True tales: Hippies have invaded the Guardian critics' poll

Fleet Foxes
Invasion of the beardy singers ... Fleet Foxes lead the charge of folkies in 2008 PR

I was having a look at the Guardian critics' poll for 2008. Is it just me, or have the hippies taken over the asylum?

I'll give TV On the Radio kudos for menace and energy alone (that Letterman performance certainly rocks my world), and Portishead remain in a world of their own, making late-night music to scare the shit out of lonely city dwellers, but what about the rest of the list? I saw Elbow support PJ Harvey at the Eden Project in Cornwall a few years back, and grew a beard waiting for the third song to begin. Their soporific, drizzly music makes Radiohead sound interesting. Musicians and critics seem to link the idea of slowing down music with "beauty" – why? All it means is that you've slowed the music down, which makes it easier to smoke the odd bong or five in-between moments of interest. All of this adds further weight to my argument that hippies have taken 2008 hostage.

The same goes for all these indie bands pretending they've always been down with gospel and folk music (Elbow and Fleet Foxes are two of many culprits). It sounded patronising when Blur did it several years back, and it still sounds patronising now.

Bon Iver plays beardy folk in isolation. Now there's nothing wrong with that, and his album is fine, but don't you wish people would play something else occasionally? The 1960s was a terrible time for rock; everywhere you turned there was a stoner grooving to some bearded bloke wailing about how his woman don't fetch his shopping. And the same applies to 2008. Beards bloody everywhere! Folk musicians bloody everywhere! I blame Will Oldham; the rot set in when critics started taking him seriously. The same goes for Fleet Foxes, only more so. I mean, it's great that this Seattle five-piece love themselves and their friends and that they all get together and listen to Animal Collective albums every other Monday when it isn't raining (which it usually is), but man! They're suburban hippies! Count the beards!

One last thing: Vampire bloody Weekend? Do people miss Sting's early solo albums that badly? Vampire Weekend are 2008's Vines – in three years time, critics will be falling over themselves to slag them off. But hell, as I wrote on Village Voice last year (so I was first and don't you forget it), there's nothing wrong with liking mediocre, derivative preppy music if liking mediocre, derivative preppy music is your bag. Or hippies, I guess.