To supplement this year's Pazz & Jop launch, Sound of the City asked a few critics to expand on the reasonings behind their voting. We'll start off the series with Seth Colter Walls of New York City, who has a constant itch to do the deep dive and find the single-voter albums out there. Find his ballot here.

​Damn do I ever love voting in, and then reading, Pazz and Jop. All these serious music-listening people, expressing opinions, mostly with a high degree of sincerity: admit it, it's a nice break from the social media-enabled review cycle, in which a lot of people apparently feel obliged to sound off on topics about which they may only kinda sorta have an aesthetic stake. (Read: The Internet.)

Consumers (and/or voters) often look to the number ones, to talk about the consensus where it exists—me, I liked but did not love Merrill Garbus's poll-winning record, outside of the stunning tracks "Powa" and "Bizness"; I suspect her masterpiece as a composer may yet be written for forces larger than her multi-tracked self—but in times where a 10-vote album ballot feels ever more confining and statistically unrepresentative of broader listening habits, I'm always fascinated to look at the sheer number of lonely minority reports on this side of the poll.

Critics cited 1,734 different full-lengths this year; way more than half of those titles had only a single champion. Multiple votes for albums only start to occur with real consistency around poll position #341 (Gang of Four's Content). If you're a true Pazz freak you're gonna do the deep dive, and try to find something new in that glut of passions rebuffed (or ignored) by the hivemind. As in: wow, East River Pipe put out a record this year? I didn't know that. Same-ish thing goes for Brooklyn Rider and their disc of Philip Glass string quartets.

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Main Attrakionz.

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Sound of the City's staff has opinions about which bands to see at the CMJ festival, happening around the city this week. Here, Nick Murray offers his seven picks—well, six festival-affiliated artists and one dude who just happens to have a couple of NY-area shows this week. (Check out Maura Johnston's and Martika Finch's selections. too.)

AraabMUZIK
This Providence-born producer hammers out beats that will make your feet move with a virtuosity that will make your jaw drop. After turning hip-hop heads' heads with his work on Cam'ron's Crime Pays and Dipset reunion single "Salute," AraabMUZIK has come into his own on this year's trance-influenced solo album Electronic Dream.
Where to catch him: Try the Saturday Blowout at Santos Party House, where he joins Main Attrakionz, Action Bronson, Elks, Trash Talk, and Kylesa in one of the week's most promising showcases.

Titus Andronicus
If you haven't discovered the bar punk, Eric Foner-with-power-chords bliss of The Monitor—the latest from New Jersey-and-proud quintet Titus Andronicus—by now, you should probably proceed directly to Glasslands tonight. If you're familiar with the record, go anyway; these days, the group rarely plays venues as intimate as this one.
Where to catch them: The band's only show this week happens tonight at 9 at Glasslands.

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Willie Davis

Eleanor Friedberger.

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4Knots Music Festival: Mr. Dream, Eleanor Friedberger
Pier 17, South Street Seaport
Saturday, July 16

Better than: Showing up late.

I have this problem—it's well known among my friends—where I arrive at things (shows, parties, etc.) on time. Usually this results in me either a) attempting to read my book through the warm-up music at whatever dimly lit venue I'm at this week or b) bankrupting myself by buying a mixed drink at the bar. So, for a person like me, it's nice when I come to something that starts at 1:00 at, well, 1:00 and find my punctuality rewarded. And when I can get a buzz going without turning to the savings account, I know it's my day.

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by David Raposa

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Saturday's Northside Festival show at Europa will showcase four well-traveled acts from far-flung corners of the indie-rock diaspora: Eleanor Friedberger, Ida, Rebecca Gates, and Pete Nolan. The bill's highest-profile member is also the only one with an album scheduled to come out in the near future; Eleanor Friedberger's Merge debut, Past Summer, is due out later this year. If you haven't already, check out the video for "My Mistakes" that came out earlier this week. It's the sort of pleasantly plainspoken yet off-kilter tune that the Fiery Furnaces could seemingly conjure up at will, as the group's debut (Gallowsbird's Bark) and 2009's I'm Going Away ably demonstrate. "Tropical Ice-Land"!

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The video for Eleanor Friedberger's charming "My Mistakes," the first single from her forthcoming solo debut Last Summer, seems initially like a cautionary tale about how not much has changed for women since the era of VHS fuzz-outs. (The older footage is for-real archival, and culled from a project Friedberger starred in while studying at the University of Texas in the '90s.) But it actually winds up being sort of a sweet love letter to her relationship with music, and the fine art of eating on a New York City stoop on a summer day. Watch below.

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​We're about five and a half weeks out from the first annual 4Knots Music Festival, which is happening on July 16 at South Street Seaport. And today (hooray!) we can announce the free show's other three bands: battle-flag-wavers Titus Andronicus, nervy rockers Obits, and velvet-voiced Fiery Furnace Eleanor Friedberger will join Black Angels, Oberhofer, and Davila 666 on the Seaport stage. Music from the three new additions to the lineup after the jump.

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