Serious Question - Is 2013 So Far The Worst Year For Album's In Over A Decade?
Because that's how I'm feeling it now.
But not trying to flame, rather trying to spearhead an interesting discussion on where the music world is right now, the impact of the internet and mega-festivals, etc.
First, a little definition of me and my listening patterns - I'm an old timer (47) with a serious jones for staying up with what's current. The classic "Critics" listener, I neither listen to radio or burrow deep to discover up-and-coming bands no one else is talking about, rather, I track reviews on critical aggregators like metacritic, Album of The Year.org and acclaimedmusic.net and try to pick up the year's consensus top 100-150 albums. At the end of each year, I put together a massive mix collection for friends and coworkers highlighting what I've enjoyed the most, and I've been doing this since I was about 22 (1988). Granted it used to be mixtapes for just a few and Rolling Stone, Newspaper, and Spin best of lists rather than internet sites...but the overall point is like many on this board, I'm seriously into popular music, and gravitate towards what many others find to be the best.
Given that perspective, I have to say this year, from an album perspective, has bored me like few others...So far, maybe only 10-15 songs I really care for, and only 2 albums I'm actively promoting...Nick Cave's Push The Sky Away and Parquet Courts last (which might not even count, as it's a 2013 re-release). There's others I like moments of...Daft Punk, Autre Ne Veut, The Haxan Cloak, Foals, Jake Bugg, Mikal Cronin, Vampire Weekend, Deerhunter, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Phosphorescent, Savages, Kurt Vile, The National, Rhye, The Knife, Ghostface Killah...but even here, most of these are lesser efforts from bands that have been stronger before, or decent efforts in genre's that have been beaten to death and already done better the last few years.
Not that the last two years were that much stronger, but at least the last two years had some genuine front-to-back classics to offer that I firmly believe we'll be talking about twenty years hence...Let England Shake in 2011, Swans The Seer in 2012 (I'm not fully sold on Channel Orange yet).
And then, so many titles this year, celebrated titles a lot on here like that I just can't stand - Youth Lagoon, Disclosure (someone please tell me what this album offers that hasn't been done five times better by other acts over the last half decade), "Boreds" of Canada, QOTSA's sleep inducing ...Like Clockwork, MBV disappointing new release, James Blake, Kanye's comically bad Yeezus.
So obviously, for me, I feel like I've hit some kind of saturation point...where just decent/good/kinda interesting suddenly doesn't cut it anymore, and in both music and frankly, the last two year's Coachella, I feel like that's all we are getting anymore.
So my questions to you fellow board members are the following.
1. Are we reaching an age of oversaturation, where too much of a good thing, too many solid bands, making too many solid but not great albums, playing too many mega-festivals, is threatening to dull our appreciation of the new.
2. Are the technological market forces that have returned us to the "era of the single" killed the "album" as the central element in rock music, or are we just in a lull.
3. Was classic rock maybe more "classic" than younger listeners want to believe. Case in point, I go back and listen to one of my past music collection mixes each week, and the thing that's really striking me about so many of them from the Aughts is how poorly many of the songs, even some from just a few years ago, are holding up, how "disposable" many of them feel, while old sixties classics I've burned through multiple copies of - VU and Nico, Are You Experienced, Astral Weeks, Exile On Main Street, Rubber Soul, Who's Next, Something Else By The Kinks, London Calling - sound as vibrant today as when I first heard them.
4. Or is it we've entered an era where performance chops, technological production savvy, and a sense of history outweigh the one skill outlasts all the others - genuine songwriting skill - this has been my biggest gripe the last two years of Coachella - dozens of dozens of bands with great energy and already finely honed performance chops, mostly in the service of such average material - didn't feel this so much 08-11.
5. Is it time for music to start looking forward again? - As one LA Times critic put it so well, in the years from the mid-50s to the late 90s - rock and it's offspring had a constant forward momentum - there were retro offerings and back to basics movements to be sure - but primarily, the direction and innovation was always forward leaning - but that momentum stopped cold in the Aughts - with that decade's mantra instead becoming one of synthesis, the emphasis on finding new recombinatory possibilities in the styles of the past. Have we reached a point where it's time for our artists to start looking forward again, rather than to the past for inspiration...I don't know, like I said, I hate the new James Blake, and that's in some ways as forward looking a release as 2013 has produced.
6. Or are we just experiencing a cyclical lull - For me 2013 is shaping up as an all-time weak album year, rating right there with 73-74 and some of the early CD years of the mid-late 80s, that produced almost nothing of genuine note on the long playing spectrum? Are better days just around the corner, or has every nook and cranny possible in the rock/Hip-Hop spectrum been exploited, so today's young artists really have almost no place to go other than imitating their forebears unless they are willing to go majorly inaccessible...I've always felt that Radiohead was really just a latter incarnation of the Beatles, and incredibly dextrous band looking to constantly change and push boundaries, only when it came into existence, the boundaries were much farther out there.
The answer to all of this is I don't know...But I'd love to hear thoughts on these points from others on this board, especially older posters who aren't just now growing into their music loving years, but have been at it a good long while like I have.
Thanks for indulging me on my long winded rant.
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Originally Posted by canexplain
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