In case you missed it, this year's edition of the Village Voice's "Pazz and Jop" poll is online. It's an annual roundup of a bunch of music critic's top-ten lists for the preceding year. For this big-deal anniversary edition, 577 critics responded. Jonathan Cunningham (music editor of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times) and I (music editor of the Miami New Times) were among them.
The top ten, at least in the albums, is pretty predictable if you read too many music magazines: Spoon, M.I.A., the National, Amy Winehouse, blah blah blah blah. Well, great. We can all agree these albums were great. So for my own ballot, I kinda went another way; part of this was mental fatigue from hearing so much this year about so-called "indie rock." Instead of trying to intellectually parse which discs were the "best," I just picked ones I had played and just enjoyed a lot for whatever reason, and probably got lost in the critical shuffle (with a couple of exceptions). In one or two cases, looks like I was the only one doing so for some of my picks, haha. (I still think Felix da Housecat deserved a lot more love!!). (BTW, the single listed on my ballot as by "the Veils" is by FOALS!!!!!! I have no idea who "the Veils" are, if they indeed exist.)
J.C. can weigh in on his own picks later, but looks like he used a similar M.O.
Meanwhile, I think the web version's functionality is pretty cool. Besides looking at individual critics' ballots, you can look at the top lists, and click individual album/track names to see who voted for them. Again, if you read too many music magazines/web sites this is worth a look. -- Arielle Castillo
