pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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?

(yeah I know beating dead horse etc)

this generation is ignoring it, and also old critics.

critics who are really into the Clash? i guess? (i've never seen evidence of this.)

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

Haha yeah the idea that you had to be able to "remember" them is just...

xp if this was in a British publication, thinking of one of the more middleaged ones, the there would be a little more resonance to it, although I'd stil consider it spurious at this point in time

Black Flag made it okay to fight cops, to fight fans, and to do what punk always promised but rarely did: be oneself. The band was both explosive and implosive. It was destined to end.

FYI, most bands have to break up eventually, except for the Rolling Stones.

actually i feel like bands are lasting a lot longer than they used to. 80s bands aside, it's kind of crazy to me that even, like, Spoon has been around for over 15 years.

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

Yeah. I had never considered Bad Brains this way. So, so wrong.

"Black Flag made it okay to fight cops, to fight fans, and to do what punk always promised but rarely did: be oneself."

This part of the sentence is even dumber.

i agree bands are around a lot longer these days. it still seems like a ridiculous thing to say.

Read that yesterday and was totally boggled. Unfortunately, I was so put off by the bit about "Clash-fetishizing critics" that I quit before the "ethnic cleansing". Who does Cosmo Lee even imagine he's talking about there?

A couple more choice bits:

"Black Flag made it okay to fight cops, to fight fans, and to do what punk always promised but rarely did: be oneself. The band was both explosive and implosive. It was destined to end."

"The face on the cover of 2001's Jane Doe, the hand on the cover of 2004's You Fail Me -- they are the Black Flag bars of today."

jesusfuckingchrist

I know that, before Black Flag, I felt I had to totally sublimate my desire to fight fans and fight cops; thank you, Henry Rollins, for letting me be myself again!

(in fairness, once you get past the awful revisionist history part, the review does spend some time describing what the music on the album sounds like, so good job on that)

i agree bands are around a lot longer these days. it still seems like a ridiculous thing to say.

not debating that, just sayin'.

I think I'm more critical than any other genre(s) of people writing about hardcore and metal in publications that don't focus on it a lot, but there are so many little needles poking in me w/ this one

"Kurt Ballou is this generation's Steve Albini" is highly debatable - dude produces almost nothing except hardcore and beardo metal bands

Doesn't Cosmo Lee post here sometimes? And do the Invisible Oranges blog?

he posts as "Mr Snrub"

hey, i know him!

yeah i don't wanna be mean but i'll just say it was a non-shocka when i scrolled down to the author of this review

Doesn't Cosmo Lee post here sometimes? And do the Invisible Oranges blog?

And former Stylus writer.

Black Flag made it okay to fight cops, to fight fans, and to do what punk always promised but rarely did: be oneself. The band was both explosive and implosive. It was destined to end.

FYI, most bands have to break up eventually, except for the Rolling Stones.

― TGAAPQ (Mr. Que), Friday, October 30, 2009 2:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is particularly weird because Black Flag were going at it for almost 10 years, and outlasted a lot of peers and kinda trudged on well after people stopped caring