away, because a good sulk is great.

20. Gang Gang Dance – “Glass Jar”
PP says: Youtube comments suggest that this is sexy time music. I guess I have a lot more songs on my list before I get to this one, and I would have to be Wilt Chamberlain to get this far.

19. Lana Del Rey – “Video Games”
PP says: It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about Lana Del Ray and what her legacy will be, through the waves of hype, the backlash, much of it completely undisguised misogyny- as if there weren’t any derivative or packaged artists or sounds on the rest of this list- or these lists every year- even though there are different rules for LDR, her aesthetics on this song and its video made an impression. I was kind of reminded of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” in terms of visceral impression of voice plus visual just kind of freezing you for a moment. Maybe that feeling turns to indigestion, but it is not fair to deny the naive response.

18. St. Vincent – “Cruel”
PP says: This is a fantastic song, and there could even be better ones on the album, I always suspect these placings are the songs everyone heard of the album, whereas the obscure shit on the list is the stuff passed around the hypothetical P-fork office [note, I know there isn't one]. I wonder if there is an even better one? I should have this album, it is just that I pay for music, have no energy to listen, blah blah blah, but I think Annie Clark is great, and this is very good.

17. Oneohtrix Point Never – “Replica”
PP says: Chill out, you’re sad. More rain drops in pond water music, and rolling clouds. Would be good for the nature breaks in a Mallick film.

16. Tyler, The Creator – “Yonkers”
PP says: Ian Cohen wrings his thesaurus hands a little bit about how Yonkers takes him back to the day when we were all just innocent of that messy messy hurtful Odd Future, when they were just so new and sparkle rainbows shine out of our behinds. Maybe when Tyler stopped being a blank slate for music people to project a bunch of bullshit on, everyone had a sad because he took the joke/non-joke? too far. Same old story here, probably got a ton of talent with the word smithing, and he ups the homophobic/misogynistic game to the point where the bandwagon fell apart. Oh well, on to the next one.

15. The Weeknd – “The Morning”
PP says: Production is immaculate, and I think more immediate that the standard R/B, and here the production is much more modern. Not my bag, because the more skittery the beat the more I think the sound will be over soon, so I’m listening to the musical equivalent of glasses without lenses, and I think he’s really mining the same old clichés. The Weeknd- The Mehrning (sorry, world).

14. Girls – “Vomit”
PP says: This is all about a clean, almost Bends-y, or maybe something else 90s tasteful sound with the edge played out in an American way instead of those guys across the pond. A retread but these guys do emotional repetition pretty well for their fans. They don’t exist anymore but this worked better for me on first listen than their breakthrough from two years ago “Hellhole Ratrace”, even though the epic feel of that one was undeniable.

13. tUnE-yArDs – “Bizness”
PP says: Always reminds me of Laurie Anderson, but this is like some kind of primal global blues over a McFerrin/jazzy polyrhythm. She’s really good. This one builds and I like it more and more, feel like “Powa” grabbed me more the first time, but she’s got it. End of song is a funkier, earthier St. Vincent, but with sax and cut up vocals. GOOD.

12. Jay-Z & Kanye West – “Niggas In Paris”
PP says: Totally bangs. Makes me go insane when he refs Jordan beating my Jazz in Game 6. Saved by a beat so great, propped up by decent Jay that it can support a hit and miss Kanye, a pathetic Will Ferrell break, and an outro that kills what should just be 10 minutes of ball so hard. Still love it.

11. James Blake – “The Wilhelm Scream”
PP says: This is so minimal it makes the muted Weeknd sound like R. Kelly at his most histrionic. This is a production spot on the list. Chilly was in last year, and this does sound superb on headphones. In a way I think a lot of these songs are the Kid A influence on music. Songs sublimated to tones and bloops and aetherialness. I can even remember what was out last year, but I wouldn’t mind a few straight ahead tunes.

10. DJ Khaled – “I’m On One” (Feat. Drake, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne)
PP says: Wayne sounds totally wasted here and Rick Ross is like a rapping Santa Claus cartoon and Drake is being all serious. Cinematically disposable and dated, but I wouldn’t quibble with this at 99, but this means I got about 89 problems and this sitch is one.

09. Azealia Banks – “212”
PP says: Holy crap this is really cranking hip hop designed for the club because she raps straight over a club track, but not euro cheese just effervescent and smiley while you get assassinated. Her attitude weirdly reminds me of Lords of Acid in its unabashed female sexuality and DOES NOT GIVE AN EFF, also AB goes back a way for her club beats, very retro. She should do “I Sit on Acid”. NSFW.

08. Cass McCombs – “County Line”
PP says: I know I listened to this song the other night, but nothing about it remains in my memory. The most capricious and arbitrary thing about Pfork this year, is how traditional and straight-ahead this one is. Either subtle and sophisticated or light and nothing (depending on if you are a fan or not), but certainly not a gimmick by any sense. Weird.

07. Beyoncé – “Countdown”
PP says: Beyoncé just irritates me more and more, though this song has some undeniable charm. Nothing new under the sun in cloaking traditional gender roles in fake empowerment. I don’t know why radio turned its back on this. Once guy at Clear Channel probably was constipated. Glad this won’t show up in the recurrent charts. Me and B will always have “Crazy in Love” and I will never tire of that one.

06. Destroyer – “Kaputt”
PP says: I don’t get anything about this, or Dan Bejar, but he maintains a high percentage record of hypnotic oddness that seems to convey something more. Or at least the idea of musical experimental poems. The words always seem to convey a feeling or a time and place, but of an alternate reality, not the retro caricature you might predict from the attached soundscape. Hater: did you see what he was wearing? 3B Dignan: Yeah, pretty cool.

05. Real Estate – “It’s Real”
PP says: I should like everything about Real Estate and this is a pleasant trifle, but when the shimmer gets a little thin or trebly it becomes offputting. These guys probably love their New Zealand bands (Bats, The Chill), but the sound back in the day was a little more filled out. I wonder if I bought this? I should check the ol’ hard drive. Inoffensively pleasant.

04. Nicki Minaj – “Super Bass”
PP says: This is a gigantic artifact now on this list at a late date. A prefabricated song that doesn’t really transcend anything, though will admit that Nicki knew what she was doing- just give them what they want. Kind of unbelievable that the same artist can drop “Did it On ‘Em” and this. Funny. Inessential!!!!!!!!!!

03. EMA – “California”
PP says: Her attitude sails her through open mic night at the poetry slam cafe and the music ties it all together into something if not compelling it holds your attention. I guess I’m too cynical to say gripping, but I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if I experienced a facsimile of being gripped! Jayson Greene seems to get halfway there in his writeup, but I would say that it isn’t the words that do it, its the fact that you hear them but instead you feel the music, the whole package. This is the kind of song that gets disavowed when they do the decade list, but I’d listen to it again.

02. Bon Iver – “Holocene”
PP says: I think this is an OK song. Full disclosure: I just listened to it right now!!!!!!! I have nothing useful or important to say, haha BUT YOU KNEW THAT.

01. M83 – “Midnight City”
PP says: More directly retro and nostalgic for a time kids these days never knew, but our writers and voters in their aging remember maybe a little bit. Same vein but even more so as the LCD Soundsystem pic a few years ago. Always pick up some Psychedelic Furs in this one, plus the feel that Neon Indian’s “6669″ gave me the first time I heard it (that bouncy 80s new wave romantic electronic feel) except French guy here has the good sense to not wash out the whole thing in cassette tape veneer. I will say that maybe in this one instant, with Goob just punching me in her sleep, but snuggled all in with GC and I, and Smokey Dog too, because they don’t like thunder and lightning, I might be even more susceptible to this kind of blatant tugging on my aging heartstrings than usual.

Anyhow, there is now double the math for your commenting fiascos. Unless plover can figure out, as plovers are wont, where in the style sheet the new Captcha font color is called out, your tiny eyes will do nothing but strain to make out the directions for your math Waterloo. As much as I hope that shady Ruskeroo criminal computers would be even more disadvantaged in squinting their cpu to conquer such Captcha, I feel we might be in trouble.

Anyhow. I have probably about 10 days to finish Pitchforke Cobaggery Watch 2011 before 2012 rolls around. Nothing says how boring the list must have been last year than the great effort put out by music lovers (Seitz), and snark lovers (Brando), and Pinko haters (UC) and in betweeners (PP) that we could not make it through 100 songs in 350 days. Onward.

Did I miss the election? What happened?

Cloverhill Big Texas Honeybun keeps getting inappropriately hijinked. Also, Matt Yglesias continues to post his thoughts on topics. The stronger he gets the weaker we become.

Onward.

I will try to fix the other cob logs anon, but there every comment will go to moderation to try to kill the spam somehow. I don’t know exactly how the spam does the math but it freaks me out.

I, for example, cannot imagine how the giant sauropods mated, except through the use of telekinesis.

I have two modest proposals for a solution to this conundrum.

1) Face-to-face

Find a lake with a depth equal to a little under twice the height of a sauropod torso. (If you can’t find such a lake, get a sauropod to dig you one. Tell the sauropod it gets to mate when it’s finished.) Put a sauropod in the lake. Tell it to roll over. Don’t take no, or, more to the point, blank incomprehension, for an answer. Note that the long neck conveniently allows the sauropod to keep its head out of the water while lying on its back. Put a second sauropod, of the opposite sex, in the lake. Presuming a reasonable amount of buoyancy on the part of sauropods, it should now be possible to fire up “Swan Lake” and have them dock together.

2) Oral sex

A male sauropod could perform oral sex on itself then on a female, or, conversely, a female could attend to a male first and then herself. While this explanation, like the previous one, would show selection pressure for long necks, it’s less clear there would be all that much selection pressure for gender discrimination, and sauropods may have gone around having oral sex pretty much at random. Cue outrage about how Darwinists want to teach your kids about gay dinosaurs.

*

The source of the quote is the 1987 novel Daughter of the Bear King by Eleanor Arnason, which features an appendix providing an evolutionary explanation for why dinosaurs were magical. The novel is one of the odder SF/fantasy hybrids I’ve come across, and so far I can’t really convince myself that it works, though it is interesting. However, Arnason would go on to write A Woman of the Iron People and Ring of Swords, two of the best anthropological sf novels around.

And yet, some of these ‘punk’ and ‘indie’ kids are still willing to back WK up with a number of ridiculous excuses that they deep-down know are inherently flawed. “It’s catchy” is no kind of argument. Every pop song you’ve ever truly hated is catchy. “It’s ironic” is wack, too, since there’s exactly zero irony to be had on any of I Get Wet or in WK’s motivational interviews. “It’s fun” is about the only legitimate excuse a guy could come up with– and that’s the one thing I’ll give it to warrant the .6 in the rating– but this world of music which history has graced us with is loaded with fun music. Even fun music with substance, fun music that doesn’t talk to you like you’re some kinda total dipshit that wouldn’t know Boredoms from buzzworthy. And you don’t even have to look that hard! So then, what is the excuse for a typically elitist music nerd to bow to Andrew WK’s blistering tard-rock? That’s right, folks: there isn’t one.

SHORTER SHREIBER: “YOU, READING THIS, YOU AREN’T AN IDIOT, ARE YOU? I MEAN I CLEARLY DON’T THINK YOU ARE, AND SINCE YOU AREN’T, YOU CLEARLY DON’T LIKE ANDREW W.K., DO YOU? I KNEW YOU DIDN’T. THANK GOD WE GOT PREVIEW COPIES OF THE LATEST BOREDOMS 7 INCH FROM THE FUTURE. IN FACT I HAVE BUILT A TIME MACHINE TO ENSURE THAT IT IS NEVER RELEASED AND YOU SHALL NEVER HEAR OF IT. I WILL DESCRIBE IT TO YOU IN WAYS THAT YOU SHALL NOT UNDERSTAND, BUT SURELY YOU WILL RECOGNIZE HOW MUCH IT MAKES YOU A DIPSHIT.”

Here is Ian Cohen on the exact same album:

It was one of the last great bizarre major label experiments. Coming at a time when the New Rock Revolution was meant to depose nu-metal, it was staunchly anti-intellectual, undeniably a commercial flop, and yet, you’ve heard it nearly everywhere. A full decade later, Andrew W.K. maintains enough pop culture juice to end up on TV with striking frequency [PP adds- Pitchfork TV?]. Musically, I Get Wet started no trends and influenced no one. It’s often scoffed at as one of the dumbest records ever made, but I’ve heard equally compelling and cogent [PP adds: compelling AND cogent. PLEAS DO TELL] arguments comparing it to Daft Punk’s Discovery in how its treats euphoria as an actual [PP adds: instead of...?] musical [PP adds: as opposed to?] genre.

I almost love this part the best. He could have actually written about bands that kind of go for a little bit of that euphoria feeling/sound, even if their topics are maybe a little less over the top (Maybe (and I actually mean “Maybe” not “Maybe as sarcastic definitely” Japandroids doing in garage instead of arena plastic/meatloaf-metal rock? Maybe [same as above example- true maybe] Torche working in happy pop metal???). Kind of like happy emo triumphant rock instead of sad/important triumphant rock. W.K. doesn’t have to have influenced people per se, but recognizing that he could have been, you know, working along some lines that aren’t wholly unique. Maybe that is what the Daft Punk thing is all about, but then again, I don’t major in Andrew W.K. studies. Jesus Christ, why didn’t Ian even bother to invent a genre with a catchy phrase like Glee™ Rock?

…

You simply can’t divorce the sensational effect of I Get Wet from its emotional one [PP adds: then why are you writing a master's thesis of pretentious nothingness to explain this simple and direct point], and the music truly is the message: “It’s Time to Party” immediately triggers I Get Wet’s enduring effect, the same pit-in-the-stomach feeling of boarding a roller coaster, asking someone out, or looking at your bank account after a particularly brutal weekend. It’s thrilling, it’s nauseating, there’s no going back.

OK- so music that is immediate and mindless that is about euphoria and excitement, even if fleeting, is compared to the pit in your stomach due to gravity [rollercoaster], the pit your stomach due to existential or situational stress [financial woes] and the feeling of nervousness and excitement of asking someone out. I think all of these things feel different, and I think they feel different from the feeling of “IT’S TIME TO PARTY”. For example, yelling IT’S TIME TO PARTY suggests to me that I have just won the lottery [reversal of financial woes] or someone has said yes to my asking them out [dating]. It seems pretty simple. Perhaps I am emotionally unsophisticated, because I trivially separate these distinct emotions.

Thing is, Andrew W.K. seems like a cool guy. I don’t know if this means “I Get Wet” is an 8.6. And maybe it isn’t a 0.6 either, but what I do know is that Ian Cohen writing about reissues, revealing to us the inner workings of historical mists of time 10 YEARS AGO, KIDS, LET MET TELL YOU OF A TIME WHERE LABELS WERE EXPERIMENTING, THESE WERE HEADY DAYS, LET ME EXPLAIN TO YOU DUMB *SSHOLES WHO WE CONVINCED YEARS AGO WERE TOO STUPID TO CONSIDER THE INCREDIBLE DEPTHS OF ANDREW W.K.’s I GET WET. WE WERE TESTING YOU- YOU FELL FOR IT. ACTUALLY WE WERE JUST PLAYING YOU MORONS, IT WAS GENIUS ALL ALONG. SORRY SUCKAS. BANDWAGON WHIPLASH. I GET WET IS IN THE PANTHEON. WHAT DID WE SAY ABOUT THE DARKNESS, DID WE RECOMMEND THAT?

Ian Cohen: I don’t write in all caps, moron.

PP: You do. You really, really do. Tell me about the universally reviled dad-rock last two Ride albums?

Ian Cohen: I am the arbiter of historical facts.

PP: Here is the decidedly meh but not revulsion review for Tarantula from your very own website, called Pitchfork (I actually like how Jason Josephes writes here without the pretense of a doctoral student of cobaggery, he just writes like a normal person who likes music):

Ride used to be one of the coolest bands on the planet. Although their first EP Smile didn’t completely win me over, the thoroughly awesome Nowhere blew me away. Goin’ Blank Again was almost equally majestic. Suddenly, Ride decided to give birth to a giant poop log and disguise it as a CD. 1994′s Carnival of Light probably ranks as the biggest disappointment from a competent group to ever sour my ears. Now, they’re calling it quits, and the swan song is called Tarantula. It’s better than Carnival of Light, that’s for sure. It’s more stomp than swoon as evidenced by the lead-off “Black Nite Crash.” Another number, “Castle on the Hill,” is good vintage Ride music that made me smile. That’s about it, though. A lot of the tunes don’t fail to hold my interest, but they also don’t give me that huge, superhero glow that songs like “Seagull,” “In a Different Place,” “Twisterella,” and “Leave Them All Behind” did. Oh, well. We’ll always have Nowhere.

I’m not even mad that Ian likes the Andrew W.K. album! It is just really annoying that these guys never recognize that they write reviews about certain bands or albums where the reviews are rhetorically designed to marginalize people that do, and then turn around and write theses about liking these same albums is a badge of honor for the intelligent. But if anything in this world is passé, it is bashing on Pitchfork, and liking the Dandy Warhol’s Welcome to the Monkey House (not Ian Cohen, but an Andrew Bryant classic):

A bright spot amongst the tarnish is the Evan Dando co-write “You Were The Last High”, the song that undoubtedly gets the group another quarter of a million records sold– the A-Ha influenced composition that will cause phone company executives’ ears to perk up in advertisement bliss. Alternately sounding like the mix-tape song of choice for your average sixteen year-old girl in the throes of first-luv or a Jarvis Cocker solo release, “The Dandy Warhols Love Everyone” rounds us out as best as can be expected– doo-doo’s and wah-ooo-oooh’s augmented by electronic beats and a twice-bitten fuzzy bass line.
Unfortunately, these songs highlight the poseur mentality and insincerity that paradoxically plagues and blesses The Dandy Warhols– one side of the coin endowing them with innocent condescension of their musical roots, the other holding them accountable for their acoustic laziness in the face of so much potential. The decision rests solely with the band now as to whether future releases will make good on this latent talent, or whether they will continue to rely upon breathy sighs, the crowd-pleasing rush of hedonistic pleasure [PP emphasis added], and the infidelity of exposed nipples.

THIS IS ONLY OK WHEN WE SAY IT IS OK

In other news, 16 year old girls’ mix tapes- sounds like a progressive argument is being made!

Let’s just all have a good laugh about it, we don’t mean to hurt anyone. Criticism sucks! Please rereview Jet’s second album as a 10.0. Do it. BLOW UP THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE

Seriously, and I mean not seriously: why not just go for the 6.66 joke score and leave it at that. This is a guy that head bangs over cheapy synths and Meatloaf/Great White/Glee piano. Don’t overthink it!

Always has the best Celeb Dream Cameos.

UC chastised me for participating in Le Pitchfork’s People’s List, where everyone got to vote for their favorite albums from Pitchfork’s existence. They said they’d take all the data and present it in super cool ways. Instead, they show some top 20 lists parsed by some geography and a few questions (most listened to genre). For the whole shebang they give the top 200 albums on a nice looking page and a graph where they break the thing down by albums from year with a table or so about some of the data. They just seemed like they failed. Where they succeeded is I assume some information harvesting app because they required voting through social media sites. Who knows. UC and I kind of had a group vote- we traded suggestions back and forth with arcane rules for vetoes etc.,

Suggestions for what would have been actually cool:

1) Top 1000 or even 2000 albums- nothing in the top 200 is surprising so much, but it would be interesting to know what albums were in the next pockets of interest (since there were tons of albums voted for) and a great way to remember some albums that have maybe fallen off.

2) Top write-in albums (bunch of well known albums were not in their database) UPDATE- OOPS- they did have this one. This was a little bit sad because these should have been in the database- I would have liked to see how many of the top 200 were suggested in their pages for the top rated albums- perhaps a little selection bias maybe

TOP-VOTED WRITE-IN ALBUMS
PAVEMENT BRIGHTEN THE CORNERS
REFUSED THE SHAPE OF PUNK TO COME
LAURYN HILL THE MISEDUCATION OF LAURYN HILL
BRAND NEW THE DEVIL AND GOD ARE RAGING INSIDE ME
PULP THIS IS HARDCORE
QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE RATED R
DEFTONES WHITE PONY
JAY-Z REASONABLE DOUBT
BEASTIE BOYS HELLO NASTY
PAVEMENT TERROR TWILIGHT
THE WHITE STRIPES DE STIJL
BLUR BLUR
DELTRON 3030 DELTRON 3030
OUTKAST ATLIENS
DR. DRE 2001
SLEATER-KINNEY DIG ME OUT
MUSE ORIGIN OF SYMMETRY
THE VERVE URBAN HYMNS
MUSE ABSOLUTION
JIMMY EAT WORLD CLARITY

3) Distribution of rankings for albums in the top 20 at least (kind of like how IMDB lets you look at distribution of scores for movies- and then gives some demographic breakdowns).

4) A selection of some people’s number 1s that didn’t make the top 200 and their comments. People’s comments were a nice feature. I presume they harvested a ton of comments from people on albums they love, yet they only used 10 of them. It is nice to see regular people write about stuff without trying too hard (™ Grayson Currin writing about metal, Ian Cohen writing about re-releases, maybe anyone at Pitchfork?).

5) They had one small list of albums that scored OK but had no number 1 votes. That was interesting. They could have had more breakdowns along these lines.

6) Maybe geography by state instead of two entries for NYC (holla Brooklyn!)

We feel a bit worried about our local search results.

UPDATE:

don’t use quotes and I don’t want the search results I want what google is going to guess about your typing

If you feel like being laid low, enjoy these animated graphs about the melting of the Arctic.

Maybe I should post some reruns. IC3W3DG3!!!!!!!!!!!!!

B) Kanye West’s verses get worse and worse but the beats are better and better. See “Mercy” and “No Church in the Wild”.

C) The oldies station that has only been on a year- a super cheapie with pre-recorded DJs- but still had lots of 60s Neil Diamond AND The Standells AND about 15 Beach Boys songs AND Sonny and Cher AND The Supremes AND some very random songs AND a bunch of Stevie Wonder AND a pretty deep library is doing that thing where they are changing formats. Their format change appears to coincide with the “classic rock” station disappearing from the airwaves, and now Oldies means 70s and 80s crapola. I has a sad. BLARG.

Please give our Ombuds some attention, they really do love nothing more. If you were to create a parody of Matt Yglesias, would you bother to change anything about him or just make him more concentrated?

The converse of Apple Store workers not being rich despite the company’s success is that Sears & K-Mart workers don’t earn negative wages even though their company loses money.

The existence of layoffs is apparently not a thing at Slate (he said without irony). Also not included in an article titled, in part: “What if the Apple Store were the worst job around?” are the terms “minimum wage,” “outsourcing,” and “FoxConn.” We are not unopposed (THANK YOU ZOMBIE FOR GRAMMAR CORRECTION) to Apple products, but if MattY wishes to hold them up as a shining beacon of benevolent American capitalism, he might first try to live on under $25,000 like so many of his fellow Americans already do, and see how many of Apple’s stock shares ($580 each at the time of writing) his salary will allow him to purchase.

There is probably some irony in the fact that a company which provides their wares at a substantial markup while providing minimal benefits for their workers saw fit to employ someome to write about Apple.

We are also obliged to note that Cogitamus’ Sir Charles uses the term “Apple Slapping” in his post title discussing the subject. And so Filthbot arises again. This may have been the entire point of these introductory paragraphs. On to our actual appointed task:

1. fish: Everything is still fish’s fault. This will not be disputed.

2. A minor request: Pinko, via secret communication, wishes to be convinced one way or the other on the merits of Rush v. Japandroids. Our own sympathies in the matter are well-known, therefore we are recusing ourselves. However, others may present their arguments. As in Democracy, the only losers are those who take no side.

3. There is no third thing.

4. Almost immediate update! Someone in DorD adds:

What kind of fascist has effing MATH instead of a CAPTCHA? Are you trying to prove that we’re human, or that we didn’t go to an American public school?

Carry on.

I will start with:

The Goob disapproves of the pillowcase on her pillow. She prefers it to be wrapped in special little blanket (*more on this item later). Anyhow, GC checked her the other night and went to straighten out her little sheet and it wouldn’t straighten out. GC determined that what appeared to be the sheet was actually the matching pillowcase, which had been removed from the pillow and entered into as if a sleeping bag.

*Re: blanky. Blanky (not referred to as such in real life) must accompany the Goob if she effects a change in locale at early hours. She will request this change by silently pointing to the door, or saying “shoulder” by which she means that blanky is to be transferred to one’s shoulder, shortly followed thereafter by her own person to be carried wholesale into mommydaddybed. One of many cargo cults in which Le Goobiepants participates!

THE GOOB!
UPDATE

For Jennifer, and for Thunder, for different reasons!

ONWARD

just kidding. I know if I commit to that, the blog will get hackspammed again. It is like all the energy I had for this whole year was sucked into rescuing the blog from the hack, but now I have nothing and fish is gone.

WHAT NECKST?

twitter?

I should just call myself Facebook stock and then the banks will defend me.

Austin O. Jones “Consumer-in-Chief”, says:

Whilst Mr. Yglesias should be well-versed on the sordid history of glory-holes and their ilk, I find his grasp of the subject to be disappointing. Add to that his talentless, pedantic “writing”, and you end up with a fairly inexpensive doorstop.

I love thinking about this guy using the Kindle version of MattYmunch’s book as a doorstop. “MAH KINDLE!!!!!!!!!! DOH!”

Mark Frutig writes:

While Matt used many of the words found in more promising works, the order in which they were used was disappointing.

While this is simply wonderful, the meanest part is that Mr. Frutig has seen fit to only write two reviews for books he has not read, Yggie’s and Jerry Sandusky’s. Ouchies.

nikkolai writes:

I’m guessing this guy has no economic training, much less real-life experience, at all. Look elsewhere for this type of advice.

I almost feel like it is too mean to speculate that this is a Breitbarty bull in a broken clock factory, at this or the other right time of day.

DeeDee does not sound convincing- I do wonder if Breitybartos maybe concoct spammagamma in their time away from their spare time writing about MattY:

Same old tired Liberal tropes. I’ve followed this author on the Blogs, and there is not much new here. Just a chance to monetize his opinions, I guess. Buyer beware.

I don’t feel convinced, but I really want to be! Do you also love my newsletter?

Someone named Andrew Bretibart makes us feel sad for MY, and this is quite hard [I bet Brando just thought "that's what she said"]:

Awful, just awful.
The in depth description of anal probes on the space ship the author claims he went through..was too graphic.

T. Spaulding, in an extremely classy move, pushes us all the way into the Yglesias camp, for a mere moment before we destroy him with Battle Rap, with this statement, feeling the title of Matt’s book is too confusing:

Very disappointing. I thought it was titled “The Rent Boy Is Too Damn High: Tales From the Fire Island ER”.

Andrew Breitbart is Here.

I don’t get it! Where is Andrew LiteBriteBart? Is he in your homophobic cliché? Why not gild the lily? Perhaps the title was “Tales from the RNC closet inside the Judy Garland museum in KeyWestCastroSouthEndPTownChelsea”???

Courtesy of Mendacious D, willing this internet happenstance back to life, we relaunch our battle rap at MATTHEW YGLESIAS, may he have eventual solace from AB goons, but no solace from his own pet ard. Now with production values!

It just took me an hour to fix the blog so I could login and give zombie some words of wisdom love, and now I am too tired to read the mean comments about Yggiepants’ bookie wookie. OR AM I?

Audio player should be fixed to the point such that Battle Rap may post later. I mean, we’re not quite on Chinese Democracy timetable.

Lettuce enjoy.

a best f?ie?d’s móthër-i?-law mákes $62 hó?rly ?n the cómpüter. She has bee? oüt of á jób fö? 8 mó?th? büt läst mónth hër paýcheck wás $16353 jüst worki?g on the ?ompüte? för a ?ew hóürs. hëre’s the site t? reäd m?rë..MakeCash2.Com

Oh, yeah, the long delayed -not due to Mendcious D- due to battle rap star self-destructive behavior- final mix of verbal 2×4 to Matt Y will drop this week. The wax ain’t exactly still hot on this platter, but we do what we can.

Second, we feel it necessary to praise plover’s resurrection of the notorious Icewedge (and many variations thereof). Background, for those of you who insist on feigning interest, can be found here.

Third and most importantly, we are quite happy that Von and other worthies have been unspammed thanks to Forces Beyond Our Control. The new WordPress posting layout is only slightly more terrible than the last, but this is a minor price to pay. Those who disagree will be banned. Again.

Fourth, to answer ZRM when he asked:

Whoah.

This blog is still here?

No.

Any other business?

Apologies to all Ahemmers who are not on the blogroll; but look, we all KNOW 3Bulls is completely .5 assed, right? It wouldn’t be 3 Boolz otherwise.

Now if only the blogroll feed would at least UPDATE more often than every other third Wednesday in a month when the date is a prime number. At least that SEEMS to be the algorithm.

Of course, Von’s and Zombie’s inability to comment is a travesty and they both deserve much praise for bearing up as stoically as they do. Send them money and beer.

A word from Errata Brushbins, 3B’s I-blur-topic ed.

I’m looking for “reader” input on whether and when Three Bulls! keyboard monkeys/meese/birds/fungi/ombudsganisms should insist that “sense” is overrated and ought to be dispensed with in any “content” inflicted on hapless viewers of this website.

One example mentioned recently by a small, potted plant that has never actually read this site: As noted in the recent XLVIX-part series “Under the Bench: A Gum Wad’s View of the Supreme Court”, a court spokeswoman said Clarence Thomas had “misunderstood” the rules of curling when he used curling stones supplied by his wife which could be remotely steered from a bunker under the Heritage Foundation. The plant seemed perturbed by the plausibility of this scenario.

Another example: on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches “apologizing for the lateness of Pitchfork Cobaggery Watch,” a phrase to which Uncanny Canadian responded in a December column by saying: “”.

As a denizen of the Three Bulls! mausoleum, Mr. [sic] Canadian clearly has the freedom to be non-responsive. My question for readers is: should actual non-silent posters do the same?

If so, then perhaps the next time Mr. Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for Three Bulls!, there should be a post stating, more or less:

“Mitt Romney is just a theory. All hail IceWedge.” (IcePorkins getting no love per usual.)

That approach is what one reader was getting at in a recent message found in a bottle washed up on the Three Bulls! private beach. He/she/it/bird wrote:

“My question is what role battle raps play in inducing the heat death of the universe. The main problem with entropy is that it doesn’t work fast enough, especially when living organisms are around. I continually mourn the amount of order I add to the universe and rely on 3B as a synapse randomizer. If the site’s overarching goal is the dismasting of the ship of reason so that it is helpless before wind and water and soon devoured by lampreys and laser-urchins, oughtn’t its principal posts fire their cannons on all cylinders? In other words, if Matthew Yglesias stubs his toe in a forest and no one is there to hear, does he still sound like an emu? And shouldn’t the result be sampled?”

This message was typical, perhaps even archetypical, of “mail” from some readers who, fed up with the distortions and evasions that are common in public life, look to Three Bulls for variety in distortion and evasion. They worry that 3B might one day show something, that, without requiring the assumption that the phonemes mean something when strung together in one of chief languages of the planet I______ IV, could be called judgment.

Is that the prevailing view? And if so, do we care? We can point to actual sentences in the universe like, “Is it possible to be objective and fair when the reporter is choosing to correct one fact over another?” What more could you want?

Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign debates, 3B has employed a special invisible sidebar where we ignore them entirely. Do you like this feature, or would you rather our ignorance be incorporated into our regular posts?

Please feel free to leave a comment below or send an e-mail to public@nytimes.com with the subject line: Must Credit Three Bulls! Beware of comment moderation policy.

PS The collective noun for ombudsganisms is: an ombudsgasm of ombudsganisms. No one who has met one has lived long enough to devise a collective noun for laser-urchins.

Lyrics below the fold, but I think you should suffer through the scorched earth devastation.

timeframe forever/certified hatelist
I got my rap on-I got something to slay with

a word for a flightless bird
emu

don’t think you should be called that
we do

you’re the worst movie of all time
skidoo

kick you out of your house
kelo

play cat and mouse with me
no go

try to hide wait and see
we know

step up to my lyrical piper
just payin

push you in the snow, make you an angel
just sleighin

make it better with a smartass hashtag
just sayin

you wrote a book
I never read it

bust its spine
call it an edit

just in time
call me dr. who

step outta my booth
take a page from the future

I pun when I punish
your gonna need a suture

first name matthew
like one of the gospels
which one-don’t matter/
I put you in the hospital
its a story of pain and I’m able
to deliver a lethal dose
I put the motion on the table
better go to church
light some candles
time to get enrolled
in my personal death panel

Punch a nut/and they cheered
Damn right/I be feared
maybe shave your beard/
neck/
I put you in check/
step to me you get decked/
halls/
bells and holly/
ring-a-ding dolly/
your career is a folly/
paint you like salvador dali/
melt a clock on your head/
the persistence of dead/
now I start to shred/
you better get fed/
all you can eat bread/
sticks/
I lay it on thicks/
suck your blood like a ticks/
you gonna have a malady
now all you can eat is your salad-y
through a straw like your soup
minestrone
you’re nothing but a phony/

[Ygglesipants]
Oh Pinko Punko,
that’s so cute
who woulda thunko
that the internet
would give such
pap
smear
haven’t you hear
my lyrics gonna kill
you are hpv
i am gardasil

You say I that I’m contrarian
but I’m a cool libertarian
stop acting like Yossarian
raging at my catch-22′s 
I got a job so why can’t you?
blow
you reap what you
sow
you make bad choices
you be on the street hearing voices
no need for me to reply to comments
I’m over at Megan’s
Wishing she weren’t dishing
Not very delishin 
I’m fishing but she’s missing
to my hints she’s a harden’n
I want to eat at the Olive garden’n
Your marginal utility
you can’t recognize such futility
Stuff my face with those breadsticks
Enrage you with my mouse clicks
I’ll bust you like a fucking puppet
I’ll shit on your MFE
Don’t got a degree like me
‘Bag you with my neck beard
Its the end that you feared
Constant degradation is great
Now I’m writing at Slate

You think you’re so reasonable
Gots Opinions when its seasonable
Always wrong its not evenable
Belief that could be pleasonable
Ignore getting corrected by little peoponable
In your column issues so urban
here’s a real lefty
I’m John McEnroe/and I’m servin
a dose of You can’t be serious
of course You must be delirious
You’re David Cone
caught you spanking in the bullpen
I put you in a diagram like Venn
An empty set between you and expertise
Oh think I’m too mean oh Yggie please
explain something to me you just read
make sure to patronize instead
of empathize which you are unable
please tell me about basic cable
the moral of the story is this
you step to the bulls you get burned
our battle rap is so furious
your argument is so spurious
call me george and I’m curious
when you move into your new house
the eventual rebirth of Mickey Kaus

Is UC in this year? Seitz is gonna join in. I work on a list and we pass it back and forth, or you can just e-mail me your feelings on this business and I will add.

Also, I project that battle rap gonna street this week. Devastating.

I would no doubt regard being declared a separate “species” as some kind of blatant eugenics program if the other Kentish plovers didn’t horde all the scones for themselves. I would also no doubt inform the AOU that I shan’t be back, if I’d ever been there. But, of course, “there” is nothing but an empty lot with emus nesting in it, as is clearly seen in the satellite photo below. Don’t be surprised if the next time they rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, it is to put you in one of them.

Have at it. We triple dog infinity dare thee to win our contest! I assume that voting will be up to the usual standards.

THAT IS ALL.

And off we go!!!!!!!!

20. Erykah Badu “Window Seat”
Pinko Punko says:Sounds like a Erykah Badu singing over a vaguely Massive Attack “Protection”-like beat with some Quiet Storm like touches. OK but so unmemorable I forgot to do this list until November or read anything about why this song is supposedly exceptional.

UC adds:

19. How to Dress Well “Decisions (feat. Yüksel Arslan)”
Pinko Punko says: If you read what Jess Harvel writes about to explain this song and you listen to it, you will wonder what the eff she/he/it/bird is talking about. It is short, OK, good and meh at the same time.

UC adds:

18. Titus Andronicus “A More Perfect Union”
Pinko Punko says: Exceptionally self-indulgent but totally sincere at the same time. I think the song is probably awesome, and every time it comes on Pandora I wonder if I can make it through the whole song, and I always do. I was never inspired to pick up this album because I felt it wouldn’t match their last one, but I like these guys. They are rough enough that they come across as raw instead of calculatingly retro.

UC adds:

17. Girl Unit “Wut”
Pinko Punko says: Let’s go to the YouTube commenter jury:

yooo system meltdown u greedycunt!? ? EchelonWeb 4 days ago ?
wut? this is? sick? -_____- So dope.?SkitterPLUR 4 days ago ?
“Girl Unit is actually? a bloke named phil”?DjBassMaster10 5 days ago

@GlittersAllWet …? l0l???Jim44ee 6 days ago ?BIG? Tingz????KIN9DUB 1 week ago ?
@GlittersAllWet did u actually use girl unit and crystal castles in the same breath, uve got alot to learn? mate.. this is sick, productions so tight.. crystal castles mainstream jank shit with no balls, play this tune with a sub or sumat… then ul see..peace???KIN9DUB 1 week ago ?
@tallyhoman911? Same????mmcc0203 1 week ago ?
Das? racist freestyle???cavaleio 2 weeks ago

How do I say ^this, but not. I cannot believe how cheesy this song is. Chippymunk dubstep/drum and bass that is both tinkly and useless.

UC adds:

16. Beach House “Norway”
Pinko Punko says: Good song with some off-kilter tuned musico (the MBV reference from the write-up). On this list because this was the lead track pushed from this excellent album, definitely not the best on here, but good.

UC adds:

15. Crystal Castles [ft. Robert Smith] “Not in Love”
Pinko Punko says:The Cure’s Robert Smith sees your picture hanging on the back of his door. That is nice- who put it there? It is a mystery. Lyrically, this song is definitely a filtered through hazy cable watching of some neo-waver thinking about what it would be like to live in a John Hughes movie watched many times on the cable of childhood. Musically, it’s M83′s retro wave mixed with a dancier feel. It is OK, but again has the whiff of a novelty. It is a decent guest turn from Smith who just does his thing but commits to the song. OK.

UC adds:

14. Sleigh Bells “Rill Rill”
Pinko Punko says: Norway’s Annie+Kurt Vile aesthetic+60s girl group on drugs. This comment is like a patchwork of Pitchfork-fueled references that have no meaning. Kind of like Pitchfork and descriptions of Pitchfork. This is a hall of mirrors. Should be better than it is. But does not suck I guess. Amanda Petrusch is over the top in a simile to such way to prove my point can’t be bothered. If I finish this tonight I might make deadline before I have 100 new ones to think about.

UC adds:

13. Caribou “Odessa”
Pinko Punko says: I like the last Caribou album a lot I think because it was more melodic and psychedelic and better I guess. He sounds like Frazier Chorus on this one. Look it up.

UC adds:

12. LCD Soundsystem “All I Want”
Pinko Punko says: These guys can just hit that spot the “All of My Friends Spot”- this isn’t that good, but it is a good song, but is it a little bit going through the motions. The odd thing about the mix [the loud guitar line] is drawn to our attention as a work of special and purposeful magic hands by James Murphy, LCD’s ringleader. I think he pushes it just a little bit and it doesn’t quite work like it should. It seems a little false. OK song. Speak and Spell outro I kind of like

UC adds:

11. Deerhunter “Desire Lines”
Pinko Punko says: One of my faves of the year. The heart of the Deerhunter album. Although, I need to admit that in the time since I wrote about “Helicopter” at 41, when I liked this song better, I may have reversed my preferences.

UC adds:

10. Janelle Monáe [ft. Big Boi] “Tightrope”
Pinko Punko says: I think she’s really audacious and this song is nice and fun, but I feel like her voice is an eensy bit blank- I feel like she’s just not there. This is certainly better than anything Beyoncé has pooped out in 2011, though I expect ‘Fork will go nuts over “Countdown”. I don’t expect to remember this song’s existence in a few days, unfortunately.

UC adds:

09. Arcade Fire “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”
Pinko Punko says: I don’t favor the Arcade Fire backlash. Maybe I am a little surprised at how quickly they developed a brand of a sound, and oddly this song sounds exactly like them even though at points musically it reminds me of a more analog and less clean Pet Shop Boys. The sound is so washed out- a little bit of that “chillwave” cassette sound that is less obvious on headphones. Good, in a “won’t skip it on the internet radio, but won’t queue it up” way. Maybe that is all songs these days. What are the odds I make it through ‘Fork 2011? Why has UC forsaken me?

UC adds:

08. James Blake “I Only Know (What I Know Now)”
Pinko Punko says: Soundtrack to a video playing in a club that you imagine yourself seeing in a movie about someone that does this sort of thing, in a dream. But through night vision goggles. And it is 4 am and nobody is talking or saying anything. 2011- the year Chillstep broke? Not anything I would recommend to anyone that wasn’t already drinking the Flavor-Ade on this. Fine I guess, but you might be asleep, so read up on it at All Music Guide, but careful clicking away too fast, the mouse might be asleep and your click finger might fall over. More than any track, I would like UC to review this. I don’t hate him, I swear!!!!!!!!!

UC adds:

07. Joanna Newsom “Good Intentions Paving Company”
Pinko Punko says: I didn’t really have the attention span for her last album Ys, while loving her debut- though not being allow to play that in the house because I would get punished for playing “screeching cat lady”. This seems to drop the Ye Olde Cat Scratch Renaissance Faire of Ys, and creates a tempered, ambitious thing kind of out of the Laurie Anderson/Kate Bush headspace but without the extreme experimentation or theatrics, so maybe not like those at all. I like it, especially the ooooooooh ooooh oooh part and the little bit of trombone then the piano chug outro, but novelty central. Wolk does a nice write-up, though.

UC adds:

06. Kanye West [ft. Dwele] “POWER”
Pinko Punko says: Earnest enough I guess it staves off the whiff of unfortunateness. Yeezy has a delivery that is all his, but sometimes he seems clunky or lazy. This is a mehseum piece not a classic. Maybe it’s OK?

UC adds:

05. Big Boi [ft. Cutty] “Shutterbugg”
Pinko Punko says: I’d call this H-funk, Human League funk. Boi easy cheesy rules this invisible shoulda been all summer jam. I think he just didn’t get the obvious hook for the crowd on this. Its too smooth. Really good.

UC adds:

04. Robyn “Dancing on My Own”
Pinko Punko says: Scandinavian popstress makes le Fork just give it up. To be honest, if Gaga (or actually, Taylor Swift if you pop-countrified it) released this, it would have sold 10 million. Robyn knows what she wants and she does it. It’s pure queso but hits that one spot…pretty good.

UC adds:

03. LCD Soundsystem “I Can Change”
Pinko Punko says: LCD can take a lot of different sounds but the drum machine and some of the bloops just paint it as LCD Soundsystem, and then the James Murphy delivery, restrained but full of emotion in that peculiar way. Excellent. Super good.

02. Kanye West [ft. Pusha T] “Runaway”
Pinko Punko says: The pinnacle of sad sack hate yourself rap, but kind of brilliant. The question to Kanye, is can he listen to number 3? Because if he can’t change, this is not gonna end well. Hug squad! To the West mansion. Nine minutes a little much. Pusha T also puts too much swagger on his verses- like did he not listen to the rest of the song?

UC adds:

01. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti “Round and Round”
Pinko Punko says: What is going on here? A floating prog pop pyschedelic love child from the threeway between Alas Parsons and a tranquilized muzaky Modest Mouse and Stephen Merritt. I really can’t explain it. Some of it is just great- in that effortless Phoenix way- like you can’t quite tell why it is so perfect, because it is nothingness lighter than air. Good stuff in here. Very light. Wonder how it would work without headphones. Also liked the Mark Richardson write-up, so like a nice little breath mint placed on the cowpie of this year’s list. HA! Beat 2011 list by a few days. UC, get thee to thy iPod!

UC adds:

What an eccentric performance… (note: not safe for sanity).

And now for something that is actually not at all different but is, in fact, part two.

Five is not right out, as apparently there are going to be a total of six of these.

Libertarianism can be a lot like the divine right of kings — simple elitism dressed up in some of the moral language of the day. At least this lot admits they’re anti-democratic. Also: watch for the bit where the guy basically implies that assassinating the president would facilitate libertarian city-states seceding from the US, which somehow derives from a libertarian city-state which is effectively at war with the US being a good investment. This idea may disprove string theory as I think there are more curled up dimensions of delusion in it than can be accounted for by any physical theory proposed to date.

Between Ms. Kelly’s cluelessness and the recent decision defining tomato paste as a vegetable, we can only conclude a conspiracy to discredit Herman Cain and his known association with DorD-worthy pizza companies, as if he needed the help.

That, or viral marketing for an upcoming episode of Chopped.

Other business:

1. We welcome back our esteemed avian colleague plover, and eagerly await the inevitable returning salvos from Fishy McBiaspants.

2. Having not personally seen the new secret header (and being too lazy to refresh the page ad nauseam), we can only assume the presence of giant stone heads, and preemptively approve.

3. We make no apologies for our absence, accountability was specifically omitted from our contract. We have very good attorneys.

4. And they have suggested that this statement be redacted.

Any other business?

Before getting to the main part of my post, I’d like to note the following description of the aftermath of the pepper spraying at UC Davis (the author also provides a take on Lt. Pike’s body language I’m not sure I agree with):

the students announce to the officers that they are offering them “a moment of peace,” that is, the option of leaving without further escalating a truly horrible situation. They cry (in one of the most moving instances of the human mic I’ve ever seen) “You can go! You can go!”

It’s transcendently brilliant, this tactic–the students offer an alternative in a high-pressure situation, a situation that no one wants, but which seems inevitable in the heat of the moment. It’s an act of mercy which, like all acts of mercy, is entirely undeserved. Watch the other officers’ surprise at this turn in the students’ rhetoric, after they had (rightfully) been chanting “Shame on you!” Watch the officers seriously consider (and eventually accept) the students’ offer.

The following tweets are by Zeynep Tufekci, and were in response to a link to a video of the UC Davis protesters being pepper sprayed.¹

• Most everywhere else in the world, the crowd wouldn’t just watch the police pepper spray a row of kids sitting down.
• American protestors are the most compliant & obedient of the police I’ve seen anywhere. Surprised me when I first came to US.
• Bystanders just watching … chanting shame. Most places in the world, skirmishes would break out. People wld join, intervene.
• In the first big protest I witnessed in grad school –fresh-off-the-boat– people said we’re going to do civil disobedience.
• Protestors sat somewhere, police said we’ve arrested you, everyone got up & lined up, paperwork processed, minor fine, voila.
• Semed so funny. In most places, if protestors aren’t obeying the police (civil disobedience, unlawful order, etc.) they disobey.
• I mean, no wonder police feel empowered to brazenly spray a line of kids sitting down. Nobody joins, jumps in, intervenes.
• Somehow civil disobedience has been reduced to full & polite cooperation w/ all orders. Ppl need to watch civil rights videos.

They are worth reading alongside this post on the ambiguity of non-violence.

There are two points I want to make about these. One is also effectively summarized by the statement of the spokespod from planet Orwell UC Berkeley chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau² that “It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience.” That is, the operative notion among many authorities that civil dis-obedience is only acceptable (even, for the chancellor, worthy of “honor”) if, well, protesters obey everything the authorities say — a fairly good measure of the degree neo-liberalism abandons democratic principles for (at best) paternalistic ones. Non-elect human beings are a management problem, passive, infantile things, best managed at arms length, entirely through statistics if at all possible.³ Protest should not do even conceptual violence since the values civil manager/rulers are supposed to uphold in the name of the will of the people pre-exist the will of any actual people.⁴ (If anyone comes across the howling revenant of Thoreau, perhaps he could be given directions to the chancellor’s office.)

This post has some useful history showing the likely difference between the particular protest situation described by Tufekci and what OWS protesters encounter. (And this post is a useful corrective to some non-historical aspects of the previous link.)

I have been puzzling over the connection between the chancellor’s demand for passivity on the part of protesters, and the congressional Democratic leadership’s usual passivity in the face of Republican demands, e.g. the farcical “filibuster-by-gentlemen’s-agreement” they’ve allowed to overshadow Senate business. The suggestion of a connection seems quite strong, but so far I haven’t found a way to make it explicit that doesn’t fall apart.

The second concern derives from the initial tweet: “Most everywhere else in the world, the crowd wouldn’t just watch the police pepper spray a row of kids sitting down.” I suspect there is a real point here regarding the difference between US crowds (at least in some metropolitan contexts) and crowds in many other countries — though I think in this unqualified form it is hard to pin down. The most obvious objections are that the “bystander effect” is not an aberration of Americans, and that, historically and currently, situations where a populace fears the effects of interfering with authorities are not uncommon.

But I think there is a more interesting question here: what is the role of the crowd in non-violent protest? Or rather “roles”, as the crowd is unlikely to be homogeneous. For example, in the crowd at UC Davis a rather large percentage are wielding cameras of one sort or other. Who among them considers themself a “journalist” — a role that traditionally calls for “reporting the story” rather than “being the story”? On the other hand, who considers themself to have the somewhat more ambiguous role of “witness”? Are those who show up at a protest with the intent of documenting what happens in order to ensure that the protesters side of the story gets told, effectively part of the protest, that is, are they too expected to exemplify non-violence?

If bullying authorities are interfered with, does that not effectively constitute a secondary protest, one specifically against the treatment of the original protesters? In what cases and what forms is this secondary protest justified in abandoning strict non-violence? And (if the answer is not the same), in what cases is it advisable? The answer to that last would seem to depend a great deal on the effective audience for the protest.

There is a long history of discussion on the left of when violence might be justified and against whom. Of course, many of the landmarks in that discussion are a century or more old at this point, and when I read current discussions of these issues, I can end up feeling that not enough care has been taken to update the older ideas for current conditions, or to acknowledge what non-violence has or can accomplish. So many of the culturally widespread images of revolution remain 18th and 19th century ones.

While he uses a more explicitly Marxist vocabulary than I would, and I haven’t entirely decided what I do and don’t endorse about his conclusions, this guy provides a much richer discussion than I can of these issues.

Perhaps, the missing element in Tufekci’s tweets is the notion of what is expected from the police on the part of the people. While protesters in America may have no illusions about the current tactics that police may be expected to employ, many of them likely share the ideal that the purpose of the police is to “protect and serve” — with the insistence however that the implied direct object of those verbs includes the rights and persons of the whole populace, not just the interests and property of the rich.⁵ The initial reaction of the crowd after the police pepper spray the UC Davis protesters is to chant “shame on you”. Whether or not anyone expects the police to actually feel that shame, the chant most certainly expresses the ideal of policing the protesters see as implied by a democratic and egalitarian society.

In other words, the position on the protesters side is the police ought to be ashamed for using the power granted to them to effect an arbitrary authoritarianism that serves only one narrow class of citizens and not the populace as a whole, that serves to curtail and manage, rather than facilitate, the exercise of the rights that make “democracy” something more than a euphemism for elites to hide behind. The history of protest policing linked above shows that, for a time at least, something much closer to this ideal of policing was achieved. And that more ideal approach can still be found in places (IIRC — I hope I have this memory attached to the correct incident — the Milwaukee police chief, at the time of the initial Scott Walker protests, issued quite good statements to the effect that the goal of the police would be to protect everyone’s — both protesters and counter-protesters — right to speak, and the policing was actually carried out in a way consistent with that). This Rachel Maddow interview with a former police captain who participated in the OWS protests provides more context.

Anyway, I’m afraid this post is a bit fragmentary — hopefully not to the point of incomprehensibility — but I’ve already delayed too long in getting a topical post like this out. All the incoherence that remains is my own and does not express the incoherence of the management. So there it is. Caveat bloggor, carpe emu, etc.

1. Having formed no particularly useful relationship with Twitter, I am unsure what to do with these other than cut and paste. I figured out how to link to a single tweet (which I do on the first one), but not to a point in a sequence. [back]
2. BTW, the post at the link is rather good, I highly recommend it, if you haven’t come across it before. [back]
3. In constructing this conceit, I am no doubt guilty of conflating the statement of the chancellor with those of neo-liberal defenders of the current role of Wall Street, but I suspect the connection is not unfair. [back]
4. As my brain’s pedantic lobe insists on making clear: it is this disconnect between the will of an actual demos and the rather less dynamic categories used by the manager/rulers to understand that will that provokes my dig about statistics. [back]
5. Of course, the whole issue of expectations has a different cast when viewed through the lens of the history of policing in, say, African-American neighborhoods, rather than at protests. [back]

Who will encamp within our rotting electronic shell when we finally forget to pay the hosting bills? Will we be raptured to Slate? Will we merely existing in the Twits of doddering elder punsters? Are we all going to die? Will we still have 3B radio? Who will win the header contest? Will anyone notice?

I’m not asking what the point of the Occupy movement is, or why they’re using the tactics they are, but rather, why is it called “occupying” and is that a good idea? Isn’t the metaphorical point more to remove an occupation than to engage in one?

The original “Occupy Wall Street” actually makes sense: a parody of US foreign policy being visited upon on a tiny “foreign” nation whose inhabitants have probably caused more damage to this country than any terrorists are ever likely to.

But “Occupy Oakland”? “Occupy Boston”? If “we are the 99%”, then we are Oakland, we are Boston. Isn’t the real point that the 1% are occupying us? That we are, in effect, living under their puppet regime?

Wouldn’t it make sense to use language that implies we are actually defending our homes from an abusive force rather attempting to invade something? The message to our elected leaders rulers is not necessarily “we will overthrow you”, but perhaps more like “you’re killing us, and we aren’t going to take it anymore”. That at least has the potential to be turned into an invitation to return to being the government they were, in theory, democratically elected to be — that is if they truly can, in fact, figure out how not to be elitist, authoritarian, collaborationist “rulers” (an “if” which, in most cases, is probably more about moral high ground than realistic expectation).

The “occupy” message also has the potential to make those who don’t identify with the movement feel like their land is being invaded. It risks breaking the 99% into two groups, each of which thinks they are defending their homes and families from each other. The 1% always likes that.

This is probably all moot as the “Occupy” brand has already sailed, so to speak. Perhaps, the “we are the 99%” message is enough to counteract the metaphorical problems of “occupying”. Though I still wonder what different tactics and rhetoric might be considered if the underlying message was one of defense from, well, “colonization” might be the best word for it.