"My Chemical Romance is this generation's Nirvana"

Also: Bright Eyes

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpost

You really think that's interesting?

xpost Anthony how could that not be interesting/meaningful? I feel like any critic who's not at least a little curious about what that means and how that works is ... well, weirdly uninquisitive! It's one thing if you think you know those subgenres and know what they mean and just aren't interested -- if you feel like you've dealt with them enough -- but otherwise hell yeah, it seems fascinating enough for me.

I was the only one who has Lovespirals on mine. That they're obscure and MCR are huge is the obvious point of difference, but I don't think Jess and I are running for a position in terms of who is the best amateur sociologist here.

It was a remarkably productive tension, though, which it isn't anymore.

Nabisco's right, but I find it pretty hard to write about that class of bands in any interesting way, which is not even the case with other rock bands, it's just the emo ones. I just end up grumping like an old man. It does seem remarkably derivative, but maybe it would be better to regard that as a conscious borrowing rather than just lazy defaultism.

note also that it's technically a 2004 album and got 7 votes in that year's P&J:
http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/04/ballots-votedfor.php?titleid=250905

also most of the people who say "i just listen to what i listen to" also end up inevitably complaining about they'll never get as excited about an album as they did when they were 14 or 18 or 22 or whatever. could it be because since they were about 22, they started slagging off every new band as "derivative"? enjoy life in that hermetically sealed bunker. hope you don't choke when the air runs out.

I think there needs to be a finer -- and much more flexible -- line drawn between 'critics' as such and individual interaction with music as a point of relative importance. It might have been clearer in an era divided between 'critics'/'everyone else,' but that artificial construct has long been on life support.

High school != college. Very different. But even if specific individuals change between high school and college (and they do), they don't forget the high school part.

I have in my life liked hardly anything at all that has anything whatsoever to do with any kind of hardcore lineage.(*) Flat-out. I don't feel in the least bad about this. At the same time, I'm well aware that it keeps me from understanding or having good things to say about a lot of music. If I were a career journalist, I certainly wouldn't want to get into that situation with more and more stuff.

(*) This is not entirely true.

xpost to ned

people having different experiences is what i'm after as a reader. the problem is that there are too many older crtiics having the exact same reaction to the music ver kids are listening to, and it's so predictable. admittedly some people do it well -- even though i am wildly suspicious of aging Dylan fans, Greil Marcus is still interesting and the last new band i can recall him liking was Sleater Kinney -- but most are just old bores, and it's easy to see how they got that way.

also the difference between critics and everyone else is that i'll forgive my buddy who i used to go to shows with for fixating on Springsteen and never moving on because he's my buddy, and although he's really boring to talk about music with, that's not why I hang out with him. i wouldn't read Xgau or Xblogger or dumbass ILX poster X if he wasn't saying interesting things, because reading an interesting perspective although what i'm hoping to gain by reading him. i'm not doing it because i want him to come over saturday so we can play mah jongg.

To me, this seems really a main point in the MCR-Nirvana correlation, and maybe also why I might not be able to completely nix Ultragrrl's point.

They're not are pretty "mall-emo," but nonetheless, a plausible gateway.

nabisco, I sincerely mean no offence by this, but this is often exactly how I've felt when reading or talking with people who come from what I'll crassly class as soft-indie/Britpop/goth/80s/new wave backgrounds, including yourself. This is one of the things that drew me to FT/ILM in the first place though.

Anyway, I was listening to Three Cheers the other day and it's glorious non-stop pop energy. I don't know or care if it's this generation's Nirvana.

("Helena" did OK in the P&J singles poll FWIW.)

I do know kids in high school that were fans of MCR's 2002 debut (which was underground to an extent), and four years later the same kids are hardly following any of the mainstream trends, i.e. listening to non-pop music.

This isn't to say that all critics have to understand everything -- that would be pointless -- but there's no reason to go out of your way to avoid engaging stuff.

I kinda have to come back to the professional point here again, which is what Nabisco brought up and which makes sense *for that kind of professional,* and even that professional finds themselves in more limited amounts these days in terms of 'traditional' media. If the majority of music writers out there are (like, dare I say, me) less interested in a full-time job/freelance life than in a participatory but less temporally-invested approach to writing about music, then the active need to 'engage' drops off. It ain't my life to keep up with everything, bluntly put.

I have a hard time believing that any rock act - emo/hc-inspired, whatever - could be this generation's Nirvana. It would be difficult to overcome the advantage hip-hop has in sales and listeners.

*hears MCR*
"Huh. Bleah."
*time passes*
THE PRICKINGS OF MUSICAL CONSCIENCE: "They're mondo huge!"
"Good, very good."
THE PRICKINGS OF MUSICAL CONSCIENCE: "Which means you must listen to them again to better get a sense of things."
"I'll get back to you on that.")