OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

Yeah but that was because they looked like girls with girl hair and as such were unworthy of anything more complex in terms of criticism than "lol ur hair"

to be fair who didn't lol at Nelson's hair?

not damaged/depressed = "not sophisticated" is an annoying trope in its own right, and one that probably overlaps with the gender stuff at issue here but is not exclusive to it

vmg's overall music-bloggage quality was pretty awful with a few exceptions (hi reed, thanks for being awesome) but miami's was always the most consistently embarrassing. good to see they're keeping it up

I've thought about pitching stories but

holy shit that quietus britpop article upthread

britpop's idea of a controversial loudmouth was louise wener? DO YOU THINK YOU MIGHT BE FORGETTING SOME PEOPLE

every member of HAIM has incredible hair. but i can't agree with that writer's assertion that their songs are unsophisticated.

Yeah that's some lousy writing. They have hair, their songs are dumb like Hanson, and they have long hair like Hanson. That's pretty much all of the review, and yet it takes 2 pages to read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ0v6pBkmdc

Yeah that's some lousy writing. They have hair, their songs are dumb like Hanson, and they have long hair like Hanson. That's pretty much all of the review, and yet it takes 2 pages to read.

― ▴▲ ▴TH3CR()$BY$H()W▴▲ ▴ (Adam Bruneau), Friday, May 2, 2014 12:39 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't forget the bit where everyone liked the songs (except for him) and how Haim should just shut up and not talk and just play with their hair instead.

One of the band's biggest strategic mistakes was that while Danielle Haim does most of the vocals, her older sister Este was charged with the onstage patter, which seemed to be influenced by the Shoshanna character from the HBO series Girls.

A strategic mistake? Were they overrun by an army of Cimbri half-way through the set?

(also, I doubt a 27 year old based her personality on a character from a show that premiered 2 years ago.)

yeah but Haim are girls and the show is named GIRLS so you know i mean there's a pretty good link there

I hear they mapped out their strategy in kindergarten: Este would grow up to be more talkative and Danielle more reserved.

Excited to see some genuinely execrable writing again itt. Now with added life coaching.

With the sisters ranging from being young to being kind of young (Este's the oldest at 27 and Alana's the youngest at 22), there is time for them to fall in and out of love, hitchhike around the Southwest, or have other meaningful and meaningless experiences that might help their lyrics and personas catch up to their musical skills.

hitchhike around the Southwest,

is he basically telling them to go get murdered?

the southwest seems like a terrible region to hitchhike, so many long desert roads and stuff, wouldn't it make more sense to hitchhike in like the southeast where it's still warm but more dense?

also i'm p sure the haim album did well enough that they could buy like an old honda accord or something

hitchhike around the southwest, collecting topaz necklaces, bald eagle statuettes, and actual living lizards

Spend your allowance on a bow and arrow set where the arrows have rubber plunger tips. Get some water at wall drug. Release a hit record.

Form a Brit pop band with some Nevadans, like an inverse dire straits. See the Hoover dam. Check out those arches. Play to arenas full of adoring fans.

WOW @ "there is time for them to fall in and out of love." that's rly gross.

Can't wait until Haim writes a song or two about falling in or out of love

a prescription for success!

re: the NYTimes Magazine piece on Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas, McCormick's daughter posted the following to the fb "The Real Blues Form" page:

A few points:

1) My father isn't “withholding” or “hoarding” his archive. He is actively working on getting his research out there. I am aware that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the speed at which he works. Bipolar disorder is a terrible thing to have to live with. He does the best he can.

2) No one has any intention of burning the archive, setting it out by the curb for garbage collection, or otherwise allowing it be lost. My father has referred to it as his “monster” but it’s also his baby. It represents years of his labors, his hopes, and his dreams. He desperately wants it be preserved, as do I.

3) That said, he is not going to just give it away to anyone. He has very strong feelings about how he wants it to be handled and preserved. As he has every right to, because it is his life’s work. He devoted years of effort to collecting this data and he is entitled to do whatever he wants with it. It is not in the public domain. It does not belong to “history.” It belongs to him. Whether you approve of his approach or the speed at which he works is irrelevant, because it’s his decision and no one else’s—not even mine. Your enthusiasm to get your hands on it does not magically give you a legal right to take possession of someone else’s property.

4) He is not in this for the money. I am not in this for the money. That does not mean that money is not a factor, but it’s certainly not the most important one. When all is said and done, I am fairly certain that any money that might potentially be earned by my father’s work will be far outweighed by the investment that has gone into it over the years.

5) There has been some talk of burglarizing his home to “rescue” his work. Please know that we take any and all such threats, even if intended as a joke, very seriously. Any such comments will be forwarded to our attorney and to local law enforcement in case anyone else should decide to follow in Sullivan’s and Love’s footsteps and steal from my father.

6) There is absolutely no purpose in circulating some kind of petition to try and convince either me or my father to do whatever it is you think you want us to do. We don't need your harassment to understand the importance of either his research materials or his work based on them. We already get a daily stream of phone calls and emails from people who want to “help,” most of whom simply want to help themselves to my father's work. The last person whose assistance he accepted was Caitlin Love, and instead of doing the work my father needed her to do, she rifled through his files and stole what she wanted for her own—and John Sullivan’s—professional and financial gain.

7) Indexing and preserving an archive containing decades of original research and notes is complicated. Writing a book (or in this case books) is complicated. Negotiating with universities, foundations, publishers, and agents is complicated. Living with bipolar disorder is complicated. Coping with age-related illnesses is complicated. There are no easy answers or simple solutions to my father’s problems. We are doing the best we can.

My father still believes he can finish at least some of his work. That belief is what gets him out of bed every day. How dare you suggest that anyone has the right to take that away from him.

If you really, really want to help, leave my father alone and let him work. Instead, call upon John Jeremiah Sullivan and Caitlin Love to return everything they removed from his home, and to refrain from using any more of my father’s work for their own profit.

damn

http://observer.com/2014/05/john-jeremiah-sullivan-responds-to-nyt-controversy-regarding-robert-mccormick/

neither side comes off remotely spotless here (piece is still great, I thought), but that "I wanted him to be a complicated but heroic figure" bit is one of journalism's worst magazine-writing chris evans impulses

Neither side is spotless, but Sullivan's letter is pretty convincing. Which is not surprising, as he's a professional writer, and Susannah McCormick is not. But that stuff about L.V.'s family is compelling! I do think that his last point is a little optimistic; my guess is that when Robert McCormick dies this stuff is just going to be hoarded by his family.

Which is their right, and obviously better than the dump, but I don't think it's necessarily what Sullivan meant.

Not the worst ever, but something about this felt gratuitously nasty. Maybe it was the lazy use of "teenage girls" that set me off?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/arts/music/lindsey-stirlings-music-combines-classical-and-dance.html?_r=0

nerdy ones!

stupid nerds and their stupid study music

This critic discussion format is aggravating too. I think it's because it reads like a closed dialogue, not like a dialogue with the reader. The reader is made to feel like a voiceless onlooker.

There's that constant need for classical musicians and dancers to be "building upon" what has come before, always being progressive-- "how does this fit into the canon?" A hilarious conceit when you consider that both genres are period piece, the equivalent of civil-war reenactment. And this is of course the prevalent attitude. It's just as strange and dogmatic to me as "she probably made this extremely popular dubstep using presets"

The "who is it for?" question is a weird one, and Caramanica is better than that. To echo jmm's point, they could actually do some reporting and, like, go to a concert and talk to people about what they see in the music, and then tie that into their critical discussion. Hell, they could even go to a fan page.

But instead they choose to remain baffled because they can't fit the music into one of their preconceived archetype/stereotypes about audiences and target markets.

they could actually do some reporting

music writing's epitaph

i think most of the right things said above basically trace back to the motive for writing/publishing: 'we need a thing—well, here's a thing, say shit about it'

it's like vanessa-mae never existed

basically it's the old "classical crossover! it's classical, but like with POP! and DANCE! and NOT VIRTUOSIC!" saw with an added dash of "but teenage girls like it?" (which is weird, since it's usually "but middle-aged women like it?")

you guys probably don't read metal magazines so you might have missed the worst music writer interview ever. hahahaha!

https://scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/t1.0-9/10325402_10152402830090908_8747120128821642114_n.jpg

are those your kids? those kids look awesome.

You shd frequent WDYLL

Hey
Are you a fan of The Replacements, Archers of Loaf, Nerf Herder, Smashing Pumpkins, Bottle Rockets, Urge Overkill, Me First And The Gimmie Gimmies, The Cult, Jane's Addiction, Fountains of Wayne, Ween, Garage version of Chixdiggit, Wilco, Modest Mouse, the Smithereens, The Del Fuegos, Talking Heads, Dinosaur Jr., Against Me, Modern Baseball, Tripping Daisy, etc. Mid-90's stew, Thin Lizzy, some Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers, Sloan's Chris Murphy straight-edging his way into The Queers
-a slight Foo Fighters/Queens of the Stone Age vibe, but they sound more DIY.
-a funnier and more upbeat version of Tigers Jaw or the Front Bottoms
-like if Jon Spencer was trapped in a PopPunk band before discovering the Blues.
We try to harness the power of the Who (which comes naturally to us), the musicality of Wilco (everyone knows how good they are), and the lyrical genius of Ween (though we don't even come close to doing the amount of drugs they do/have done, and therefore probably won't come close to the level of Buenos Tardes Amigo, Stroker Ace, or Piss Up a Rope). That said, when people say we sound like Pavement, Spoon, or The Hold Steady, we don't disagree. Pavement was awesome. Spoon makes cool records. Craig Finn sings nice. Those are our aspirations as well. Our music isn't heavy metal, though at times we get pretty heavy. It's kinda Indie Rock, but without all the irony. And it's kinda punk, though you wouldn't think that from looking at us. It's hard to look punk and not get thrown out of PTA meetings so we keep our punk on the inside.

i know i know i got it in an e-mail, but still...

Wilco (everyone knows how good they are)

I claim this song title.

wilco (everyoneknowshowgoodtheyare)

Nobody seems to wonder
What my band sounds like
I gotta find a way
for this blurb to say
how we sound,
Everybody knows
we sound like Wilco

nah nah nahhhhh, nah nah nahhh nahhhhhh
(Everybody knows)
nah nah nahhhhh, nah nah nahhh nahhhhhh
(Everyone knows how good they are)

A slight Foo Fighters
NOT SO MUCH!!!
A trapped Jon Spencer
HE'S OUT OF TOUCH!!!
Kinda indie
WE'RE EXPOSED!!!
Everybody knows
we sound like Wilco

nah nah nahhhhh, nah nah nahhh nahhhhhh
(Everybody knows)
nah nah nahhhhh, nah nah nahhh nahhhhhh
(Everyone knows how good they are)

it comes naturally to us
we don't even come close
we don't even take drugs
we don't piss up a rope

that said, we don't disagree
that said, there's no irony
that said, we're pretty heavy
that said, we're kinda indie

nah nah nahhhh....

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/tyrese-is-hip-hops-first-billionaire/