Pitchfork Readers (As A Whole) Like The Music You Probably Expect They Do

Dan Gibson | December 12, 2008 1:30 am

Pitchfork’s big pile of lists continues to grow with today’s unveiling of how its readers poll turned out. While there was some grumbling about the site limiting the number of options for each category (largely to Pitchforky type acts and albums, understandably), in the end, things likely would have come out the same way. The biggish indie-type albums in a year without a agreed-upon album of the year—TV On The Radio, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, Bon Iver, Deerhunter—rose to the top. I imagine the lists assembled by the staff will be a little more surprising in their diversity, but all in all, the results of this poll may top the 2008 list of Year-End Lists Least Likely To Expose You To Anything You Haven’t Already Heard Or Chosen To Ignore.

THE GOOD: Hmmm, each of the 150 albums chosen by the ‘fork received at least one first-place vote. Yay for diversity? THE BAD: Nine Inch Nails’ The Slip at No. 18 is hardly a crisis of any sort, or even anything to get worked up over, but it may very well be evidence that Trent’s fanbase engaged in a bit of Terry Steinbach-level ballot stuffing. THE WHAAA? In the current overheated age, is the idea of an “underrated” album even possible? I feel like I heard plenty hyping nearly all the albums that made that list’s top ten, especially the efforts put forth by Wolf Parade and Of Montreal. I guess there might be a woefully under-promoted and examined disc out there, but it’s definitely not going to be one on a list decided by the power of democracy.

Album of the Year 1. TV on the Radio, Dear Science 2. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes / Sun Giant EP 3. Vampire Weekend 4. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago 5. Deerhunter, Microcastle / Weird Era Cont. 6. Portishead, Third 7. MGMT, Oracular Spectacular 8. Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours 9. M83, Saturdays=Youth 10. No Age, Nouns 11. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals 12. Sigur Rós, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust 13. The Walkmen, You & Me 14. Dodos, Visiter 15. Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer 16. WHY?, Alopecia 17. The Hold Steady, Stay Positive 18. Nine Inch Nails, The Slip 19. Of Montreal, Skeletal Lamping 20. Okkervil River, The Stand Ins 21. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III 22. Beach House, Devotion 23. Crystal Castles 24. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! 25. Beck, Modern Guilt

Most Overrated Album 1. Vampire Weekend 2. Kanye West, 808s and Heartbreak 3. Beck, Modern Guilt 4. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III 5. MGMT, Oracular Spectacular 6. TV on the Radio, Dear Science 7. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes / Sun Giant EP 8. The Hold Steady, Stay Positive 9. No Age, Nouns 10. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals

Most Underrated Album 1. Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer 2. Of Montreal, Skeletal Lamping 3. Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles 4. Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War 5. Blitzen Trapper, Furr 6. Frightened Rabbit, Midnight Organ Fight 7. Black Mountain, In the Future 8. Mogwai, The Hawk Is Howling 9. Shearwater, Rook 10. The Magnetic Fields, Distortion

2008 Pitchfork Readers Poll [Pitchfork]

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