what does this pfm song review thingy even mean anyway?

the syntax is off-kilter and often hard to penetrate but the weirdness is calculated and the grammatic acrobatics finely tuned. it's not a new trick i guess (trying hard to sound breezy) but i guess it's just a little more obvious when you've got this self-conscious overuse of parentheses, abbreviations, and unexplained references. i understand they're trying to keep these little blurbs to word count but there's still something distasteful about writers purposely alienating readers and casting themselves as "insiders" too busy to explain what the fuck they mean.

Again, for the record: it seems to me to be a better challenge for the critic to evade this issue entirely, and in fact I think the people lauded as top-notch critics usually do find a way to write that can be sophisticated and universally-understandable at the same time.

There's a problem of genre here. When people read music criticism (or at least, when I read music criticism) they want something along the lines of an IGN.com video game review or a newspaper movie review. Straight and to the point. It's utilatarian literature, they want the question "Do I want to hear this?" answered.

They aren't expecting something that looks like it belongs in the Norton Anthology of British Literature. Reading music reviews on sites like Pitchforkmedia, I often feel like opening a technical manual for my car to find out how to change the oil and finding the entire thing is wrote in haikus.

'the writer is giving the reader a little credit' by referencing phantom planet twice

'the writer is just aiming to the most initiated portion of the audience, aiming for the approval of his/her peers' by referencing phantom planet twice

there must be an option d.

a lot of the reviews i'm thinking of try to come off like casually composed riffs. just thinking out loud, no biggie etc!!

This is certainly how I write track reviews.

Dan too.

(Also haikus are very clear and practical, not opaque.) (Also your haiku simile is an example of exactly the kind of literary tactic -- metaphor -- that I'm surprised people claim to have trouble reading.)

in conclusion it's nothing personal but rachel probably had to look up Phantom Planet on Allmusic.com before she referenced Alex Greenwald by first and last name. because any normal person would. that's reason enough to explain the reference, however briefly.

to reiterate, i might actually be more worried if she just knew it offhand.

"WHATEVER, NUTFACE/NUTFACE ABOOBIE/I'm sorry, I have to go take a drug test now." Watch out for those poppyseeds. I'm afraid all the Nyquil [you've] been popping turned [your]pee into Mad Dog 20/20. There's only one way to find out. I.P. Sizzurp. Polka party?

[three stars]

http://www.marchofdimes.com/images/chapters/NY_greater_Chris-Russo.jpg

If it's that easy Jess why was I told after submitting clips that Blender "would have no work to offer (me) but thanks for trying"?

So, for an example, let me load today's Pitchfork reviews.

Okay, the first review I read was the Espers one, and it's exactly what I want a review to be. Great job. High five.

So instead let's look at this one:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/q/quintron/swamp-tech.shtml

Starts off simple enough, but then gets to shit like:

Dumb fun trumps brainy tedium, and if Swamp Tech were an RPG, it'd be all whimsical mini-games, no arduous stat-building.

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. The rest of the review is fine.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/n/nadja/truth-becomes-death.shtml

Though timely, Truth Becomes Death risks being a marginal record, if only because it has a nature so huge some might take it as scenery

I'm lost. I understand that it is an experimental album and may not become popular, but how is it's "nature" "huge"? What does that mean? And what does it mean to be mistaken for scenery? Is this just supposed to sound witty? Is the album's sound "large" such as Mogwai (which was cited earlier) songs, and that is why it may become marginal? How does that make sense?

In this barbarously delicate sea, the crashing guitars and horror house vocals of "Memory Leak" wreck damage in some other nearby room.

Oh, another metaphor. Okay, the album's sound is huge like the ocean, and it sounds kind of scary and "barbarous" I guess. Okay, that's nice, but isn't there a much easier way to say that? The review already once cited before how "large" the sound is using allusions to nature.

Nadja's not obsessed or stuck on ideologies, which is why they sound like latecomers.

I have no idea what this means.

So, even if you do think it is only minorly difficult to understand what all that means, my stance is this: minorly difficult is still too difficult. I want a music review. Not creative writing. I'd read something else for that.

big words in the wrong hands = dangerous

Mwahahahaha

Biggest words in Mickey's quoted material (by number of syllables):

ideologies
barbarously
latecomers
whimsical
marginal
delicate
scenery
arduous
tedium

Apart from maybe "barbarously" these are all pretty common words.

But a better retort to Mickey's post might be drawn from his own words: "I don't want to have to think about it." I suppose it's inevitable that there will be people who don't like thinking about stuff; I suppose it's inevitable that some of those people would nonetheless want to read music criticism (without thinking about it); I'm going to try and remain comforted by the idea that this is some perverse minority opinion. It's certainly the first time I've ever seen someone say he prefers writing that doesn't make him think.

Actually, this review totally put me in a bad mood. Mainly because i'm a die-hard (post movie poster) BoYo fan (common ways to say SSLYBY: the actual name, Boris Yeltsin and sometimes BoYo) I like saying SSLYBY (sly-bye) as well.