If Only Our Other Electorates Were This Reliable

I had been waiting for the Voice‘s annual Pazz&Jop poll to come out so I could complain about the fact that in a year when I’m having trouble winnowing down to just a top 20 a sonically undistinguished singer-songwriter album with atrocious lyrics had won it. But funny thing — not only did the inexplicable (or, perhaps, all-too-explicable) Pitchfork winner drop all the way to a distant ninth, I love 4 of top 5 and like the other. (And Watch the Throne left me a little cold only because these vastly-more-accomplished-than-Justin-Vernon artists have each made several solo albums I’d rather hear.) I must be getting less contrarian in my old age.