Pitchfork reviews the new Momus album

>Pitchforkmedia.com reviews the new Momus record, Oskar Tennis Champion. Any thoughts?

All's fair in love and journalism, but that doesn't mean all is factually correct. I like Pitchfork because they review at length and intelligently, and I'm glad Oskar got reviewed there. However, to quote the reviewer out of context, 'I'm not that generous.' He's also not that factual:

>a lost lawsuit over a song about Wendy Carlos.

The Carlos case was not lost but settled out of court. The judge refused even to issue an injunction on the record.

>Written and recorded in Japan... the CD takes no inspiration from its surroundings.

Not true. Not only are there several tracks in the fake oriental 'spooky kabuki' style, there are also recordings of Japanese street cryers recorded from my window mixed into songs like 'The Laird of Inversnecky'. There are also songs written for Japanese artists, like Pierrot Lunaire, made for Emi Necozawa. The record is, de facto, 'Nakame-kei', just like the latest Cornelius. It goes, literally, 'from Nakameguro to everywhere' and it has that fragmented, magpie Tokyo feel.

>Song after song, Currie's trademarked sick wit is nowhere to be found.

'Humourless' is in the eye of the beholder. There's a lot of slapstick and macabre black humour throughout Oskar, as much in John's cut-ups as my lyrics.

>"Electrosexual Sawing Machine"

There's no track called that on the album.

I'm glad Mr Idov likes "Trans-Siberian Express", but to say:

>That was old Momus, I guess, unencumbered by tabloid infamy and money concerns.

is again simply untrue. The guy who wrote that song was much more tied up in tabloid infamy and money concerns than the guy in Tokyo making 'Oskar', who, rather than romping with teens, was trying to get through the death of a close friend and the end of a relationship. If the fun on Oskar sounds somewhat anxious, that's why.

>The new Momus is the kind of guy who stoops to include a minute of silence as the 16th track on this disc and titles it "A Minute of Silence".

Simply not true. The gap track is not titled 'A Minute of Silence' either on the album or on the website. I don't know where Mr Idov got this idea, but to use it as evidence of my lame sense of humour is absurd.

>If that's not enough, he follows it up with an instrumental reprise of the album's second track-- rendered in telephone ringtones! Oh, the fun!

Adam Bruneau, the 'he' in fact resposible for The Ringtone Cycle, reprises not one but six of the album's tracks. Wrong again! This is getting ridiculous, how many facts can you fail to check in one piece?

>awfulness has always been a part of Momus' gambit.

Who sets out to be awful? With Oskar as with all my projects, I set out to entertain and to stimulate. But pop music is communication, and it takes two to make a successful act of communication. A bad review is as much a confessional commentary on the writer's inability to do his part of the imaginative work. That's fine, no work of art can compel acceptance. What's not so cool is when spurious and incorrect 'facts' are marshalled to make the confession look more objective.

>his laboriously cultivated image of a postmodern ponce is binding and irreversible.

Words which will have to be eaten when Pitchfork reviews the 2004 release, 'Summerisle', on which the 'powdered wig ponce' persona is stunningly absent (as he is on at least half the tracks on every Momus album except perhaps 'The Little Red Songbook').

I like Pitchfork and I hope they continue to review my records, though with a bit more respect for fact.

>>>Song after song, Currie's trademarked sick wit is nowhere to be found.
>'Humorless' is in the eye of the beholder.

Your point is accurate, but are reviwers only to report on observable facts? ("This record features instruments and vocals.") You cite stuff you found witty, and others might; the reviewer thought you weren't as witty as you've been elsewhere. That's not a "factual error."

I felt for you when I read that review, really I did; I take bad reviews really, really badly, it's why I only ever review records I like. But come on, now. The fact that somebody didn't think your jokes were funny doesn't mean they didn't hear where the jokes were.

Isn't that what you are ultimately aiming for, tiger?

Please leave the critic crap to the critic. And keep the artist crap to the artist.

Don't get me wrong. I love pirates.

Sounds like 99% of the reviews I read...

3 out of 9 = 50%? (4 out of 9 if I'm feeling generous)

he's not saying you did this, he's saying you're the TYPE of guy who'd do this (in his admittedly wrong-headeed opinion). See LL Cool J's "I'm The Type Of Guy" for further explanation of this device.

Yet, does that mean there isn't a good way to do this?

I may buy this album for comparison purposes, as the one Momus album I have is very early Momus. I like it a lot.

"I like any publication people dismiss as 'trendy'. I also like mags to get their facts wrong, because wrong facts lead towards fiction, parallel worlds and unreliable narration. So I'm with Nitsuh on the point that this thread has actually enhanced Pitchfork's status. It makes it a 'passionate subject', somewhat transgressive and divisive.

-- Momus, November 23rd, 2002.

- If the reviewer makes egregious mistakes, s/he should be called on it.

- I fully support litigation on any grounds whatsoever against Creed.

Suggested lyrics:

Pitchfork, you've given me a shitfork.
I handed you my album, in return you've launched a turd.

Pitchfork, some consider you just bitch dorks,
without straight facts, just whiny hacks
with loads of insecurities.

A 2.1, you've called me out, and called me an asshole to boot.
I return the favor, Shitfork dorks, nerdy frat boy bastards.

I pitched my disc toward your fork, with hopes that you'd enjoy it. Instead, you pitched your fork in me, 2.1 times.

Just for your enjoyment, Pitchdorks, here's 2.1 seconds of
silence.

------------
Just an idea. A similar song might make sense on some indie comp with an Internet theme. Feel free to use these lyrics Momus as you please. Even if only for a laugh or a cringe.

Or is it that he's scared of the parallel reality Momus - the humorless Momus who fails to absorb his surroundings and stoops to include a minute of silence as the 16th track on this disc and titles it "A Minute of Silence - killing him and taking over a la every sci-fi evil-doppelganger story ever...

(Obviously I am ignoring the subjective issues, largely because I am entertained by the "I'm still Momus from the block" response they caused.)

If wrong facts in a review lead to fiction, we the readers become, in our turn, the reviewers of the reviewers' fictions. And this one gets nul points from me because the parallel world it takes me into is just a lot less interesting than the parallel world my record is capable of taking listeners into. For instance, in the parallel world of this review, I am chided for having descended into a world of 'tabloid infamy'. And yet the review, rather than my record, is the fiction which is trading in lurid tales of my marriage, my lawsuit, etc. It is the review which is both claiming moral high ground and retailing lurid (and inaccurate) tittle tattle for sensation. Which is exactly what tabloids do.

You are an intelligent man who makes interesting records that engage deeply with key points of both the modernist and postmodernist projects. Your efforts in this regard grate on some people hard enough to make them want to express their displeasure loudly. John Berryman, in the introduction to His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, the sequel to the first book of Dream Songs, used a phrase that I've tried to live by (with varying degrees of success; people get their facts wrong about me, too, and it drives me batty). The phrase is "it is idle to reply to critics." It has become something of a koan for me.

I think the big inaccuracy is accusing you of "laboriously cultivating" the persona of a postmodern ponce, because it doesn't seem to require nearly that much effort! Anyway, sorry. It's a better album than that.

(Now make me really proud and post that naked picture of yourself to the Pitchfork message board.)

No.

If you prick us, do we not bleed? And if we bleed, we might as well bleed in public, no, otherwise it's just a waste of blood.

Don't cry ma, it's only Mr Jones and this is not real blood. (Hush, child, people will notice and think you care!)

By the way I'm on tour now for two months and will not be here so much. It's nothing anybody said!

I can't really overstate my sympathies. My work tends to polarize - either people really like what I do, or they hate it with a deep & abiding passion, and go out of their way to explain to people that it's not just that they don't like my work: it's that I suck. One review of my last album described the shortest song on it as "interminable." That was a factual error. But it wasn't the factual error that hurt, not really. It was that I thought I'd done something good, and somebody else thought I'd just wasted their time.

Chin up, man, there'll be plenty of good reviews!

John, can I speak from personal experience? There's nothing more humiliating than being approved of by a really thick person. Some of my own best reviews have embarassed me intensely - because I am implicated in the mediocrity of the reviewer's positive opinion of my work. I hope and pray no-one reads the review, even if it's positive.

The same is even more true for interviews.

And I quote:
".:Momus: Oskar Tennis Champion
The underground's most obnoxious, deluded fop returns with another album of deflated ironic "pomp." Write a song about this, asshole."

Man, talk about deluded venomous cretin.

It's true about Momus pronouncing sexual 'seks-sual' though. That much is true. He has been pronouncing it this way for nigh on 20 years. I always associate that pronounciation with a debauched priest.

Incidentally the album sounds great, from the bad review alone.

John, I think you're taking this a bit far. It seems like you're making far more ridiculous statements than Momus. Even so, who cares? It's an online message board, read by music fans, hipsters, and a handful of idiots as well. If Momus wants to question a review, why not? Screw Pitchfork for a lazy review. Some of their writers are decent, some are not. The review of Oskar... was a piece of shit. Pitchfork shouldn't publish such juvenile crap. They shouldn't attack the artists they cover in such a pathetic way. It's really not the writer's fault at the end of the day. It's the editor who published it. Whether it's factually correct or not is irrelevant. It's a piece of shit. It tries to be sensational, and it just comes off like the rantics of a jealous loser. I'd do the same thing in Momus' position... I like some of Momus' discography, and I don't like other parts, but he's right to be perturbed, and as for any response he makes in any forum, why the hell not?

I'm lucky in that I've had several of these five year mini-careers, one in the UK followed by one in Japan and one in the US. The graph you could plot of my Pitchfork reviews since 1996 would match exactly the line of the graph you could make of my NME reviews between 1986 and 1993; raves and 9s and critical picks followed by moderate praise, followed by 'Okay, let's kill him now, quick, make up some arbitrary crime and send him to the firing squad!' The records given 2s and zeroes were in no objective sense worse than the records given 9s and 10s. It was just 'time to like this guy' ...and then it wasn't. You look at the clock and set your watch. Maybe it's political. A Bush in the White House, Momus out of fashion. A Clinton in, Momus in.

In fact, if I now look back at Brent Dicrescenzo's gush on Pitchfork back in '97 over 'Ping Pong' -- 'Momus is the perfect rock star for the 21st century' -- it makes me cringe a lot more than the Oskar review. (Yet, even in gush mode, Pitchfork managed to get the song titles wrong.)

'i had never even seen a shooting star before...'

'The butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bled upward into the cobalt sky, which seemed as strikingly artificial and perfect as a wizard's cap.'

"I mean, you can even smell his sperm as it spatters the jacket! "

Ahahahaaahaa! Oh man... priceless.

You and Momus needn't worry about critics. Critics usually don't realize their purpose: "Promote the good stuff. Steer people away from the drivel. Try to be entertaining, but realize that you're not." That Pitchfork review was pathetic. I've seen far worse, but Momus doesn't deserve that kind of personal attack from a third rate internet zine. In trying to be cool and opinionated, the Pitchfork gang only makes themselves look juvenile and prove their increasing irrelevance. Again, a problem like this always falls squarely on the editor's shoulders. Don't publish a lazy, hateful review, unless you only care about lazy, hateful readers. Intelligent people will look elsewhere.

More power to Momus for taking on a ridiculous review and more power to John D for ethics and passion.

Pitchfork should retract the review. Let somebody with half a brain tackle the album. If they give it a negative review, fine. But lose that hateful shit, Pitchfork.

My favorite Momus creations are the autobiographical ones, in particular that Stars thing (too tired to look up the title), where everybody paid $1000 to be memorialized. So I was merely joking that he might write a song about Pitchfork. Didn't think anybody would take it seriously.

this one is silly. but memorable. i like silly.

i mentioned how cowardly it was to that guy on (his?) message board and he became very belligerent. strange dude.

I mean, I am speechless - I wouldn't even know where to begin attacking that sentence it is such a mash of muddled ideas and neuroses. And that's just one sentence!

pitchfork's strength is precisely that they can publish irresponsible, juvenile reviews like this one. print media doesn't dare. when they border on groundless opinioned slander it gets a bit touchy, but anyone reading pitchfork's learned not to consult that site for a 'definitive' review of anything, just a feverish, hopefully interesting one.

I just think, you know, NYC - it's another Sonic Youth album. Because of that aforementioned elder status, he approaches this high-profile release with the tack of completely slagging it off, as if to do so is something daring. The whole giving it a zero thing is so lame and transparent; and then how much column-space and word count does he devote to meta on having chosen that zero? I don't know, SY are just some people who make records about the things they are interested in. They are interested in beat poetry. They always have been. In their free time they do a lot to preserve and promote this little interesting bit of 20th century outsider culture that they like. I mean, really, "Jim O'Rourke, just leave"? How juvenile and really beneath all contempt is that? Or wishing that more of their equipment would have been stolen? Nabisco, do you think there is something funny about a group of people's life work getting stolen? This passes for criticism? Was he 16 years old? I mean, if so - ok, I guess; doesn't make it any less laughable.

But really, it's not worth nattering on about. Jl nailed it when he said print media wouldn't dare publish such awful stuff. Welcome to the internet.

get over it.

(There's a whole other discussion to be had here about how doing stuff like that turns Pitchfork into a tastemaker for some people: how it's the sort of site that can say "Sonic Youth have ceased to impress us quite so much, feel free to rag on them now" -- or "you know what, hip-hop is now okay to like." Charting trends like that can be interesting and fun and I think we can all get a kick out of it now and then -- it's just hard to balance that with wanting to be an objective critical publication as well. Pitchfork started off in that whole "one man, cranky opinionated and enthusiastic" mold as has moved to the "critical and authoritative" stylings, and I imagine keeping a balance is an issue: cranky indie in-jokes will have some people thinking you're the sharp and no-bullshit, but it's not quite what as many people need.)

Two great tastes that go great together. 700 new answers by the time NY wakes up!

Actually, I think what the review really says is just 'We are tired of you, everything that once delighted us about you now bores us. Go away now, please.' This is totally natural, and usually comes in an artist's career at the five year mark (it comes in sexual relationships with 'the seven year itch'). You can't be hot for more than five years, really, without resorting to Madonna-like tactics of vampirism and sledgehammer hype.
I'm lucky in that I've had several of these five year mini-careers, one in the UK followed by one in Japan and one in the US. The graph you could plot of my Pitchfork reviews since 1996 would match exactly the line of the graph you could make of my NME reviews between 1986 and 1993; raves and 9s and critical picks followed by moderate praise, followed by 'Okay, let's kill him now, quick, make up some arbitrary crime and send him to the firing squad!' The records given 2s and zeroes were in no objective sense worse than the records given 9s and 10s. It was just 'time to like this guy' ...and then it wasn't. You look at the clock and set your watch. Maybe it's political. A Bush in the White House, Momus out of fashion. A Clinton in, Momus in.

In fact, if I now look back at Brent Dicrescenzo's gush on Pitchfork back in '97 over 'Ping Pong' -- 'Momus is the perfect rock star for the 21st century' -- it makes me cringe a lot more than the Oskar review. (Yet, even in gush mode, Pitchfork managed to get the song titles wrong.)

-- Momus (nic...), June 18th, 2003. (later)

Does he have a point with his concept of cyclical praise?

look how momus moves (is forced to move) from "wrong facts are just wrong" to having to establish whose facts, wrong or right, are the better facts: "me being momus, my facts about momus are much more interesting and more worthy than this 2.1 version of momus". so much for death of the author. so you can either be pro-momus or po-momus.

predicted momus response: "But Mitch, being Po-Mo(mus) doesn't mean you can't make judgements!"

mitch: but it also doesn't mean that your version of you is necessarily the most interesting one.

pmr: "When did I imply that this was 'necessarily' the case? I just find this review offers a particularly 'empty' Momus that doesn't do much else except bang underage girls.

mitch: alright, so you got any negative momus reviews on hand that you find more interesting than momus-brand momus?

pmr: "Well, I like this (insert link here) "Stars Forever" review because, thought its Momus makes lots of mistakes (and not in the Herbert sense), it touches on a lot of things that I think are related to what I'm (not) doing with my new album, Happyland, in which the concept of "Egg Foo Yung" is reconciled with the post-Farrel Williams, post-T.A.T.A world of unsubtextualized homocentric dualism et etc

mitch: *sigh*.

(mitch posts attention-getting thread about how he thinks it's time he took a break from ilx).

(mitch posts just as much as ever).

fookin' classic.

We've had this argument before, Nabisco. ;-)

(*current pitchfork writers begin to mumble and groan over perceived slight*)

(prove me wrong fellas!)

when ever a pfork review opens with quotes i immediately close the window

its really crazy that ppl review records like this. I've read most of this thread but i just couldn't even open the link to the review of the record bcz i just don't have the stomach for this.

it's the review that keeps on giving

haha well amateurist to thread!

but really i enjoy reading rockwrite but pitchfork no can do!

but who knows, they might have ideas on the record, its just that i could never go through the review to find out.

Even when Pitchfork sucks, they're still miles above and beyond the worst stuff I've ever read (that Wenner-penned Mick Jagger blowjob in RS, your average Amazon.com review, etc). Plus, the reviews are generally entertaining even when badly written (in a train-wreck sort of way).

My eyes glaze over when I read most music reviews, since too many are either paint-by-numbers raves/dismissals or overthought essays on the sociological importance of an O-Town single....

Sometimes a toilet is just a toilet ...

PS Do love Duchamp, though.
PPS Sorry to have Egged anyone on; it is kind of an, er, stale debate.

haha Momus is not a real artist!

"It's 2 quid a squid, kid," he told me.

And so I did.

Sure, it's a barrel of laughs: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/international/europe/07CHEC.html

(BTW I'll send you a package on monday)

Somebody mentioned that they miss Momus' "perverse" lyrics. I think the album is a relief. It's easier to hear the very odd and curious music. Sometimes those lyrics are distracting.

This wonderful album is subject to sudden angular shifts in mood. Lush instrumental passages dissolve into harsher, disjointed, angular runs before returning back to a soundtrack-like dreaminess.
The more I listen to it, the more I can say that "Oskar Tennis Champion" is a work of singular breadth and vision, almost breathtakingly so. Momus has developed a distinct and bleakly romantic vision, eschewing all concessions to commercial success and successfully carving out a distinct musical territory he alone occupies.

I had no idea Momus was still making records.

Cruel, but fair.

I may well be the only person who cares about Momus records at this point ("and if anyone else likes them it's a bonus") but I really believe they're considerably more creative and interesting than most of the stuff Pitchfork is reviewing, and better than the Momus records Pitchfork raved about back in the 90s. Fashion and attention span seem to dictate that these records be ignored, yet they're also more fashionable in their references than most of the dross Pitchfork gets couriered over by press officers, made by people who never leave their indie-schmindie tour vans or their American hipster neighbourhoods. Very few artists have my global reach, unless they're tremendously successful, and in that case they have to be a lot more populist than I tend to be. As for attention span, well, if you've got it, and you devote it to an album of mine, you will be rewarded. Attention-back guarantee if not satisfied.

I like the sound of this 'new' direction, but then I like sentimental, populist stuff. Fwiw my favourite Momus vocal is As you turn to go on the 6ths' album Hyacinths and Thistles. I'd love to hear an album like that, which is what I imagine it will sound like.

I don't know what Merritt was doing on that album but he coaxed some fantastic performances (Gary Numan, Roddy Frame!) out of his guests.

Anonymous wanker in making lame jibe on Internet message board shockah.

I do think you have to have more than a passing interest in Eastern music to really like Momus's recent work.

OTM & an interesting point, especially considering that you're an occasional defender of fashion's conceits - classic rock/canonist ppl often raise the question of longevity/"quality"/bang-for-your-buck, but I think the core issues there transcend rockism vs. popism where the latter category seems duty-bound to defend short attention spans

In my case, it involved recording me over and over again until I sounded exactly like Stephin!

Momus, do you have a release date for 'Ocky Milk' yet?

It's July or August. The record is finished at this point, but the sleeve (by James Goggin of Practise) isn't. There's a photo shoot on Wednesday featuring a little girl arranging paper letters.

And will it have that Eastern flavor 'Otto Spooky' had?

No, this time there's a touch of enka, the sentimental Japanese drinking music, and 1950s Asian orchestral torch motifs run through the album.

how does the production compare to 'Otto'? I preferred 'Oskar' in that department.

It's been recorded quite differently. First of all, Rusty Santos (who's worked with Animal Collective and Black Dice) flew out to Berlin to record about half of it. Secondly, I used a completely different studio set-up this time, with much less MIDI and much more post-production editing. John Talaga is involved, though, so there's continuity with the last two in terms of Dadaist stuff happening. This time John "takes the solos" rather than morphing between tracks (although there's a bit of that too).

I think the core issues there transcend rockism vs. popism where the latter category seems duty-bound to defend short attention spans

I'm of the school that thinks that things sounding "of their time" last better than things which try to transcend their time (usually by harking back to some former model which is supposedly "timeless", but actually isn't). But there are many ways of sounding "of your time". I don't know if "Ocky Milk" (and yes, it's an "Under Milk Wood" reference) sounds "of its time", but the warped torch thing co-incides with what people like David Sylvian and Scott Walker have been doing. It's less austere and purist than they are, though, less likely to get The Wire into a strop. In fact, The Wire won't even mention it.

Mickey, you can hear some demos for the "Oskar Tennis Champion" album here.

sure, absolutely - where I get all crotchety-old-man about things is when there's a conflation of defending this concept ("of-yr-time") & decrying the concept of lasting value - even though I'm as shrill as the next guy when somebody starts talkin' about stuff that'll "stand the test of time" etc

I also think there's a whole helluva lotta eye-of-the-beholder stuff at play in the phrase "of your time" (of whose time? somebody like Micah P Hanson might be accused of trying to work the "this is 'timeless'" model, but that could also be a lazy way of describing what he's up to - a recourse to shorthand rather than engaging with the material. Will Oldham has successfully negotiated these waters I think, though with mixed results to my ears) - lotta pretty unpackable hierarchiving goin' on there

xpost Momus yr on today

In nature, yes. In music, eh. I used scare quotes to denote my skepticism about the concept, not to postmodernize it. Right now, bands are quite eager to show this specific type of fake-growth - they barely bother to establish a mask before triumphantly ripping it off. Witness the Dresden Dolls whipping out "Sing" (as someone here correctly said, their own "Everybody Hurts") on their second album; witness Karen O morphing back into touchy-feely Karen Orzalek at the first hint of MTV airplay.

Well, the album you want to hear, Mickey, was made available in its entirety on my blog before being released by record labels, on a voluntary donation basis. The mp3s are no longer up there, because the moment I signed contracts with the labels, I would have been infringing them by giving the record away free, gratis and for nothing.

Anyway, if anyone wants to see a video of one of the tracks on the forthcoming album, Frilly Military is online. Takes a while to load. It's from the poppy end of the record.

Thomas: doesn't what you're saying amount to "I believe in the concept of artistic growth, therefore I find it everywhere I look"? How would you say growth manifests itself?

Momus, I agree. People are beholden to their circumstances. That's how it goes, doesn't it?

By the way, I like that song in the video.

contact us when you can.

Mickey, if you don't want to be treated like a felon all your life, please stop acting like one.

Derek          Borchardt   Derek 
Derek          Borchardt   Derek        
Derek          Borchardt   Derek        
Derek          Borchardt   Derek           
Derek          Borchardt   Derek          
Derek 'Mickey' Borchardt   Derek            
Derek          Borchardt   Derek            
Derek          Borchardt   Derek            
Derek          Borchardt   Derek           
Derek          Borchardt   Derek           
Derek          Borchardt   Derek          

'Mickey' Borchardt      Derek'Mickey'  BorchardtDerek        Derek'Mickey'  
'Mickey'  Borchardt     Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt   Derek     Derek'Mickey' 
'Mickey'   Borchardt    Derek          Borchardt     Derek   Derek   
'Mickey'    Borchardt   Derek          Borchardt     Derek   Derek   
'Mickey'     Borchardt  Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt   Derek     Derek'Mickey'  
'Mickey'     Borchardt  Derek'Mickey'  BorchardtDerek        Derek'Mickey' 
'Mickey'    Borchardt   Derek          Borchardt  Derek      Derek   
'Mickey'   Borchardt    Derek          Borchardt    Derek    Derek   
'Mickey'  Borchardt     Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt      Derek  Derek'Mickey' 
'Mickey' Borchardt      Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt       Derek Derek'Mickey'  

In almost innumerable ways! I don't think "stagnation" is really even possible - if there's any really pernicious myth in criticism, it's that it's even possible to say the same thing twice: how can it even be the same thing, if it's already been said? It can't; it's repetition at that point, which is a speech-act of an entirely different order, and is to me a pretty interesting one - most of my favorite artists repeat themselves, and I'd say they do so precisely to hear how the thing being repeated turns out not to be the "same thing" at all, but to sort of open up onto other areas all by itself under the weight of repetition. I know this is all up-my-own-ass theory territory & vulnerable to the "it's pop music, not HIGH ART" but what can I say, it's interesting to me: I think growth is inherent in all processes, even decay is growth - I'm almost always more interested in the work of an artist who's said to have already peaked, not in the heavily mythologized/romanticized "early & hungry" model that pervades rock thinking.

One example of how growth manifests itself artistically is when the artist turns inward, which, when it happens in rock or rock-related musics (i.e. pop, not actually as distinct from rock as we tend to say around here), people tend to dismiss, often on grounds such as those cited above (not "hungry" any more, "repeating him/herself," etc). In most other fields of art, though, artists who "peak" early are quite rare; artists tend to do their best work once they've actually mastered the rudiments of craft. Rock/pop thinking has this privileging of inexperience that ends up equating competence with stagnation, and I think that's kinda bogus. But all these are just on-the-fly thoughts & I'm open to correction, it's not like I think I've got all this doped out; I'm just very suspicious of a model for criticism that I think often sounds phoned-in & over-reliant on some pretty suspect cultural cues.

I'll think about this some more in the morning.

So, I think "growth" is valid also. The human soul, reflected in art, grows too, but not as much when there are ... blockages.

the thought of dj spooky actually sitting down one day to write an autobiography makes me want to befoul myself.

1) Sign up for a free radio station at a place like Pandora or Last.fm or Launchcast. If you plug in, say, Momus, that artist will get lots of airplay on your 'station'. This is how I discover new music.

2) It doesn't cost that much to download tracks from pay services like emusic - much cheaper than itunes and much easier than p2p.

3) Retail places like Amazon, and info sites like Allmusic often have sample clips as well.

No, I am not a shill, but I can't believe that people are still having trouble finding 'what something sounds like' in this day and age.

By the way, I just remembered, there's a song on my new album called "Dr Cat" whose chorus sets the Pitchfork rating system to music, but ranking friends instead of records:

Essential and spectacular incredible friends
Exceptional; will rank amongst my all-time ten
Very good, above average; enjoyable friends
Not that brilliant, but I know we'll meet again