Best Ineffable Album

Ineffable
1. adj. Incapable of being expressed; indescribable or unutterable

When we were picking out music to fill the normal awards, a few questions came up: “is Bill Callahan really pop? What about 13 & God in Electronic? Can we get away with putting Colin Stetson in rock?” Things like this. It was in a moment of sleep deprivation (or clarity) that the idea of the Best Ineffable Album was born- we needed a term that wasn’t “experimental” but still could clearly indicate that this was music that existed just outside of pop norms. Things like Callahan, 13 & God, and Stetson. Things like the absurd everything-fused highs of tUnE-yArDs. Things like the grim worlds detailed by Giles Corey and Jenny Hval. And what was the best of the ineffable?

Of course this won. I mean, Stetson’s existence outside of all our categories demanded the need for this one. Judges is both the total victory over Stetson’s instrument, and a work that breaks barriers of what most of us thought music to be. I wrote that it has a contemporary in The Men earlier this year, and as I went back to 2010, I found another contemporary: “Public Strain.” Colin Stetson is challenging the very idea of the commercial song, what it needs and means, showing a way out with the musicianship while the very music discusses the near magnetic presence of conflict.