Best Lists of Best Jazz Albums of 2012 of 2012

(6) LA Times
Love the subterfuge in having eleven entries on the list and two turning out to be ads, including one from Bon Jovi plugging MasterCard. I guess we should be happy that an outlet like the LA Times bothers, even online and even in such glib fashion, to take note of new jazz releases. And I suspect that's all they're going for.

(5) Philadelphia citypaper
There are more recognizable names and more of them on this list than any others I've seen, and not that I've heard any of these records or anything, but isn't that exactly what you'd expect from something called "citypaper?"

(4) Larry Reni Thomas for JazzCorner
Gotta love it when all you've got for a list is...a list. No hipstering or qualification, just the facts, ma'am. Of course, it's always nice to be able to listen to the work in question, but this one scores points anyway for its unusually direct and unfettered presentation. Tell 'em what you're gonna do, do it, tell 'em what ya did. And done.

(3) NextBop Best Jazz Albums
25-11
10-1
If NextBop really is a movement, I'm not part of it, but I have to say, it's awfully valuable to have a site like this where you can hear more than just 30 second snippets of the latest stuff, and which casts, in this case at least, an admirably wide net. If a slight downgrade is in order, it is on account of the massive size of their list, which if it got much bigger would actually defeat the point of making one in the first place. Even so, I look forward to checking out as much of this music as I can and am grateful for someone else having taken the time to assemble it in one place. Really.

(2) NPR A Blog Supreme
Hard to hate on these cats, since it seems they're being reblogged by the hour: three of the top dozen lists I found Googling "Top Ten Jazz Albums 2012" were actually just this one in disguise. To their credit, though, the layout is nice, the commentary a bit more than cursory, and you can listen. Could be a lot worse.

(1) Nextbop Best Non-Jazz Albums
25-11
10-1
I can think of at least three levels of irony here, which is more than enough to earn this one the crown. Til next year listmakers.

Perfunctory Year-End Metafiltering

Befitting the time of year we presently find ourselves mired in, NPR's A Blog Supreme has come out with its Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2012. Notwithstanding my pessimism about the very tenability of such lists, which I maintain, I nonetheless feel compelled to peek through my fingers as I cover my face with my hands. I listened to most of the music and wasn't really horrified by any of it which I heard, definitely a win. (The Don Cherry cover was mildly horrifying aesthetically, but not, I suppose, wholly inconsistent with his own thinking.) If you're looking for an endorsement, I'm afraid that's as close as I can get: professional obligation and morbid curiosity

Why such morbidity, the cultural relativists in the room demand to know? Going back to school has cut somewhat into my internet trolling time, but the time I have been able to spend over the last year or so has more often than not turned up artifacts which I do find truly horrifying, so much so in some cases that it is not their categorization as jazz or the clear outpacing of talent by promotion but, in fact, their mere existence which I find most troubling. One reason among many, I suppose, that it would be easier to delve deeper into the work that already exists than to actively seek out new things; a recent conversation here at school reminds me, though, that there are still people in the world (musicians, in fact) who claim to have exhausted all the music they are aware of, new or old, and need to find more just to have something to listen to. That seems impossible to me, but perhaps that's because I've done more canvassing than studying to this point in my life, and thus the realm of canvassed music comes to seem inexhaustible even as I truly know very little about it. There's no excuse, really, for not knowing something about what's going on now, and also, I think, grave consequences of a few different varieties for becoming truly out of touch with the Zeitgeist, even if you consider yourself a dissident; but since there's just so much stuff, filters become necessary evils in the equation, and because I so deeply distrust herd mentality (we call it other, cheerier things now, like "social media"), I try to source from a wide variety of them, and blogging, say what you want, is often helpful in this regard. I promise my participation at least one month out of the year.