2011 was excep­tion­al­ly qui­et for me on the musi­cal front. After keep­ing tabs loose­ly through the tail end of 2010, I left the music crit­ic rat race alto­geth­er this year, bare­ly both­er­ing to see what even my favorite crit­ics thought about music. Why? Well, it’s an ongo­ing trend that I dis­liked from the moment I start­ed get­ting paid for writ­ing about music: niche sen­sa­tion­al­ism. When I real­ized I could­n’t get worked up (or excit­ed about) micro­gen­res like “chill­wave,” or that I did­n’t feel an urgent desire to have a take on artists rang­ing from Gaga to Odd Future, I knew my days as a crit­ic were numbered.

Sad to say, I don’t miss it. Yes, it was often fun to shout words of encour­age­ment from the crit­i­cal side­lines as real crit­ics bat­tled for pri­ma­cy in online forums of all  kinds, but I had no real stake in it. I did­n’t feel that par­tic­i­pa­tion was vital to my life in any way. It just seemed sil­ly that adults were mak­ing the­se impas­sioned, intel­li­gent argu­ments about artists whose impact was felt by a dwin­dling num­ber of lis­ten­ers. How guys like Tom Ewing find the time and ener­gy to write such thought­ful pieces as this recent Pop­ti­mist col­umn while bal­anc­ing work and a young fam­i­ly amazes me. By the way, that piece I linked sums up my feel­ings on this phe­nom­e­non — Tom calls it “nanocul­ture” — far more elo­quent­ly that I can muster. But the sense of world-weari­ness that I felt when com­mis­er­at­ing via chat with Mau­ra and Chris was more than I could bear. There was no sense in pre­tend­ing that I cared at all about the sub­ject. It was sim­ply time to go.

What did I actu­al­ly lis­ten to this year? Old stuff and lots of it. I now unashamed­ly lis­ten to music that I’ve loved for a decade or more. It’s nice to return to old favorites. I’m lov­ing what some of my old favorites are releas­ing now, too, anoth­er sign that the game has passed me by. When you find your­self enrap­tured with a new J. Mas­cis album in 2011, chances are you’re too hope­less­ly nos­tal­gic to be rel­e­vant to any audi­ence out­side the Mag­net Mag­a­zine set and that’s some­one I nev­er want to be. Befriend­ing Mark made it clear that I sim­ply did­n’t have the sta­mi­na or endurance to be a crit­ic in the age of Tumblr.

But you know what? The flip­side of this is that “dis­cov­ery,” a term that made me retch as a crit­ic, is some­thing I tru­ly can enjoy now. When you’re not being bom­bard­ed by emails offer­ing inter­views and tick­ets to artists you’ve nev­er heard of, it’s much eas­i­er to fil­ter out all that noise and just enjoy read­ing about artists, sam­pling their music and mak­ing choic­es about what you want to hear. When the pres­sure of try­ing to hear every­thing melts away it’s nice to be selec­tive and real­ly immerse your­self in a record­ing. It breathes new life into the year end lists I’ve spent the bet­ter part of a decade ignor­ing. I find myself want­i­ng to read about music again in a way I haven’t since blurbs in the mar­gins of Newsweek first caught my atten­tion 15 years ago. It’s exciting!

So tell me what I should check out in 2011? Did I miss any­thing? Still haven’t lis­tened to that Odd Future record…