Do you ever read one of Christgau's reviews and go, What the hell is he talking about?

http://images.villagevoice.com/issues/0543/ann-xgau.jpg

On Hysteria
by R. Christgau

You know about the music,
and if you don't think you'll like it
you won't:

impeccable pop metal
of no discernible content,
it will inspire active interest
only in AOR programmers
and the several million addicts
of the genre.

In short,
it's product--
but as product, significant,
because it's product for the CD age.

Stuck with over an hour of material
after four years
(after all, could twelve songs be any shorter?),
they elected to put it all on one disc
because as technocrats
they instinctively conceive for formats
that can accommodate an hour of music:
cassettes, which now outsell vinyl discs,
and CDs, which outdollar them.

The cassette sound
is a little too dim,
as commercial cassette sound usually is,
and though I sometimes
find myself preferring
the depth of the vinyl
once I've turned my amp up
to six or seven,

the clarity of the CD
gets more and more decisive
as the needle approaches
the outgroove.

I mean,
I have trouble perceiving these guys
as human beings
under ideal circumstances.

Not docked a notch
because at least they didn't
pad it into a double.

Okay,
so he makes hot
"experimental"
("serious") ("classical") ("new")
music.

What we wanna know
is whether it's cool
rock and roll
("rock").

Not by me.

It's great sonically,
with ringing overtones
that remind me of a carillon
or the Byrds,

but the beat's overstated
and the sense of structure
(i.e. climax)
mired in nineteenth-century
corn.

This can be endearing
in Pete Townshend
or Bruce Springsteen
(maybe even opera),

but it sounds weak-minded
in an artist of such otherwise
austere means.

which isn't the same as actually conveying an emotional connect with whatever affect was inserted, nor is it the same as expressing your own emotion (or even convincingly simulating it, which would be fine enough).

Thanks, slb, I think that's probably the best explanation I've read about what Christgau could possibly be on about in that New Order review. I think that's probably what he meant. New Order are neither expressing nor simulating an emotion (because that would mean suggesting that they themselves are experiencing the emotion) - rather they are presenting an emotion to us as a scientist might present a bacterium on a slide - something for our dispassionate and objective perusal.

Melding classic reggae and
Miami booty-bass,
Muddy Waters harp and
Schoolly-D scratch,
cocktail vibes and
sacred quartet.

The Native Tongue beatmaster
turned gravedigging heretic

assembles
"senseless skitstyle material"
by

"a motley crew of ill
characters and cronies
from around the way who
resemble a P-Funk on crack

(wait, P-Funk was on crack)"

into a disturbing laff
riot whose dramaturgy is

more musical than De La Soul's songs.

There's even a sweet-chorused
romantic ballad about
rape and homicide

two of each
but don't worry--
they're only a dream,

with a fake Viennese
muttering eager encouragement
in the background.

Unlike most punk lifers,
they've always yukked it up,
accepted outsiders,
and thought about

their feelings.

So I was pleased
rather than surprised
to learn that they'd
made their politics explicit.

Their attacks on religion
and hater hating
are right on

And why shouldn't
the guy who reads Zinn
and Chomsky
and then votes Nader
be confused?

Concomitantly
I was disappointed
rather than surprised
to find that the songs
about their personal world
are deeper than those
about our political one.

So
I'm glad quadriplegic Nubs
gets her impolitic two minutes.

And
my hopes for all humanity
leap

when a boy and girl
fall in love over the vinyl
they both own.

These 15 songs
are Muslim
like Philip Roth
is Jewish
irreverently, idiosyncratically, and to the marrow

Their North African provenance
means their sense of Islam is at least
unorthodox
and often
cosmopolitan/European

and so, of course, does their pop provenance

East-West instrument mixing
is standard
mystical intensity
a hook
Women
hold their own

Some of these professional entertainers
are seekers after the catchy tune
others folkloric types
who sound authentic to us and impure to adepts
and as many come from Paris or Barcelona
as from Cairo or Marrakech

You wouldn't think to listen
that they're all championing a cultural tendency under attack
But Islamists hate them as much as they hate us

if not more.

-- Thomas Tallis (tallis4...), February 8th, 2006 6:20 PM.

I'd agree, but its posting was followed by a host of ostensibly intelligent people debating its meaning at great length, a course of events which unfortunately renders your allegation specious.

This makes for a marvelous near-haiku in its own right, worthy of contemplation and bearing multiple meanings.

They both own.

I was going to let someone else suggest it first

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/dylan-05.php

that's what I got anyhow - I don't think he's driving at a HUGE point, just doing rock history, which I rather enjoy

Björk, Debut
Placebo, Without You I'm nothing
Blonde Redhead has one Neither and nothing else reviewed.
Blur, The Great Escape
NIN, Broken
Offspring, Smash
Pulp; His n Hers !!
Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon collie and Adore
Weezer
practically everything from Tori Amos, etc..

I guess it comes down to being interested enough in what he has to say to be disappointed when he doesn't say it.

It tells you about his tastes but I don't know if it is that valuable in and of itself to know what his tastes are. The really dismissive reviews doesn't offer any insight or perspective into the music or its reception (which the Branca review does offer, for a counterexample). They don't critically engage wit the music. There's rarely any effort to understand why millions of people might have liked and like Def Leppard or Jethro Tull even though they left Christgau cold, beyond the hint that maybe they're just not as smart as Christgau.

I was reading Chuck's comments on Nirvana in Accidental Evolution and this strikes me as a really interesting engagement with music towards which he's ambivalent:

The first time I heard of Leonard Cohen was when I noticed a poetry book by him on my father's shelf a few days after the funeral. Maybe part of my aversion to Nirvana, and maybe even to dark depressing sounds in general (and their glib chicness in "alternative" circles) is owed in part to me shielding myself from emotions I'd rather not think about. Sometimes listening to Nirvana basically creeps me out. They hit too close to home...

We really need a rolling Xgau thread - it is hard to keep track of them all...

I dislike or am indifferent to every one of these records except Bjork's.

But you raise a good point, richardk: why is he so quick to dismiss these albums? Here's the short album: too much fucking music to absorb in one year, let alone a lifetime.

Van Halen [Warner Bros., 1978]
For some reason Warners wants us to know that this is the biggest bar band in the San Fernando Valley. This doesn't mean much--all new bands are bar bands, unless they're Boston. The term becomes honorific when the music belongs in a bar. This music belongs on an aircraft carrier. C

I did like that he said at the end of his Silent Tongues review: "Even more than usual, take my grade as a measure of personal usefulness rather than aesthetic merit".

Billie Holiday is uncoverable,
possibly the greatest singer of the century,
yet the fact is that Ross's versions
which occupy only two sides of this soundtrack album
are intensely listenable.

That's the word I want,
because it doesn't fit Holiday,
who either seizes your full attention
or disturbs you in the background.

While copying Holiday's phrasing and intonation,
Ross smoothes them out,
making the content easier to take
without destroying it altogether.

This may be a desecration and a deception,
but it speaks to the condition of a ghetto child
who's always had a talent for not suffering,
for willing herself up and through.

Not every singer turns into a junkie,
after all.

Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone) [Columbia, 1974]
If you think the inflatable dolls they sell with the Orgy-Gell in the back of cheap skin mags are sexy, then you will doubtless find this fifteen-year-old wonder of nature the hottest thing since that waitress who brought you the screwdrivers the time you blew $220 playing blackjack in downtown Winnemucca. A cute little ass, better-than-average pipes, and Billy Sherrill's usual "who gives a shit if the title cut is commercial" country album. Up a notch for no strings. B-

is he saying that this fifteen-year-old has a cute little ass?

I mean, he's obviously going for a satirical "this is what happens when you market a 15-year-old as a sex symbol" tone, but he's doing it wrong.

god those "poems" are annoying

What a creep
that's a classic song too

was tanya tucker strongly marketed as a sex symbol?

Still the best. A mile better than Greil.

was tanya tucker strongly marketed as a sex symbol?
i was too young to know about all that but twelve year old me bought this on account of the cover
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c3/TanyaTuckerTNT.jpg

Delta Dawn > every weird xgau ever wrote