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

http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4148321-kaleidoscopic-love--dis-meets-caribou

So this isn't a 'bad' piece of music journalism - it's pretty bog-standard stuff, not especially insightful, not particularly well written, but it's not insane or offensive or anything dreadful.

But it is littered with typos and errors and just clumsy sentences like this: "Someone who lists ‘crate-digging’ under their their list of hobbies"

And maybe it's the fact that I'm 35 and manage publications for a living and look after a style guide for an institution etc etc, but stuff like that just makes me feel sad now. I read stuff by 23-year-olds (including old stuff by 23-year-old me) and sigh and think "fgs worry less about metaphors and crazy adjectives and more about understandable subordinate clauses and not making errors and being understandable".

#old

Drowned in Sound has always been pretty sloppy, hasn't it? I don't expect any degree of competence from it. The reviews are pure junk writing.

I thought the AV Club Hateclub thing with Mary Timony was good, but the new one, with some comedian, talking about "Pink Houses," is so full of stupid. It's not my favorite song, but her reading of it is totally wrong and she gets all sorts of stuff wrong, especially silly since it's really just a poor man's death of the dream "Born in the USA." Like, she claims right-wingers use it in rallies, and blames the Coug, but the Coug has always told them to cut that shit out. And then the writer and comedian both think the pink house in the song is some sign of individuality, and not, like, a crappy pink house. And then the comedian rips on "Do They Know Its Christmas," which is a fair and easy target, but she does it all wrong, by claiming it's an example of Americans (?!) being up their own asses, even though it's overwhelmingly UK. And then she cites Bono's - who she notes is not American! - blurted "Tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you" as only quasi-ironic. I mean, it's a dumb line, but it's *entirely* sarcastic. And so on.

I never heard that line as sarcasm

maybe mid-80s Bono wasn't the right dude to give your ironic line to

Yeah, that's the totally fair criticism (or any criticism of Bono, really). But do people really hear his "tonight, thank god it's them instead of you!" blurt as an earnest, phew, at least we aren't starving in Ethiopia! I always heard it as Bono sarcastically accusing people of selfishly ignoring the famine as something happening to someone else somewhere else.

its obviously completely sarcastic. and it's it a 100% uk/irish recording?

Except for Kool and the Gang!

I wouldn't call that line sarcastic. It's basically another way of saying "There but for the grace of God go I."

Well, he does say "God."

I just read that Bono and Geldof fought about the line as Bono thought it would be misinterpreted

to be honest I never listened to the lyrics of that song closely. I just kind of hear Bono's voice as signifier for mid-80s hypersincerity.

http://www.liketotally80s.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/best-christmas-song-photostrip.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrdAI3kwIbU

lol yet another article calling frank ocean a rapper

also "shower" is pretty distinctive for a dr. luke production -- and it's wonderful besides.

I am deeply suspicious of poetry professors who own albums by Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/magazine/streaming-music-has-left-me-adrift.html?referrer=

it's little pink houses, plural, for you and me (yeah), how could that be a sign of individuality?

let's just skip that one, please

That article is shit

I am stunned that the opening sentence "It’s hard to imagine now, but there once was a time when you could not play any song ever recorded, instantly, from your phone" appeared on an editor's desk and did not immediately cause the piece to be spiked.

To be fair it could have been worded that way to be a joke.

could we really just not do this

It's not that hard to imagine a time like that

A lot of discussion of this article already on the Millennials Ask Old-Timers thread

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/oct/15/playlist-world-eek-islam-chipsy-souad-abdullah-maurice-louca-faycal-azizi
(The first blurb)

?

Really it was just this line:

The tightly syncopated rhythmical assault is in a lot of ways analogous to carnival or marching musical forms such as soca, New Orleans second-line drumming, dancehall and calypso.

otherwise the writing is fine

so it may not be the worst piece of music writing in the history of the world is what you're saying

Is that a terrible line?

Seems like a very useful article.

IDK it seemed pretty o_O to me -- like what does it have in common with those styles of music other than being syncopated and not by white people?

they all use a marching-style pattern

YES! I've arrived…

http://www.artistdirect.com/entertainment-news/article/feature-5-reasons-logic-s-under-pressure-is-the-best-debut-of-2014/11247386

resonances??

pretty sure resonances is 100% not a word

i mean i'm not sure what we should be expecting from like, artistdirect, but even so woooooooooowwwww.

He must have meant 'resonations'. A literal symphony of them.

And I had no idea artistdirect was still a thing

resonances is definitely a word

checked, it is indeed, but it still sounds mad ridiculous in plural form and is unnecessary in the context of that review

I agree. It is a widely used word in my field, so it doesn't sound weird anymore. 'A symphony of resonances' is terribly lol, though, and I plan to use it if I ever come across some bad glass.

Hahahahahahahaha!

I mean credit to the New York Times there -- after the Dan Brooks thing, they realized that if you're going to troll, leave it to a total fucking pro.

a gathering of bare-armed, bare-legged lovers of song and smokers of pot

Frank Bruni received money to write this.

While recording devices have liberated many of us from commercials on television, the rest of our lives are awash in ads. They’re now nestled among the trailers at movies. They flicker on the screens in taxis.

Cause, meet effect!

They’re woven so thoroughly into sporting events, from Nascar races to basketball games, that it’s hard to imagine an era when they weren’t omnipresent. But in a story earlier this year on the website Consumerist, Chris Moran reported that 20 years ago, only one of the major-league baseball stadiums had a corporate moniker, Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

"Hi dere, I have never heard of Wrigley Field (built in 1914)!"

He's a talented man.

maybe he only watches the World Series?

“Keep Austin Weird” is the Texas capital’s unofficial slogan, a clue to its proudly subversive soul.

can we talk about how Austin is really not weird, like, at all?

i feel like it got some rep because it was in texas and slightly more "quirky" than dallas

Keep (X) Weird

I'm a super dilettante when it comes to Texas but for what it's worth, I found Houston to be a LOT weirder than Austin. Or a lot more bohemian, arty and exciting at least.

Austin is weird gone mainstream, so isn't actually that weird anymore. From my experience the past few years Houston and Dallas weird are still out on the fringes so lack that homogenizing factor.

austin has livenationed up, totes

Keep Austin Weird, brought to you by Doritos.