We're down to the final four.

Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue (1977, #2278)
REM - Life's Rich Pageant (1986, #668)
Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (1998, #552)
The Knife - Silent Shout (2006, #444)

Pacific Ocean Blue vs Life's Rich Pageant

Two surprise semifinalists. Dennis Wilson is surprising because of the more well known albums he upset, and REM is surprising because nobody expected anything but Either/Or to be in this spot.

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea vs Silent Shout

Two unsurprising semifinalists. From the beginning they seemed destined to meet in the semifinals. Both with people who rank them among the best albums ever, and with people who don't care for them at all.

I'm going to leave this one open for two weeks, for two reasons. First, I don't think everyone has heard Pacific Ocean Blue and Life's Rich Pageant. Second, I think Aeroplane vs Silent Shout could be the most epic match of the tournament.

Life's Rich Pageant
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Lifes Rich Pageant
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Pretty easy decisions this time.

The only thing is I actually think Lifes Rich Pageant doesn't have the apostrophe. Weird, but I think its true.

Silent Shout

REM - Life's Rich Pageant
The Knife - Silent Shout

Pacific Ocean Blue
In The Areoplane Over The Sea

Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane over the Sea

I like Life's Rich Pageant but I don't know if I would take any R.E.M album outside of Murmur and Automatic over Pacific Ocean Blue. As for the later round, SIlent Shout is a worthy opponent, but there is a league of distance between it an In the Aeroplane.

Lifes Rich Pageant

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue (1977, #2278)
Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (1998, #552)

I need to relisten the albums in the first group. I'm very surprised if I won't vote for Pacific Ocean Blue.

In the second group my vote goes to Silent Shout.

Easy choices for me...

Pacific Ocean Blue
Silent Shout

By the way, I think it's sorta cool that the release dates of these albums are:

1977
1986
1998
2006

Life's Rich Pageant
Silent Shout

In the Aeroplane over the Sea

Lifes Rich Pageant
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

This vote was actually a lot easier than the one I took in the quarterfinals.

Two difficult choices.

In the surprising semifinal: Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue
In the battle of two great, highly original albums: Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.

I need to give Pacific Ocean Blue another listen before I vote in the other match up.

My votes:

Pacific Ocean Blue

I don't know what I was missing last time I heard it, but when I listened to it this time it grew on me a lot.

Silent Shout

Maybe I'm a bit too hard on NMH because they're the sort of band that would have appealed to me as a teenager. Maybe if I heard Aeroplane as a teenager it'd be one of my favorites of all time now. But, it's a moot point, because Silent Shout is in my top 20 of all time.

Life's Rich Pagent
Silent Shout

* Pacific Ocean Blue
* Silent Shout

Denis Wilson - PAcific ocean Blues
The Knife - Silent Shout

Four albums I like, but not masterpieces for me.

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Pacific Ocean Blue

I have a grudge against Life's Rich Pageant for taking out XO. Pacific Ocean Blue was awesome on first listen, too.

Listened to Pacific Ocean Blue yesterday. I like it a lot—the word I want to use is “delicate,” if that doesn’t imply insubstantial. Dennis, on the evidence of this album, is a master of packing the maximum amount of emotion into the structure of the ephemeral pop song. His big brother was kinda known for that, too, but where Brian aspired to the epic, Dennis is more of a lyric poet—and he’s also less histrionic. Great find.

But:

Lifes Rich Pageant
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

epic indeed

Hey, just because almost everybody voted early doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea to give people more time to hear all the albums. Both the matchups are still close enough that late votes could turn them around.

Lifes Rich Pageant
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue

Pacific Ocean blue.

I realy have trouble killing one of my absolute favorites, but i have to go for.

In The Aeroplane across the Sea.

R.E.M. - Lifes Rich Pagaent
Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

Life's Rich Pageant

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

One more day to vote.

One of them is no longer close, but the other one is tied.

I'm ruling in case of a tie there will be only a one day tiebreaker instead of one week, because it's already been open two weeks and the finals can't happen until both matches have a winner.

The results.

Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue 11 TIED WITH
REM - Life's Rich Pageant 11

As mentioned in the above post, the vote will remain open one more day. If the vote is still tied after that, my vote will be disqualified and REM will win.

Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea 16 def
The Knife - Silent Shout 9

I'm wondering now if the only one who could have taken down Aeroplane was Elliot Smith. There aren't enough anti-NMH people to beat it on their own, but as proven by XO's near victory, Smith has a common enough fanbase to siphon off a lot of it's votes.

The finals will start tomorrow, with In The Aeroplane Over The Sea against the winner of the tiebreaker, and last two weeks.

Or we could just have all three battle it out.

I place my vote for "Pacific Ocean Blue".

I'm going for Pacific Ocean Blue in the other matchup.

And with that, Pacific Ocean Blue wins 13-11.

We could have all three battle it out, if that's what we had been doing the whole time. But A, it'd be weird to suddenly make that rule change for the most important vote. And B, the reason for the using head to head format in the first place was to increase the odds of upsets. The only way to preserve that with a three way match would be to have some kind of complicated runoff vote where there was an extra round if no album got 50% of the votes.