The Role of the East German Judge will now be played by Jane

First, let me hearken back to Andrew's "basic rules." "I encourage you," he wrote, "to pick albums that are personal favorites as opposed to 'good albums.' In other words, you might listen to Taylor Swift every night before you go to bed but recognize that Tom Waits is hipper and generally more critically acclaimed. In this case, please let go of your inner hipster and pick Taylor Swift." This rule was easy for me to follow. My inner hipster, like my outer hipster, has precious little in the way of existence. It's true that I have a tee-shirt from Threadless that I think is pretty hilarious, but I never would have known about Threadless if Sarah Byker James hadn't bought me that tee-shirt. It's true that I heard about M.I.A. before Andrew did, but I heard about M.I.A. from Newsweek. So, in the Death Match itself, as in the making of my list, I've been choosing what I like the most, not judging the albums by an allegedly empirical standard that I don't really get, anyway.

I mean, I know that the true music aficionados out there have it in them to balance all kinds of complex and meaningful things about an album: what lies in its sphere of influence, whether it's original or derivative, and so on and so forth. But I am not a musicologist. I am a person who listens with idiosyncratic and possibly crackpot taste to what she fancies. And I do not fancy the Beach Boys.

Andrew has pointed out to me that their harmonies are amazing, and no doubt he's right. But I think their harmonies are amazing in a way that is a little bit barbershop quartet, or, to put it otherwise, in a way that Andy from the office could take easy advantage of. Andrew has also pointed out to me that an album like Stars on E.S.P., which appears on my list, has been hugely influenced by the Beach Boys. Again, I can't imagine that he's wrong about that, but I'll say to y'all what I said to him: I think whatever aspects of this album held them in its thrall, His Name is Alive really improved on it. Sure, there's a couple tunes on this album that I can get behind--namely, "Wouldn't it Be Nice" and "The Sloop John B." But "God Only Knows" has always struck me as syrupy, and a lot of the other songs on this record also strike me as hokey. I know the album came out in the mid-60's (thank you, Wikipedia), but, to me, a lot of the songs on this album have cliched 1950's romance at their core; it's a record I can imagine a girl listening to while lying stomach-down on her bedspread, mooning over Richie Cunningham and kicking her bobby-socked feet gently back and forth. I have no experience of falling in or out of love in the simple terms this album offers. I can't get into it. I'm sorry. I will say that I like that one song begins with an instrument that I can't identify, but happily imagine being a saxophone filtered through a kazoo. But that's the height of my enthusiasm for Pet Sounds.

I am not wholeheartedly enthusiastic about Mezzanine, either. With the exception of "Teardrop," I would turn to this album, as I would to Portishead, for ambiance rather than for any deliberate act of listening. But it doesn't make my flesh crawl, so:

Mezzanine wins. Pet Sounds loses.