Simon Reynolds' Unfaves

simon reynolds - lost it?

Cameron Diaz fisting Brad Pitt while he reams a donkey

Works even better out of context. :-)

Perhaps we are better off without BNFs, better off finding more affable, humble, non-polarising ways of looking at pop. As someone who gets off on messianic fervour, though, I can't help finding this kind of unassuming approach ultimately lacking some vital buzz-factor: it's too mild in temperament and temperature. Where's the fiyah?

To which I think -- why does the flame need to be public? The tyranny of one's own tastes on oneself can just as easily do the trick.

I thought Reynolds writing in this months Uncut, the Streets and the BOC reviews stunk to high heaven, and was all set, when clicking on the above link, to indulge in another bout of head shaking and sighing....I was probably all ready to type that he 'was no Dave McCullogh or Johnny Waller". (note to younger readers, they were journalists for Sounds in 1980 or so).

But I thought some of the things in that page were fantastic, he nails just why Magpies Eyes was a great read, I don't quite agree with his assesment of In their own write, but its not agreeing with I am complimenting the man on, but in producing something worth reading and his view on that book is compelling too.

If pushed I'd probably say the Dylan bit sucked though not that much, but he really should be the last man to quote the critisism of Dylan about "gets away with opacities disguised as oracular wisdom".

Hmm, has he written anything else worth reading I might have missed?

Plus, he ignores garage in his "Dance music is dead" thang -- while of course he praised it in his faves article. So is he going schizo?

One of the more interesting snippet for me:

"Fabulous pop music" like Kylie or Britney is a bit like good weather: it comes along and brightens our days, but (perhaps because it all occurs on such a impossibly remote and out-of- any-of-our-hands plane) it seems beside the point to get worked up about it. There's no food-for-discourse there, unless you're a metereologist or Billboard columnist.

Together with his eagerness to jump off the R&B bandwagon, this leads me to think that Reynolds' appreciation (in the critical sense) of recent pop is pretty much limited to the situations in which it intersects with his own pre-established aesthetic rules. In comparison, I probably got into R&B/chart pop young enough that I will always now be interested in it no matter what sonic course it decides to chart (in fact since I was 16/17, it is a scientific certainty that I will listen to it for the rest of my life).

Though that remark re. house and being gay/black-Hispanic did puzzle me a bit. I wonder if you could say the same thing about Black Sabbath and being white/hetero?

Mmm...you might yet surprise yourself, Tim. I'm not saying you shouldn't, of course! But where the indefinable buzz existed for me at 16 is not the same at 31, and the reasons are multiple.

??? != Diana Ross???

This is nothing but inverted grandstanding, the rhetorical power of self-deprecation: 'Call me stupid, but...'; 'Is it just me, or...?' - jeez, Simon Reynolds can do better than *this*. I'm talking about *writing*.

>>> "Somehow, from the very earliest moment I became of Bob Dylan's existence, some embryonic (or even zygotic) form of critical perception sensed there was something stuffy and pious and un- rock'n'roll/un-pop about the Dylan Thing."

Something of the same problem here, too: the dull rhetoric of 'I'm not saying what everyone else is saying' - let down by the fatc that not everyone else is saying it anyway.

It's not that I disagree with Reynolds here. I don't share his feeling - I love Dylan - but I know that that's what we're dealing with: 'feelings'. They clicked for me with Dylan, not for SR - which is fine (and very contingent). That's neither here nor there. What worries me is his recourse to clichéd opinion. Like this:

>>> "Well, that's my gloss on it now: probably initially it was something as rudimentary as a gut non-comprehension of how anyone could bear to listen to that aggravatingly nasal and goaty vocal timbre, even if the lyrics were as amazing as cracked up to be. And then beyond that--a notch up the scale of critical sophistication--an intuition that in this ability to hear through the surface un- pleasure of that weathered leathery bleat, and find the truth or word- magick embedded in the lyric---that right there was the residual puritanical streak and scriptural bias (in the beginning, there was the Words) that underpins rock's elevation of text over texture."

In other words, Dylan = Lyrix, Man; whereas SR = Sound.

I have a lot of time for the SR position (he taught many of us to make the mental leaps). But the trouble is, the dichotomy is so hackneyed. Only the editor of the Telegraph (I mean the Dylan Telegraph, not the Tory one) still thinks it's like Every Word Bob Writes Is Scripture. That's not the point. Don't throw the bairn out with the tub. There are things lyrics can do which aren't about scripture and revelation; not about separation of 'word' from 'sound', or dull canonical formations. There are things Dylan does which are not about 'Meaningful Lyrics', but about sonic FX, combinations - the voice, the harmonica, the unpredictability of the arrangements. I'm saying: don't put Bob in a box - his work can do things outside of it.

Fortunately, I know Tom Ewing would back me up on this, and put it more persuasively than I have.

>>> "Less widely accepted, but still established enough to merit inclusion, is the idea that Melody Maker in the late Eighties/early Nineties was a golden age (perhaps the last golden age) for the UK music press..."

Spot on: thank god someone who knows what he's about is sticking up for it. This whole paragraph is the best in the thing by a mile.

I can really only care about Dylan when he's covered by someone else. So clearly the arrangements etc. don't have jack to do with it from where I sit.

Amen to that.

Mmm...you might yet surprise yourself, Tim. I'm not saying you shouldn't, of course! But where the indefinable buzz existed for me at 16 is not the same at 31, and the reasons are multiple. "

It was a joke, Ned. Seriously though, I don't think Simon having a pre-established set of aesthetic rules is a bad thing - I have one too, it's just that I've had less time to develop it. It's just that it explains points of difference between tastes; I'd been baffled by Reynolds' eagerness *not* to continue listening to R&B, whereas now I think I understand it. FWIW, I think Reynolds' rules are a very *good* set, seeing as they lead him to like more great music (IMHO) than just about anyone else I can think of.

Hm! I don't know, for some it isn't in their own listening habits, it seems! Thus the endless nostalgia market.

FWIW, I think Reynolds' rules are a very *good* set, seeing as they lead him to like more great music (IMHO) than just about anyone else I can think of.

Hurrah! No bad thing indeed.

this is bad???

Echoes of the eighties anti-rockist period when entryism, "good pop", black values were all the rage. I get the impression that Reynolds liked R&B for being the (deceptively) smoother end of black "street culture", for the way insurrectional energy was warped into being something deliciously palatable. Most of his favourites ("No Scrubs", "Bills, Bills, Bills", "It's Not Right, But It's Okay") are arguably songs which place socio-cultural ideas - specifically the idea of a battle of the sexes, emotionally, socially, economically - above the personalities of the performers, who are empty vessels. That's what thrilled him maybe about the TLC-Sporty Thieves "dual", the idea of real social energy becoming manifest in chart pop, with the stars as mere mouthpieces for processes that are bigger than they are.

The new improved "it's all about me" Beyonce in contrast probably turns Reynolds off because her focus - and the focus of much critical reception - has been on her; her as a standard for others, as a trend-setter, as a personality. Compare the hits of TWOTW with those of Survivor: in all of the former the girls talk about themselves in the midst of some social transaction. "Independent Women" and "Survivor" in comparison are very ossified, very much about reifying the DC (ie. Beyonce) persona as something that exists above and beyond the situations she may find herself in.

Generally I think pro-pop people *enjoy* the cult of celebrity, enjoy the camp thrill of setting a Britney or Beyonce up on a pedestal and appreciating how incomparably above and beyond us all they seem, even though it's obvious that it's a deception. And obviously pro-pop people love tearing them down too when the time is right. And that's why pro-pop people might be drawn to Survivor: because Beyonce is the ultimate diva, in all her tyrannical hypocritical glory. There's a certain aura about Beyonce now that just wasn't there on The Writing's On The Wall, even though the stories on that record feel more real, more tangible to me. Beyonce feels more inevitable to me now, and I mean that in a good way, as in there's something about hew that just can't be dismissed or ignored, demands attention.

Reynolds' puzzled dismissal of pop suggests to me that he finds this whole process a waste of time (which is fine, different strokes for different folks etc.), and considers there to be nothing inherently interesting about the personas of Britney or Beyonce. Their potential for magic in Reynolds' conception is how they might become inadvertant mouthpieces for something much broader, much more real to life.

(tangent: perhaps Reynolds resists the camp process because E culture in comparison is all about the abolition of pedestals. Or rather, yourself and everyone about you is on a pedestal. The communal/physical/drug-interface nature of dance music generally lends itself to the social energy preference, I'd imagine)

Of course this is all conjecture; maybe Simon will come along at this point and correct me.

Making her and Jay-Z counterparts, then, based on his last album? That's the comparison that leapt to my mind at least...

More generally -- this is what Tom was writing about with his death of pop article -- robo-divas of all genders are forced now to differentiate. Thus interchangability is lower, thus less like Reynold's sublimination of self.

I think it was 1987, not 1988 actually.

dave this is industrial-strength nonsense: PSB were awesome at the time and have aged like gods

(haha i wrote a piece for nme abt what wz wrong w/em in 1987, which was spiked bcz the eidtor"did not like my tone" — SO I AM SAVED FROM SIMON'S FATE by some otherwise forgotten idiot)

gods of tweeness!

I don't think I still hate them. Even when Ken Bruce plays them i don't switch off.

They were not at all twee. Nor were they in any way gods.

I don't there was anything more enjoyably and perfectly and surprisingly bombastic as when I first heard "It's a Sin" on Top 40 radio in San Diego. What the hell was THAT all about? Needless to say I loved it and got the album shortly thereafter.

Of course I used to feel exactly like that about Bob Dylan too; so maybe it's one of those acquired taste thingies that I'll just mysteriously develop one day.

House music does look forward, it's hyper concerned with the new like most other dance genres, moreso surely than techno or something. I think it's difficult to get a handle on what the latest edge of house music if you're not involved and his piece proves that a bit. House doesn't make massive waves as he says, it continues along steadily. Another key point is that house is only barely about djs or producers and almost all about random one off tracks, however cosy it may appear to have become talk to anyone going to house nights regularly and they'll be talking about a different track every week, you'd have to be voracious to keep up with it all.

House now is the closest dance genre to pop, obviously, and like pop it pretty much absorbs whatever it can, so OBVIOUSLY it is going to have people from other backgrounds contributing to it greatly, it remains the centre and to some extent the establishment and so subvert away, really.

The idea that it is dominated by snobbery and the old days were better rubbish is quite harsh, particularly since all dance music is to some extent, a bit unfair to single out house.

Anyway my main point was that there is a whole vibrant house scene which does not equate to serious or old skool.

Also the gay/hispanic thing is just plain odd. Unless myself or my parents have been hiding something from me.

but the ladies tell me he's cute.

Precisely.

I agree entirely with you about some sectors of house fans not being comfortable with the crossover, but crucially I suspect these people aren't comfortable with Daft Punk or with Green Velvet or more recently with electroclash influenced house or even garage influenced house.

Then again I'll bet garage people hate the idea of garage influenced house and see it as just dilution.

I totally agree that the soul obsessives pretty much hate what house has become, what house IS. It's odd because that's so at odds with the values the old style had in the first place. Yes house has become a mongrelised genre while still remaining quite a safe option relatively speaking, but this is a good thing, it's still traditionalist in the sense of the general themes.

Part of the hatred also is caused by house's tendency to gobble up anything that works on a dancefloor and make it house music, by virtue of remixes or some such. House DJs will play a rock song or a techno song or a hiphop song or whatever the hell really, and the crowd will lap it up. It's one of the things which annoys me most about it but it also can be a key part of the enjoyment. Modern house sets, as in post '99 has so many sources from which to draw, you've got french roule/crydamoure etc stuff, the real old skool classics like good life etc, acid house, pop music, hiphop, rock music, techno, electro.

This is reflected by the drug intake of the audience, even the lifestyle, the same tendency to "get messy" that Reynolds talked about in that Lo Fis article Tim F posted which was excellently ahead of its time I reckon. Yes for alot of people house, like their evening, is something of a generic mish mash of styles and borrowing, like a few pills and bags of cans and whatever else is handy. It may be a middle class post rave dance fan thing to do to go out and experiment with whatever drugs are handy and dip your toe into house but I think there is still capacity and the records and sounds there for passion and trainspotterism. I should know.

When I go out there is a whole new wave of classics, Diabla, La Rock, Flylife, Silver Screen Shower Scene, From Disco To Disco, loads more if I thought about it for long enough. There is a whole different audience to the credible house mafia and it would be tragic to think they ruled the roost, even if they do have a ridiculous amount of supporters in the writing business, cf muzik giving single of the issue to good but overly tasteful stuff.

I think house is comfortable with crossover, obviously you have your duds as I'm sure is the case with garage but generally speaking the crossover house successes are totally revered, the jaxx, daft punk, underworld, etc. Also there are always a good few crossover house hits in a year. That said at the moment I think potential successes like Behind by Lacquer for example aren't really getting the push due to the perception that dance isn't something people want to listen to anymore.

Totally de-railed the thread now but anyway.

What of the Hispanic/Gay idea? Maybe warrants a new thread?

just wanted to pick up on that point because it annoyed me that a track like 'Deepest Blue' could go top 10 but 'Behind' never could - its hard to say why because they're not so different, only Lacquer's track is just so much better for reasons i actually find it hard to come up with because it just seems so obvious and natural.

I think the idea of house as being a stodgy traditionalist cul-de-sac is incredibly easy to maintain when you're not directly engaging with the music on a regular basis - comps from Subliminal Records say just reek of that sort of stuff and then you put them on and realise that it's not true at all. In a funny way I approach house from that Reynolds-style mindset and then each individual record proves me wrong; it's lucky therefore that I get a lot of house thrown at me for review.

i like to smirk at his (circa 93?) comment on the "triangle region" of "middlebrow dance", which of course gave us lovely things like microhouse and electroclash.

I came late to that thread and couldn't really find a position from which to start!

Subliminal records just screams capitalism, I'd rarely say such things about music but it really does. Each record has a nice breakdwon, sounds like it was made on extremely new shiny hardware or software (perish the thought), and they release loads of them.

Also their records are always ridiculously overcredited and then stupidly named like Harry Choo Choo Romero, Erick Morillo, Jose Nunez, Richard F, and Jessica Eve featuring Who Da Funk and Da Bongo Boyz Crew presents Get Up On Dat Thing. It's like the more names they put on there the more people might buy the album.

That said they've released some good ones. I think though, Sub Sessions 4 and 5 are probably crap, I've not heard them but their own singles around the time were all shite.

Choo Choo is easily the biggest talent there, and Morillo's given up DJing to make suits or whatever.

Garage influenced house then? (or even TECHNO? haha) Tunes?

Agoria-Kofea.

I suspect Subliminal Sessions 2 was a peak that was totally impossible to recreate. I really dislike *all* the Who Da Funk tracks actually. Possibly one of the negative aspects of electoclash is that it's acted as a magnet for all other attempts to display aggression/detachment/"subversion" in house music and Subliminal are a good example of that - their punkish jack house was thrown out of orbit by electroclash so that now whatever they do they only sound like they're avoiding or imitating that style.

I should note that track I mention in that post "Get Up On Dat Thing" does not exist.

Basement Jaxx obviously is the thing to look forward to, I enjoyed Audio Bullys but their DJ sets led me to believe they were going to be a big step forward for house.

i don't think simon would ever want anyone to think this and i don't think anyone with a functioning pair of ears would ever suggest such a bloody daft thing in the first place, funkstorung not being microhouse at all (also, i don't know this for sure, but i'll lay a £10 bet that simon doesn't like them much)... microhouse comes diresctly from the much-vaunted cologne/frankfurt/berlin axis of minimalism and has gone on, over the course of several years, to incorporate more and more influences, rather like fleshing out a skeleton, and spread out across the world. also morgan geist = not exactly microhouse at all, but still very good...

sorry dave, my ears aren't functioning right! it sounds more like you're providing an ad hoc definition of "microhouse". if you want to define "microhouse" as "the output of labels from cologne, frankfurt and berlin" then i suppose, yeah, m.g. doesn't cut it.

if you want to define "microhouse" as highly syncopated, intricately spatialized, tech-influenced and *somewhat* minimal house then you're just going to have to let in morgan geist and dan bell and clear records and swayzak etc. etc. etc.

http://www.thewire.co.uk/archive/interviews/basic_channel.html

biba kopf also disses the main street recordings for having vocals and being housey!

oh how terribly against everything house music/techno stands for...

i don't know - and i'm not saying for a minute that you or tim or jess or anyone else, can't understand these very regionalised genres just coz you don't live where it comes from (particularly not in tim's case), but i do think it is harder to see it as a whole culture and occasionally this does lead to some daft ideas (cf some of the ludicrous ideas posited abt dizzee on ilm in the past). also i have never been to jamaica, but still *get* dancehall - however, i would get it less had i not always lived in ares with a high concentration of jamaicans and the opportunity to attend dances etc - i also expect myself to get it *more* when i finally get to jamaica early next year... in some ways i find soulseek etc a little worrying in that it makes a huge amount of sound available to people but provides no context and no opportunities to engage with the cultures the music in question is at the heart of...

do you read simon's stuff ever? i think this is one of the last things he would ever want, but hey... anyway, it's weird we're discussing his unfaves from 2 years ago now! i'm only her coz there are some interesting meta-discussions here but think all would be better on seperate, new threads!

You have a point Dave but surely the more people hearing it the better.

I get a similar feeling with house but the borders tend to be critical ones rather than geographical, ie the age old why is this dick writing about my favourite music equation!

don't talk abt me like that - i'm under the weather as it is!

you still need a good internet connection and a CD burner.

''It may matter in a sociological sense but surely almost all genres are states without borders now''

well, ppl may get to hear a wider range of things, but actually what you find out when you're on soulseek is how much of the stuff you've already got a decent collection on is on there, and then how much more is left.

I think there will be borders all the time but one way to overcome these things is by cross-pollinating bits of genres. Microhouse kinda does that (from listening to the three kompakt comps i downloaded off there)(yes i know there's been plenty of debate on the def of microhouse includind some on this thread ok ok).

(was that reynolds on his blog at all or am i getting confused? either way, whoever said it threw me for a loop!)

I thought something similar and almost sent him an email consisting of subject: Lumidee and body: Young Marble Giants. But my power cut out. (Besides, that beat is ideal for someone with a fragile voice.)

(I have never made a connection between Morgan Geist and Perlon despite owning and loving almost everything by both... must look into this further...)

that's coz there isn't one...

Lumidee is, theoretically, the answer to every R&B-hater's prayers (insofar as all R&B-haters everywhere rely on overtrained melisma as proof in and of itself that the music suxor) but oddly the pro-R&B kids seem to love her heaps and quite a few reviews of the song I've read here say something along the lines of "she is R&B so she suxor, and she can't sing so she suxor more!"

Raincoats - their recs wld not be better if they cld sing better? (I dunno, I've never knowingly heard a raincoats rec)

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/d/donna-summer/this-needs-to-be-your-style.shtml

i think my problems with s.r. are thus, and they didn't really start becoming problems until i had to be confronted with a near daily dose of them:

- he is terribly fond, obviously, of the Big Overarching Theory to Explain Everything, but said theories (the plural alone should give rise to a worry there) are totally tied up with his whims of the moment (manic drug noise this month/year, a "return to songform" next.) he flipflops back and forth so much between talking up "anti-music" (his beloved "tracks") and then scurrying back to his rabbit warren of songform when it all gets too much for him. he slams the david banner track for being unsure if it's "really music", but if he had bothered to listen to the album he'd learn that a. "mississippi" has possibly the most intricate rhythm i've heard this year, rivaling any 2-step i've heard and b. "cadillac's on 22's" has the most gorgeous melody i've heard this year. his relentless flip-flop wouldn't be so bad if it was coming every twelve months in the form of his year end best of/worst ofs, i guess. but now it just seems cloth eared and ridiculous.

- the idea that he has to pay attention to hip-hop when he only really cared about it for the three or four years when it sounded (to him) like old rave music (cf. also his year-long romance with dancehall at precisely the time it sounded most technoid) when he's never seemed to give a tinkers damn for it otherwise. (also, related, the idea that his opinions on hip-hop are being cried out for.) pre-timbaland he only seemed to care about hip-hop at it's (mainstream) "weirdest" (bone thugz, say) or most art-rock (outkast.)

And what I think Jess doesn't say although possibly it's implied - Simon's approach seems to fetch up as so awkward and infuriating in a time (this time) when there are only so many small movements and small sub-movements and small essentially nothings when you try to patch it all together into a bigger something it's just not. going. to. fit. And I think that the blog template is also a factor in this. It forces you to think in small dribs and drabs and to think in terms of small units (songs, mini-movements, single ideas) that Simon isn't really done the same justice as when he has the expanse of a Word Count. (Don't get me wrong either, Simon is brilliant because he fondles ideas like a lover and it is consistently exciting / surprising how good a writer he actually is - but he has been smacking of old-ness / out of place-ness of late.)

a. his relentless flip-flop wouldn't be so bad if it was coming every twelve months in the form of his year end best of/worst ofs, i guess. they didn't really start becoming problems until i had to be confronted with a near daily dose of them.

b. the idea that he has to pay attention to hip-hop; his forced patronage in the face of percieved diminishing returns just bores me. if you don't like something, why keep returning to it, ad nauseum; he certainly doesn't bother writing limp-dick "scathing" attacks on dnb every week.

James--go fuck yourself.

ps. sorry if this offends you matos, not the intent.

It seems to me that *the* problem is that jaded cynicism is - point blank - not particularly interesting, especially because it's the standard form for so many writers (*especially* "this is crap this year but it might be a cycle (ergo Clinic are the saviours of music!!!?!?!)"). Simon writes well, but even he can't enliven jaded cynicism an awful amount.

As for the book, he should forget about it for a while (not least because focusing on your private golden age makes everything else look like tin in comparison, unless you spend your whole time making complicated grime = post-punk analogies), write the grime equivalent of "Feminine Pressure" and *then* return to his opus.

I think this might be the key of it but it also raises a question. There really should be room for expressions of frustration, of wheels being ground, of feeling exhausted -- it seems that in any field or private obsession there should be room for that, a bit of metacommentary. The problem is that usually the feeling of exhaustion equates just as equally to a feeling of not wanting to write or talk about that feeling precisely because one is exhausted -- my 'hitting the wall' article last year on FT and various posts and threads on ILX since have been attempts, however poorly written or expressed, to articulate a state of mind where I want to capture a feeling of distance and detachment while still wanting to engage, to somehow communicate this feeling, which to me feels as valid and as much a potential part of individual artistic reaction as full participation. It isn't easy, capturing this feeling. I might not agree with SR's take -- personally, I think it boils down to state of mind rather than state of art -- but can you truly say you're giving him the benefit of the doubt, inasmuch as you might be nettled that he is apparently not giving YOU that same benefit if you're in a different place yourself?

I'm reminded of that first line in Anna Karenina - something like "every happy family is the same, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." It's the reverse for music criticism: there are so many interesting ways to write positively about music, but it's very difficult for complainers to not sound like they belong to a hive-mind of bitterness. The problem is not SR's intentions so much as the reader's capacity to take something fruitful from the writing.

I know you're saying its difficult but it can only be his fault. The point that he's blogging while in the middle of writing his book on post-punk is a good one. How much of this stuff would he actually say if he hadn't been listening to the music he grew up with, I wonder.

(It also helps that he honestly ISN'T very convincing on hip-hop, they/we are hardly disagreeing for the sake of it)

there is some lazy reading going on re the bashing of him for not having heard 'mo money' till this year. what he actually said was that he hadn't heard puffy's new house track, and in passing mentioned haveing seen 'mo money' on tv and that he thought it almost uptempo enuf to be a house track. no pontification on hiphop there, just a blog comment, thas all. lighten up folks.

I have just noticed how many of the Critics' Corner threads are about Simon Reynolds. I thought I would click on this thread and say so.

Haha ironic.