Robert Christgau: Web Maillist Pazz & Jop 2003: David Penner

This list is an echo or reverberation of the published opinions of others. I blame emusic for their startlingly open policy of allowing subscribers to download everything released on Fantasy Jazz (plus Atavistic and dozens of others) for my lack of attention to the music of this current year. It takes me a long time, too long by far to be a credible critical listener, to believe that I love a record instead of liking it. As such my list should also be read as a prediction. I very much like these records and I am fairly certain that Buck 65 is the best album I have heard and reheard from this year. I had some doubts about putting it on the list because of a vague suspicion that it was overly wordy and that it did not have a great groove but it rocks and rolls as well as anything I heard this year (second place goes to this one time I listened to Akrobatik with headphones when I was very sleepy and had other things I should have been doing).

I recognized this past year that I was getting old and that the music to which I was most drawn appeared to reflect a significant distance from what was hip and happening. Every week day I would check what the boys (and I am fairly sure they are mostly boys) at Pitchfork were recommending (today's pick: The Dirty Projectors: Glad Fact. This is the sort of thing I might normally miss.). The boys at Pitchfork have a tendency to conflate hyperbole with enthusiasm and radical self-involvement with art. Anyone who chooses The Rapture as their record of the year is not likely to dare me into spending a lot of money on off-chances. Of course, probably like you, I kept up with Christgau who has proven himself to be reliable at least in what he recommends. His only serious fault stems from my vague belief that he misses a lot of stuff that is wonderful and my confirmed belief that he does not write enough about jazz. And finally there is Tom Hull, his intoxicating lists and the column at Static -- are probably my favorite source of listening advice this year. I have him to thank for a lot of jazz. I have become disheartened at how little rock music I listen to or like. And like a lot of older people I blame the music. Only a year ago I was mildly supporting The Strokes, The Vines and The White Stripes and I felt the future was bright. This year I was mostly bored by The Shins, The Unicorns, and you name it. The new Strokes came and went and I was largely unmoved and I am so untouched by Elephant that I have come to think I was suckered by White Blood Cells. I do not expect that I will still be thinking about The Libertines, Rancid or Kaito five years from now. I am seriously spooked when I find records that I do enjoy on the featured wall at Indigo Books (the Canadian approximation of Barnes and Noble).

So, I decided to actively see if I was right in my gravitational pulls or whether they were the result of my own laziness. The great friend of laziness, I have found, is loyalty. I am drawn primarily to the recordings of people whose previous recordings I have adored. I do this in the face of an awareness that nobody makes great records every time out. But still I get more excited for a new Luna side project or a Lucinda Williams (and I have a hundreds of examples) than I do for a band I have not yet heard of. I tend to read the emails from friends before those of strangers. I also recognize that I do this because it is likely that the band that I have not heard of will require some initial effort: that it will be a first chapter instead of the tenth. My attitude perplexes me because it is this sort of effort that draws me to listening. This year I listened to a lot of things that I never would have normally heard and I took the advice of friends from very different backgrounds. And while I include the Libertines' record the list of this year's favorites does not seem to break with my own unrecognized and inarticulated traditions. It still looks like it was drafted by someone in their mid to late 30s. I am who I have become, what I like to listen to, it seems, is going to stick. This is not something I celebrate; I don't like it at all. And while I find some appeasement in that I have not cheated and embraced that which I am not quite sure I can stand -- there is something that I believed was me that sought rather than rested and to think that I was lying to myself about that is disheartening.

That said it also seems to me that the most provocative albums on my list are the ones most likely to be embraced by public radio. I don?t know if it is the latest thing or not but the older folks seem overwhelmed by a sense not of personal failure or doubt but of themselves as sinners. It registers with me that Johnny Cash lets us know that he is a deep believer in the judgment of the divine and that, in regard to it, he is in serious trouble. In the words of the Blue Sky Boys "Down on the Banks of the Ohio" it appears he was not prepared to die. Amy Rigby shares the same fear and trembling but is still trying to bluff her way through with cynicism and self-deprecation. But she is truthful enough to acknowledge that her strategies are not very effective. Lucinda Williams' relationship to her earlier order to "get right with God" is one of darker considerations -- she loves and hates playing in that mixture of despair and hope. She did not expect that God would want to prove his manhood constantly especially after the love she thought they had made.

That's all I got for right now -- believe me these records are much more interesting than what I have to say about them.

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