After reading my critique of Pitchfork’s P2K: The Decade in Music list in City Paper's Music in Review issue, a friend commented that “sometimes I don't know what's more cliché: reading Pitchfork or complaining about Pitchfork.” Reductionist arguments like that are easy swipes, but they speak to the incessant griping, legitimate or not, to which Pitchfork’s every move is constantly subjected. If you feel that nitpicking Pitchfork’s interminable lists is just as futile as creating them, reading after the jump might not be such a hot idea.

In a year that saw the shuttering of numerous print publications, one of the Web’s biggest woes was Maura Johnson’s departure from Idolator, the once-mighty music blog that, in her absence, has gone straight to US Weekly-like hell. The site, once balancing thoughtful coverage of all things indie with equally thoughtful American Idol rundowns, has given into its weaker impulses and become a breathy, exhalation of celeb news, with lolcat critiques of Lady Gaga’s outfits and Chris Brown’s Twitter trends. I’ve decided to pay humble tribute to Johnson by examining Pitchfork’s Top 50 Albums of 2009 using her old rundown format—the Good, the Bad, and the Whaaa?—a feature that now seems like a distant memory buried beneath countless pages dedicated to Rihanna’s latest haircut.

The Good: In a year when most lists culled from familiar major players, Pitchfork allows for some genuine surprises, including deserving nods to worthwhile mainstays like Jim O’Rourke and Dinosaur Jr. and understated favorites like Bill Callahan and Fuck Buttons while not throwing this year’s worthy newcomers under the bus (Japandroids, Neon Indian, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart). It thankfully also acknowledged that Cymbals Eat Guitars, just barely coming in at No. 43, needed some time to ripen.

The Bad: Outside of the tensionless reveal of its No. 1 pick (hey, did you know Animal Collective put out an album this year?), this year’s ranking was more consistent with the site’s obvious preferences than in the past. Depending upon your perspective. that's either comforting or maddening. Out of the 40-plus Best New Music designations given, only six of these albums failed to chart (YACHT, Isis, Volcano Choir, Camera Obscura, Wavves, and Sunset Rubdown). In other news, Future of the Left received a lowly honorable mention that reinforced, even in the wake of the collective ball-dropping of its former outfit McLusky, that the band is destined for relegation to the indie-rock fringes. The list also continues the trend of semiapologizing with the site's love for Passion Pit (“Passion Pit's debut album can seem to come on like a big, friendly dog slobbering you with kisses: one part "Eww, too much!" and two parts "Aww, I can't resist!"), as though the band were a socially awkward sibling it feels compelled to invite to parties. And considering Phoenix’s ubiquitous Pitchfork presence, its squeaking into the Top 10 at No. 8 rings false.

The Whaaa?: Pitchfork’s Top 10 is rarely surprising, but this year’s had a few unexpected notes. Bat for Lashes turned out to be a sleeper favorite while the biggest surprise came with the unabashed appreciation for the xx, who took the No.3 spot. Who knew the band’s song(s) were so beloved? I smell a pug-induced slice of snark when its follow-up album tanks.

And if this list does nothing else, let it be a lesson to all lo-fi wunderkinds who are thinking of taking some drugs and breaking down at a big European festival—if you embarrass the Web site’s good name, your name will quickly turn to mud.

On Sunday, the New York Times ran an article about Jim O'Rourke, an underground overachiever who, in addition to recording his own solo music, has played in Sonic Youth and Gastr Del Sol, and worked in various other capacities with Wilco, Joanna Newsom, and Superchunk.

His latest project is the new solo album The Visitor, a recording that, at times, features as many as 200 tracks of instruments.

As one might imagine, an album such as this would require quite an intricate mix, which is perhaps why The Visitor will only be available on CD and vinyl—no digital download.

Here's part of the Ben Ratliff article from NYT:

He’s taking a stand against the sound quality of MP3s; he’s also taking a stand in favor of artists being able to control the medium and reception of their work.

“You can no longer use context as part of your work,” he said, glumly, “because it doesn’t matter what you do, somebody’s going to change the context of it. The confusion of creativity, making something, with this Internet idea of democratization ...” he trailed off, disgusted. “It sounds like old-man stuff, but I think it’s disastrous for the possibilities of any art form.”

He's not the first artist to attempt a download pushback. But is he a part of the vanguard or a dying breed?

From his collaborations with Sonic Youth, to his abstract guitar improvisations, to his seemingly bottomless catalog of drone compositions, Jim O'Rourke has made a lot of records. However, if one were to name the quintessential O'Rourke LP, it would have to be I'm Happy, I'm Singing, And A 1,2,3,4. Originally released in 2001 by the Austrian electronic label Mego, "I'm Happy" was O'Rourke's attempt at solo laptop composition, using an array of max/msp patches to generate heavilly textured compositions in the style of Brian Eno's Discreet Music. But every major O'Rourke calling card is here–from his preferred instruments (acoustic guitar and accordion), to influences, to the music concrete-style trickery (are those strings, or synthesizers, or both?) that he employed so effectively on earlier compositions like Tamper. But what's most striking is O'Rourke's use of melody.

Laptop music at the time–and especially among his peers on the Mego label–was an extremely noisy pursuit. At the time, to listen to a record by Pita, the alias of Mego founder Peter Rheberg, was like plugging a dial-up modem into a marshal stack and sticking your head in front of the speaker cone. On I'm Happy, And I'm Singing, And A 1,2,3,4, O'Rourke brought a more directly musical sensibility to laptop music–he swept out the noise, and instead, concentrated on manipulating simple and harmonious sounds.

The record's first track "I'm Happy" dices up organ and accordion figures, creating a blurry digital update of Terry Riley's organ/tape piece "Poppy Nogood & the Phanton Band." The final track, the somber 21-minute "And A 1,2,3,4," uses string section samples of varying length to create a gradually shifting drone somewhat similar in spirit to Gavin Bryar's "Sinking of the Titanic." But O'Rourke's voice is so present here that it's easy to hear elements of "I'm Happy, And I'm Sining, And A 1,2,3,4" popping up in his other work, even with rock bands like Sonic Youth (Murray Street's "Karen Revisited") or Wilco (A Ghost is Born's "Less Than You Think). Not just in the noisy parts, either.

This recent repressing, by Editions Mego, brings the album back into print for the first time in years with new cover art and a second disc of unreleased material. That new material is largely inessential–noisy asides that lack the coherence of the record's original tracks. But those three compositions hold up remarkably well, and listening to them again, you can hear how their influence has come to bear on numerous contemporary records, in both the pop and electronic worlds. Most of all, it sums up what O'Rourke's other work always suggested–that technology and musicality are not mutually exclusive.