OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

People now form lines around the corner not to buy a new album

1,974-word article about doing nothing. Proust this is not. Not even in the suburbs of Simon Barnes.

Whatever you think of the album in question, this is such a horribly witless, inept hatchet job. The byline photo really caps it off.

http://www.offthetracks.co.nz/willy-moon-heres-willy-moon/

That's so hacky and awful I'm surprised it wasn't published on Collapse Board.

I really liked that single...

I like Willy Moon but I didn't want to get into the pros and cons of the record. Even if it was indeed the worst album of 2013 it would be better than that review. Nothing sadder than seeing someone huffing and puffing to deliver a killer hatchet job only to drop the axe on his foot.

I don't hate Elizabeth Wurtzel's recent blogging. It's not especially good, but it feels honest.

Faint praise to warm any writer's heart.

:)

I mean, people have feelings about music, and there's this tendency on ILM to reflexively dismiss most such feelings (other than exaggerated poptimist enthusiasm) because they're not adequately problematized, or something. I don't really like her writing, but I like the sentiment well enough.

I agree. I can't get angry about her.

she kind of reminds me of my sad aunt who lived a pretty amazing life but is now alone and depressed and says wistful things all the time about having "the memories to comfort her" -- full of pathos, not really objectionable

Just filing the Tiny Mix Tapes Knife review here for posterity

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/the-knife-shaking-the-habitual

That writer's whole catalogue appears to be Worst Music Writing gold.

they are responsible for a heterogeneous garland
um

I salute anyone who can write a line like this without thinking oh, wait, hang on a minute…

"Absorbing the girth of this behemoth in one fell swoop is rigorous and harrowing"

unless you're a power bottom

Holy shit, that whole article is http://tinyurl.com/bovb886

^ I'll have what he's having

That Willy Moon review... jesus.

This album dresses up vacuous in its mother’s clothes then takes it out on a date.

This album masturbates on to its own cover then rubs in whatever lands because it might help to maintain the sheen.

This album is certainly unique. (That’s not a compliment).

Like the random, half-formed scribblings I type into my iphone notes between snoozes on the train.

Killer parenthesis. "Unique? That sounds like a compliment! Oh wait, ya got me."

The main problem is approaching via wads of press material, which is painfully presented by this reviewer, and can make it seem like you've got to refer to this stuff while listening, to justify the musicians' presentation. Better to start with Clocking in at 97 minutes, this 3xLP has not been recorded with the ease of amiable track-hopping in mind, its purpose built for a single sitting., which makes the initial presentation's main point much more succinctly--but the rest of the graf argues that listeners being "obliged" to listen a certain way is a good thing----which will soon run into the beginning of the next graf The songs come in a variety of forms, destined to instigate cherry picking the “best bits” for the next subway trek Press tidbits-wise,I do like the mention of The Knife recording sounds so you can't tell the source, then telling exactly what the source is--but, still playing editor, I'd ask the writer if this kind of humor comes across in any of the music, as one way of getting past press sheet-directed conceptualism and sweeping swooping overviews, though "girth of the behemoth" is kinda fun.

I think this should be included on this list:

"Bauer remains focused on developing Q's editorial proposition to increase the brand's relevancy for mainstream music fans with a view to building exciting new properties out of a strong magazine product."

"relevancy for"

"magazine product" -- this is the worst kind of business-speak -- redundantly adding a word like "product" to try to elevate something beyond what it is.

took me a while to realize we weren't talking about the harlem shake guy.

if we were, it would be a great sentence!

i feel like the majority of tiny mix tapes reviews i have read are mind-bogglingly terrible (check out their farrah abraham one sometime)

"elevate"

http://woundedbyechords.tumblr.com/post/48147751615/paramore-selt-titled-an-album-review

For some reason I was interested in what Matthew Friedberger might have to say about Vampire Weekend but this is unreadable. Surely nobody will ever get to the end of it.

http://thetalkhouse.com/reviews/view/matthew-friedberger-vampire-weekend

I won't mention the American Express UNSTAGED: Vampire Weekend with Steve Buscemi video comedy show. I typed "video comedy show" because it was meant to be funny… yes?
But since I've mentioned it already: when "Director Steve Buscemi meets Vampire Weekend for the first time, and offers some interesting advice on how to raise their profile," as American Express UNSTAGED told us on April 16, 2013.............................................

shocker, he writes prose the same way he writes songs

God, that is appalling.

I don't know if this is 'about vampire weekend' in any conventional sense.

This opening paragraph (from Pitchfork's review of Venetian Snares - Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding) is unbeatable for its unbridled pomposity and ludicrous false dichotomy:

"A great schism has gradually formed in the orthodox church of the glitch and IDM scene. Of one doctrine is the Matmos/Oval/Mouse on Mars school, based around clicks, squelches and skips, in which musicians struggle to merge our fleshy, imperfect world with that of bent circuitry and drum machines. On the other side are those such as Autechre and Richard Devine, who program crystal-clear computer assaults directly into the listener's brain, with no patience for human warmth or error. While the first are an elusive breed of rarefied souls with mild artistic aspirations, the second are the kids who once survived on Mortal Kombat, Jolt Cola, and Dune, all grown up and ready to overload your conscious mind. And if, at the moment, electro-acoustician Fennesz and musique-concrete practitioners The Books are at one end of the scale, Canada's Aaron Funk (aka Venetian Snares) is providing the counterbalance."

Barf.

"Matthew Friedberger, a Chicagoan born in 1972, is unemployed. He has no degrees or credentials of any kind."

Surely he isn't sustaining himself via checks from solo work and Fiery Furnaces? Is that possible?

"You simply must come over to dinner. Yes? No? My wife is making the most delightful...well, some will say that, I won't go into it here suffice it to say that we have not yet been disappointed by them...burgers. Would you care, oh that's such a terrible way to put it, but surely you know what I mean, to come over?"

He writes like David Mamet after a stroke.

lol that's perfect

I'm impressed that he's into Shake It Up.

http://www.vulture.com/m/2013/05/why-pop-stars-rule-the-world.html

That was a whole lotta hot air.

and factual errors!

but I guess once you reach tv-exec status the "small things" are mere piffle

JONES BEACH IS NOT A STADIUM GAHHH

I'm not sure if this from Salon is exactly music writing or not -- is there a "tragically misconceived generational thinkpiece" thread? -- but I challenge any human here to read the whole thing

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/25/i_dont_hate_millennials_anymore/

Perhaps unfairly, I want my students to define themselves personally by defining themselves musically. I want them to care deeply for one band or musical genre over another. A lot of my cultural bonding with friends occurred because of music. One always knew who had been at the big rock show the night or weekend before, because everyone wore concert shirts to school the next day. The coolest kids at my school were the skate punks who listened to the Dead Milkmen and Anthrax and 7 Seconds. In high school, I found it difficult to be good friends with people who couldn’t appreciate the Cure. At my high school proms, it was my friends and me who took over the dance floor at the opening riff of the B-52s’ “Rock Lobster”—after sitting down through all of the Taylor Dayne, Bob Seger, Miami Sound Machine, and Tiffany preceding it. Underground music in the 1980s truly was an alternative to the likes of Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Debbie Gibson, and the proliferation of syrupy romantic duets (like “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life” from “Dirty Dancing”). Marked by “deep,” literary, or socially conscious lyrics, melodic buildups that defied the three-minute pop format, innovative vocals, and like as not a British pedigree, alternative music was a revelation to me and my left-of-center peers. Millennials, on the other hand, “do not have a generational music.”

Given this anecdotal evidence, it is tempting to believe that the sum of the generation gap between us can be encapsulated by a “content item” like “The Breakfast Club”—a sacred text for Generation X (and for a long time my half-serious litmus test for friendship), the alienation of which does not generally reflect Millennial experience. In reality, however, the difference is one of method and mode; not only have the “experience boxes” of Millennials been filled with different content, the manufacture of the boxes themselves has followed a process as deliberate and structured as the formation of Generation X was laissez-faire, relativistic, and nonintentional.

i could barely finish that excerpt.....

On the first day of class each semester, I ask my students to list on a three-by-five card their contact information, major, hometown, clubs/activities/athletic teams, favorite book, film, and music. Despite being an English professor, I am most interested in the third of that triad. I hope against hope each semester to see listed the Decemberists or Nick Drake or Sigur Rós or even U2. What I get instead is a lot of second-rate hip-hop, former American Idol contestants who’ve landed recording contracts, or—worst of all—“I listen to anything.” One semester a young woman who indicated English as a potential major also listed Britney Spears as one of her favorite musicians. I said to her, “Is that ironic?”

“What do you mean?” she replied.

Oh, that’s right, I thought. Millennials don’t do irony.

Tenure-track professor, ladies and gentlemen.

wow what a dumbass