Shoot Me Now: More Nominations for the 2010 J Award

I’ve moaned on and on about this in the past, but another round of nominees for the 2010 J Award has been announced, and yet again, I’m left exasperated by absence of artists who have released great albums this year but have been ignored by the broadcaster. Washington and Birds Of Toyko have joined Sia, Tame Impala and Cloud Control on the roster of ‘breakthrough artists’ in line for the national youth broadcaster’s 2010 award for best album.

Any person who has followed the awards over the past year should recognise that many of these ‘breakthrough artists’ also happen to be the ones consistently played on high rotation throughout the year on Triple J. I don’t begrudge an artist from receiving praise for work well done and reaping the rewards, but frankly, I’ve formed the view that the J Award is nothing more than a rubber stamp, justifying the promotion of certain artists, while ignoring those who are doing equally as good work with little recognition but who haven’t, for whatever reason, captured the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Triple J audience. In short, populism reigns supreme and critical assessment of the work submitted for the award may go by the weigh side. Sounds elitist, but hear me out.

The award ostensibly represents the talent Australia has to offer. To quote their website, it is an award that “recognises the very best musical talent that Australia has on offer, each year celebrating the outstanding musical output of our homegrown artists.” [Source: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/jawards/10/about/].

So the question that always bugs me when these nominations come around, particularly when you consider the objective of the award, is the J Award truly representative of quality Australian music, or simply some means of self-justifying giving a lot of airtime to a relatively small group of bands. Where is the transparency?

This is not a criticism of any of the bands nominated in 2010 so far – truth be told, I’ve only listened to two in full – but historically, some of the records that have been nominated have been decidedly underwhelming. Occasionally, some artists seem to be nominated on the basis of their past work rather than the merits of the record that is currently up for judgement. Case in point, Bernard Fanning’s nomination for Tea & Sympathy some years back, a record that was pedestrian and lacked any real staying power (this Drowned in Sound review of that record pretty much sums up my own listening experience of this release).

Of course, the preceding view is coloured by my own subjective judgements, but it’s hard to deny that the artists who get nominated generally come from a group that gets consistently hammered into the listeners. There are question marks over whether the broadcaster is aware of other records of true value, that in many cases far exceed those nominated.

Lets have a look at a few examples. Last year, Sydney band Songs put out an absolutely brilliant self-titled debut record yet wasn’t picked up by the J Award. This year, Melbourne group Otouto have put out Pip, another piece of brilliance that has tragically gone ignored. The Boat People’s Dear Darkly is also great but can’t even rate a mention thus far. There are many other examples that I’m sure people could think of. Richard in Your Mind’s debut record is outstanding and hasn’t appeared on the nominees list.

While more esoteric, the 2010 Mess and Noise mid-year report is far more illuminating when it comes to seeing what artists are making waves in the craft. I suggest having a read of that. You’ll note Otouto’s name features prominently among the list. I wonder why that is?

Consequently, this post talks of my own personal loss of faith in the merits of having a J Award. If the award is to recognise the best musical talent, then I think it is failing, because it is not recognising the best musical talent, but rather reinforcing its own monolithic and completely subjective opinion on what is good and what is bad. I know it would be impossible to nominate every single record of merit for the award, but if the nomination process were more transparent – if the listeners could see exactly why the judging team selects certain records rather than others – perhaps some of my confidence could be restored. Because at the moment, the J Award seems nothing more than a fancy marketing tool for both Triple J and their favourites.

To finish off, let’s have a look at some zingers from the past….

In 2005, The Drones released an absolute masterpiece in Wait Long By the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By along side the aforementioned Bernard Fanning solo record. The Drones lose out to Wolfmother.

In 2006, Gotye and Sarah Blasko released great records and lost out to The Hilltops Hoods’ formulaic brand of Australian hip hop (pan pipe sample + beat + beer reference + shout out to DJ Peril = song).

In 2007, Eddy Current Suppression Ring released a great debut record and lose out to The Presets’ Apocalypso. I almost threw up in a hat on that one.

Occasionally it had looked like perhaps the national broadcaster had got it somewhere in the correct ballpark – in 2008 with The Panics, and last year with Sarah Blasko, but generally, I have been underwhelmed with each offering from the ‘winner’ of the award.

Any further thoughts?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010 at 12:48 pm. It is filed under Darragh Murray and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

12 Responses to “Shoot Me Now: More Nominations for the 2010 J Award”

  1. cameron says:
    September 22, 2010 at 1:45 pm

    i think we all just have to accept that as jj gets progressively worse, they also get more influential and selective with which bands they choose to annoint. they’re their own (not so) little industry now, and they want to see things continuing into the future. that means backing the surefire big bucks.

    the only time i listen to jjj these days is when i’m in the car with my girlfriend. she wants to listen to nova, i want to listen to 4zzz. jjj is the compromise that neither of us are particularly happy with. i suppose we could always try conversation…?

  2. Darragh says:
    September 22, 2010 at 2:12 pm

    It’s a bit exasperating yes. I guess I’m refusing to acknowledge to myself that the mighty truly has fallen.

    Obviously, tastes change, but sometimes I wish I could recapture the enthusiasm I once had for JJJ, but things such as the J Award sum up what annoys me about the station in the present day.

    Back in 1998, when I was teenager, I loved everything about Triple J. Interesting presenters, some great plugs for some great little bands that I’d never hear anything about on the Austereo network.

    Nowadays, I generally can’t stand listening to it, the majority of the presenters just set my teeth on edge (exception, Zan Rowe, I think she is great). The music, well, most of it I can’t differentiate from other commercial stations. As it’s become bigger, its gloss has faded. Like you Cameron, 4ZzZ is generally my choice mainly because the music is just more interesting (not to mention local).

    I guess what truly motivated this post is also something personal – as I’ve grown older, have I lost the spirit that made me love TripleJ when I was 18? Or is it because it has genuinely become worse over the last 10 or so years? Hate to point fingers, but this period roughly converges with Kingsmill at the helm – is that the connection?

  3. cameron says:
    September 22, 2010 at 2:20 pm

    when kingsmill took over i remember thinking ‘awesome, the guy who does those great, in depth shows about relatively unknown bands is going to be in charge’. little did i know…

    i think it’s a combination of us just not being into the same sorts of music as we used to be, and jjj moving ever closer to the middle of the road. i don’t expect jjj to go playing ‘weirder’ stuff likes the new pissed jeans or no anchor record on high rotation, but relatively poppy stuff like deerhoof or the rational academy? yes, i don’t see why bands like that shouldn’t be getting more than the obligatory play or two on the specialist shows (or home & hosed, for australian bands).

    basically it comes down to ‘why is it all so bland’? i KNOW that there’s interesting music out there, i go out and see it every week.

  4. ed says:
    September 22, 2010 at 2:28 pm

    I did have a search for Triple J’s Mission Statement but couldn’t find one. But maybe Dom Alessio’s current wikipedia entry sums it up best: “Dom Alessio” ‎ (Speedy deleted, importance/significance not asserted) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dom_Alessio

    If you look at the winners and indeed the nominations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Award) it’s all very MOR and there’s very little that would be out of place on a commercial radio station, especially the albums that have won. It’s all very major label (which is why bands like Otouto have no chance) and if you look at the chart positions the albums have achieved in the Aria album charts, they’ve all been Top 5 except Cloud Control which still made a very respectable No.20. It’s all so predictable I reckon the next nominations will be between Little Red, Bliss n Eso and Children Collide. I’ll check back next month to comment if I’m right.

    One of the depressing things about Big Sound is the question on everyone’s lips is “how do I get played on triple J” but that no one seems to be paying attention to the industry/major label people on the panel talking about their regular meetings with Kingsmill and his team. They seem content (or should that be smug) to now be the feeder station for commercial radio so that they can say they were playing the band first. The trouble with that is that it’s done at the expense of a lot of things that are way more interesting.

  5. Darragh says:
    September 22, 2010 at 2:32 pm

    I’m suddenly reminded of an essay on Meanjin, which starts off presumably to criticise TripleJ and concludes that ‘despite its flaws, it’s a great cultural object’.

    However, fails to acknowledge that it has indeed declined.

  6. tomfiend says:
    September 22, 2010 at 2:39 pm

    As much as I’d like to think its some national conspiracy to supress quality music in favor of the mass marketable tripe, I’m more inclined to believe it really is just laziness.

    Rather than presenting the widest possible array of talent, both good and bad for the listener to evaluate, they simply find a few safe unknown horses to bet on for the year and ride them into the ground while still crowning themselves the kings of the Australia’s up and coming artists because they played a few bands before anyone else.

  7. tomfiend says:
    September 22, 2010 at 2:43 pm

    and ed beats me to the punch. >_<

  8. Dane says:
    September 22, 2010 at 6:35 pm

    “importance/significance not asserted” brilliant.

  9. Darragh says:
    September 23, 2010 at 10:32 am

    Tom – I do think Zan makes an effort to provide some diversity and some interesting music. Her catch of the day (much like ET’s Song of the Day) sometimes throws up some interesting local and international music that would otherwise go ignored.

  10. ed says:
    September 23, 2010 at 11:05 am

    Found out that Bliss n Eso have already been nominated; you left it off your list of nominees. Maybe I’d already seen it and dragged it out of my sub-conscious, maybe it just proves how predictable it all is…

  11. Darragh Murray says:
    September 23, 2010 at 11:59 am

    My bad! Sorry

  12. ed says:
    September 24, 2010 at 10:34 am

    That’s ok. I mean all I did was look at the current ARIA chart and pick a few bands that are on heavy rotation on Triple J. It’s not science.

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