Year-End Analysis: Alt-Weekly Chain Perfects The Art Of The Narrowcast

That map to your right is an illustration of the reach enjoyed by mega-weekly chain New Times Village Voice Media; this week, the network’s music editors have been releasing their end-of-year package across the nation. (So far, we’ve seen pieces of it pop up in Cleveland, Kansas City, Miami, Dallas, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Broward-Palm Beach.) Chunked up by genre before being dispersed across the country, the pieces, taken as a whole, don’t reflect a critical stance as they do a singular sentiment: There was a lot of music that came out this year. Who knew, right?

THE GOOD: The real metal vs. hipster metal fight between the list of “hardest, heaviest metal albums” and the list of “heavy rockers that will also make you see stars of the hallucinogenic variety” is, at the very least, sort of entertaining. Time for a throwdown at the bro-down! THE BAD: Breaking the lists down by genre probably seemed like a good idea when these pieces were assigned, but the end result is a slew of neutered recaps that read more like newsy rundowns than critical analyses. It’s hard not to wonder what records each writer would have written up had stylistic restrictions not been placed upon their choices–perhaps it would have given the pieces a bit of personality. And hey, maybe this writer wouldn’t have felt the need to laud the pile of sub-Paula Abdul dreck that Gwen Stefani squeezed out a few weeks ago. THE WHAAAA? “Ultimately, as any Pitchdork blogger or college radio DJ worth his salt could tell you, indie rock is a shape-shifting term that encompasses any and/or all of those things. And many of my favorite releases this year offer a pretty good reflection of that sentiment.” Seems like a bit of a long-winded way to say “Hey, I liked what I liked, and yes, that includes She Wants Revenge,” no?

Music [New Times Broward-Palm Beach]