I'd imagine that it's in a reviewer's own best interest to look like a non-idiot as often as possible. Ignorance that parades as "expert opinion" reflects badly on the reviewer, the editor and the publication as a whole. So yeah, don't do that. It's not the fucking record company's fault. "Well, you didn't give me enough information to protect me from saying stupid shit, so..."
― That's not just me saying that, that's the Pentagon. (contenderizer), Friday, 9 October 2009 17:22 (fourteen years ago) link
um yes it is also the record company's fault
― as strikingly artificial and perfect as a wizard's cap (HI DERE), Friday, 9 October 2009 17:23 (fourteen years ago) link
i can totally see being like "well this is what they gave me so this is what i'm going with" but a) i don't review records b) i can be a jerk about things like that
― don't blame pitchfork, blame america (call all destroyer), Friday, 9 October 2009 17:24 (fourteen years ago) link
Okay, HD, but the critic's exposed ignorance only the record company's fault in an indirect way. A very indirect way. I read criticism due to a presumption of expertise/intelligence, not a presumption of ability to transcribe one-sheets.
― That's not just me saying that, that's the Pentagon. (contenderizer), Friday, 9 October 2009 17:27 (fourteen years ago) link
Seriously LOLing at that review. No matter how it happened, that reviewer looks like an idiot. It's some kind of a success for the artist though, since his attempts to de-contextualize the original material has obviously proved to be somewhat successful. At least to pull the wool over this dork's eyes.
― everything, Friday, 9 October 2009 17:29 (fourteen years ago) link
Best part: "...a bleak, sometimes frightening character portrait of Oliveri as an outcast not fit for normal society."
― That's not just me saying that, that's the Pentagon. (contenderizer), Friday, 9 October 2009 17:30 (fourteen years ago) link
u should get credit for dude changing it
― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 9 October 2009 17:46 (fourteen years ago) link
lol
― a bleak, sometimes frightening portrait of ceiling cat (contenderizer), Friday, 9 October 2009 17:49 (fourteen years ago) link
judging by recent accounts of olivieri's temperament, you can see why the reviewer thought it was his own song.
getting sent MP3s with nothing else is an annoying trend. what are PR companies for if they're just gonna email you the music?
― dog latin, Friday, 9 October 2009 17:59 (fourteen years ago) link
I could picture a Vietnamese whore saying that whilst doing a striptease.
― a bleak, sometimes frightening portrait of ceiling cat (contenderizer), Friday, 9 October 2009 18:01 (fourteen years ago) link
oh man, I get so paranoid about exactly this thing with mp3s, to the point of creating these elaborate, ridiculous worries -- what if I don't realize it's a cover album of 60s obscurities, what if this line I say I hate is actually a reference I'm not catching, what if I criticize the drumming without realizing the drummer lost an arm in an accident and is re-learning to play like Rick Allen, what if there was a mistake and I got sent the wrong album entirely and I write that it's a ridiculous Bowie rip-off when they accidentally sent me a mix of Bowie b-sides I didn't know about, etc. etc. etc. sometimes it gets you; it's something it's normal not to know, googling won't turn it up, and you just eat it and make corrections.
― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, 9 October 2009 18:18 (fourteen years ago) link
This probably says more about what I write about (namely, stuff that's either too small to have a publicist working it or too big for anyone working it to care about me, and things sent directly too me by artists and/or by artists that I already have a good working knowledge of), but I almost never ask PR people for anything, unless they happen to mention something I'm actively interested in in some mass e-mail I get. I mean, it's not that hard to find one-sheets or equivalent info just with a quick search anyway if I'm really in the dark on some detail I don't want to get wrong in a review.
― some dude, Friday, 9 October 2009 18:25 (fourteen years ago) link
pretty sure nick oliveri has a publicist
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Friday, 9 October 2009 18:26 (fourteen years ago) link
he murdered his publicist
― don't blame pitchfork, blame america (call all destroyer), Friday, 9 October 2009 18:32 (fourteen years ago) link
the review told me
^^^well done
― the taint of Macca is strong (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 October 2009 18:50 (fourteen years ago) link
actually GG Allin murdered his publicist first
― some dude, Friday, 9 October 2009 18:51 (fourteen years ago) link
― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, October 9, 2009 1:18 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
rap music's constant self-referentialism makes this even harder fwiw
― i got nothin (deej), Friday, 9 October 2009 21:15 (fourteen years ago) link
and hilarious when new-jacks fuck it up
― I am not an animal, I'm a human SBing (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 9 October 2009 21:52 (fourteen years ago) link
rawkan
― i got nothin (deej), Friday, 9 October 2009 22:14 (fourteen years ago) link
jk <3 u tom
The sound has many names, but none of them seem to fit just right. Dream-beat, chillwave, glo-fi, hypnagogic pop, even hipster-gogic pop
Results 1 - 1 of 1 for " hipster-gogic pop".
is Marc trying to create the world's worst meme, just for larfs?
― FC Tom Tomsk Club (Merdeyeux), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 14:42 (fourteen years ago) link
Results 1 - 10 of about 333 for "hipstergogic pop". (0.21 seconds)
Not actually 333 different mentions of the term, but still
― Vladislav Delap (DJ Mencap), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 14:45 (fourteen years ago) link
i don't review a record without asking the publicist for a one-sheet, which every record has, without exception
the problem arises when you find that a potential issue crops up here but your deadline is RIGHT THERE FIVE MINUTES AWAY
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 14:47 (fourteen years ago) link
xpost oh yeah, I read the Reynolds article. I guess the term didn't have any epoch-defining effect on me, for some reason.
― FC Tom Tomsk Club (Merdeyeux), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 14:49 (fourteen years ago) link
That's all true, but I think there's also a tendency in a lot of reviews to treat lyrics as a direct sort of window onto the artist's soul.
^ this. Also, overemphasis on lyrics in reviews of bands/music where lyrics plainly aren't the main focus. Up to, and including, peppering the review with random couplets. Dunno if this is because critics are more likely to be 'words' type people, or whether the music side is harder to write about.
― ecuador_with_a_c, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 18:35 (fourteen years ago) link
I think it really is that more critics are writers who like music than musicians and/or students of music theory who also can write well. A really stunning number of critics seem to talk about only the text of the lyrics as if they're writing about poetry, and treat the music as almost incedental.
― looking for comedy in the mustache girl (some dude), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 18:41 (fourteen years ago) link
Granted, a lot of brilliant musical minds can't write for shit and I wouldn't want to read them as critics. But on the other end of the spectrum there are a lot of critics who don't know shit about music but express their shallow lit 101 ideas about it really eloquently.
― looking for comedy in the mustache girl (some dude), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 18:42 (fourteen years ago) link
[looks around nervously]
― a bleak, sometimes frightening portrait of ceiling cat (contenderizer), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:03 (fourteen years ago) link
think it really is that more critics are writers who like music than musicians and/or students of music theory who also can write well. A really stunning number of critics seem to talk about only the text of the lyrics as if they're writing about poetry, and treat the music as almost incedental.
Really? If anything the lyrics-are-just-as-sound school has been so successful that I've known critics who get self-conscious citing examples of good rock lyrics (I don't excuse myself, one of the world's biggest Bernard Sumner fans).
― Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:09 (fourteen years ago) link
Oh there are definitely lots of successful critics in both camps, if we're gonna run w/ my shaky premise that everyone is one or the other. But I feel like there are more, especially nowadays, who can go deep into the meaning of a song (at least as they see it) w/o ever giving you the slightest idea what it sounds like.
― looking for comedy in the mustache girl (some dude), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:15 (fourteen years ago) link
A pretty high percentage of critics I know play music. At least a little. (At least indie-type critics.) Some just play an instrument. Some have fun doing home recordings -- nothing serious, just for the enjoyment of it, but enough to give a person a sense of what it involves to put music together, how it goes and how the tools work. Some are full-on musicians with albums you can go buy at the store. (On Pitchfork's staff that includes, as far as I know: Matt Lemay, Mia Clarke, Drew Daniel, Joshua Klein, Dominique Leone, and Douglas Wolk. And even just I personally have heard for-fun recorded music by at least five more.)
So I wouldn't leap to the assumption that critics/writers don't know anything from a musician's perspective. I think a lot of folks have worked on or played with music enough to have a little bit of grounding in how it works. Which is helpful, sometimes. I don't know that it's always necessary, and sometimes it can even get in the way. But I think a decent number of critics have some of it, just enough to see a few things about what musicians are doing.
― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:28 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, plenty do, of course. But I'm saying if I had to guess probably less than half? I don't think that's a hugely unlikely thought.
― looking for comedy in the mustache girl (some dude), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:31 (fourteen years ago) link
NB: One thing I do think critics do, often, sometimes well and sometimes badly, is to try and isolate some core thing about the essence of the record they're writing about, what the music's really about or what's it's offering -- and then try to locate how that's reflected in the lyrics, which you can actually quote on the page and say this, this right here sums it up.
Which might account for some of the lyric stuff being discussed here
― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:31 (fourteen years ago) link
that's what I end up doing, mostly.
― Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:33 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, that definitely happens a lot too.
What always irks me about the Christgau school of thought is when a critic seems to decide on what the record stands for or symbolizes, and then takes some kind of ethical or intellectual stance on that, as if that tells you whether it's a good or bad piece of music.
― looking for comedy in the mustache girl (some dude), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:33 (fourteen years ago) link
from a reader of music reviews standpoint, i have to stay, i really can't stand the idea of a critic telling me what the music is about. i can see how it works fine for some people, but not for me. this also extends to book reviews as well, so, you know.
― pariah carey (Mr. Que), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:35 (fourteen years ago) link
And I'm on the other side of that fence. For better or worse, I tend to approach almost all art as an argument of some sort, and figuring out what's being said is job #1. Even if it's just presenting an aesthetic or working through a process, I tranlate it into argumentese so I can more effectively comp and rebut it. Therefore I like reviews that deal with music on a similar level, though not to the exclusion of all other considerations. Funny thing is that I'm taking the reviews as arguments, too -- arguments about other arguments that I can then argue with on a number of levels.
― a bleak, sometimes frightening portrait of ceiling cat (contenderizer), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:38 (fourteen years ago) link
n Pitchfork's staff that includes, as far as I know: Matt Lemay, Mia Clarke, Drew Daniel, Joshua Klein, Dominique Leone, and Douglas Wolk
Mike Powell is in the band Festival (though he didn't play on their most recent album).
― M. Grissom/DeShields (jaymc), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:39 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, this can be interesting stuff to read about, but I never care about it when I'm actually listening to an album.
― M. Grissom/DeShields (jaymc), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:42 (fourteen years ago) link
No, but it can be fun.
I find myself concentrating on what the music is doing, what the artist does, and what I can infer. Readers will sometimes assume I make these inferences based just on lyrics, which isn't really or wholly true.
― Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:43 (fourteen years ago) link
Do you find yourself better able to express those inferences by way of talking about the lyrics than about the music?
― on a top secret challops mission in contraristan (The Reverend), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:47 (fourteen years ago) link
Vocal tonality and rhythm matter as much – it's how they all signify.
― Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:49 (fourteen years ago) link
I think it's sorta inherent to the concept of criticism or really just any kind of engaged reaction to art to think over what it seems to be "about" or what it's saying or what it represents, etc., though you sorta need to do this in a modest way where you don't pretend that's what it's actually about, or that it isn't complicated and open to lots of interpretations and whatnot. Being good at this is even handier when people can just click "play" on embedded mp3s.
You know who's great at making there not be a music/lyrics divide, is Tom E, who's really good at talking about how the two things suit each other -- this is oddly kinda rare, being able to talk in a comprehensive way about how music and lyric and performance and emotion interact with one another, or support one another, or clash, or whatever.
― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:50 (fourteen years ago) link
I can't separate how I respond to, say, Girls from the vocalist's timbre; the lyrics are secondary.
― Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:51 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah nabisco otm, especially this
though you sorta need to do this in a modest way where you don't pretend that's what it's actually about, or that it isn't complicated and open to lots of interpretations and whatnot.
this is super key.
― pariah carey (Mr. Que), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:53 (fourteen years ago) link
Hm. Qualifying an argument isn't very important to me; isn't it a given that your argument is one of many, a part of a conversation?
― Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:55 (fourteen years ago) link
people don't read reviews for that uppity talk
― da croupier, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 19:58 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, I'm not so sure about the importance of hedging/qualifying. It's definitely an art, and something that has become much more important in recent years for whatever reason (pavlovian reaction to the expectation of derisive internet snark?), but to me it's more a style point than part of the essence of good criticism.
― a bleak, sometimes frightening portrait of ceiling cat (contenderizer), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 20:21 (fourteen years ago) link
HEY "XXX HARDCORE" MEAN PENETRATION, NOT FROLICKING INNA NOOD, NOOB
― Fox Force Five Punchline (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 28 October 2009 13:07 (fourteen years ago) link