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

we've got nine months to prepare our group halloween costume

http://www.punchland.com/music/interview-james-lockhart-and-matthew-heckmann-of-brother-moses/

fed up of this thread scoring cheap easy laughs from non-native English speakers

http://flavorwire.com/563477/oscar-winner-dustin-lance-black-tells-oblivious-sam-smith-to-stop-texting-his-fiance

I'm missing the "worst" here

"I wonder what he could be texting him? Maybe song lyrics? Probably song lyrics. Unfortunately, none of the other gay Oscar winners seem to care to participate in Twitter culture, so no further shade was found. And oh, what shade there could have been."

you might want to avoid the following list of music sites: all of them

no comment

loooool katherine

you might want to avoid the following list of music sites: all of them
Real lolz.

This really needs to be preserved. I actually like this album, and this review makes me hate it.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cc31Gu5W8AAKelL.jpg

this reminds me of exercises in like high school English where they challenge you to write sentences with multiple descriptive adjectives.

God that is painful.

reads a bit like one of Pushead's reviews from Maximum Rocknroll in the 1980s, but way more po-faced

I know someone who writes exactly like that, all the time. Facebook posts... Probably shopping lists, too.

kinda reminds me of how i wrote all the time in college

Not one of yours mencap? ;)

I know a writer who does something similar when writing about jazz. He's also a big fan of (at least this is what I guess is his method) writing a sentence with normal/appropriate nouns and adjectives, then busting out the thesaurus and replacing each one with something two steps removed. The result is that his reviews read like they were written by a self-educated extraterrestrial who thinks he's really, really smart.

that kind of writing always makes me think of "the eye of argon", which in turn always makes me smile.

we should have a thread for good writing screwed by shitty clickbait-driven editorial. for instance, this is actually a splendid obit, but oh god that headline is awful:

http://www.mtv.com/news/2750555/nikolaus-harnoncourt-was-classical-musics-punk-genius/

that was actually one of the most interesting music things i've read in awhile

Rotting Christ review is the new winner of the thread, if only because this writer uses (and invents) figures of speech without bothering to picture what the hell he is actually saying:

"majesty" cannot be "brimstone-scorched"

guitar distortion cannot be "velvet thick"

a "choral blast" cannot be "grave-scented" (new board description here?)

a backbone cannot be "thickly distorted" (can anything be "thickly distorted?")

a "trapping," almost by definition, cannot be "instantly recognizable"

flutes cannot be "sun scorched" (maybe they can, but how much would that affect the sound of the flute and how many readers would know this?)

Sorry, this sort of writing drives me up the fucking wall.

"Thickly distorted" seems like a needless way to reword "heavily distorted", and "sun scorched" is more of a description of the feeling the flutes provide to the piece, not the sound of flutes that were left on the dash on a sunny day. Overall I agree, it's too much.

The saddest part is that you guys are clearly not on metal promo lists, because I get press releases written almost this badly pretty much every day.

actually i'm pretty happy about not being on metal promo lists, all things considered

Rotting Christ review is the new winner of the thread, if only because this writer uses (and invents) figures of speech without bothering to picture what the hell he is actually saying:

"majesty" cannot be "brimstone-scorched"

guitar distortion cannot be "velvet thick"

flutes cannot be "sun scorched" (maybe they can, but how much would that affect the sound of the flute and how many readers would know this?)

Sorry, this sort of writing drives me up the fucking wall.

― Jimmywine Dyspeptic, Thursday, March 10, 2016 11:40 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

all of these are perfectly fine metaphors, your problem is interpreting them literally

i would feel cheated if i read a review of a band called Rotting Christ and it didn't refer to brimstone

jimmywine dyspeptic describes things as they are

(i've gotten a lot of comments over the years that are like "how can x.... be y??!?!?!??!!" and tbh they don't get old)

Most of the imagery I thought sucked in that piece wasn't what Jimmy listed but the main problem is just too fucking much of it

You could put flutes on a rocket and shoot it into the sun, just brainstorming

I actually listened to the Rotting Christ album because of this thread and it's pretty good!

i know what jimmywine is saying, but i kinda like "scorched." one of those words you only read in music reviews! or maybe in like grilling cookbooks.

brb, putting flutes on a rocket

eh it's been done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POMhSZLXR4I

holy crap playing flute in a spaceship that is amazing!

<3<3<3<3<3 Cady Coleman you rule! just chilling in space with Jethro Tull's flute

Academic goes all "jumpers for goalposts" about music reviews, referencing that time, 37 years ago, that a music critic audaciously reviewed an old record. Hard to believe that someone who teaches music crit at a University never read MOJO.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-music-critic-in-the-age-of-the-insta-release

I dunno; I think she's had some good pieces lately.

yeah, i think she's good. people in general get all atwitter about how fast our hurly burly world is. they've been doing that since forever. it's a natural impulse, i think. to say hey slow down there, pardner. people can still obviously wait and write about things decades later. the internet waits for no man, though.

I don't like Petrusich's writing much, but I don't like anybody's writing about music much lately. I hate that thing that went up on the New York Times website today, for example. I think it's probably me.

That said, I have never understood critics' need to be "part of the conversation" as demonstrated by jumping in headfirst to review something as fast as possible so you can tweet about it with all the other music critics you follow, and who follow you. Especially since none of you are going to dare write something negative. Look at the latest Kanye album - the mad rush was all to see who could be first to declare it a work of genius. It wasn't until what, two weeks later that Lex's negative review went up. You should never review art from the perspective of a kid tearing open a present on Christmas morning. You should let an album sit until you're bored with it, then write about the parts that still stick with you.

(Though I once wrote a review of a Derek Bailey album in which I said that since it was improvised music that had only been played once, I was reviewing it after only listening to it once.)

That said, I have never understood critics' need to be "part of the conversation" as demonstrated by jumping in headfirst to review something as fast as possible so you can tweet about it with all the other music critics you follow, and who follow you

i mean simply it is 1) wow i need to get paid 2) how do i get paid 3) oh someone wants me to turn around a review about a surprise release in less than 10 hours 4) guess i'll do that

^^ bingo
i don't really want to be "part of the conversation" either, but it happens, and i can see why people *do* want to be part of the converstaion

Yeah, I just don't get that impulse at all. (I guess that's demonstrated by the shit I do write about, and who I write about it for.)

can we go back to cady coleman and paddy maloney's tin whistle in space? what a rad astronaut.

You don't get the impulse to pay your rent?

I pay my rent by other means. As all sensible writers should.

You Ott to know not to open that can of worms.

that new ben ratliff book is all about the anxiety of everything. and the fastness and the toomuchness and the flavin and the heyladyyyyyyy....

I actually listened to the Rotting Christ album because of this thread and it's pretty good!

check out Thy Mighty Contract. totally great band.

I just dl'd it for listening on my commute home. Will report back about the flutes.

I hate that thing that went up on the New York Times website today, for example.

Yeah. The huge circle jerk things like that trigger among music writers on social media is really ugly to me. I enjoyed reading music writing a lot more when I didn't know who the writers behind it were. Maybe you could say that about any form of writing now, I dunno.

And by "know" them, I mean knowing their social media personalities.