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

People who wear their shoes untied on purpose are insane

pitching GQ as an way-out-there magazine when it comes to anything is wild

like it's literally for 30 somethings who have an interest in owning more than one suit and want to read about things they've already heard of

https://www.spin.com/2019/01/deerhunter-why-hasnt-everything-already-disappeared-review/

I'm probably being unfair, but this unedited+unreadable wordcloud (at one point referring to the "ponderous basso continuo" of a track, presumably to mean "it has harpsichord") turned up in my feed on the same day many of the best writers I know got canned, and I went for the state of "content" as I have not wept since Pitchfork Reviews Reviews was a thing

*first "went" should be "wept" obv, but thanks to autocorrect for trying to make me appear happier than I am

he shd have cut straight to "boffo continuo"

eh, dense screed apparently written by a megafan who is too close to gauge the interest to others of everything being said

united spiritual conduit tho

jesus christ dale

'Ponderous basso continuo' is perfectly fine imho. As for the rest, it's not exactly good but it isn't bland either.

PONDEROUS, MAN, FUCKIN PONDEROUS

“Nothing Ever Happened,” a short-but-sweet number that leads to one of the most-inspiring guitar riffs in modern indie rock history

I'd be hard-pressed to name one riff from modern indie rock besides maybe "A-Punk" which is just a busier version of Minutemen's "My Heart And The Real World"

I'm struggling to articulate precisely why, but (for reasons undisclosed) really rubs me the wrong way. It just seems so uh... presumptuous? Idk

I recall Vedder saying he wished he'd written the guitar line from the dismemberment plan's "secret curse"

I dunno what “most-inspiring” means (so I’ll bracket that); but when I think of great/iconic indie rock riffs, I guess I think immediately of — “Freed Pig,” “Hot & Cold Skulls,” “Trigger Cut” (which was swiped from VU), “Coming Hot and Proud”... (all from the ‘90s)

What VU is the "Trigger Cut" riff swiped from?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Lqyoq2P7OE

"modern indie rock history" means post-Oh Inverted World ifaic

*afaic

it's getting to the point where one of my favorite things about indie rock is its sheer unmemorability. if i could remember it i think i'd probably hate a lot of it.

I will def. concede there haven't been many memorable "indie rock riffs" since c. 2001 (that I have encountered)... indie music also became less guitar/riff-based around that time.

Here's a great one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcNcuGkhASw

http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4152207-the-beginners-guide-to--slowcore
verges on unreadably bad

Despite being the second ever slowcore band, Galaxie 500 aren’t much of one.

makes u think

This is truly awful

Laughing Stock isn’t slowcore because it doesn't feel like slowcore.

Look guys sometimes space has to be filled

i mean does it tho

Well obviously no but I'm a nihilist maybe

not that i don't appreciate the irony of filling space with an article about slowcore, a space-filled form of music

By far the most recent release included in this guide, and our very own Album of the Year for 2018, Low’s latest work is definitely too close to see, but even considering the blinders of distance it is quite possibly their best work to date, and that can’t be understated

RLY makes u think

Maybe it’s not their best. I mean, I’m not really sure how someone could compare this to I Could Live In Hope or Things We Lost in the Fire; it seems like an immensely pointless task of comparing apples to oranges, or pecans to pelicans. But it’s not so different from Low’s previous work that it’s unrecognizable. Strangely enough, it feels quite the opposite, it’s strangeness and conflict the most obvious possible extension from the band’s past.

reading this part burst a blood vessel in my left eye

the "it's" made me burst a blood vessel, i know i shouldn't care when the writing is this bad but i still do

this isn't "worst music writing" so much as "worst idea for study," but I cannot think of a SINGLE confounding variable here:

Several years ago, Chris Johnson, an audio software developer, tested a theory, espoused by some anti-loudness war activists, that the hyper-compression roiling the industry was partially to blame for shortened careers. Using a list of all-time best-selling recordings, he rearranged them by “commercial importance,” assigning each a score derived by multiplying an album’s number of platinum certifications (how many millions sold) by the number of years it had been on the market. These were records that were not merely popular — they also displayed longevity.

(that isn't even sarcasm -- I can't think of a single confounding variable because they're more like a rat king of them)

(also this is an unpopular opinion, probably, but the proper level of loudness for an Eagles record is silent)

I barely made it through the FIVE commas in that first sentence.

lol/+1 @ both comments above

to be clear this is not about the writing -- some of the commas can be eliminated with line editing, but the reason this is here is because there isn't a thread (but should be) for "terrible studies that set out to confirm one's beliefs about music sucking these days, at the expense of facts or the scientific method."

(also, I should note that Greg, the author of the piece, points out in his book some of the study's flaws, such as how asinine the "multiply by the years on the market" thing is)

for those unclear what's being talked about (I was):
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/what-these-grammy-songs-tell-us-about-the-loudness-wars.html

the proper level of loudness for an Eagles record is silent)

― theorizing your yells (katherine), Thursday, February 7, 2019 11:21 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol, always love a good eagles zing

While the Elton John piano catches your ear during “Absentee,” Sam Griffin Owens’ sax warbles down in the mix, a class clown whose mischief makes the day’s lesson more fun for everyone, teacher included.

good heavens

Grammys 2019 Hits a New Low Note

They call it Music’s Biggest Night.

Is there actually one single person out there who still believes that’s true?

The 2019 Grammy telecast was a neon-colored-chalk outline around a Xerox of the Google entry for American Idol, an over-staged infomercial for the instant gratification of the Spotify era and a shallow exercise in collective guilt.

...

What is music to you? To your heart? To your life?

Maybe it is this: Ecstasy and repetition. Identity and release. Music is the electric connection between your buzzing, happy, elated head and the starry dynamo in the machinery of night. Music is the way your heart thumps when the kick drum pushes the air of the old theatre. Music is your connection with the primeval memory of the rhythm of sweatshops and plantations, the high sigh of shtetl weddings, and the sand dances of Saharan ceremony.

Music is memory: Playground chants and first-love stares; tenth grade stargazing and skating on beer slick in sophomore dorm basement parties; evenings spent watching bleached-blonde-dyed Brits scratching the air and climbing imaginary ladders in smoky, blue-lit old vaudeville halls; nights passed sharing stale air with shimmering, sibilant, shrieking cowpunk Canadians in narrow booze cans in the gray hours before dawn; mornings spent mummified in sheets waiting for the record store to open. Music is that song in the car on the way home from Hebrew school, that song bursting into your ears on the 7 train on the way to your new job. Music is the mnemonics of melody, ecstasy and repetition, identity and release.

...

The Grammy show had nothing to do with the joy you felt when your son or daughter discovered the Small Faces or Stone Temple Pilots entirely on their own, or when you saw the smile on your elderly father’s face as he lay in his last hospital bed and thought about the Ink Spots. The Grammy telecast was as representative of your relationship with music as a crowd chanting “U-S-A” at a sporting event is representative of the American poetry of Martin Luther King, Huey Long, Carl Sandburg, or Abraham Lincoln.

He keeps digging.

god the thought of my daughter discovering stone temple pilots is too awful to contemplate tbh

huey long?

he was the singer in the fun lovin' criminals iirc

He must have meant Huey Lewis

i know who huey long is. i just am surprised that lefsetz (this is lefsetz, right?) is postulating huey long as an alternative to american populist jingoism.

(this is lefsetz, right?)

Close; it's this guy.

I wonder what Canadian cowpunk band he's talking about

why would you read cultural criticism from an offshoot of "a Chicago-based political news and polling data aggregator formed in 2000 by former options trader John McIntyre and former advertising agency account executive Tom Bevan"

Patrick Stack of Time magazine has described the site's commentary section as "right-leaning".[17] The site has been described as being run by conservatives, and containing "opinion pieces from multiple media sources".[18] In 2009 RealClearPolitics was described as a weblog "in the conservative pantheon" by Richard Davis.[19][20]

In an interview with the conservative magazine Human Events, McIntyre described the philosophy behind the Web site as based on "freedom" and "common-sense values". Said Bevan, "We think debate on the issues is a very important thing. We post a variety of opinions". He further stated, "we have a frustration all conservatives have", which is "the bias in media against conservatives, religious conservatives, (and) Christian conservatives."

so... yeah