Classic Christgau Zings

Anglophobes and wimpbashers won't hear it

watch out America--well-mannered four-part harmonizers are coming to fuck your daughters

I swear these tuneful blandos were hands-down winners of the REO Speedwagon eight-track earmarked for the Least Alternative "Alternative" of 1994 before I ever read their bio. I swear I didn't know the front man studied guitar at Berklee and took his band name band from The Fountainhead.

almost hooky enough to reconcile me to a world that needs Marxist background music

But you have to ask yourself just exactly what kind of repository of All That Is Highest in Western Civilization it is that remains so susceptible to the brummagem, the bathetic, the half-assed, and the utterly full of shit.

Benetton boys adrift on Tony Blair's morass of neoliberal compromise

I was fully prepared to get close to the high-tech textures and artificial energy of mindless electrodisco. In a few cases I did, too: Utah Saints! Utah Saints!

seven years and no response from clemenza ;_;

Wish this "illegitimate son of man" would stop pretending he's a pimp--he tours so much he can't possibly provide the necessary continuity.

Down from 48 percent to 35 at amiannoying.com, not because they're less annoying but because they're less successful.

purty music, but I yawn like a lawn when I hear him recite

Hopeless eccentric spends most of his adult life and a large chunk of his ill-gotten fortune trying to make the perfect album. Succeeds, kind of, on his own totally irrelevant terms. Nobody cares.

college radio wouldn't know a good rhythm section if one played live in the studio

Lol at those last two.

Male computer nerds who've mastered a culture of affluence without making sense of their sex lives should listen up.

Hopeless eccentric spends most of his adult life and a large chunk of his ill-gotten fortune trying to make the perfect album. Succeeds, kind of, on his own totally irrelevant terms. Nobody cares.

^a fair assessment of Mark Hollis's solo album, imho

"666[bent downward arrow or else some emoji I'm too uncool to recognize]"

Open Your Eyes You Can Fly [Milestone, 1976]
Shut your mouth and maybe they'll let you land. C

But you need a lot of hooks to get away with being full of shit

The message being that only those ready to give up the transient pleasure of a good tune are ready to confront the meaninglessness of their neoliberal-capitalist lives

Patterns of culture have changed, and in a boutique economy, this shit, like all other shit, is probably here to stay.

Still an expert architect of musical spectacles, but... does anybody actually like the guy?

worthy of Eno at his most rhapsodically technopastoral

Sade for androids

But there are times when the Kiss-Lil Jon continuum is just right for clearing the sinuses or getting you to the next rest stop

David Bowie accomplished several things I wish he hadn't in the 70s, from briefly reinstating mime as a legitimate art form to permanently convincing Britons that their elitist nation was the chief locus of artistic sophistication in popular music.

Gary Numan--everywhere you turn these days, Gary Numan is sitting with the lights out, staring off into space.

I note as well that you are not from the United Kingdom, the spawning ground of the 1975 delusion.

The textures are nicer now, but whose aren't?

these boys like lotsa malaise with their mayonnaise

They weren't smokin' in that boys' room--just taking a quick dump.

At least the Cocteau Twins are eccentric. At least ELP were vulgarians.

We hate you you little smarty.

tunes, aarghh, tunes--please not more tunes

People consent to fascism because they think fascism will be more fun than this. They could be right.

the hope-addicts whiff both commerce and pretension

As pretentious goes, not stupid.

Billie Eilish PLUS HER BROTHER, THAT’S DEFINITELY A PARTNERSHIP

But Donald Fagen “happy/upbeat”? That pathological ironist? How???

All of these suck tbh.

lol

I almost didn't bring my down jacket for fear someone would knife me and the feathers would all fly out

All of these suck tbh.

Objectively... yeah, they're mostly awful.