Critic's Dilemma: When Bands Respond To Bad Reviews

Even weirder (and potentially a lot of fun, though sometimes a pain in the butt): When they respond to negative reviews thinking they're positive.

Anyway, yeah, ignore it is best, otherwise something like, "I think the review said pretty much everything I had to say..." Reviews are consumer guides, not peer critique.

How about if it's a local band but you don't actually live in that locality?

I don't see why you shouldn't be doing both, or something which lies somewhere in between. I don't think music criticism should relegate the critic and/or listeners to the sidelines. Resist the artist-audience divide!

Then again, this dude asked me would I critique his lyrics the other day, I wrote back to say "I'd rather not, you'll just be pissed off 'cause I'm not going to pull my punches," he sent 'em anyway, I told him the truth & the resulting dead silence made me feel like shit, so maybe you're better off not responding at all

(note: I am only 25% serious about this)

"Dear Jimi,

Have you ever thought about ditching the electric guitar, for a more musical, traditional blues style?"

Yeah, yeah. Aeon Flux: "Amateurs."

haha dude I actually know a local band who you reviewed and although I thought you said some somewhat biting/critical things they only seemed to notice the positive stuff

Isn't this BN's philosophy, too? And does it have anything to do with the two of you being musicians yourself?

This effectively shifts the issue from whether you're right about their band to whether they should care what you think at all.

Yeah, I generally don't write about something I don't like, but it's mainly because I really don't find most bad reviews entertaining - Xgau a big exception here, his bad reviews make me laugh hard. Most bad reviews read to me like stuff that the author thinks is really amusing - like guys who're fancying themselves possessed of real comic wit for a few paragraphs. Offputting to me.

For me, though - I'm passionate about writing, I really don't care to expend any energy listening to and trying to figure out something I don't like. I don't know if this has anything to do with me being a musician, though it's possible I guess.

MC5. Or the reverse. Anyway, it was the same critic, too.

Your wit does not fall upon deaf eyes.

Hey, it may be "frat rock," according to Mr. Blount, anyway, and the band may be in the company of Hootie and the Blowfish and the Dave Matthews Band. Honestly, though, are these two bands what one could necessarily consider bad company? I don't think so. They are two very different internationally recognized bands that have obviously done a good job in maintaining their status among their fans. S0ul Miner's Daughter does the same with its fans.

these days anybody who cares enough to read reviews (especially the 'thoughtful' type reviews people on this board probably shoot for) is downloading records instead of buying them ----

I guess that's "consuming" in a sense but it feels more like cultural participation & less like being part of some economic machine ---

and good reviews feel like that too: participation in music culture by people who get all worked up about music.

not that different from being in a band.

like DJing is not that different from being in a band -- making cool noise come out of speakers. and being somebody with a big music collection and lots of love is nigh unto being a DJ -----

Bands, writers, DJs, managers, fans (all writers/DJs/managers/in bands too!) ---- just a bunch of music fuckheads!

No reason to write back if you have nothing to say & dealing with artsy-minded fuckers ----- talented or not ---- can def. be prickly

but you're a punk if you think you're on a different level from somebody you review or somebody who reviews you. that you deserve to be spared the trouble of say running into them at a bar ---

Springsteen.

Very much so. Thanks for asking.

"All during Cream I was riding high on the 'Clapton is God' myth that had been started up. I was flying high on an ego trip; I was pretty sure I was the best thing happening that was popular. Then we got our first kind of bad review, which, funnily enough, was in Rolling Stone [RS 10, May 11, 1968, by Jon Landau]. The magazine ran an interview with us in wchich we were really praising ourselves, and it was followed by a review that said how bori8ng and repetitious our performance had been. And it was true! The ring of truth just knocked me backward; I was in a restaurant, and I fainted. And after I woke up, I immediately decided that that was the end of the band."
--Robert Palmer, "Eric Clapton" (1985) from The Rolling Stone Interviews: The 1980s

Why do I only write about stuff I like? Real estate is so precious (in print, online, whatever, the point regardless of medium or format is that your reader's time and attention is precious) and life is short. I would rather expend this resource trying to be an advocate for something that I think deserves to be celebrated and maybe isn't getting celebrated (or, if it's already popular, maybe isn't getting accurately described). Since the scene is already so bitchy and hype driven and fickle and here-today-gone-tomorrow, I don't need to be first in line to slag off somebody-- it's likely that plenty of others will be doing that already. But I must admit that you're right- I do think of myself as a musician first and a critic second, and I do think that it's hard enough to write, record, complete and release a record, let alone to struggle to make a living as a musician, and extremely rare cases aside the odds are stacked so high against you anyway, that I don't much feel like making some other musician's life even harder, no matter how much I may think their art sucks / is over-rated / panders / is pretentious / plays it safe n easy etc. There is also, in the back of my mind if I am honest, an "ecology" angle here about not doing unto others so as to cover your ass: you never know who you might wind up on a festival bill with and if you trashed somebody and you both know it it gets really awkward. When asked in interviews what I hate I will do that in a context where it makes sense, but I'm not going to go out of my way to trash somebody else. But critics who are critics first and not musicians have a duty to tell the truth, and if their editor has said they need to review the new CD by Band X, Y. or Z and it sucks then they should say that. That's part of participating critically in a medium-- delivering praise and blame. Duchamp said that "the new art doesn't want to be judged- only loved" and it's quite true of the music world, to a point . . . but also, (sorry this is so longwinded) I have to point out in fairness that most musicians I've talked to about this topic have had bad reviews that they really treasure and have memorized. My own favorite: "Matmos sound like a retarded monkey playing an out of tune violin". Gross mocking caricatures are fun. The only reviews that really hurt are the ones where the critic clearly grasps what you set out to do and they just think that you failed this time.

if you only write positive reviews you're a writer not a critic.

But critics who are critics first and not musicians have a duty to tell the truth

wtf every journalist has a duty to tell the truth! and while a musician can bring mucho insight and perspective to music writing by pulling your punches and self-editing in the name of social advancement among musician peers youre violating the sacred trust with your readers whether it's criticism or feature writing.

imagine a novelist/critic who only writes positive book reviews in fear of alienating his peers. or a film theatre critic who only writes positive notices. sorry I'm ranting but this is (another) long running pet peeve -- many quite prominent rock critics (who aren't musicians) amazingly only encounter records they like.

that said, getting book-reviewed after many years of (sometimes harshly) judging albums was one hell of an eye-opening experience for me, now I see just how it feels on the other end of the stick.

You hope to get more relaxed and confident over time; and you should certainly get (or seem to get kinder) simply by avoiding the stuff you are likely to warm to. Enjoying being insulting is a youthful corruption of power. You lose your taste for it when you realize how hard people try, how much they mind and how long they remember... --Martin Amis

Wait, so then why do Sugarland sometimes sound like Bad Company now??

-- Toke

I don't think professional art critics are ever useless (well... sometimes) but there's been a very healthy downgrading of their power of influence.

Or has there? (see recent Pitchfork successes aka the new NME).

Well, at least until you're well-established in a career (i.e. a stage I imagine to be much further along than where a new local indie-type band would be). (I'm assuming this wasn't a realy well-known band with a lot of history.)

xpost

Brent DiCrescenzo, as bad as he seems?

-- reacher (geof...), December 13th, 2005

For those who don't know why this is funny, please see the comments here and at the end here, and compare to the name above. Just so you can grasp the "irony" etc. etc.

Also, second link gets into similar territory as the discussion here.

I'd write back if (1) the people in the band seem interesting, and (2) I have something more worth saying about their music. If neither seems to be true, I'd write something short along the lines that Nabisco suggested.

But what I'd do shouldn't necessarily be what you do. The fact that you didn't know immediately how to respond, and posted the question here, might be because you felt uneasy, maybe due to the way the email was worded or the role it was putting you in. Your intuition here will probably be better than any advice we give. You're under no obligation to reply merely, but their civility may make you want to reply.

But critics who are critics first and not musicians have a duty to tell the truth, and if their editor has said they need to review the new CD by Band X, Y. or Z and it sucks then they should say that.

that's kind of a bogus distinction -- if you're getting paid to write about music, you're a critic first. if you have the luxury of only writing about records you like, that's up to you, but i don't trust a critic who doesn't write negative reviews every now and then. it undermines the quality of even their best writing. it's like being a huge Kiss fanboy who likes all of their albums indiscriminately. would you trust their review of Kiss' new album if you know they never trash anything?

Yeah, returning to this thread I have to say that I fear I've been rather misunderstood. Especially if somebody thinks I'm dishonest because I only write about something if I like it. Let me clarify: I don't publish an opinion I don't believe. There are records that I think are okay, so so, not awful, but not amazing. So I don't even bother to write about them. If I write about it, I genuinely believe that it is worth elevating and celebrating . . . so I am not "dishonest" in what I put into print, I don't rave about something's that's just okay. You call this a luxury, I call it priorities. There is so much art getting made, it's a lifeboat scenario, or a triage operation-- what do you want to save from forgetting and effacement? At no point am I saying something's great if it isn't.

also, reasons to give an album a bad review:
1) to cut through hype. even though i liked The Strokes, i enjoyed reading critics who hated them because it offered a balance to all the fawning style press they had been getting.
2) to explore their place in the culture. Simon Reynolds' MIA review was as much about the phenomenon of the record and the people so eagerly pushing it as it was about the music. i still like Piracy Funds Terrorism (not so much Arular) but he made some really provocative points about where she comes from and the effect that has on the reception of her music.
3) to articulate a dissatisfaction with someone's change of direction. this isn't just being a hater, it can be really productive in crystallizing what fans like about an artist's previous work. i love reading Lester Bangs' dissections of Lou Reed's later solo albums because they're really more of an exploration of what he loved about the early stuff, about how our tastes change as we get older, about how an artist has to deal with the weight of their back catalogue.

It's simply part of the job in professional journalism. Exclude it and you're a hobbyist.

There's still a need for "proper" critical criticism -- because part of what people want to learn from publications is what the music world in general is looking like, not just what cross-section of it you're in favor of -- but that column component can often serve people better in terms of figuring out what to listen to.

Or here's a round-up of all the real gobblers that came through last week. Now you know to avoid. Plus, there's the variety and entertainment of reading both types of journalism. Now there is an entire realm of publication that devotes itself to just happy and pleasing comment and news about their areas of interest. They're called trade publications and they're quite often not taken seriously.

i completely agree. dont write back.

the only time ive contacted critics is to simply thank them for coverage, whether it was postive or negative. ive never wanted to contact them for reasons otherwise, like, to prove something, start arguments or whatever. aside from all of that, id be seen as someone who cant take criticism, which i'd like to believe is not the case.

George - It's funny, I recall being in a round table for the SF Guardian with Dan the Automator about remixes circa 98 or so and he turned to me and said "look you and I are not the same, I'm a professional and you're just a hobbyist". He was right, no hard feelings. Personally, I don't have a problem with being called unprofessional, or a hobbyist, if that means "something you do for fun rather than for money"

That said, I don't think that the stakes of criticism are low. Music criticism, like art criticism, like literary criticism, is a chance to do justice to the complexity, structure, and historical resonance of an art object. To be a critic is to take part in a conversation, and it's an endlessly long and thorny conversation with Eliot, Benjamin, Hazlitt, Lamb, Johnson, Greenberg, Krauss, Foster, Hickey, Bangs, Meltzer, Ashbery blah blah blah etc. I've spent eight years writing a dissertation on Shakespeare, Burton, and Tudor court painters, and I don't think I have come close to exhausting the richness of meaning contained within the artworks I have been staring at and re-reading all of this time. Though the metabolism of most print and online and music journalism is set to a faster tempo, the stakes of the encounter between a writer and the thing before them (pop song, Jacobean drama, engraving, whatever) remain open, even infinite, regardless of that: there's no end to the things you could conceivably say and do with the time allotted to you to respond sensitively, truthfully, and fully to that object. So don't think that because I self identify as a hobbyist it means that I'm not aware of the contours of criticism as an activity. I may only bother to start writing about things that I love- but it's doing justice to what the work is doing that is causing that reaction that requires care and thought and attention to detail and honesty. You can choose to regard that as equivalent to writing puff pieces for trade magazines, but I disagree.

Clapton obviously became less repetitious after this. (what a fucking tool.)

he did!

yeah, but sometimes people need to be challenged about what they do listen to, and why that record ended up in their hands rather than another one. i'd say that can be as valuable as being directed to a new record you don't already like, and i'm somewhat suspicious of writers who are unwilling to do it for fear of offending people.

i see Nabisco and Drew's point -- only writing about things you like doesn't destroy the intrinsic value of your writing if you happen to have the freedom to only write about things you like. i guess my point is that when your editor gives you an album that sucks, there are plenty of interesting and productive things that you can do in the context of a negative review, things that may benefit the listener or even the band. so saying that people just shouldn't write negative reviews because the band works hard, or because they might hate you, doesn't really work for me in the context of review sheet journalism.

what do you think could make this band better? do you have any thoughts in that direction, or was your review a simple writeoff saying 'this music is not very good'?

if that's the case, perhaps it would be decent of you to give them an answer, unless you don't have one. in which case you might want to think about that.

you're being tested, you realize, you're being called on it -- whether or not it was 'beneath' them to write to you, it sounds like they're being reasonable about this and not replying doesn't sound like a very admirable response.

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2005/07/how_to_respond_to_critics.html

At first I thought I could see where you're coming from but I think I still disagree. Why does someone need to be 'qualified' in order to give advice? I know that as a musician I appreciate feedback from listeners (and anyone who listens to your music is obv a listener, whether or not they're also teachers or musicians). I appreciate and have learned from feedback from all kinds of listeners, musically educated or not: including family, friends, random listeners. Doesn't mean I agree with or follow all of it but it can be useful or just interesting to hear and sometimes you need to ask for it. If one listener, who's also a journalist or critic, expresses a strong opinion in print, I might be able to learn something by asking them to explain further or give suggestions. Why should there be some sort of 'wall' between musicians and critics? It makes sense to me to be able to conduct a dialogue or even just be able to ask for it.

xpost OK, I guess maybe I could see a difference, considering what most rock criticism is actually like.

the point I put in italics will probably just seem like anathema to most rock critics. I do wish that wasn't the case, though, or that there was even the slightest, occasional bit of self-consciousness over the insane idea that the musician's intent is the last thing a listener should ever have to concern themselves with. regardless of how eloquently he or she speaks about the work.

& with that it's time to unbookmark ILM

I mean, I have no problem with artists contacting me to comment on my reviews, clarify their intentions, or challenge certain points -- so long as they're nice about it. Often it helps, or at least I learn something about their music, or how to be a better critic.

Also once got a very thoughtful response to a very positive review I'd written from a band member who said, essentially, "I'm glad you liked it but I think you've got a couple of facts wrong, & therefore significantly missed the point of what we were trying to do." I still correspond with him sometimes, too.

I still occasionally get hate mail from a guy whose 35-year-old record I slagged off in passing once. And I heard secondhand that one harsh review I wrote (of a well-known band's side project) made the guy whose project it was decide not to do it any more, which I was sort of sad about.

So what exactly is the problem there? How are artists getting stepped on by critics?

Yeah, when remembering that

Please remember one of the top five responses of a pop musician to criticism is Sonic Youth renaming a song "I Killed Xgau With My Big Fucking Dick."

you need to keep in mind the character of Christgau's negative reviews (despite how wittily they're worded).

I wouldn't be sad at all! It's his decision and if he has that little faith in himself to begin with, then to heck with him.

the reason I bring up 'intent' is the reason why this thread set me in such a foul mood: a critic writes a bad review of a band. the band writes back in a personal e-mail asking him his honest opinion about how to improve. then, the majority of posts to the thread advise him that it's not even his 'job' to respond with another personal e-mail.

it's not about your 'job' by this point anymore if they're being polite. and if your job is volunteering to sit in judgement over another person's work, but you find the idea of ever having to talk about this opinion face to face with that person distasteful... quit your job now -- you have completely missed the point of listening to music.

I mean, the same goes for journalists, where there aren't even as many matters of personal opinion in the air. A person can certainly write and complain that your news article didn't portray her in the right light, and you can certainly respond to that if you want to -- but so long as you aren't printing something untrue, it's not your job to respond. It's just a nice, decent thing to do.

It seems to me that Milton and Sundar are approaching this from an academic perspective. Of course, I have no problem with that type of viewpoint, but I'm not sure it's applicable to yuengling participle's current situation.

xpost

1. Assuming that every act thinks it's making the most amazing music ever. Some crappy acts really do think they're amazing, and they're the types who'll send you bitchy letters. But a lot of musicians are just nice people who like making music, and are trying their best to be good at it; they might not think their albums came out as good as they'd have liked, either, but they know a few people are interested, and just want their records out there so those few people can enjoy them. There's nothing wrong with pointing out that these records might not be that great, but a lot of critics seem to leap to the conclusion that the people behind them think they're so cool, or that they're actively trying to fleece the public with sub-par product. And just because people are in bands doesn't mean they think they're awesome -- some of them are just trying their best like everyone else, and don't even expect people to think their records are as great as those of the bands they love.

And I think that problem has a lot to do with this one:

2. Thinking that it's really easy to play something different. For a critic who doesn't make music, it can seem really simple to do make things different -- as if it's no harder for the band to do than it is for them to throw a new disc in the CD player. But in reality it's incredibly difficult to make music that even sounds listenable, leave alone sounding the way you want it to -- and I think is is still true on some level even for really good musicians. So I chafe when I see critics talk about, say, pop structures being "easy" and "obvious," or electronic records "barely getting beyond the presets" or whatever, as if this is total brainless laziness: making something even marginally appealing is a lot of work from the get-go, and while it's fair to point out that something doesn't seem fresh, it's cheap to imagine that this is a result of the act not even trying. Even worse is when this comes up on stylistic grounds, in these implications that it would be oh so easy for a band to just do something different, and associated implications that it's stupid of them not to. The mindset seems to be that the artist has total effortless control over what winds up on the record (why don't you just do that differently?), whereas the reality is that making music requires loads of searching and trying and not quite getting what you want (which tends to be what makes it interesting).

i think a large percent of the review should just be what the record is trying to do and then how they do or don't achieve it in terms of your worldview or whatever -- that's all analysis and still subjective etc. but its different from taking a I hold the crystal ball on aesthetics and maneuvers attitude and i'm going to let you into or keep you out of my....school of thought (i don't like the academics analogy at all). it would be much easier for a band to say ok yeah you got us completely wrong or right, or ok you get what we're trying to do, but you show how we don't do it...and you're wrong! or you're right, so we'll think about your ideas ... this should all be in the review. if the band is calling b/c they want to abjectly find out how to please the gods, the problem could be in the way the review was written??

But sometimes that's really what's at issue, right? And usually it just gets covered over in vague references to things being "poorly recorded," or whatever. (Or else interpreted, rightly, into what the music is: whatever comments you have about the "feel" of the music translate in the end into a bunch of technical decisions.) But whenever I'm actually working on making music a bit, I start thinking about stuff like this, and I have trouble finding non-stupid ways to bring that stuff to bear on reviews. E.g. my most surprising technical thing of the year was the way the drum machine programs on the Broadcast albums never use high-hats -- just kick and snare -- but I'd feel terrifically silly writing "the sound is minimal (partly because they aren't using hats)."

It's practically an article of faith in pop criticism that all anybody's doing is expressing an individual opinion; to criticize, say, use of legato in a sixteen-bar piano interlude where a staccato approach would have been more effective is sort of just not the done thing in pop criticism, y'know? Pop critics, and readers, seem (on the evidence) to prefer such discussions to be couched in terms of flow, mood, etc. That this preference is somewhat ideological in origin, and that it frames criticism rather narrowly, seems obvious to me - but as I say, I have something of a hobbyhorse about it.

but eppy --

surely it's false modesty for you to think twice about responding to any kind of criticism directed toward your musical efforts!

after all -- you're in that smart club right? the one with the composers? and people capable of framing critical arguments? when you put on your pop music hat does it dumb you down to drummer level?

nah surely not! you're just slumming right? pop music is just silly fun. but you'd better put on your thinking cap when it's time to write about it!

no wait ---- maybe you're not that presumptuous --- I mean you don't really participate in critical dialogue or say anything debatable cause your pieces are just little bubbles of subjectivism answerable only to your well-pedigreed if passing fancy ----

let's just say you write intelligent appraisals of something which is essentially inane in order to help consumers spend their money in a manner most consistent with their averageness -----

keep up the good work!

but yeah he does get me worked up. the word ironic in quotation marks. jesus.

Really? I'd feel perfectly justified in writing "The album has a sparse feeling, particularly because of the lack of high-hats." I like to read that sort of thing because the reviewer has an opinion and backs it up with a direct example.
Part of it may be that reviewers often don't have a lot of musical training (while I can tell a 5th is different from a 3rd, I couldn't necessarily tell you which one was which), and I know for me that my more technical criticisms probably come from the fact that I used to run live sound a lot, and so have a decent idea of how things could sound if they were mixed differently. On the other hand, I kind of feel like a lot of things like that should be apparent to anyone who gets paid to listen to music (by the implication that if you're getting paid, you should have learned how to actively listen by now). I agree that it can be a fine line to walk, as turning a review into a technical critique can be really boring for anyone who's not interested in that, but on the other hand using technical details to support an argument can really help what might otehrwise be airy-fairy handwaving or undergrad textual analysis ala P-fork.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN "OBJECTIVE" REVIEW.

Nick, you're basically right, but you're forgetting the conflict of interest! Like if some band recorded a whole album about how I was a lousy critic, you probably wouldn't trust me to write a very "objective" review of it, right? So if I write a review about how a band's album is terrible, they might have trouble claiming their response is some even-handed "review" of my writing. They are totally not disinterested parties, and their response is bound to be just that, a personal response. Which is cool!

Which, I'm sorry, is bullshit. A music review is as much of a personal response as an angry letter about a bad review.

So my point was just that it's kinda iffy for a band to respond to your review and say they're just "reviewing" your review. General readers can write in and do that, and when it comes to how well I'm writing, I'm gonna be more interested in what those readers have to say than what the bands I'm talking about do. Because they're just plain not "reviewing" your writing; no real journalistic standards would allow them to, what with the obvious conflict of interest; no, they're just responding. And that's perfect fine and often helpful and really cool, but it'd be kind of a joke to pretend, you know, "Your pan of my album came across my desk today. Here are a few even-handed, non-vengeful thoughts on your abilities as a writer."

Eh. It was mostly filler, but the single was a killer.

(1) The idea that there is something that is the "job" of a critic.

(2) The idea that insecure musicians should give up.

"Academic" approaches, particularly with modern composition, would probably be the big exception on that one.

I'm also really suspicious of this idea. Some people seem to have these clear normative standards about what professional music criticism consists in. I don't have much interest in reading what somebody writes as they slip into their role as a music critic. The music writing I enjoy most is written completely unapologetically by people who aren't 'proper critics', detailing the personal significance of certain music with all the appropriate enthusiasm and indulgence.

I don't think writing about music professionally (or anything) could make your opinions more 'right', just better expressed. I think this is why I find the idea of reviews as consumer guides very patronising. A critic's overall verdict on a band alone is just as worthless/valuable as anyone else's, its the ability to articulate it and relate it to other things that can make it interesting and valuable (though not in any sense more right).

I think the most important thing about music is the effect on the listener. I want to read critics who write about the effect the music has on them, exactly what about the music creates this effect, what they think the artist is aiming for etc. The importance on slagging off music you find distasteful thus seems somewhat suspect. If you can somehow turn it into a piece which somehow illuminates a certain wider issue then it could be worth reading. That, and knowing what you don't like might help your audience better evaluate your judgement.

Mark R. already spoke to that:

"In an ideal world every review would be come to be because the writer had interesting and provocative ideas to communicate. Whether or he or she "liked" the thing in question, well....in a certain sense I don't even care. But obviously in this non-ideal world magazines have space to fill and so on, so most reviews happen regardless of whether the writer has any ideas."