“See, I have this hunch. I reckon that if you were to draw up a top 2,000 albums of every pop decade and compare them, the noughties would win: it would beat the 1990s decisively, the 1980s handsomely, and it would thrash the 1970s and 1960s. But I also reckon that if you were to compare the top 200 albums, it’d be the other way around: the 60s would narrowly beat the 70s, the 70s would slightly less narrowly beat the 80s, the 80s would decisively beat the 90s, and the 90s would leave the noughties trailing in the dust. Yeah, it’s just a hunch – but it has the ring of truth. Because I think that the higher reaches of a chart of this kind demand something more than mere musical excellence: there has to be an X factor, the hard-to-define quality that you could call “importance” or ‘greatness’.”

He uses Pitchfork’s early-Noughties (I feel weird and British using that word) slant to its Best of the ’00s list (Person Pitch being the only post-2005 inclusion) as the first bit of evidence.  Believe me, Pitchfork editors and staffers had an inkling that something like this would happen.

The most interesting part of this article is its conclusion–which, thankfully (and perhaps obviously, given its author) avoids the “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” argument.  Reynolds’ contention is that, as the numbers of (often good) releases goes up, the critics themselves are spread thinner, and consensus inevitably declines, especially in comparison to earlier decades.  I actually had a bit somewhat similar to this in my own 00’s accompanying essay–a similar conclusion, but having more to do with the role of technologies and the incursion of non-critic-critics into this situation–but cut it, for various reasons.

Mark: hey Eric
Me: hey Mark
Me: what’s up
Mark: are you into metal?
Mark: haha
Me: nah not really
Me: i like metal when it’s hybridized with other things
Mark: yeah, me too
Me: i really don’t know anything about metal, post like Slayer, early Metallica, etc.
Mark: something just popped into my head, I was thinking about the soundtrack to Gummo, and it seemed very novel at the time that a bunch of black metal and grindcore and what have you was on an indie movie soundtrack in 1998
Me: oh wow yeah, Gummo
Me: man, i’d forgotten about that film
Mark: I mean, look at this track list
Me: wow, yeah
Mark: for an indie film in 1998, that was super fresh, and I was wondering if that kicked off anything in terms of critics coming around
Me: hmmmm yeah
Me: on a young Domino, no less!
Mark: yeah
Me: i could definitely see that. i mean, film soundtracks seem to often be used as a way to smuggle subterranean music into a wider consciousness
Me: but jeez, like i’ve not heard of any of these bands
Me: except Destroy All Monsters
Me: but they’re old, i think
Me: oh shit, yeah, Niagara and what not. Ron Asheton
Me: Mark, I know you’re extremely aged
Me: were you at any point in the band Destroy All Monsters
Mark: yeah, i went to middle school with the Ashton brothers
Me: ha
Me: but your point, i think, holds generally
Me: re: soundtracks
Me: i think like any sort of comp, it allows dilettantes to dip their toes in
Mark: I’ve yet to read a convincing article about why the critical focus on metal in the last 5 years
Me: hmmmm
Me: hasn’t metal seen the same sort of niche resurgence as a lot of other forms of music?
Me: now that eclecticism is the way that people engage with music as the default
Me: like, there’s more music period, and there are beats to cover
Me: “beats” in the journalistic sense, y’know
Me: but like
Me: i think that there’s always been residual metal dudes writing about music, and there’s an audience for that
Me: like, all those metal rags in the 80s that were mixing coverage of Slayer with like, Poison
Mark: yeah, it’s true – always been a genre that people like to pick up magazines about
Me: but now, i think the coverage has gotten a lot more eclectic, as the music’s gotten a lot more eclectic
Me: and i’m saying this as someone who hasn’t ever listened to an entire Sunn O))))) song
Me: i think the field has widely expanded in general
Mark: so there are more entry points
Mark: if you like drone, there’s a way in, or ambient stuff, even
Me: yeah, like i think there’s always been dudes making weird variants on metal, but now they have the capacity to get a public
Me: a small public, but a devoted one, for sure
Me: this is a concept i generally use to discuss a lot of stuff with music post-Napster
Me: i still think it’s ridiculous for people to assume that, like, pitchfork’s gonna be on top of every doom band that comes out of Denmark, though
Me: without considering that Pitchfork’s serving an audience that’d much rather read about Andrew Bird
Me: i think a lot of things like this are explainable by looking at production, promotion and distribution
Me: and how artists can rise up through these things with a few carefully-timed releases, strategic associations
Me: and then, genres come into play
Me: like, do you know the concept of “the narcissism of minor differences”
Mark: yeah, I am familiar w/ that concept
Me: smarter people have used it, quite well, i think, to describe how genres form. they’re talking more about the actual people involved, but it’s an interesting application of the thing, regardless
Me: basically that genres coalesce when something, for whatever reason, becomes popular, essentially turning a “public” into a “market”
Me: and then other bands who are doing the same thing with minor differences get ass’d with a “scene” or a “genre”
Me: i think that’s sort of how the process works
Me: and like with metal
Me: how it’s fragmented into all these niches
Me: i think that a) that’s a function of so many options, post-Web and whatever
Me: and b) that there’s arisen a new crop of dudes whose job is to make sense of it
Me: but i think it’s important that it’s metal, though
Me: inasmuch as we don’t see huge waves of like Rhys Chatham disciples getting blog love
Me: because there’s always been a devoted base for metal and its variants
Mark: yeah, one other possible thing with metal is that, while it’s always remained popular among a blue collar base lower on the socioeconomic scale, in the last few years, too, there’s been a shift among the educated hipster elite types where certain things from this other world have become fashionable
Mark: ironic mullets, and next thing you know you are listeing to metal
Me: ah, yes
Me: we can see that with indie rock, too, right?
Me: like its roots with the British “working class,” at least initially post-punk
Me: and now, we’ve got that “Dark is the Night” compilation. Which is good, but which represents a different form of homogenization, gentrification, etc.
Me: i think the main audience for this sort of fringe music has definitely shaken out to include a large number of upper-middle class
Me: with colleges that have free Web access
Me: and creative-class jobs that let them sit at a desk all day and do nothing
Me: well, “used to,” WHAT WITH THE ECONOMY AND ALL
Mark: yeah ]]> http://www.marathonpacks.com/2009/01/metal-and-its-discontents/feed/ 0