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

I would love to read something critical of boygenius not by Steve Hyden or like something I would have wrote on my Myspace blog when I was in high school: https://constantlyhating.substack.com/p/boygenius-is-insipid-music

“No wonder Phoebe Bridgers has so many goddamn stans on Twitter, this is indie music for the pop brain. And you can’t have it both ways! “

Gotta keep em seperated

If anything I wish it were more poppy!

(but I’m on the opposite end of the Greater Millennial timeline, which this writer seems to think is an important point for music reception, so what do I know)

I listened to about half the boygenius album this morning and it's not really for me, but it's fine for what it is. But there's a Slate piece (which I haven't read) with a headline calling them "Rock's Greatest Supergroup" and...just...fuck you. The editor who came up with that should be beaten with a bag of oranges.

Isn't that by the guy who wrote the Celine Dion book?

Yes, and he's a smart guy and a good writer who I like, which is why I don't blame him for the headline. I blame the all-too-typical idiocy of Slate.

the backlash to this record feels primarily like a backlash to phoebe bridgers, incidentally it also doesn’t feel rooted in the quality of her music but by some ostensible thing she represents

i don’t love the record as much as i wanted to but it’s because my expectations were probably off—these are three songwriters i want to hear write together and there’s only 1-2 instances of that on the record, otherwise these feel like siloed off songs that they brought to each other, which is fine, they’re just very distinct songwriters and thus i feel invited to compare what one offers vs. what another doesn’t. julien baker is prob offering up the best indie rock i’ve heard in a decade, dacus is the best lyricist of the three easy but i prefer when her sound has a little more oomph (historian, an album where EVERY song makes me cry and i don’t even know why), and bridgers is kinda like… in the center of both of these styles without ever seeming to unite them? there that’s my considered takedown of the boygenius record, a record i like

yeah, saw a Twitter thread yesterday that called Phoebe "cringe", which seems p emblematic of the backlash

whoops, no, the guy called her "corny"

Ryan Adams truthers getting their revenge

i wish schoop was better at hating lol, he loves his contrarian hot take pieces but this one especially is so lazy and lacking in substance

the backlash to this record feels primarily like a backlash to phoebe bridgers, incidentally it also doesn’t feel rooted in the quality of her music but by some ostensible thing she represents

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Saturday, April 1, 2023 5:02 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

typical twitter music discourse. instead of criticizing the music, imagine an annoying person who might like that music and criticize that fake person

I’m not familiar with “Schoop” but for someone whose blog URL is “constantlyhating”, that piece was bad at its job and he seems bad at “hating”

I would have loved reading someone whose shtick is taking down hyped up artists maybe a decade ago but now this dude just seems extremely tiresome

mostly i just know him from tumblr like a decade ago well before he'd started seriously writing about music. he had a slightly less negative renaissance dunk piece last year too

lazy dunks like this are good at getting attention though, both from people who support the inevitable backlash against the dunk's target but also from people annoyed at how lazy it is

I can fathom where "indie music for pop fans" is coming from, there's a smoothness to some of Bridgers work that I find offputting... but that was also true of The Postal Service almost 20 years ago and you just have to accept that "indie" hasn't meant anything for American audiences for 30 years so who cares.

"mostly i just know him from tumblr like a decade ago well before he'd started seriously writing about music."

lmao seems about right

sorry, can't get over how half-assed this backlash is

It’s kind of sad now that white women singer/songwriters are all called like Puny Tyrant and make songs about how having a pebble in your shoe reminds you of being ghosted and all of their fans lie about how that feeling is so real it makes them want to jump off a balcony

— Ben (@perma___ben) April 2, 2023

back in my day, backlashes etc blah blah

Music fans always lying about liking music

“Puny Tyrant”(?)

The way some of those guys write about these female musicians certainly says a lot more about themselves than their targets

between constantly hating and this dude, their hearts are clearly not in it!

Making up a guy to be mad at vs. making up a woman singer-songwriter to be mad at

kind of sad how these guys think pointing out the whiteness of white women makes their gender coded sneering (and their own whiteness, where applicable) less obvious somehow?

I bet they have some real dogshit taste in music too

i’ve got dogshit taste in music but i just occasionally blast it on a messageboard

l mean, lol, that’s the thing, the people who complain the loudest always have shit taste anyway

I will say that any piece that says Wojnarowicz and Feinberg paved the way for boygenius is a stretch— partly because the latter didn’t have much to do with music, and the former was a Danceteria worker for a spell who was in a shortlived post-punk band 3 Teens Kill 4. And frankly, their politics were much more radical than what appears on boygenius records. That’s fine! Revolutionary art and activism doesn’t need to have anything to do with pop music! The imperative to draw these connections when they simply aren’t there is on critics, so while I don’t agree with the rest of the review— I like the new record well enough— Schoop has a point there. Just because something is queer doesn’t mean it has anything to do with queer struggle !

as ever, the negative reviews of something like the boygenius album are as much a review of the critical reception as they are of the music. when the music press gets together to unanimously revere something that already seems to have the exposure and support odds tilted in its favour, it can all have the feel of enforced consensus-building, the canon being assembled in real time. which, if you don't fully buy the importance of the music, can feel very disheartening and result in ugly lashing-out at music which probably doesn't deserve it.

i say this as someone who has done the above many, many times

last year's big thief album i just had to shut off the hype, ignore it all, just listen to the music, and it worked. if i listen to boygenius i don't want to know anything about it first. no narrative, no prejudice

i want it sprung on me in a cafe, i don't want to think to myself 'right, i shall now sit, and RESPOND to the boygenius record, i shall PEN MY RESPONSE', that is monstrous, it needs to be organic. whither radio, whither accident

a cafe or an EOY rollout ;)

as ever, the negative reviews of something like the boygenius album are as much a review of the critical reception as they are of the music. when the music press gets together to unanimously revere something that already seems to have the exposure and support odds tilted in its favour, it can all have the feel of enforced consensus-building, the canon being assembled in real time. which, if you don't fully buy the importance of the music, can feel very disheartening and result in ugly lashing-out at music which probably doesn't deserve it.

i say this as someone who has done the above many, many times

― imago, Monday, April 3, 2023 7:56 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

It isn't the saturation that irks me, particularly but the types of records that get elevated to the extent the boygenius record has. To me, this is regressive, bland music that does nothing to challenge the status quo of cafe playlist indie dominance. I'd be fine with Pitchfork plastering seven different articles about, say, Fever Ray or Angel Bat Dawid on the front page, because they're in my opinion legitimately groundbreaking artists who just released excellent albums, and it's just disheartening to see that level of space and focus wasted on zoomer Wilson Philips. I guess what I'm saying is that you're right: it's not the record itself, but what you correctly identify as the enforced consensus-building that some of us are reacting to. Like, why this?

it's just disheartening to see that level of space and focus wasted on zoomer Wilson Philips

Three women harmonzing = Wilson Phillips? OK.

i like that this thread has transformed into the thing it was complaining about yesterday

But what if cafe playlist indie is your thing?

I'm just chuffed that Case/Lang/Veirs didn't get this hype

come on darlin, hear me darlin
this thread's a waste of time for me

Three women harmonzing = Wilson Phillips? OK.

― the very juice and sperm of kindness. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, April 3, 2023 9:44 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You're right, that was an unfair comparison. I usually remember Wilson Phillips songs five minutes after I hear them

TS a hypothetical band called Puny Tyrant who sound like zoomer Wilson Philips vs Boygenius

Puny Tyrant consists of Amanda Palmer and two fans who paid their life savings for a spot in the group

Case/Lang/Veirs = awesome/awesome/awesome

It's funny, I've also thought of that album as a comparison point... I should revisit it.

it's terrific.

i don't agree with "Zoomer Wilson Phillips" but that was a good line

i want to go to sleep forever inside "Blue Fires"

I'm just chuffed that Case/Lang/Veirs didn't get this hype

― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes), Monday, April 3, 2023 6:47 AM

lol otm

(i have zero interest in the boygenius material, but only because i am a stick in the mud)

The Rolling Stone cover story surprised me, but I see it as a combination of appealing biographies, good reputations for songwriting, and timing.

I like the album but recognize how smart, mostly acoustic tunes may not resonate in 2022, especially if like Paul you want "groundbreaking" (a quality dependent on the writer's attitude toward the music specifically and singularity generallly).

There are a lot of thoughtful ways to be critically write about the hype cycle without attacking artists personally for benefiting from it. I think weaker writers are less capable of avoiding the latter. It’s not like boygenius is pushing other ascendant artists down the stairs on the way to the top. It’s not like their feelings are false and their fans are lying because it doesn’t make others feel the same way.

If boygenius did push anyone down some stairs I stand corrected.