Music Opinion Blog

So The Guardian’s end-of-year album list has zero overlap with mine. I recognise that despite their positive reviews of both the album and the Albert Hall gig, Steve Wilson’s “The Raven That Refused To Sing” was never going to be Guardian enough to feature, but I did wonder if Goldfrapp’s “Tales of Us” or perhaps even Black Sabbath’s “13″ would make the cut. But they didn’t. For those who might be interested, their album of the year was Kayne West’s “Yeezus”. I don’t know enough about hip-hop to be able to say whether it’s good, bad or indifferent, but they closed the comments after about 12 hours in which 700-odd people were decidedly unimpressed with their choice.

Sadly The Guardian’s list is yet again a rock-free zone. The top end of the list seems to be made up almost entirely of hip-hop and mumbling indie, as if they were the only genres that exist. Those records might well be the best hip-hop and mumbling indie records released this year, but anything properly resembling rock is conspicuous by its absence. As is anything strongly based around melody; where, for example was Goldfrapp’s beautiful “Tales of Us”

No, I’m not expecting the whole list to be filled with rock and metal releases, but there’s not even a token presence there. It comes over as so NME it’s quite embarassing; Paramore are the closest to “rock” that it comes, and they come over to me as rock music watered-down for people who don’t really like rock music, mainly marketed to children.

I’ve listed to a few of the YouTube videos or sound clips attached to their features whenever the description made it sound as if it might be worth a listen. But I haven’t heard anything at all that makes me want to listen further to any of them. A lot of it comes over to me as far too scratchy and tuneless to hold my attention. It may well be deeply symbolic of man’s struggle against his social-political environment, but lacks any compositional depth or instrumental flair.

Indeed, Kitty Empire writing about White Denin gave the game away with the line “Bands this proficient can easily end up making pointlessly masturbatory virtuoso-rock“. I found White Denin boring, a band playing well below their abilities is if they were trying too hard to appeal to people like Kitty Empire.

Yes, there are plenty of people out there who like that sort of thing; but it leaves me feeling that a publication that’s not supposed to be a narrow genre-specific one like Kerrang it ought to be covering a far broader spectrum of music that it does, and cover the sorts of music that appeals to a broader range of age groups that just spotty yoof alone.

One wag made a comment suggesting that the list was by thirtysomethings writing about music made for twentysomethings then being sneered at by fortysomethings in the comment threads. But it does make the point that there isn’t nearly enough music in there for grown-ups. And there isn’t nearly enough rock.