Xgau Tastes Voice's Ax

Alfred, I'm not saying that essay is the only appearance of those ideas, or that they were absolutely new to him! But really in all of his early-80s New York writing it feels like there's a recommitment to that kind of stuff. The earlier stuff still probably has more of a moral dimension than most music writing (even when its moral dimensions were wrong), but it's still interesting to see him once again wowed by the seriousness of it.

isn't dave marsh impossibly sententious these days?

Marsh wrote a Musician piece in 1980 damning Christgau for embracing the avant-garde (Pere Ubu, B-52's) over Tom Petty.

In recent years Marsh has always tried to get his brand of left-wing populist politics into his own reviews and articles in his Rap & Roll Confidential newsletter, and elsewhere (his involvement with Springsteen), so his criticism of Christgau back then for injecting politics is interesting. Although Marsh is likely to claim his injection of his Detroit-born politics is different than Christgau's NYC version.

Musically, Marsh's taste has always been narrower than Christgau's.