MY VOICE VS. THE VOICE

The results of the 2007 Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll are out. My Top Ten is here. I think this may be a new record for me, as I was the only person who voted for six of my 10 choices (Tego Calderón's El Abayarde Contra-Ataca, Arch Enemy's Rise Of The Tyrant, Belanova's Fantasía Pop, Wisin y Yandel's Los Extraterrestres, Demiricious's Two (Poverty), and Behold...The Arctopus's Skullgrid). The fact that no other critic in the whole U.S. of A. thought most of those discs were Top Ten candidates doesn't bother me much - I suspect that Wisin y Yandel were hampered by a late release date - but seriously, folks are sleeping on that Tego album and it's their friggin' loss. Not only is it a brilliant album, but not recognizing it as such speaks volumes about their cultural blinders, if not their taste, period.