What's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding? Before anyone gets too carried away or gets the wrong end of the stick that's one way in to look at the fact that there is little critical consensus in terms of critics' end-of-year lists that nonetheless remain pretty addictive if even partially so inclined. Choose any list or award and it's rare that any two in any given year even are the same. An overall comprehensive properly vetted list of all the significant critics and then aggregated still does not exist despite one or two laudable efforts. Instead as ever making sense of best-of lists goes down to trusting the critics you know and have used over the years or are beginning to be aware of. There is a tendency for many critics only to listen to avant-garde records thinking that avant-garde is the only game in town. Also, no one is comparing the quality of one year against another, something that is worth doing at least in general terms. This year for example has been one of the worst years for album releases not in terms of quantity because there are lots and lots out there, a large number simply unreviewable because they aren't really ready for a proper review beyond curt dismissal, but in terms of groundbreaking quality in quite a while. That is probably not surprising because of the Pandemic ruining a lot of music-making and grinding production to a halt. Certainly the sound quality of ''bedroom'' jazz recordings is not that great.

At the other end of the spectrum few well known jazz critics unless they are trad specialists listen to large swathes of trad-jazz often because trad-jazz is, let's be fair, very much a backwater and belongs largely as a museum interest for specialists. There isn't enough time in the day let's face it for writers to keep on listening to vast quantities of music which exist out there 24/7. So trad is further down the list. Critics at the other end of the scale hardly ever talk about smooth jazz, a fairly big area which has its own specialist blogs and sites and fan community but these rarely crop up in big newspaper or online music sites critics' lists often simply because yes it is quite often terrible and only for fans. Occasionally ''smooth'' can be relevant but that is a rarity in the wider swim of jazz styles where hard bop, free-jazz, fusion and chamber-jazz are more favoured.

It's good to be aware of the faultlines with critics' lists, the gaps, and there are quite a few more besides all of the above, and then to retain a healthy scepticism. The list that claims to be the ultimate you need to be wary of most. Finally there is a sheepiness in a lot of critics about making forensic analysis about big name acts. It might be an inconvenient truth but a great artist can make a bad album and past achievement is no guarantee of present performance. It isn't practical at all but really every critic should listen to every album they review without any knowledge of who the player is or any other detail about the album in a blind listening. That would be a lot fairer and the results would be very illuminating indeed. Don't hold your breath for it to happen. Science, the whole list-making malarkey, it certainly ain't.

Photo: Wikipedia