critic's darlings

How about people like Aimee Mann (pre-Magnolia)? I tend to think "critical darling" mostly about this cadre of people who are making accessible pop music, to glowing reviews but decidedly non-pop sales. I imagine that some years ago there would have been plenty of critics claiming there's no stylistic reason Aimee Mann records shouldn't chart high, and then going on about how it's "the industry" or people's bad taste or something that's "keeping her down." (You know the type I mean, right -- the preferred middle-of-road singer-songwriters of top-level critics everywhere?)

Like Big Star?

Good thing too.

and now sonic youth the institution, well they've "paid their dues" ? entitled to the benefit of the doubt ? they've achieved greatness some years ago ? they're enthusiatic patrons of others (with all the unpleasant indulgences associated with that word intact i'm afraid) ? asylum/geffen sponsored artistic cred for nirvana ? the godfathers of the grunge &/or industry (with the associations of those words intact) ?

yeah, it's that leadership and elder-statesmen positioning that the "critics look to sonic youth" for which grates so much, a position sonic youth would shrug their shoulders at with callow youthful ambiguity -- is the music industry that bad ?

bring in indie mock superstar o'rourke, with o'rourke protesting he ain't worthy in the media (cf: open-ended structured "collectives" like jackie-o, mothers temple or no-neck, or his collaborations with lesser mortals "groop" stereolab presumably of less import) and fingers crossed our team will lift their game

(but seriously, no band could win this. too many college radio DJs aren't really critics, and they like all the same bands)

having read zoot horn rollo's book on the magic band, i think of that album as an opportunity to produce a really interesting listen blown by a maybe jealous zappa -- the box set of parallel unreleased recordings cleared up what the band was really trying to achieve on that album, for me anway, and i see it as the more varese-like piece, the varese blues -- the patron got in the way, was there for the credit and partially screwed up the result, in the name of "weirdness"

but i don't know the von vliet art -- whether getting into painting was a good thing, something arising out of the novel hisory of the magic band, that i don't know, but i don't think beefheart and band overstayed their welcome in the rock music world -- the whole beefheart phenomena is an interesting aside to the general ransacking of the blues by the whites, probably a curious distraction for rock critics through the years that's still fun to reflect on

the idea that whatever sonic youth does next or continues to do is still interesting to critics now however is like watching a muscal idea from the mid '80s trapped in time and self-servingly "curated" by big city scenesters, spun out beyond the usefulness of the bands ideas -- like rock bands from the '70s who endlessly re-do the nostalgia circuit -- why is this bands recent output seen by critics as important, interesting ? wouldn't it hae been more dignified for sonic youth to have moved on ten years ago ? there has been no benefit from any wisdom that might have arisen out of "mature" sonic youth (cf: the promotion of free jazzers, a good thing, but nothing to do with the sound of sonic youth, "grunge improvisors")

i admit critics' visibility right now is low or at least spread, with moves onto the web, so i assume there have to be a lot more genre-specific fanzine type web publications that now achieve a much higher worldwide circulation, with critics as general purpose music contributors to non-music publications less prevalent

and so threads like this will be more about a different set of critics for every poster, from both genre and other preference points of view (so i guess my choice sy are older or classic critics darlings, which they certainly were ten years ago

The Wire attempts to be universally applicable while excluding a lot of pop/rock music, which maybe makes it irrelevant to some here, and their championing of almost lone pop/rock band sy particularly ridiculous to me

explain Vic

(This thread is dead.)

Yeah, George Gosset, Frank Zappa fucked up "Trout Mask." Included all that shit to make it seem like a "field recording." But the record succeeds anyway. "Ransacking the blues by whites" is kind of a musty notion now, though--white people have always played "blues" and it's unfortunate there's no term equivalent to that idiot word "rockist" for these "bluesist" people who persist in thinking it's all about the noble black man, the ransacking white man, and some misguided notion of "purity" of "delta" blues and all that very wearying bullshit. "Trout Mask" isn't "perfect" but it sho' is swingin', and if you get nothing else out of besides that great velocity, you've gotten more out of it than most folks have. It's only people uncomfortable with the basics of American music as she is swung who persist in hearing what Beefheart did as "difficult." And there were a few critics back in the dark ages before "rockism" who saw this, too.