You can't really know where you're headed unless you know where you've been. For that reason, we're taking a look back at Pazz & Jop 2012 to drill down into the ballots of contributors and voters who participated. Maybe amongst the rubble we'll find clues about what lies ahead for music lovers in 2013. Here, music writer Michael Tedder defends his ballot.

See Also:
- Pazz and Jop 2012 Table of Contents

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Robert Adam Mayer

The Drums play the 4Knots Music Festival tomorrow.

"I don't think any indie pop bands or fans really cried out for attention," Clyde Erwin Barretto told the Voice in this week's feature about the recent rise of New York's indie pop scene. Well, they're getting some.

The NYC Popfest, co-organized by Barretto, recently marked its sixth year of celebrating all that is jangly, haze-shrouded and jubilantly forlorn with a weekend that included local new jacks like Heavens Gate and UK imports like Allo Darlin', while the similarly themed local dance party Mondo has been quietly going strong for eight years. And while the Lower East Side indie incubator Cake Shop has been hit with a number of unexpected legal difficulties recently, several of its most high-profile graduates have reached out to offer their support.

Events and clubs like these have helped create a fertile landscape for indie pop in New York, as seen by the recent success of outdoor-festival staples like The Drums and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. It wasn't always thus. When the Voice talked with Michael Grace Jr. of the beloved sweaterclad post-punks My Favorite recently, he talked about watching his group getting overshadowed by buzzier acts. And while indie pop will likely never be a Hot New Sound like dance-punk or chillwave, it's undeniably having a bit of a moment in New York. SOTC gathered some of the New York's primary experts in the field—Barretto, Grace Jr., Mondo DJs Maz and Miss Modular, the Drums' Jacob Graham, Cake Shop co-owner Andy Bodor, and Pains frontman and indie pop Padawan Kip Berman—to discuss the genre's recent rise, what makes it so special, and what the heck the term "indie pop" means, anyway.

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Michael Grace Jr.'s current band, The Secret History.

As noted in this week's Voice, Michael Grace Jr. has the tendency to be at the right place at the wrong time. Along the way, he's amassed a formidable (secret) songbook of alienation, fading beauty and chiming guitar. In case you were never fortunate to be at the right place, here are seven of his songs that you need to know, from his humble, New Order-obsessed beginnings to the opening salvo from his forthcoming magnum opus of generational desperation.

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The Magnetic Fields' new album Love At The Bottom Of The Sea (Merge) is the first in more than a decade to feature the shimmering synthesizer lines for which the endlessly malleable indiepop icons first became known. As I learned when writing this week's Voice profile of Magnetic Fields songwriter Stephin Merritt, he loves talking about the gear that helps him command those sounds—he gets downright giddy, which is both unexpected (given his cantankerous reputation) and endearing.

Below is a gear-centric excerpt from our conversation, which took place at an old-timey Greenwich Village restaurant that uses real anchovies in its Caesar salad, and where the waitress brought him his pasta before he even cracked open a menu.

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​Sound of the City's search for the quintessential New York City musician enters Round Two this week, with battles in the Round of 32 daily. Keep up with all the action here.

In round one of Sound Of The City's March Madness, jazzmaster Miles Davis dispatched Cyndi Lauper with tonally perfect blow, and Strong Island rabblerousers Public Enemy fought the power of Mariah Carey and came out on top. Both of these icons of American music helped push their genres into artistic maturity and wildly explorative places. It is not overstatement to say these people were the rock on which the rest of their art forms were built. So have fun choosing this one.

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Your guest editor, about to be eaten by Pac Man

Good morning. Your friend and mine Maura Johnston is currently overseas, enjoying grog and mead (I'm assuming) and generally being awesome. When you hear about the show she is seeing, in all probability you will die of jealousy. Expect a full recap on that next week, and let us pray that the inevitable Tyler, The Creator and Lana Del Ray duet does not drop while she is out of town. We all know how much she would hate to miss that.

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To supplement this year's Pazz & Jop launch, Sound of the City asked a few critics to expand on the reasonings behind their voting. Here, Michael Tedder breaks down his entire ballot, and along the way he talks about about the operatic heights of Fucked Up, the shredding ability of Annie Clark and Ritzy Bryan, and the power of the "boof."

Fucked Up, David Comes to Life (30 points): I was starting to get a sense of the way the wind was blowing for this year's roundup, and I'm generally aware that aggressive music, no matter how smart and inventive, has a ceiling for critical support. (I should point out that I submitted my ballot before the Spin endorsement.) So, just like I did last year with Titus Andronicus' The Monitor (I will not accept the idea that anyone this decade wrote a better album about America now, or a better album period than that), I went all in, points wise, to try to get my favorite album in to the top ten. Like last year, I failed, and I regret nothing. Anyway, people focusing on the intentionally confusing plot of this rock opera are not paying enough attention to the operatic arrangements (that term is not used as loosely as you imagine) Mike Haliechuk and company are offering up here, like some bizarre amalgam of Crass, Queen and Chavez. Also, I still don't know how Veronica died, and I'm surprised that in these #OWS days no one is discussing the working-class fatigue subtext ("those better days have passed us by") on display here.

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A year ago this month, Wye Oak kicked off their 2011 with an opening slot for The Decemberists at Beacon Theatre. There was a snowstorm, and it was a pain in the ass to get home, but their set was a great kickoff to what's been, for the Baltimore duo, a great year. Their third album Civilian, a slowly revealing mix of slanted arrangements, dream-pop melodies and guitar riffs that sound like pixies getting sucked into jet engines, won them the best reviews of their career, and they've been touring nonstop. They've been around the world, covered Dinosaur Jr. and Nirvana for the Our Band Could Be Your Life tribute show, and wrapped up the year with another Beacon opening set, this time with The National.

Singer/guitarist/songwriter Jenn Wasner has a complicated relationship with the hype machine. When I met with her and drummer/keyboardist Andy Stack for dinner at the end of December, the two were clearly wiped from a long year of taking advantage of their increased exposure. Still, they were very open with Sound Of The City about the toll this year has taken, the making of one of the year's breakthrough releases and their plans for the future—which include a solo set by Wasner, performing as Flock of Dimes, tonight at Shea Stadium.

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My Morning Jacket w/Band of Horses
Madison Square Garden
Wednesday, December 14

Better than: The other bands on the Bonnaroo roots-jam circuit.

I sometimes imagine the young Kentucky rock fan who would one day name himself Jim James surfing the internet in the late '90s (we called it surfing back then), searching for some Allman Brothers guitar tabs, and stumbling upon a message board debate about the perils of rockism and boomer nostalgia and dinosaurs who won't let the '70s go. I imagine James absorbing the ideas about not making "rock" the default genre idea, prejudices about pop and dance music and closed minds and closed ears. (You know the drill.) I imagine him nodding, taking it all in and deciding that they were all good points—but realizing that he still really liked guitar solos. The solution? He would use these ideas to build a better classic rock. This is a completely imaginary scenario, but it has worked out pretty well for him.

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Sebastian Slayter

In this week's Voice Michael Tedder profiles the Brooklyn trio Widowspeak, who craft hushed, gorgeous ballads and whose self-titled debut (Captured Tracks) is one of the year's standout first releases. Tedder trailed the band around CMJ, where they were one of the beneficiaries of the week-long music festival's hype cycle. His account is below.

At their best, Widowspeak achieve a state of cinematic grace. Grace is something that has fuck-all to do with the CMJ Music Marathon, and even fuck less to do with the music industry at large; Widowspeak is still getting used to this. Vocalist Molly Hamilton says the band has only ever done a handful of interviews and getting all the members in the same room for a photo shoot is always a chore. Even managing the band email can be problematic. But they signed up for this year's music meat-market anyway.

A week before the festival, the band members laugh off the suggestion that they might try to "win" CMJ and accrue buzz band status by playing as many high-profile gigs as possible. "We have nothing really to push," says Hamilton, noting that the band's policy is only to do what feels right. The members were wary of overdoing it and playing gigs in the double-digits like some upstarts, plus there were days jobs to think about. (Hamilton is a barista, guitarist Robert Earl Thomas a busboy.) But both were happy to play showcases for things they supported, like WNYU or NYCTaper. That added up.

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