pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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?

Results 1 - 10 of about 333 for "hipstergogic pop". (0.21 seconds)

Not actually 333 different mentions of the term, but still

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

xpost oh yeah, I read the Reynolds article. I guess the term didn't have any epoch-defining effect on me, for some reason.

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.

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.

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.

[looks around nervously]

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

that's what I end up doing, mostly.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Yeah, this can be interesting stuff to read about, but I never care about it when I'm actually listening to an album.

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.

Do you find yourself better able to express those inferences by way of talking about the lyrics than about the music?

Vocal tonality and rhythm matter as much – it's how they all signify.

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.

I can't separate how I respond to, say, Girls from the vocalist's timbre; the lyrics are secondary.

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.

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?

people don't read reviews for that uppity talk

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.

HEY "XXX HARDCORE" MEAN PENETRATION, NOT FROLICKING INNA NOOD, NOOB

lolllllll

ha, it just came to my attention that "xxx hardcore girls video" is an interesting bit of search-engine optimization

Girls as aspiring SEO expert.

http://www.komailnoori.com/web-designing-images/seo-expert.gif

Koller's kit is so murderous, it's practically the sound of ethnic cleansing.

sigh

o_O

ok then

his drum technique is dictatorial

his ride cymbal is a genocide symbol

kinda wonder how that line got through

I started reading the review and didn't even get to that line before taking umbrage:

Converge are this generation's Black Flag. This generation might not remember Black Flag, so here's a refresher. In the early 1980s, Black Flag and peers like Bad Brains and Minor Threat took punk beyond "three chords and the truth." The result was hardcore punk. It was deliberately ugly and harsh; Clash-fetishizing critics have mostly ignored it.

wtf Bad Brains made UGLY music? This is news to me!

i'm just glad someone finally started talking about black flag, minor threat, and bad brains after years of them languishing in obscurity.

also lol that whole "ethnic cleansing" section was edited out

i went to amoeba last week and asked about black flag and the counter guy looked at me and said, "i've heard of electric flag but black....no..."

ha I just had a flashback to seward's attempt to rent "thirtysomething" from Blockbuster

Thank god for small favors I guess.

xxp

The review of Black Flag in that Converge review is worse than the review of Converge.

Converge are this generation's Black Flag. This generation might not remember Black Flag, so here's a refresher. In the early 1980s, Black Flag and peers like Bad Brains and Minor Threat took punk beyond "three chords and the truth." The result was hardcore punk. It was deliberately ugly and harsh; Clash-fetishizing critics have mostly ignored it.

this is just so horrific on so many levels

Maybe I'm old and out of touch but who, exactly, is ignoring Black Flag, Minor Threat and Bad Brains?