Top 50 Continued: Featuring asides on the omission of Culinary Art School 2 and Spin missing the point on their album of the year choice

I planned to ride to work on Monday and listen to the Panda Bear album, but my roommate’s car battery died and I had to give him a ride. We decided to listen to the Drake album because he still listens to Kid Rock and putting on Panda Bear would not have been well received, so I had to wait until after work to continue my pitchfork listening adventure. I eventually put it on later that night while I played Mortal Kombat Trilogy. I liked it more than I thought, but I couldn’t get passed endurance mode on novice level, even with Noob Saibot, so that ruined my vibe a little. I’ll probably keep a couple tracks off this one though.

Tuesday I listened to the first nine tracks off Fucked Up’s album on the way to work. Spin named this as their album of the year, but I guess my limitations as a punk rock critic made it difficult for me enjoy it let alone see how it was a major music magazine’s AOTY. (I’d also like to take a moment to point out Spin has a separate list for rap albums of the year… didn't white people agree to stop doing this kind of thing like 50 years ago?) I’m assuming Spin rated it as such because it's an abrasive punk record that provides catharsis for an angsty generation of youth that has been marginalized and overlooked, but I’m gonna have to go ahead and call bullshit on that. Our generation has adopted chillwave/dream beat/bliss pop/whatever as its sound because we just don’t really give a fuck about things and we’d rather listen to the sonic manifestation of not giving a fuck., Fucked Up might be the rallying cry for the minority who prefer catching beat downs from the Oakland PD, but that’s not the reality for most young people… I mean we have iPhones that can talk to us and Snooki lost like 25 pounds, how are we supposed to muster the collective motivation to recycle punk rock angst as the emotion du jour... But I guess if Beavis and Butthead can make a comeback why not punk rock angst? And full disclosure, this is all coming from a dude who thought Culinary Art School 2 was one of the more underrated albums of the year, so the opinions expressed above may not represent the majority view

I finished the rest of Fucked Up on a run after work and moved on to Sandro Perri. As was the case with most of the list to this point, I had no real expectations going in, so it was a pleasant surprise to a hear a more straight forward guitar player/singer songwriter sound. It dragged on a little and there was a ten minute track where he’s singing about a wolfman or something, at which point I began to question the quality of an end-of-the-year album list that contains an album with a ten minute song about a wolfman. The album was pretty weird, but not terrible. I moved onto Iceage during my drive home and it was Kate Bush-level off putting, just in goth/punk rock form. Pitchfork’s capsule calls it "near perfect" while at the same time only dedicating one sentence to its description of the music itself… thanks for keeping me in the loop on the latest teen goth rock buzz band, but this shit was broke as a joke. Deleted.

Now, it could be that my plebian mind just can’t wrap itself around the nuanced genius of some of these albums, but with twenty down, minus the ones I’d already listened to this year (Cults, Toro y Moi, Araabmuzik, and Lykke Li) it’s starting to look like I wasn’t missing out on much during my indie rock hibernation, but I press on...