Spazzing over Pazz and Jop: Can PJ Harvey shake Bon Iver?
The year-end listicles are wrapped, the ballots are counted, and the Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll results are due this week. Conventional wisdom holds that Bon Iver’s self-titled album is the frontrunner, if not the inevitable winner. From its Net-shaking release the week of my 28th birthday, a P&J victory seemed its birthright, in a year where consensus picks were rare and/or immediately debunked. But as the best-of-2011 features emerged throughout December, so did a clear challenger, one who could upset Bon Iver: PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake. Of course, most of those lists deadlined prior to Bon Iver’s surprise quadruple Grammy nominations: a windfall just as likely, in the age of the Netcrit, to lose P&J votes as to gain them. If the year-in-review thinkpieces are any indication, the overdue Bon Iver backlash is in full swing: the Grammy hosannas amplified his detractors’ ire.
And so the 2011 Pazz and Jop race boils down to a middling album from a legendary performer, and a dreadful album from a middling performer. Thus, as has often been the case lately, the winner will be an undeserving one. Let England Shake is a promising concept that gets bogged down in too much schoolmarmish peacemongering. Like some of the folkies she emulates, Harvey often sacrifices songcraft for message. Of course, as a proponent of songcraft, I have nothing but contempt for Bon Iver. It is a lifeless, insipid album: the sound of a fourth-rate Thom Yorke impersonator auditioning for the Benedictine Monks, what fogeys like me used to dismiss as New Age music back in the 90’s. I have not been a fan of the recent non-Kanye P&J victors, but all of them had some redeeming value (cultural insight, sonic boldness) than Bon Iver lacks. In fact, the whole album is exactly that: a lack.
PJ Harvey could benefit from the Year-of-the-Woman momentum that will surely inform the accompanying P&J essays; the last time a female-fronted album topped P&J was 1998. Regardless of Harvey’s finish (and I still think she’ll finish second), at least 60% of the P&J top 5 will be female, including the should-be winner who will settle for at-best third place: tUnE-yArDs’ W H O K I L L, a remarkable avant-garde pop (though not avant-pop) record full of disjointed, shapeshifting songs. The confused sounds complement Merill Garbus’ confused take on class, race, and womanhood in a globalized and necessarily relativist society. For all her confusion, her hooks, her chants, her voice are authoritative: she eschews the idealism that consumes Harvey and confronts the world from which Bon Iver retreats altogether.
The only possible threat to Garbus’ number-three ranking is the music-buying public’s consensus pick, the album that single-handedly and temporarily saved the music-industry: Adele’s 21. Millions of people bought and adore 21; it’s the kind of broad appeal hit that many thought extinct. That said, it’s kind of boring. For its alleged authenticity, 21 is far too perfect: nary a missung or misplayed note, its every passionate incantation measured within a centimeter of its life — a triumph of sterile tastefulness. Only album closer “Someone Like You” is gripping enough for break-up ballad immortality. Like her fellow Grammy darling Bruno Mars, Adele is a tremendous talent and likable performer, but her records play far too safe: not enough adventure, not enough energy, not enough personality.
The answer to Pazz and Jop’s pesky hip-hop question will, by my fallible estimate, round out the top five. Too often, P&J voters rally around a single consensus, and often tokenistic, hip-hop pick, usually a big hit that even the rockist voters can embrace. This tide is changing, of course: as more Netcrits who grew up on hip-hop enter the P&J fold, the breadth of hip-hop finishers will expand. In 2010, the hip-hop picks looked a bit long in the tooth: Kanye West, Big Boi, and the Roots all had decade-long careers. But 2011 opened a new hip-hop horizon, as critics hailed a bunch of brave new rappers, many of whom seem to have masterpieces in them, none of whom recorded one this year. To draw simplistic parallels, these newbies are still in their Bleach or Stink or Greetings from Asbury Park phase. As such, Kendrick Lamar and Danny Brown will not overthrow the old hip-hop guard: Jay-Z and Kanye’s dramatically comical collaboration will take P&J’s hip-hop crown, and Young Money rapper Drake, a Kanye disciple whose Take Care owes as many debts to R&B and indie-rock as it does hip-hop, will likely finish in the top ten. And for extra perspective, the third highest-ranked hip-hop album will feature the guy from Digable Planets (and will probably land in eleventh place).
Here’s my guess at the 2011 Pazz and Jop poll’s Top Ten Albums:
1. Bon Iver, Bon Iver
2. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake
3. tUnE-yArDs, W H O K I L L
4. Adele, 21
5. Jay-Z & Kanye West, Watch the Throne
6. The Weeknd, House of Balloons
7. Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues
8. St. Vincent, Strange Mercy
9. Drake, Take Care
10. Fucked Up, David Comes to Life
Singles are tougher to predict than albums, simply because there’s a lot fucking more of them. But it seems obvious that “Rolling in the Deep” will take the Singles crown, and that some Village Voice staffer will argue that the song is a metaphor for the global economic collapse. “We could have had it all,” you see. Anyway, here’s a far less confident or reasoned prediction for this year’s top ten singles:
1. Adele, “Rolling in the Deep”
2. Nicki Minaj, “Super Bass”
3. Jay-Z & Kanye West, “Otis”
4. Bon Iver, “Holocene”
5. Beyonce, “Countdown”
6. EMA, “California”
7. Girls, “Vomit”
8. Adele, “Someone Like You”
9. M83, “Midnight City”
10. James Blake, “The Wilhelm Scream”
Check back here later this week for full P&J coverage, or check villagevoice.com/pazznjop to see how poorly these predictions fared.
