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

Xgau also sometimes writes like someone who has no idea women read music criticism.

Christgau's been around long enough to let you know this ain't his first rodeo, and his reviews read like he forgot to do his taxes. Still, the question remains: is he the cowboy or the clown? As far as funkless wonk goes, it beats fishing. B-

i generally always found xgau's longform essays good -- his chuck berry essay is a classic -- but i always found the short reviews that everyone else seemed to love kind of frustrating and glib. tbh he's written reviews i found even grosser than the ones referenced here -- his review of pj harvey's stories from the city has a line so creepy i don't even want to quote it here.

His best essay of the last five years wasn't on music; it led me to an obscure Christina Stead novel. Maybe he should concentrate on books:

https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bn/2013-12.php

xpost, jeez I just read that and his Rid of Me, yuck

Just looked them up, too... O. M. G.

It wasn't too hard to locate the exact sentence J.D. was on about, it kinda leaps out at you from the screen, that!

Working a hunch, I looked up his Liz Phair reviews. Let me annotate this one:

Exile in Guyville [Matador, 1993]
She's a rebel, and if all goes well, also a pathfinder, which isn't certain mainly because the acts and attitudes that make her a rebel are so normal. (weird negging move?) Her number of partners may be over toward the right side of the bell curve. (says who? and why’s he gotta be shaming?) She may have commitment problems. But for at least two decades, bohemian women of a certain age have displayed this much desire, independence, bitchiness, self-doubt, and general weirdness (the negging continues: “female artists older than her have been doing the same thing for years”)--while continuing to pin down the unmanly emotional apercus that make "Dance of the Seven Veils" and "Divorce Song" so gender-specific (I’m honestly lost now... is the subject of the sentence still “bohemian women of a certain age”? what does this clause mean?). They can behave this way if they want--they're just not supposed to come out of the closet about it. And while Phair knows more than enough about tunes and guitars to challenge the taboo (if she were a lesser artist, would she not be allowed to challenge the taboo?), the weirdness level of her spare, intuitive, insinuating demos-plus is bohemia-specific. (...OK?) Which is apt for sure. (Huh?) But not necessarily pathfinding. (a final, summary neg!) A

To be fair, a lot of the initial press for that record had similar slut-shamey qualities. The '90s! They were a different time!

yeah to be fair if you struggle with his writing - he's not on trial. did he invent misogyny in music journalism? obviously not - is he still out there being employed to write mysogynist shit? yeah apparently, stop paying him

(weird negging move?)

He does this shit constantly, and not just with women. Search up the Chuck Berry essay Alfred cites - he describes Berry's guitar playing as "limited but brilliant" and given the context, I feel like he was much more compelled to write the first two words than the third one.

What a time we live in to see Xgau link this on twitter and get pushback from women for his sexism, and still a MAGA chud pops up to call him a “white knight”

Oh man I remember that Edith Frost review, extremely shitty.

I FUCKING HATE THIS

https://www.weeklystandard.com/dominic-green/john-coltrane-and-the-end-of-jazz

The story goes that Coltrane was using LSD after 1965. If so, then the overreach and incoherence of his final music, and his mingling with admiring but inferior talents like Alice Coltrane, the Yoko Ono of jazz, suggest that Coltrane might be the sixties’ first and foremost acid casualty, flailing out rather than flaming out, the peak of his late style already behind him.

Coltrane’s late style began on the legendary Davis album Kind of Blue (1959), and jazz began to die there too.

lol the yoko ono of jazz, great job

holy god

I find the Yoko Ono of Jazz to be a kind of compelling and entertaining idea, but probably not for the reasons that writer intended

innovative, collaborative, deeply spiritual, great discography, underrated and unjustly maligned thx to misogyny = yup checks all those boxes

haha yeah. amazing that we're celebrating 50 years of yoko as a shitty sexist punchline this year! she must be doing something right.

https://www.xlr8r.com/reviews/review-houghton-festival-2018

do you think they regret any of the sets they missed?

That Yoko / Alice thing made the rounds on twitter, and while I get that it's tone deaf, I don't have a problem with it necessarily for two reasons: 1. like Οὖτις says above, it's actually a flattering and apt comparison in spite of itself, and 2. while it may be a bullshit and wrong opinion, people are allowed to have those

You do have a problem with, you think it's wrong and bullshit.

omg

The next morning, rumours abounded that Jane Fitz had played a mind-bending techno set at Houghton’s secret stage deep into the small hours; while access last year required a train journey, this year it was reachable by a short walk back through the campsite. Options inside the arena were so good that I never felt the need to work out the hidden spot’s exact location, but Fitz’ performance generated some envy-inducing hype

2. while it may be a bullshit and wrong opinion, people are allowed to have those

― Paul Ponzi, Tuesday, August 28, 2018 3:05 PM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

referring you back to the thread title

Who is the Yoko ono of acid house?

Or of crunk?

That article is chock full of shitty jazz opinions besides the Alice stuff!

There are some aspects of it I agree with. If I had to pick just one John Coltrane album to listen to for the rest of my life, it would be Crescent, not A Love Supreme and certainly not Ascension or anything after. I also think Hank Mobley doesn't get nearly enough critical love, and was glad to see his name pop up.

John Coltrane really does bring out the worst in people (music writers):

Coltrane enters with a vortex of obsessively involuted streaks of chordal fragments that yield to furious, sound-shredded shrieks and bellows that suggest the will to break through the stuff of harmonic investigation to sheer expressive sound, the swinging patterns of pounding rhythm to shifting biocentric undulations.

From:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/sun-ship-the-complete-session-john-coltranes-musical-documentary

mmm I love a good medium rare streak, the chordal the better!

I was on board until 'biocentric'.

yeah i stayed on a surprising long time, then - wipeout

Should have left it at "the stuff of harmonic investigation," which sounds like a Leonard Cohen line.

I wavered at 'pounding' but 'biocentric' did me in.

I was going to say it's like someone tried to write a review using only Robert Pollard song titles.

go the full lovecraft dude: biofugal undulations

lmao brody!!!!

stick to film crit i guess?

not that i necessarily want him to do that either

a vortex of obsessively hideous streaks of cosmic fragments that yield to furious, squamous shrieks and bellows that suggest the will to break through the stuff of unspeakable investigation to sheer blasphemous sound, the accursed patterns of nameless rhythm to shifting biofugal undulations

(he used primordial in another sentence, to qualify new orleans lol, dude it was like 100 years ago not 500 thousand)

(actually fungoid is better than squamous)

You guys are made of tougher stuff than I am... I bailed at involuted

jazz is tough to write about, what with no lyrics to analyse. But it sure does inspire a lot of writers to try to do 'word jazz'.

I was on board until 'biocentric'.

lol exactly where i got off too (even though i had to double-check the meaning of involuted)

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/nepnqq/gwen-stefani-cultural-appropriation-legacy

Man that writer is in for a real shock when she finds out about Vice

the writing is awful but it's not like they're wrong

tired of takes on appropriation that focus on one individual tho

Sure bindis were a general 90s fashion no?

The harajuku girls side of it ... probably something wrong there. Asian women as props for diva sort of thing.

I dunno. I thought the point of Gwen stefani was at least partly the jouissance of playing dress up in crazy clothes, which feels maybe healthier than Britney in school uniform saying hit me.