Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Let the debate begin... I personally can't take issue with what's actually on the list (except the somewhat shocking absence of Volcano Choir's Unmap), but the rankings are a bit suspect - and that's putting it nicely. Phoenix's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, The Very Best's Warm Heart of Africa, and Real Estate's self-titled album should have all probably been higher; Memory Tapes Seek Magic, Atlas Sound's Logos, and especially Passion Pit's Manners were far too low (#34?!?!). But how about Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest, which was ranked at #6? Only months ago, it was rated as the 42nd best album of the decade by Pitchfork, well ahead of some classics like The Rapture's Echoes (#57), Sufjan Steven's Michigan (#70), The Microphone's The Glow Pt. 2 (#73), The Wren's The Meadowlands (#88), Jay-Z's The Black Album, (#90), Spoon's Girls Can Tell (#92), The National's Boxer (#110), and The Notwist's Neon Golden (#131). It happens to be ranked ahead of the Dirty Projector's Bitte Orca (#56 on the decade list) as well, which is somehow ranked 4 spots ahead of it at #2 on the 2009 list. I know Pitchfork has some kind of complex voting system amongst its entire staff, and that probably accounts for anomalies like this from time to time, but that still just seems a bit ridiculous to me. Also, the top 5 contains 3 albums that are, in my opinion, probably the 3 most overhyped albums of the year: The Flaming Lips Embryonic (#4), the aforementioned Bitte Orca, and Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion (#1). I actually think Merriweather is a great record, and will be ranking it very highly myself, but I'm definitely not putting it on the same pedestal so many others have this year.
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