What makes for a good music critic in 2010 ?

I have been at this for over 5 years now and I am starting to feel like I am in an echo chamber wrt to my writing on music. I know there are plenty of critics on here and those who actively read music criticism. My question is pragmatic in nature. What do people want to see more of/less of in contemporary music writing ? Look, I know this is ilx, and snark is par for the course here but would really appreciate serious answers. I am at a cross roads and basically want to become better/more effective at what I do and hearing people's opinion on it would be of great help.

cheeba

an ability to pay attention to anything for more than 5 seconds before fidgeting around and losing interest

I've been at it since 1996 and the primary advice I will offer you is this: what makes a good music critic is the ability to get paid for what you do. Period. This is a job. Now, if you want to become a better writer, it's gonna take a lot longer than five years, and you need to read as much as possible...and as little music criticism as possible. I think the key to successful criticism, from an artistic/philosophical standpoint, is to ignore your nominal peers. Journalists of all types are herd animals, so most of them listen to horrible shitty bands - the same horrible shitty bands - anyway. Whatever they're ignoring is what's most worth your time, both from an aesthetic angle and from a find-a-niche-and-fill-it professional angle.

you need to read as much as possible...and as little music criticism as possible

... says the music critic who reads/writes on ILX.

Agree with unperson, btw.

good qualities for a music writer to possess: an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre they write about, an engaging prose style, the ability to describe music in an accurate, compelling way, and, most importantly, a penchant for having something interesting to say, consistently

you need to read as much as possible...and as little music criticism as possible.

genuinely curious, Phil: what would you recommend they read?

i'm not a critic, but fwiw, i'd say: straightforward, clear writing. that seems obvious, but i think it's often a challenge when you're writing about music (or dancing about architecture).

what would you recommend they read?

Anything that inspires them to write for the pleasure of writing. I read a lot of science fiction - I'm currently on a Charles Stross kick, and digging into a couple of books by Iain Banks, and I'll be buying William Gibson's new one on the day of release. I also read a lot of thrillers and crime novels. But whatever you want to read, do it. Just keep reading voraciously, in every spare moment, and steal anything that appeals to you. The reason I suggest avoiding music criticism is the herd-animal thing again: they all read each other, so you'll wind up stealing from the same people they're stealing from (Christgau, Bangs, Eddy, Klosterman, and the big Pitchfork names), which will make you just as boring as them. Plus, if you read things that have nothing to do with music-crit but inspire you to think, you'll wind up thinking about music differently.

Thanks for the responses so far. @ unperson. I think what you are saying wrt to thinking about music differently by reading something other than criticism strikes a chord with me. I think that every critic gets into a rut where he starts to feel like he is repeating himself, or even worse that he is repeating others and that kills the motivation. And in this game, motivation counts for a lot after you have been at it for a good amount of time.

nabisco otm

no such thing

fwiw I prefer it when writer's address the ideas being presented in the music, rather than the musicians' personal lives/career arcs (there are exceptions when the musician's backstory is REALLY compelling, but in general I just don't want to hear this kind of bullshit anymore)

the ability to describe music in an accurate, compelling way

As a reader I'll chime in and say this is key. Specifically, the ability to talk about the music, how it sounds, what it does to you, while avoiding most of the press sheet rhetoric. Too many reviewers spend about 90% of their review talking about shit that's on the press sheet without talking about how the music actually fucking sounds. If I wanted to hear a general discussion of a band's history and influences and talking points, I'll read the damn press sheet for myself.

Speaking in terms of what I want personally (i.e. I can't guarantee this'll help your career at all!), I like reviews to be clear and direct and, yeah, focussed on the sound of the record - a bit of context can be nice of course. As for more general writing (features and the like), I find the writers I come back to nearly always have unique ways of coming at their subject. A good litmus test is whether someone can find something new to say about really well-worn canon stuff. I'd actually say the fact you're concerned is a positive - another constant with critics I like is that they seem to spend a lot of time thinking (and often writing) about their role; what they want to achieve or why they see the value in criticism or whatever.

xpost

Phil: thanks for the great post, and for the great advice, which is totally solid. i feel inspired to read more often now

(i already read a lot, but i definitely want to read more, especially, you know, offline)

I really agree with the bit about reading as much as possible outside of music criticism -- plus thinking about how it works. Music criticism as a whole has a certain prose style, tone, and way of thinking. If you want to write criticism, it's probably best to understand that style and perspective, but it's probably best to understand other stuff as well. This doesn't even require going far afield: thinking about how any kinds of essays or criticism or longer arguments work -- how people talk about literature or film, or political arguments, or personal narratives, or even just how people structure magazine features and whatnot -- that's useful, right? It's not just about prose style, though that's a big thing (there's a distinct prose style for a lot of music criticism, sorta stylized and dense and flashy with reference/wit/shorthand, and to be honest I think people appreciate seeing something different in that world) -- it's about ways of thinking, too. E.g., the way critical writing on literature works is REALLY different from the way music crit tends to -- it focuses hard on "what is this art doing, what might it mean" and close-reading type stuff, whereas lots of music crit is set up more to talk about "is this art good/worthwhile."

I mean you can poke around the internet right now and read things like Edmund Wilson reviewing Ulysses for the New Republic in 1922 -- and that's gonna help you think about how it works to write about art, surely? PLUS it's not like I think music critics need to get all cultural-studies about everything, but it SERIOUSLY pleases me as a reader when someone can connect ideas not just to music-world arcana but to broad ideas and trends, or maybe even stuff about, you know, life. That stuff can be embarrassing if you try to force it too hard, but really, people think earnestly and constantly about what it's like to be alive and what sort of people they want to be, and explaining how music even tangentially figures into that experience is a cool goal, IMO.

I also agree with the "unique ways of coming at the subject" thing, especially when the writers really know what their way is. Some people are great at thinking about song narratives, others are great at talking about how music fits in with its audience/industry, some people talk well about how music functions in their personal lives, etc. It's probably just good to know which dimensions you want to tackle with any given piece!

(For the record, I'm not blaming music criticism for the difference between it and literary criticism; it's more a structural/timing thing. The kind of lit crit I mean stems from close reading of canonical texts, basically, and music critics do close reading when they talk about canon too -- it's just that a lot more time is spent reviewing everything that comes out NOW, so of course its gonna develop a style that has more to do with evaluating quality. And lit crit can continue to think more about, like, what can I pull from the whole body of literature to advance an idea about literature itself, or life, etc.)

A huge part of what inspired me to write music crit was reading litcrit: Wilson, Kazin, Trilling, Woolf. And lots of novels. I can't stress enough the importance of thoughtful dilettantism. You improve your craft by borrowing tricks from other writers and learning how to adapt them to your own voice.

I can say with some certainty that if all you read is other music criticism your prose will eventually constrict to the point at which you have to squint to read it.

^^ plus your only lens on music will be how it relates to itself (i.e., trends, comparisons, insider/geek talk, etc.)

Reading outside of music criticism is good advice. MFK Fisher's writing about food is often in the back of my mind when writing about music. Seeing how people get at things they find interesting, whatever the subject, has value. I do think there's still a lot of music writing that falls outside of what is often emulated that is useful too, like David Toop's books.

complete nonnegotiable honesty
attentive listening
indifference to hype
not being too much of a cheerleader for your own generation
not ever allowing political correctness, populism, ideology etc etc to seep into your reviews
a fairly good knowledge of classic music regardless of what other genres interest you
a fairly solid knowledge of Western culture in general, particularly aesthetics
developing the so-called aristocratic style: direct, frank, unaffected and concise (also known as the opposite of the way some Pìtchfork reviewers and Robert Christgau write)

obs: item 6- classicAL music, also, this means knowing the basics of music theory, pitch etc

don't know about unaffected, but Christgau is pretty concise most of the time

i really like when you can download the mp3 directly from the blog instead of having to click through to mediafire or whatever

Yeah, don't read press releases. If you need to get some facts - the credits, recording details, any of that stuff - call the publicist. But don't read the press release. That tells you what they want you to think, and tend to set the terms for a huge number of the reviews. It's much harder to be absorbed into the hive mind of music-crit if you don't allow yourself access to one of the hive mind's props.

know - or learn - about music.

i agree w/nabisco & alfred & unperson about the importance of reading outside sources, that's what I always did, as a music critic in the 80s & 90s my big influence was the literary journalism of martin amis & julian barnes. at the same time I tried to educate myself (a non-musician) in music itself, the recording process and ways of the biz.

in the 2000s the only music crit worth reading is grounded in musical knowledge, alex ross in the ny'er being the prime example. this is my jaded old-guy perspective. but the time-honored "pop music criticism = sociology" equation no longer adds up and lack of interest in the music itself is the achilles heel of the whole christgau/marcus school.

know - or learn - about music....the recording process and ways of the biz.

Agree with this too. I studied audio engineering and it's totally changed the way I listen to music and consequently the way I write about it - not only what I say in reviews etc., but the questions I'm interested in asking artists when I interview them. I'm much more likely now to talk to someone about their drum sound than I am to ask what personal tragedies influenced the lyrics.

To be honest, reading enough of Wilson, Trilling, et al will inoculate you against attempting biographical criticism (writing fiction or music of your own helps too).

i beat phil AND alfred. i've actually read a sci-fi novel by leslie fiedler! (um, noted lit critic, for those of you who only read music reviews.)

Fieldler's sci-fi novel is no doubt superior to Trilling's Alger Hiss-Chambers novel.

these days, i just want to turn people on to good stuff. that's why i still do the little writing that i do. i mean, i've always wanted to do this, but now i'm less concerned about flexing my "creativity" and more concerned with "the facts". sorta. i still write silly stuff when i'm bored. so sue me.

but look i get e-mails like this and my mission is accomplished!

"Hey man, My names David and i'm a huge fan of your Wages of Din article. i read it religiously every month and i try to get everything you review or at least check it out. I recently picked up the releases you mentioned from Utech and they're incredible. I just wanted to say thanks for writing the article and if you got any other tips let me know man. I'm always interested in hearing some new interesting sounds."

I love biographical criticism. Or at least anecdotal criticism--I don't want to know your whole life story, but if you can tell me a funny story that such-and-such a song reminds you of, leading to a good line at the end, I'm a fan.

but that's called having a conversation!

And that be good (which I hope is what you mean).

Anecdotal stuff is okay as "enrichment," I guess. Learning that Paul wrote "Hey Jude" for Julian and "the movement you need is on your shoulder" stayed in at John's behest is cool, but I'd hate to read an interpretation that draws upon these tidbits for ballast.

(I get cranky about this stuff because two weeks ago I graded yet another stack of undergrad lit essays that drew biographical parallels between Hemingway's life and his fiction -- a not-fun game of Connect the Dots).

We had a guy in Toronto who recently got let go after 15 years or so of writing for a weekly. I don't want to name names, so I'll call him Tim Perlich. Knew a ton about music. For 15 years, he was the teacher--I know a lot about this stuff, so pay attention and you'll learn something--and there was no conversation; he dispensed knowledge, and after 15 years, I didn't know a thing about him except that he was a tremendously annoying pedant. I'm not, I better clarify, saying knowledge is a bad thing--it's essential, obviously. (Although I've never been moved from my belief that you can write great music criticism without any formal knowledge of music whatsoever.) But the first job is to engage the reader, and to that end, funny little stories can be a great thing.

Awesome discussion going on. Entirely agree with all that was said about avoiding reading too much of other people's criticism. I read so much popular criticism when I first started dipping into freelancing that it became literally impossible to avoid getting caught up in the endlessly regurgitating hype and attendant backlash surrounding whatever critical darling was releasing LP#whatever and have my reviews be influenced, in some way, by the whole leak narrative leading up to my review copy finally arriving. It's fine when you're already a fan of the band and are genuinely interested, but if you're just going on recommendations from Pitchfork and Stereogum, it can be poison.

And as a music illiterate, I'd say that having some understanding of music theory is key to transitioning from a hobbyist to a serious critic (there's a good reason, besides the obvious lack of viable opportunities, that I'll never make a living as a critic). Sure, no one's gonna be interested in reading a note-by-note dissection of a Radiohead track, but being able to do that is a valuable asset that will ground you when other critics start recycling each other's adjectives and analogies.

On that note, never, ever use the words "glacial" or "angular."

And yes, your undergrad lit essays sound annoying. But undergrad lit essays and record reviews have different jobs to do.

And at the risk of being obvious...Trying to prescribe what makes for good music criticsm--or at least good pop music criticism--is a dead end. What Marcus does works for Marcus, what Alex Ross does works for him, and my pointless anecdotal stories work for me. Which is not to say I'm not enjoying the thread.

Word.

you can write great music criticism without any formal knowledge of music whatsoever.

there was a point when I bought this notion but half a lifetime of serious listening & reading have thoroughly disabused me.

Fair enough, but I still hold to it. (Somewhat self-servingly, I'll admit.) I approach it from the same angle as something Marcus once wrote: "What is it like to be a listener?" I try to write about what I experience as a listener. And you can do that--and, I believe, do it well--without much more than a basic formal knowledge.

Trying to prescribe what makes for good music criticsm--or at least good pop music criticism--is a dead end.

THANK YOU!!!! Some of the shit that's been said on here is just mind-boggingly moronic. Pauline Kael (not a music critic btw) said there are no hard and fast rules. Listen to her.

"w/o much more that a basic formal knowledge" >>>>>> "w/o any formal knowledge whatsoever"

this is the distinction I was trying to draw: not that every rock critic needs a musicology degree but simply that you've got start somewhere or else you end up like the well-fed restaurant critic who doesn't know anything about food or cooking but knows what tastes good.

More wisdom from Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes: "The Constitution is what we say it is."

Kael was masterful at anecdote. By the time she hit the New Yorker, she was in her '50s, I believe, so she had a lifetime of them. So if a film made her think of the time she had an argument with her boyfriend, she used it. Obviously that's one of the reasons she's hated by more formalist film critics, but it's one the many reasons I love her.

I better come clean: my basic formal knowlege amounts to mebeing able to tell the guitar from the drums.

"Knowlege" "mebeing"...you get the idea.

Kael abandoned that habit as she aged, though (maybe her boyfriends got less interesting). My favorite Kael essays she wrote in the last fifteen years of her publishing life: 900-word monsters on Twiggy and Eugene Levy's performances in Club Paradise, her excellent, excellent analysis of James' The Bostonians in lieu of having anything to say about the dire film adaptation, that sort of thing.

I'd have to start pulling books off the shelf to check, but you're probably right. Just in general, there was less enthusiasm in her writing the last few years--she clearly thought the landscape was very disappointing from at least the mid-80s onward. My favourite late Kael is her Casualties of War review. I guess we better not turn this into a Kael thread...

in the 2000s the only music crit worth reading is grounded in musical knowledge, alex ross in the ny'er being the prime example. this is my jaded old-guy perspective. but the time-honored "pop music criticism = sociology" equation no longer adds up and lack of interest in the music itself is the achilles heel of the whole christgau/marcus school.

You say that but most of my favourite compositions form the last 20-30 (and much of the best composition) is grounded in art (including other types of music and theatre), literature, history, politics and life in general. By focusing on a specified knowledge you get the kind of dry guff I unfortunately get to read in daily newspapers (dear ol' Ross can also be guilty of this but I haven't read anything of his lately), about things being judged to be 'unmusical' or what have you.

you can write great life-in-general criticism without any knowledge of life in general

Honestly, I'd be wary about asking about drum sounds unless you're writing for Drummer magazine. I've never heard a reader say they wanted to know more about drum sounds. Agree that the fundamental thing is to engage the reader, because unless you're being read there's no point writing.

Phil mostly writes about metal, though, right? I know quite a few metal listeners who care a great deal about drum sounds, what they inform about production in a genre with a manic spectrum of production. Perhaps they are a minority, though.

Yeah metal fans indeed can be unbelievably picky when it comes to production. Especially drum sounds.

You know, one thing that's probably really affected the way I think about music is that I make music, and I'm not very good at it. So I do it just enough to know a little about how it's put together, what kinds of decisions need to be made, and how genuinely hard it is to come up with anything that doesn't plain suck.

There are times when that's not helpful -- for instance, there was a period when my taste in electronic music started leaning into that guitar-store prog mentality, like "but listen to the high-hat programming here, do you know how hard that is pull off?" And of course most people don't want to read nuts-and-bolts reviews, where it's all about how some band does some subtle interesting thing with the bass intervals or the drum mix.

But it really helps to be able to think about stuff like that anyway -- and I don't just mean music's nuts and bolts, I mean anything. It doesn't normally go into your writing. But if you know about anything -- music-making, politics, film history, geography, feminism, fashion, anything -- then your brain is ready to go when you're thinking about music. So when it's actually relevant that some band does something technically interesting with their arrangements, you can identify what it is and what difference it makes in your reaction. And if something about them makes an interesting parallel with something from politics/film/etc., your brain's ready to put that together.

One general "good critic" thing I'd toss out there, personally: thinking more about why people might like something, and less about whether they should like it. The bulk of good critics already do this, obviously.

Another: being fearless and unselfconscious about not knowing things. There's that tendency to want to demonstrate that you're really in command and discerning about things. It seems important to be able to admit when you have mixed feelings, or can't pinpoint a feeling, or when the feelings you have are totally non-clever or basic or corny. Like saying "this song makes me feel comforted and loved" can be an element of bad, amateurish criticism, but it can also be part of really smart, considered, truthful criticism, if that's really what the song comes down to.

Excellent. That was what I most hated about the Toronto critic I mentioned earlier--never any doubt, never any equivocation, never any admission that the music under discussion belonged to a genre or a moment in time that he didn't know much about. Or as David Brooks said on one of the morning shows last week when he was asked if the Republicans should be the party of no or the party of yes: "Well, you're asking someone who belongs to the party of maybe..."

"Trying to prescribe what makes for good music criticism--or at least good pop music criticism--is a dead end.

THANK YOU!!!! Some of the shit that's been said on here is just mind-boggingly moronic. Pauline Kael (not a music critic btw) said there are no hard and fast rules. Listen to her."

Kevin, I understand your ambivalence and I anticipated it. The way to be a good arts critic and the precepts that lead to that end cannot be prescribed, I agree. But to call what I have felt to be thoughtful, conscientious responses from people and to call them "moronic" is straight lame. Btw I am not singling you out here KB, I have always liked your posts, in fact I think you have said some really relevant things about music in general. Anyways,I meant this thread to be useful, period. For readers, for critics, from those involved with the nuts and bolts of music writing to those who just see the finished product.

I'll dissent from the general spirit of a lot of the posts in this thread and say that I'm less concerned with a critic being able to write well (which should be a given, obviously) and more with whether they've got an interesting POV and know what the hell they're talking about. There's plenty of critics that can make their mundane or questionable judgments slick or charming or tell such a wonderful anecdote that their lack of commentary on the music barely registers, but I'd rather read the one who's got a line on some elusive truth about record or an odd way of approaching it that makes me listen to it differently or want to hear what they hear.

xpost I hear ya, oscar. But how thoughtful (not to mention conscientious) is it to tell someone to read "as little music criticism as possible," esp. coming from someone who think Bangs and Eddy are "boring?" I've long been schizy about Bangs but "boring" is one thing the man never was.

At the very least music criticism can teach you some straight up facts. But it's a wide and varied enough field that the insights you can gain from it are infinite.

And this: "a fairly good knowledge of classical music regardless of what other genres interest you"

Yeah mastering the sonata form or whatnot is really going to help, say, curmudgeon with his forays into soukous and chitlin circuit soul.

Go ahead and learn about classical music all you want. It absolutely CAN help in popular music criticism. But it's preposterous to suggest that it's absolutely necessary to understanding Lady Gaga or Ariel Pink or DJ Quik & Kurupt or Kings of Leon or whoever, all of whom have plenty to teach about music theory, pitch, etc.

Finally, "not ever allowing political correctness, populism, ideology etc etc to seep into your reviews" is a statement REPLETE with ideology (populism?? wha???).

In fact, statements like that are precisely how ideology works.

"Yeah mastering the sonata form or whatnot is really going to help, say, curmudgeon with his forays into soukous and chitlin circuit soul."

it might! you never know.

I agree that there are no hard and fast rules but rule-making is one of my favourite parts of music crit.

it's also necessary and inescapable - all music criticism is filled with certain assumptions that are effectively "rules". Trying to avoid this is like trying to pick yourself up on the ground.

The thing to avoid is ossification and orthodoxy; one of the things that tends to define good critics is that they set up ideas and contrasts and then abandon (or better: take them apart) when it becomes necessary or useful to do so.

This may seem like inconsistency but I think it's realism: no idea for music is correct in every case.

That's why I prefer to think in terms of "strategies" rather than "rules".

ugh @ "listen to classical music." although i understand the inclination to feel that way i can't stand it when people make like classical music is some kind of higher form, as if listening to brahms is like bathing in the ganges river. i like me some vivaldi but just because it entertained aristocrats hundreds of years ago doesn't elevate it above everything else.

i get sentiments like "listen to old music" or "listen to something besides what you're into" but why classical music?

listening to brahms is nothing like bathing in the ganges. i'll bet.

xxxp. kevin, i hear what you are saying, and i get it. classical "training" to be a good critic may not be necessary. as far as people mis-reading bangs or whomever thats some insider-ish im not aware of. i mean i know who bangs is, but i dont know who you are referring to wrt mis-reading him. anyways, i think sr. finney hit it on the nail to my original question.

"I prefer to think in terms of "strategies" rather than "rules".

and to be honest i feel like this thread has been to use ilx parlance otm on many levels. phil, [nabisco], alfred, scott, tim, i read and respect their opinions,(raggett donde estas ?) and many others i have not mentioned.

my goal is to be more effective. how do i/we do that esp in 2010 ? i didnt want to turn this into music criticism sucks/is dead/doesnt matter because everybody dls/or hears the albums before it hits the racks/etc. My minor goal was to remind myself why i do this, and that for me means thinking about ways to improve the craft.

"i didnt want to turn this into music criticism sucks/is dead/doesnt matter because everybody dls/or hears the albums before it hits the racks/etc."

wouldn't that be something to address in order to make more effective criticism? (OK it's kind of entertaining to read sonic descriptions of songs in old reviews, but that's probably not necessary anymore.)

I'll dissent from the general spirit of a lot of the posts in this thread and say that I'm less concerned with a critic being able to write well (which should be a given, obviously) and more with whether they've got an interesting POV and know what the hell they're talking about.

I get your point, but a critic who writes well (I can't think of any other kind, really) HAS an interesting POV and knows what the hell she's talking about.

One of my favorite stylists is Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, aphoristic as all hell.

Finally, "not ever allowing political correctness, populism, ideology etc etc to seep into your reviews" is a statement REPLETE with ideology (populism?? wha???).

I agree -- this is weird. Professing to abjure "ideology" is itself a position, easily deconstructed.

I get your point, but a critic who writes well (I can't think of any other kind, really) HAS an interesting POV and knows what the hell she's talking about.

Well I didn't word it very precisely and we could go around in circles like this, but what I was trying to say was all that stuff about reading outside of crit and being a writerly writer is nice, but critics that have boring unadventurous taste, are blissfully unaware of their own biases, or simply don't have the slightest inclination to talk about how something sounds tend to piss me off and put me off reading them far quicker than ones that don't know their way around a metaphor or a clever intro.

Moreover critics who can write well but thinks unadventurously about music don't write well about music.

I don't think we can really draw a sharp line between style and content in this regard: a good idea usually leads to its own pleasing expression. It's very difficult to express a lazy idea in a way that's interesting.

I'm not sure this answers the question, but a good stylist usually is one whose ideas attract me -- because said ideas were well-expressed and cogently argued as well as being pleasing to one's ear for good prose.

"I've been at it since 1996 and the primary advice I will offer you is this: what makes a good music critic is the ability to get paid for what you do. Period."

Is this true ? Not being snarky or condescending. But does more pitching lead the way to becoming a better critic ? I dont think Phil meant being paid makes you a better music writer, but it does help, perhaps ?

Finally, "not ever allowing political correctness, populism, ideology etc etc to seep into your reviews" is a statement REPLETE with ideology (populism?? wha???).

― Kevin John Bozelka, Sunday, 18 April 2010 00:28 (2 hours ago) Permalink

In fact, statements like that are precisely how ideology works.

― Kevin John Bozelka, Sunday, 18 April 2010 00:29 (2 hours ago)

Professing to abjure "ideology" is itself a position, easily deconstructed.

― Throwing Muses are reuniting for my next orgasm! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 18 April 2010 02:27 (2 hours ago) Bookmark

These three statements make no sense whatsoever. Another VERY important thing to keep in mind when attempting any kind of criticism in general: avoid nonsense and relativism. Focus on meaning and value.

About those comments questioning the need for classical music: if you really have to ask why you "have" to listen to it, you may just as well give up music criticism.

Claiming to avoid ideology usually = elevating "common sense" to the level of an article of faith. This is the archetypal ideological gesture.

"Avoid nonsense and relativism" usually = "don't disagree with me".

But meaning & value are both relative?

Anyway; do it because you love music, not because you love criticism.

as far as people mis-reading bangs or whomever thats some insider-ish im not aware of. i mean i know who bangs is, but i dont know who you are referring to wrt mis-reading him.

oscar, i was referring to the following from unperson:

The reason I suggest avoiding music criticism is the herd-animal thing again: they all read each other, so you'll wind up stealing from the same people they're stealing from (Christgau, Bangs, Eddy, Klosterman, and the big Pitchfork names), which will make you just as boring as them.

I might be misreading him (and biting my tongue til it bled) but the above suggests those four-plus critics are all boring.

Guilty as charged:

1) not being too much of a cheerleader for your own generation

I'm something of a cheerleader for the early '70s--not uncritical, I don't think, but I do make reference to that time far too often.

2) a fairly good knowledge of classic music regardless of what other genres interest you

I know a little...I'm woefully short of "fairly good."

3) developing the so-called aristocratic style: direct, frank, unaffected and concise

Big, big fail on "concise"; I'm so unconcise it hurts. I hem, I haw, I use lots of qualifying parentheses, I take lots of pointless detours. But I like the word "aristocratic"--it makes me think of Goodfellas, when they're frying up the steaks in prison.

4) know--or learn--about music....the recording process and ways of the biz.

I always work from the assumption that it's all made specifically for me. I kind of bypass the recording process and the biz.

I think Nabisco's posts above are very sane. And, for what it's worth, I take the Christgau/Bangs/Eddy/Klosterman comment as meaning that their imitators (or, to be precise, people who imitate their imitators) are boring, not those four writers themselves. It's open to interpretation.

Yeah it's kinda like how saying you're bored with Beach Boys-influenced bands isn't really a knock on BB themselves per se.

Honestly, someone who posts streaming sample songs from the album at hand.

Otherwise, if they have to write something, generally remembering that the objective is a music review, not a botched creative writing exercise. A few handy "if you like ____" or "sounds like ____" without worrying that's being reductive. Utter and total indifference to the tastes and social proclivities of anyone under the age of 24. Someone who prefers to promote what they think is good, and generally doesn't bother reviewing crap, unless they're trying to act as a corrective to marketing hype. The passion of a geek and the discrimination of a pro. General eclecticism with a few areas of especial expertise.

I say all that, unsurprisingly, as someone who's never cared for "rock crit," and who has always tended to discover music by other means. I'll buy the logic that the internet makes trustworthy arbiters more, not less, essential; but I like the idea of people hearing things through friends and sharers, rather than leather jacket wearing dinosaurs or the (early) Pitchfork-types.

As a reader:

Review the album based on the album, not as it stands within the narrative of the artist's career. I don't care about the last album or the next one, I want to know about this one.

I only notice music writing when it is terrible

One of the answers has to be: "Know when to quit." And I think this is the year I take my own advice.

noooooooo

Is this true ? Not being snarky or condescending. But does more pitching lead the way to becoming a better critic ? I dont think Phil meant being paid makes you a better music writer, but it does help, perhaps ?

This is only my personal experience, but I've had far more crises of conscience over pieces I've pitched and written for others, whether for pay or not. Which has inspired further concentrated thought, which has generally led to richer ideas.

It helps you to breach your own sphere. Sounding ideas in a seeming "echo chamber" was basically the whole of last year for me, and it indeed led to exhaustion and self-repetition.

I've had far more crises of conscience over pieces I've pitched and written for others, whether for pay or not. Which has inspired further concentrated thought, which has generally led to richer ideas.

This is part of it, but the other part (based solely on my own experience) is that if you're getting paid, even if it's only a little, you'll keep at it longer than if you're not. I find updating my blog with anything other than links to pieces I've published elsewhere to be very tedious and frustrating, and I don't tend to do it much. But I pitch like crazy.

And as far as the whole "boring" kerfuffle, yes, Kevin is misreading my statement, which I didn't think was written in a particularly foggy/open-to-interpretation way. (Which demonstrates the value of editors.) My point was/is that people who are stealing from the big star critics all wind up sounding/reading more or less the same, and that's boring.

(Since it was brought up, though, yes, I do think Christgau is boring. I've been reading him so long all I can see anymore are his massive blind spots. The same is true of Eddy, Bangs and Klosterman, for different reasons. Chuck Eddy isn't boring, and as an editor of other people's work he's fuckin' brilliant, but I think he spends far too much time insisting that some ultra-tenuous connection that only he seems to hear is the most important thing ever - "This metal record and that disco record have the same hi-hat sound! That proves it - death metal is disco!" Klosterman just doesn't have very many thoughts that go beyond stuff your college roommate would have come up with at 2 AM while particularly drunk/baked. And Bangs, while often insightful, too often devolved into schtick, just like Hunter Thompson. He's the least boring of the four, and definitely the least actively offensive, to my eye.)

you can write great life-in-general criticism without any knowledge of life in general

It can hold more interest than people that might have 'lived' more :-)

But really, most writing on classical is people who seemingly know about music worrying away at why there aren't enough bums on seats and their own comfort levels have been breached by such 'complex' music. Can't trust it.

And yes, a stylist doesn't necessarily have ideas...

Assumption of the musicians motives is a personal critical bugbear for me. I read too many reviews where it's assumed that the finished product is the pure, untrammeled vision of the people that made the record, rather than the bitter compromise it probably was in reality. I suppose this comes back to knowing something about the technical side of the process, but the truth is that what you hear on the record has more than likely been coloured by technical and artistic limitations, lack of money, outside interference, internal arguments etc etc. Not that a critic should really be addressing most of this, but it's worth remembering.

Assumption of the musicians motives is a personal critical bugbear for me.

This is one of the few thing that keeps me reading music criticism - imagined, fanciful narratives dreamed up about how and why a record came into existence. I don't want to know anything about the grim reality of the recording process. Once someone puts a piece of art out into the world, I want to impose my own ideas on why it's there and what it means, regardless of how much those thoughts conflict with the original intent behind it.

Sounds like you want slash fiction.

"Yeah mastering the sonata form or whatnot is really going to help, say, curmudgeon with his forays into soukous and chitlin circuit soul."

it might! you never know.

― scott seward, Sunday, April 18, 2010 12:31 AM

I'll think about it Scott. It might make me think about the stuff I am into differently, but on the other hand between a dayjob, parenting, and trying to keep up on the stuff I am into, I am not sure how much time I could give that!

You don't have to learn the intricacies of how transformer hysteresis affects frequency response etc., but I'd consider basic technical knowledge to be important. I always wince a little when I see vocoder described as AutoTune, or a song as being in a minor key when it plainly isn't.

I've had far more crises of conscience over pieces I've pitched and written for others, whether for pay or not. Which has inspired further concentrated thought, which has generally led to richer ideas.

Perhaps, but I also had an editor at my local alt-weekly who was just not interested in anything but indie-rock. No matter how much time and effort and how much creativity I put into my pitches, he rejected them. Now there's a new editor there and suddenly some of my pitches get accepted. I should have just taken all those pitches and sent them elsewhere when he was there--I ended up just doing so part of the time, and just got frustrated the rest of the time).

I know this is beating a dead horse from me, and it can be hard to convince editors, but I like to sometimes read about stuff that is not marketed by publicists to every magazine and website-- this, in addition to quality writing is a good thing.

And at the risk of being obvious...Trying to prescribe what makes for good music criticsm--or at least good pop music criticism--is a dead end. What Marcus does works for Marcus, what Alex Ross does works for him, and my pointless anecdotal stories work for me. Which is not to say I'm not enjoying the thread.

― clemenza, Saturday, April 17, 2010 2:09 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think this rings most true tbh. apart from "don't read music criticism" - i'm continually thankful that i DIDN'T grow up reading any music crit, was barely aware that the "music press" as such existed until i went to university etc. of course, i read voraciously, just other stuff.

one thing i get particularly annoyed by - across all commentary really, not just music/culture - is reading someone parrot received wisdom or a consensus opinion just because it's easy - usually to make a joke at someone's expense, or to shore up another opinion, or to simplify a complex argument. you can always tell, too! so: avoid received wisdom. ask yourself whether you're making that offhand comment because you genuinely think it (and have thought about it) or whether it's because it's something no one (inc yourself) will question. there's no point in being a commentator if you're not giving your own opinions.

i guess "know yourself" just about covers it actually. know what you're good at, know your tastes, know your strengths and limitations.

lol lex meet r. meltzer and n tosches (both of whom adopted plato's "know thyself" as their critical watchword)

x-post--But Lex will probably join me in whining come Pazz & Jop time that critics only care about Titus Andronicus and Vampire Weekend and LCD even if that reflects what Lex says: know what you're good at, know your tastes, know your strengths and limitations

Perhaps we need to make a "What makes for a good music editor in 2010" thread where I can suggest that even if the editor is NOT into metal, Bay area hiphop, Southern soul, reggaeton or whatever that he should try to get writers who are (in addition to covering Vampire and LCD and Jay-Z and Lady Gaga)

Well said to Lex. If people aren't constantly hating on you for y'know, suggesting that 'What's Going On' wasn't actually the best album released by a black man in the 70s or for saying that London Calling is a shit album or I actually think Tiga is awesome or whatever your personal version of this is then you probably shouldn't be doing it... John Harris.

"What makes for a good music editor in 2010"

freelance budget, iirc

daer all music writers ever: for god's sake don't take the lyrics for the song, and don't treat the song as a vehicle for delivery of lyrics.

that's a good one

my favourite music critics are ilx posters so kiu you guys!

oh god but another pet hatred is when a critic obviously hasn't paid attention to the lyrics, or just takes one line in isolation, and uses that as the basis for some spurious argument that makes NO SENSE BECAUSE THE SONG ISN'T ABOUT THAT AT ALL AAARGH

daer all music writers ever: for god's sake don't take the lyrics for the song, and don't treat the song as a vehicle for delivery of lyrics.

― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Monday, April 19, 2010 2:52 PM

that's a good one

― yaddayadda skinny peens (samosa gibreel), Monday, April 19, 2010 2:52 PM

...

I agree with the sentiment behind this, I think (ie, the most interesting thing about a song isn't necessarily its lyrical message, so using that as the only metric of a song's worth is annoying) but in terms of definition of the words you're using, the lyrics are an integral component of a song (the other being the melody line) and, because of this, songs pretty much exist as vehicles to deliver lyrics. This is one of those instances where I wish rudimentary elementary school music education was normalized and/or retained into adulthood because that's a baseline "what is a song?" concept.

i really think PRs should look into distributing albums with lyric sheets. sod the press release guff, that goes straight in the recycling bin - lyric sheets would be soooo helpful though (and would prevent many from making fools of themselves)

(xp) So I guess my tip for ppl who want to be good music critics is "know the definitions of the words/terms you're using", mostly to avoid things like using the term "4/4" to distinguish non-syncopated dance music from syncopated dance music.

I talk about vocals all the time, but I never talk about lyrics. I usually ignore them. (I will make fun of particularly over-the-top song titles, though.)

lyric sheets would be soooo helpful

...at making sure that even more music critics than now review the lyric sheet instead of the record. (In other words, I totally disagree with Lex on this issue, and sometimes taking words of their intended context makes for much better reviewing. Then again, since my writing never does anything else except pretend death metal records are disco records, what people do with the words really isn't my concern.)

I think that, in the name of accuracy, you should have the lyric sheet to verify our assertion. However, if you mishear a lyric a certain way, I think it's super interesting to write about it from that standpoint.

the lyrics are part of the record - getting a lyric wrong or missing the point of a song (like, an obvious narrative point, something where there isn't any room for listener's interpretation) is like saying an instrument is a drum when it's a clarinet

Nah, the lyric your ears hear is the right one, Lex. Not the one that's written down on a piece of paper. And there is almost always room for interpretation. That's a critic's job, for Crissakes.

ok despite this being a common mishearing the lyric "young girl with eyes like potatoes" is assuredly NOT the right one in "la isla bonita", though, and i can't see what benefit pretending it is would have

It's funnier?

Dan it's a fair gloss (lyrics + melody = song by all accepted definitions). shoulda said "track" I guess but you know what I'm getting at and I think we agree: knowing something about music makes u a good music critic in 2010.

i mean the best example doing the rounds right now are all the idiotic bloggers taking taylor swift to task for not being a feminist based on a) her image b) one line taken out of context and misinterpreted. but that's what their ears hear, so they're right?

i don't do "funny"

and i dislike it when artists - or for that matter writers - try to do "funny"

some writers get sooooo bogged down in trying to make constant jokes :(

xp No, they're just stupid. There's a difference.

I only like funny jokes myself.

for the sake of (Peter) Criss

I really can't see how Lex is wrong here, other than that his approach seems more hostile to the approach of '"what it is" vs "what you hear"' which I find interesting in and of itself.

xp: RM, like I said I think I got the sentiment and agree with it, I just have this thing about imprecise usage of words (one of the things I hate the most is when I can't explain my point).

Nah, the lyric your ears hear is the right one, Lex. Not the one that's written down on a piece of paper

I got a couple of angry emails about this long Fleetwood Mac essay I wrote recently that took me to task for mishearing one word. I didn't see what the big deal was.

Please don't banish jokes. Absent jokes, I got nothin'.

xp I mean, Lex, I'm not defending lazy reviewing; the Taylor Swift reviews you're referring to were idiotic. But there's more than one way to be not-lazy. (And honestly, even lazy works sometimes, for some critics, too. Like Clemenza said above, which should be completely obvious: What works for one good writer might not work for every other good writer. Nobody is saying you have to "do funny". And some people shouldn't even try. But why that rule should apply to everybody is beyond me.)

ok despite this being a common mishearing the lyric "young girl with eyes like potatoes" is assuredly NOT the right one in "la isla bonita", though, and i can't see what benefit pretending it is would have

also can we go back to this for a second, because I had no idea this was a common mishearing and I am currently losing my shit over it

it came up on popular when tom covered it iirc! i always misheard it as "eyes like pesetas"

Results 1 - 10 of about 6,920 for "young girl with eyes like potatoes". (0.27 seconds)

xp Yeah, "Some people have to make a legal living" (how I always heard it) is a better Boston lyric than "Some people have to make believe they're living," no matter what Brad Delp thought he was singing. Pretty sure that decision was finalized 20 years ago. If he didn't enunciate clearly, it's his fault, not mine.

The song is notable for lead vocalist Chris Thompson's garbled enunciation, especially of the phrase "revved up like a deuce" which has led many fans to interpret it as "wrapped up like a douche". The original Springsteen lyric is neither of the above, instead being "cut loose like a deuce".[1] Springsteen once attributed the popularity of the Manfred Mann version partially to Thompson's enunciation.[2]

item 6- classicAL music, also, this means knowing the basics of music theory, pitch etc

i could literally feel my eyes glazing over and my neurons cease firing when rev posted 'she's so heavy' and 'maggot brains' chord progressions earlier today. not sure how you could integrate knowledge of music theory into a text intended for people with no necessary knowledge of it, but almost any direct reference to music theory is honestly the most boring shit to read possible.

unless it were done in a particularly artful way -- i don't even know what that would consist of -- i'm with samosa on this one

i've learned a lot from reading about music, so when the writer knows something i don't and wants to share it in a way that's interesting, my eyes don't glaze over personally.

i mean, on a music discussion board it's totally legitimate, and i'm sure there are other people on that thread who understood and were interested in the post. i'm just saying in the context of music criticism in 2010, it wouldn't be a selling point i don't think.

sometimes if a critic drops a little hint of further music knowledge without it really being crucial to a point he's making, like "minor arpeggio" or "fanfare" or whatever, it's like 'no, i don't know what you're talking about but i feel like i'm in good hands.' anything further than that is not going to be very interesting.

and i'm not saying i shouldn't know anything about music theory, just that i don't and so do most other people in the world.

I think the taylor example would happen with or without a lyric sheet (it's not like the actual lyrics are being misheard in that case). The real problem is confirmation bias: people allowing their interpretation of lyrics to be skewed by their presumptions regarding what "that kind of performer" would mean or want to mean.

I think this is connected to the (ostensibly very different) problem of people not being able to "hear past" certain sonic qualities in musical styles they're not fans of. You know, e.g. people complaining that they can't get past the 4X4 kickdrum of house music.

When people can't actually get past what I'd call "fundamental genre signifiers" (the house beat on one hand, but Taylor's relatively pro family values fairy princess image on the other) then it's unlikely they're gonna be able to critique the music with any kind of nuance or insight (though not, I should stress, impossible).

This is a problem that all critics face when confronting music of a style they aren't intimately familiar with (most commonly: HIP HOP). You can get away with it for the most part with, say, world music, or the hot new subgenre, but it seems more ridiculous when it happens in connection with very popular music.

yeah it all depends on context of course -- but i mean recently talking about the 33 1/3 on Aja here, some folks made it seem like the one or two chapters that were heavy on theory totally bogged down the book, when i appreciated that the writer brought that kind of technical rigor to it. i mean there's a lot of music like Steely Dan or prog or whatever that everyone knows is 'complex' but very few do the work of breaking down in what ways. often critics seem to be just paying lip service to the idea of something being smart or sophisticated without actually explaining why or how, so i have a lot of patience for the ones that try to address the specifics.

xpost

i mean, if presented in a simple, really really easily digestible enough way, music theory can make listening to an otherwise good piece pretty o_O. the other day i was listening to a mozart piano piece with a friend, who pointed out that the second half is him playing the same thing in the minor key. exposing my classical music/theory naivete here, but it was pretty wild listening to it with that knowledge. i just wonder what an interesting or worth-while reference to theory in modern music would be.

The first example that came to mind is likely to drive people away screaming due to who it's about, but...

Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" has a pretty strong contrast in mood between the chorus and verse which is achieved by using a minor key on the verses and its relative major key on the chorus; if you looked at the music, it would be the same key signature throughout and both scales use the exact same notes with a different starting point, allowing the verses to be kind of unsettling and creepy-sounding while the chorus rings more earnest and imploring.

"know yourself"

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Monday, 19 April 2010 12:43 (8 hours ago) Bookmark

Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace to thread

People I want to read more of, based on their contribution to this thread: unperson, xhuxk (ok he's kinda godlike anyway), tim, m coleman, nick.
Unperson particularly, as you're not as googlable as the others, care to post a link or two?

As a punter, I'm very much on the side of the "tell me about the music" crowd. I do want to know about the drum sound, and the production, the contrasts between the moods and instrumentation, the songs on the record. Some backstory is ok, but only as context to the sound. As for the rambling anecdotes and witty payoff lines, please keep them to your blog - reading that stuff is the equivalent of listening to a wanky guitar solo. Music really is interesting enough that you don't need to go off on tangents.

Major/minor key, as basic as that may be, is one of the few formal things I've been able to (I think) successfully internalize over the years. I realized at some point that I have a pronounced bias in favour of melodic, major-key stuff over moody, minor-key stuff, and being aware of that bias is useful--e.g., it helps me to understand why other people think so much more of Neil Young's On the Beach than I do. When I do really like something minor-key, like Madonna's "Bad Girl" or Beck's "Nobody's Fault but My Own," it's unusual enough that I'm cognizant of it. (If someone comes on to correct me and say that one or both of those songs is major-key, back to the drawing board for me.)

I personally like criticism that delves into music theory and other technical matters, but I understand that isn't suitable to a general audience. However, if there are even minor technical or factual details in a review, please get them right. My biggest pet peeve is reading a review where the facts are simply incorrect or innacurate or the wrong technical term is used. And yes, this applies to lyrics as well. I feel that the critic should get the lyrics right and maybe attempt some kind of interpretation rather than telling us how they mis-heard them.

I publish under the name "Phil Freeman," but there are a few of us. A lot of my stuff is linked at my blog.

Sorry for the rambling anecdote, tomofthenest.

The practice of quoting a single line or couplet out of a single song on an album is completely pointless yet it happens in nearly every review, usually with no attempt to comment upon the quoted lyrics in a meaningful way. Seriously, this tells us nothing about the album in question.

Actually, I want to go further than I have with the lyric sheet thing. Personally, I actively avoid them when writing reviews -- I check them occasionally, but even when I do, I tend to think to myself that it's kind of cheating, taking the emphasis off of what my ears hear, and putting it on what the artist wants me to hear. (With most extreme metal -- which, when you get down to it, doesn't really have lyrics when you're actually listening the stuff -- lyric sheets are basically lies, as far as I'm concerned. And even in pop, the lyric sheet itself frequently gets the words wrong, and lyrics posted on line tend to be worse. So I'd advise writers to use them sparingly, and with real caution. Also: don't automatically assume that quoting lyrics you find clever, without explaining why, will make a point to the reader.)

I think the point being made, though, is that you kind of can't handwave what the artist wants you to hear, since that is what they are saying...?

Like, it's sort of akin to making up interview quotes because that's what you wanted the person you're interviewing to say; it isn't about the person/music anymore and is more about you and your agenda.

But what they want you to hear and what they actually put across are two different things. A critic reviews the latter, not the former.

It has nothing to do with an "agenda" either; it has to do with reviewing the music, and not the intentions behind the music.

Um... no. Mishearing what someone says isn't the same thing as someone saying something entirely different from what they thought they were saying.

Like, someone listening to some of the songs on The Wall out of context and coming to the conclusion that Pink Floyd is fully in support of segregation, exclusion and purging people who are different is a markedly different thing from someone hearing "Another Brick In The Wall Pt 2" and wondering what dock sarcasm is.

"I do want to know about the drum sound, and the production, the contrasts between the moods and instrumentation, the songs on the record. Some backstory is ok, but only as context to the sound."

as a fellow punter, I have to disagree on this one -- the sound/music is something that reveals itself to you as soon as you listen to it. The most interesting parts of reviews I've read almost descend into petty sensational gossip, but redeem themselves by making some interesting (usually non-musical) point about the band or its audience. For example, I can't remember a single sonic description of Rites of Spring, but found the uproar (or supposed uproar) of its debut to be really fascinating.

Well, if you hear segregation and purges in The Wall (contrary to the band's intentions) and can defend yourself, what's wrong with it?

going the route of reviewing mishearings is fine if it's clear that that is what you're doing, btw; it strikes me as entirely kosher to say that a song appeals to you or repels you because it sounds like the person is saying [x], regardless of what it is that is actually being said. The problem is that representing what you are hearing as what the performer is actually saying when it isn't is known as either "lying" or "not knowing what you are talking about".

Well, if you hear segregation and purges in The Wall (contrary to the band's intentions) and can defend yourself, what's wrong with it?

Nothing...? Was that a trick question?

If you hear segregation and purges in the The Wall (contrary to the band's intentions, as if a listener can or should necessarily know what those intentions are in the first place) would maybe mean that they should have made a less confusing record. (Btw, I almost never listen to songs off of "concept albums" in context, because most concept-album contexts tend to be bullshit. I just listen to them as songs; if they add up to something, wonderful. If they don't, too bad, though that might be okay if they're actually good songs regardless.)

a better example might be the "born in the USA"/reagan '84 deal

does it matter that reagan was wrong? was he even wrong?

It's easy to understand why the Reagan campaign heard triumph; the beat is pretty damn triumphant.

i'm surprised how many people are coming out against close reading of lyrics here. i know it gets overdone (critics usually being writers more than musicians, it makes sense they'd gravitate towards words), but aren't lyrics pretty essential to a song's meaning? and not just in what we think of as lyrical songs, bob dylan and such, but also like the chuck roberts sample on rhythm control's "my house" (matos to thread).

Of course lyrics matter, but the burden's on the artist to make me pay attention.

and, you know, people like to tell and talk about stories, and lyrics (or, better, lyrics+music) can tell stories way more plainly/powerfully than the accompanying music can alone.

what Alfred said

I'm not sure what you mean. If I want to engage a text whose stories are more powerful without music, I'll read a novel or essay.

xpost

some great songwriters are shit essayists, though.

why "of course", Alfred? We seem to listen to music very differently, because I'm not particularly interested in what is being sung. how it is sung is another thing entirely.

How it's sung forces me to care what is sung.

just enjoying the mellifluous tone of Craig Finn's voice over here, shame the lyrics contribute nothing worthy of discussion to his songs.

anyway, we don't have to listen to music in the same way.

How it's sung forces me to care what is sung.

― Throwing Muses are reuniting for my next orgasm! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, April 19, 2010 4:42 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

Definitely. What is sometimes (sometimes) the least important thing.

Xpost to Alfred's OTM stuff re: lyrics, but those aren't important all the time any more than guitars are important all the time, and onward and outward. I don't listen to singer-songwriters for production anymore than I listen to techno for songwriting. Different kinds of music work for different reasons, and a good critic is aware of that. Same applies for writers: I like a panoply of voices and viewpoints. There isn't any one thing that makes for a good critic in 2010 anymore than there's any one thing that makes for good music in 2010.

just enjoying the mellifluous tone of Craig Finn's voice over here, shame the lyrics contribute nothing worthy of discussion to his songs.

But he IS a good singer; he often persuades me to pay attention to his stories. The lyrics themselves aren't enough.

Or I suppose there is: readability. Meaning good writing is the most important thing about criticism, as countless people have been saying on ILM for a decade or so.

by that token, though, how could any critc's appraisal of either lyrics or music ever be enough? if the burden is on the artist wrt lyrics, wouldn't the same be (even more) true of the music? hey, we can all pack up early and go home, no criticism needed anymore!

by that token, though, how could any critc's appraisal of either lyrics or music ever be enough?

It isn't! Why do you think we've been reading criticism about Chuck Berry for decades?

insightful lyrical parsing of "my ding-a-ling"?

it's about his knob.

^^^^^ would read for decades

har har

If lyrics were all that mattered, Lou Reed's Magic and Loss would rank with Exile on Main Street.

Good thing no one said lyrics are all that matters, then.

why don't you pack up early and go home?

This seems germane to post here: http://blogs.vocalo.org/feder/2010/04/jim-derogatis-leaves-sun-times-on-a-solid-note/20704

When I do really like something minor-key, like Madonna's "Bad Girl" or Beck's "Nobody's Fault but My Own"

Nobody's Fault But My Own is in a major key, although he hedges his bets at the start by not using a third in either chords or melody til the "let you go" bit. Pretty clever really. If anyone's looking for me, I'll be in my room, reading Alan Pollack's Beatles notes and figuring out King Crimson solos.

xp Huh.

"He is going to take our blogs to a whole new level.”

i know what the dude means, but it's a funny sentence nevertheless

And this is a why I try to stick to how "Hello It's Me" makes me think of Norm Allen and his Apollo 11 model back in grade 5.

i'm surprised how many people are coming out against close reading of lyrics here

Most music writers seem to assume that "close reading" is a synonym for "quoting." So that's a problem. But yeah, all in all the Dylan Studies influence has been pretty pernicious in my experience.

Less close reading of lyrics; more close reading of bass lines!

Dan's example with "Paparazzi" is a great example of one of those things where it's so helpful if you're aware of it, and then decide what it can do for you on paper. Because it's not like, if he were writing about that song, he'd give you a whole lesson about how keys work; it'd just mean that instead of groping around trying to put a finger on this mood shift, he could say it moves from the unsettling minor to the earnest major, etc. And then if she released a record where every song did that, he wouldn't have to grope around saying there was something repetitive or limp about it; he could put his finger squarely on one of the issues.

I think I feel that way about lots of things, where it's not like you want to apply your knowledge to every single thing that passes your way, or impose a certain type of analysis on everything -- what impresses me is when it seems like someone has enough stuff in their mental arsenal that they can recognize or notice the stuff that's really relevant in the music. E.g., you don't come at every single thing from, say, a feminist viewpoint, but when it's really relevant or interesting, you're ready to go. I feel like my own set of lenses can be kinda narrow a lot of the time, so I really admire writers who seem to have a ton of good mental connections to work from. Who can look at a piece of music and decide whether the best approach to it involves coming at it via other music, or personal experience, or social trends, or some idea they picked up from films, or whatever.

yeah, the paparazzi thing is totally cool to know. the theory is still maybe a bit abstract but it's interesting that there's some structural link, that it's not just clumsy songwriting. i'm always wondering what the fuck are they thinking with this verse, but then by the time the chorus is up and it goes back in it all pans out.

Nabisco shames me into trying to write something serious...I said upthread that your first job is to engage the reader. I'll stand by that, but obviously your first reader is yourself. Cliche though it may be, the thing that's most important to me is that whatever I've written pleases me. Maybe that's self-indulgent, but to me it's unavoidable. Because the sad truth is, after 25 years at this, I remain my biggest fan. And even though that has undoubtedly caused me to not make much of an effort to improve upon the many different ways in which I'm lazy, the ability to entertain myself has also kept me writing long past the point where anybody takes much notice. Hope that doesn't sound too creepy.

*slowly side-steps away crom clemenza*

Agreed!

I'm open to more music theory; as waffle goes it's pretty engaging & lean.

Who yr writing for is a pretty tricky issue.

music criticism with deep and developed reference to music theory is like hard science fiction.

music criticism with deep and developed reference to vague ideas the writer might have is like WACKY

Well one possible ideal for writing science fiction might be:

(a) "I understand something about science, but I'm only including the basics you'll need to understand me"
(b) "The only reason I'm talking about science in the first place is because it allows me to make a larger point about life and humanity and the world"

.. and that variety of ideal works for me with basically lots of types of writing and lots of topics (music theory, any kind of theory, any kind of lens/perspective/experience/knowledge at all) -- you deploy an amount you think it's fair to expect a reader to work through, in the service of offering a thought that can be useful to them

the paparazzi thing is totally cool to know. the theory is still maybe a bit abstract

okay and but so here's the thing: maybe it's not. maybe it's sort of pop music 101. maybe it wouldn't seem abstract at all if it were the sort of thing that music writers mentioned where relevant. otherwise aren't they more "lyrics and outfits" writers?

lol @ "lyrics and outfits writers"

huh, I'd have thought of big major/minor modulations as something you could just assume readers could follow, in terms of broad outlines. I mean, most music crit casually refers to major and minor keys, right? So basically saying "it goes from one to the other..."

Less close reading of lyrics; more close reading of bass lines!

roger otm. my biggest complaint with music writing (including my own) is that it doesn't have enough music in it. and i don't mean that in a technical sense, although technical sense can certainly illuminate things as nabisco and others have said. because i'm sort of a drum fetishist, i've bitched on ilm before about how few people can write intelligently about rhythm and how it sounds and feels and works. but really, i'd be as happy to read intelligent writing about, say, siltbreeze production techniques or trent reznor's keyboards. so little music writing really touches the depth and complexity of the experience of music. it's a physical artform with physical properties that can and should be talked about in their execution and effect.

and writing like that doesn't have to be technically dense -- it shouldn't be -- people who know what they're talking about should be able to communicate it cleanly to a less expert audience. at the same time, i sort of like a critic who forces me to do work, drops references that i might not know but can look up on my own, that kind of thing is like a trail of bread crumbs. "if you're interested in this, you might want to know more about this." not in a pedantic way, just in a "btw pal" sort of way.

Different kinds of music work for different reasons, and a good critic is aware of that.

YES! you'd think this was pretty basic but the amount of times you see critics judging a song by criteria that have nothing to do with it...

the "paparazzi" example was really great - see also a ton of other dan perry posts passim - i always, always appreciate knowing what's going on technically, it's stepping from "this bit of the song works" to "here's why this bit of the song works". as far as "valuable things that music critics can provide" go, that sort of info is quite high up there. i only have a basic working knowledge of music theory but it's been pretty useful to me.

(certainly better than critical theory, which i've never seen presented in a remotely accessible way. if you find yourself namedropping adorno or deleuze & guattari or whoever, you should probably start hitting the delete button.)

lyrics are important because a substantial proportion of artists AND listeners find them important - in interviews a good tactic to get on an artist's good side and make them enthuse is to display a good working knowledge of their lyrics - i just don't think a blanket "i ignore lyrics" stance is even possible for a pop music critic. of course this doesn't mean taking them as the be all & end all and slating eg basement jaxx albums for their lyrical flaws.

HI DERE blindingly on-fire OTM upthread

also LOL @ dero teaching college students how to write...

I just wish (especially in print) that music writing could take itself a little less seriously. I used to by mags, not just because they told me about the latest music, but also for light relief. That's not to say journalists should be reverting to Pitchforkesque needless style-exercises, nor to degrade themselves to tabloid reporting, but instead to try and bring a feeling of stylish or humorous edgyness to their writing. Too many music mags (in the UK at least) read like car maintenance manuals.

totally off tm, if anything most writers have the opposite problem - everyone trying to be humorous, pursuing the joke at the expense of the music, that awful matey light tone.

Yeah, that's awful too. It should definitely still be informative writing but there's nothing wrong with injecting a bit of humanity into the writing imo.

Too many music mags (in the UK at least) read like car maintenance manuals.

dunno who you're thinking of (I'm guessing the Wire which whatever you think of it exists pretty much in a world of its own) but I don't think that's true at all

exists pretty much in a world of its own

i'm curious -- what do you mean by that?

i just don't think a blanket "i ignore lyrics" stance is even possible for a pop music critic.

sure. i think xhuxk was most otm about this -- you write about them when you notice them. which is sometimes, but not all the time.

otoh, i wish more people wrote about drums when they notice them -- because i think people do notice drums, they just don't have a good vocabulary for talking about them.

As a reader or writer, I like two kinds of reviews.

1. Extremely short ones that very roughly categorize the music in question so that if I'm scanning a lot of these I can flag some to follow up on online. Two sentences of description, or a few other bands this is kinda like. Minor bonus points for an album-cover thumbnail, track listing and/or link to where I can hear, but if you don't have 'em handy, never mind, I can google.

2. Thoughtful essays that situate some music in some interesting context. Could be musicological context, could be historical, could be about the band's evolution or their country's, or an instrument's, or a kind of soup. Could well be about the writer's life, not the artist's. The only real requirement is that the writer have engaged with the music in some way. I'm not particular about what way. Or, more accurately, I'm incredibly particular about what way, but I'm not methodically particular. Just about anything can work if done with enough enthusiasm and commitment and empathy.

Too many music mags (in the UK at least) read like car maintenance manuals.

dunno who you're thinking of (I'm guessing the Wire which whatever you think of it exists pretty much in a world of its own) but I don't think that's true at all

― this guy was grey for me to poupon (DJ Mencap), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 11:12 (8 hours ago) Permalink

exists pretty much in a world of its own

i'm curious -- what do you mean by that?

― "excellent sound-of-a-generation indie" (ksh), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 17:39

I am guessing he means that there are not alot of magazines like the Wire and that the Wire rarely covers popular music on the top of the charts

I'm excited to learn of the new Gibson book coming out upthread, though it's not 'til September. This should be a good one too - China Miéville - Kraken (June 29, 2010)

With this outrageous new novel, China Miéville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read this—or any other—year. The London that comes to life in Kraken is a weird metropolis awash in secret currents of myth and magic, where criminals, police, cultists, and wizards are locked in a war to bring about—or prevent—the End of All Things.

In the Darwin Centre at London’s Natural History Museum, Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is conducting a tour whose climax is meant to be the Centre’s prize specimen of a rare Architeuthis dux—better known as the Giant Squid. But Billy’s tour takes an unexpected turn when the squid suddenly and impossibly vanishes into thin air.

As Billy soon discovers, this is the precipitating act in a struggle to the death between mysterious but powerful forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now, a city whose denizens—human and otherwise—are adept in magic and murder.

There is the Congregation of God Kraken, a sect of squid worshippers whose roots go back to the dawn of humanity—and beyond. There is the criminal mastermind known as the Tattoo, a merciless maniac inked onto the flesh of a hapless victim. There is the FSRC—the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit—a branch of London’s finest that fights sorcery with sorcery. There is Wati, a spirit from ancient Egypt who leads a ragtag union of magical familiars. There are the Londonmancers, who read the future in the city’s entrails. There is Grisamentum, London’s greatest wizard, whose shadow lingers long after his death. And then there is Goss and Subby, an ageless old man and a cretinous boy who, together, constitute a terrifying—yet darkly charismatic—demonic duo.

All of them—and others—are in pursuit of Billy, who inadvertently holds the key to the missing squid, an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be.

I find anything about squids inspiring. I used to speed-read through the reviews section of nearly every music magazine on the rack for a period of 20 years. Lately I just skim a few web sites, and prefer more original think pieces that approaches music from a fresh perspective. I mostly dislike interviews. I listen to music so I don't have to listen to people talk about themselves.

Spoiler alert: I'm about to make some more mundane observations...The lyrics angle interests me. Generally speaking, I'm far more apt to write about lyrics when it's a funny novelty record than I am when it's somebody whose lyrics are commonly written about. If I were writing about U2's "In God's Country" or Springsteen's "Tunnel of Love," two songs I love by artists I don't particularly care for, I'm almost positive I wouldn't quote a word--I'd try to write about the sound of those records, how that hits me. But with something like Figghole's "Red, White and MILF," their Sarah Palin song from two years ago, I don't think I could write about that without quoting lyrics--they're so ingenious, I want to quote every last one. I'm sure I'm not alone in believing that funny lyrics are generally far more quotable than lyrics that supposedly tell us about the emotional state of supposedly important artists. Again--generally. Sometimes the emotional state of important artists interests me a lot.

More of:

1. Own up to the subjectivity of it all: To quote another Oscar, "the highest Criticism... is the record of one's own soul." Kael is a touchstone because she taught so many of us to bring everything to bear in our responses--politics, personal experience, other art, the responses of other people--and she wasn't afraid to take up aspects that hadn't found a common language yet. So I don't agree that you should avoid reading other criticism, but I would avoid explicitly responding to it in your writing, because there's so much more there, both in the art and in yourself. Those kind of responses can be the poetry of peer pressure.

2. Be okay with your differences and gaps: I recently reviewed the Fatboy Slim/David Byrne Imelda Marcos disco opera knowing I'd have very little to offer about how it stacks up next to most contemporary dance music, much less other Fatboy Slim, but that I might contribute something on the subject of Byrne's attitude toward the Marcoses. I probably failed, but my point is it's futile to try coming up with THE definitive take on everything--we want YOUR take. Think about friends at parties playing a record and breaking down their theory of why it's so great: They're sharing their enthusiasm, not granting their approval.

3. Cut to the chase: Think about your all-time favorite albums and then go back and read reviews and notice how most of them seem to miss the point. Or think about reviews now that focus on some minor issue or conceit by way of a lead. The first thing people want to know is: "Why does this matter?" Or "Why does this matter to you?" That applies to albums you don't like. What's your new idea?

4. Write with authority. You gain authority by showing knowledge about your subject, the world, and yourself, and expressing your insights with clarity, sharp metaphors, and close arguing skills. Writers who don't explain odd references or don't provide examples for bold claims lose authority. They gain it by showing they've listened widely and deeply and developed a "take" of their own, so that they can make up new categories, spot unsung traditions, and (yes) recommend good music in creative comparisons. Any pan of X could hold it to a higher standard set by Y. How much greatness have we been introduced to this way?

5. Make spiritual peace but practical war with your ignorance: Do your homework. Yes, of course you can read the press release--after you've fully digested the music if need be--but also pull books off your shelf or go to the library or store. Challenge yourself. Read good critics about the artist and genre, listen around, then decide why you agree or disagree. Go beyond the obvious first couple pages of Google hits (newspapers in an artist's hometown are a good start), and remember that reporting is fallible. Check your information. There's always more to the story. What comes out of an artist's mouth can be crucial for basic facts, but Xhuxk is right when he says the ultimate truth is whatever comes through the speakers.

6. Write for a person. Are you writing for a genre specialist with unlimited income, or a music head who might wind up buying 40 or 50 albums a year? Or both? Authority depends less on what your answer is than on HAVING an answer, and shaping your response around it. Which involves context: I love Christgau because I know he's honestly recommending that anyone anywhere buy every A album if he/she can afford it, and at least recommending to a general audience to consider buying every B+ album. (He's also a master of poetic shorthand for this, as well as all kinds of phenomena, musical and otherwise.) However you define it, knowing where you draw that B+ line--which seems to be 3 and ½ stars in Rolling Stone, or a 7 in SPIN--is key, not just because money is short but because life is.

7. Put your taste and preference on the table: If everything else an artist has done stinks, artfully say so. Your pan might carry less weight for fans, but your praise might also carry more weight for detractors, and either way, readers will trust you more. Or at least they'll trust you to be you. Putting these things out in the open is a subtle way to help readers get their bearings. Plenty of talented people don't seem to understand that disagreement is a fundamental condition of loving music and loving criticism. Of course it's helpful to try to figure out why masses of people might love something you hate, or hate something you love, but don't compromise between your feelings and theirs, and for goodness sake don't generalize about audiences. Unless you're writing a serious, memoir-like reflection on your membership in a subculture (and even then), don't pretend you have any idea what is in other people's heads.

8. Have fun. Play is the extra layer of creativity on top of knowing. It's what you do with your skills or muscles, and the reason anyone would look for your byline. The more authority you have, the more creative you can be, like a runner so far ahead in the race, you can dance across the finish line. It's also what you can do at a certain level of assumed reader knowledge. I'm thinking of Klosterman's Beatles piece, but also pretty much anything by my Minneapolis-rooted friends. You must love life.

9. Be good, not just great. Criticism involves moral judgments just like anything else. The more public, popular, praised, or otherwise successful an artist, the more latitude we have to condemn their art. What's the point in attacking obscure local work, unless it's blatantly provocative or corrupt in some way? (Or unless you're a Maximumrocknroll-style genre completist, pledged to review every last thing in your mailbox?) Why kick somebody when they're down?

Even successful artists often didn't choose to have their personal lives follow them onstage. Criticism is journalism of the soul, but it's still journalism. Adhere to its highest standards. That doesn't mean myth-making isn't part of it: All journalists are storytellers, and biography is elemental to criticism. But good biographical criticism tends to be over-researched and understated, and works best where it's measured and clearly grounded in tentative interpretation (I'm thinking the best of David Thomson). Generally speaking, don't trust biographies, and be skeptical of autobiographies: Turns out the Clash were an even more interesting story than the one they told about themselves. Same with the White Stripes. Again, do you really know anything for sure except what's coming through the speakers?

10. Write in your voice. This is both a complicated and simple thing, complicated because the voice in your fingers is different than the one on your lips, simple because you know when it's not yours--usually after editors are done with it. Rewrite edits back into something you would say while keeping what they're looking for. Avoid pandering to perceived audiences: Do you really use that slang? Try on other writers' voices to develop your own, there's no shame in that. But people ultimately know when you're being yourself.

This is the most eminently reasonable advice I've read on the internet in quite a while.

a lot of music journalism in 2010 just seems more like appreciation writing than journalism, or rather, criticism. which is cool, it has its place, but doesnt really help you think of new ways to really analyse music.

pete is pretty resoundingly otm

This is something that certainly goes against the zing culture, but I would add to Pete's list:
11/ Don't be cruel just because you can. It's one thing to criticise the music; it's another to start making assumptions about the worth of the person making the music based on their album. Cruelty might raise easy laughs, but it doesn't make you a critic, and it diminishes you in the long run.
12/ Remember, you're reviewing the band. not the fans. Too much music writing takes pops at the people who buy the music: "it's music for idiots". Maybe you think only idiots could like it, but chances are there are plenty of people who aren't idiots who feel differently, and who might take against a writer who calls them idiots. Call the music rubbish, not the fans stupid.

Not a professional by any means - and this thread has been great reading - but my suggestion wd be

Postpone judgment

By which I mean certainly moral but also critical judgment. Enjoy exploring, analysing, adding context and describing before anything else.

So much criticism seems to hit the ground running with its ultimate opinion tacitly apparent in its tone while pretending to review. Find good (even if it's a struggle), find bad (ditto), but keep postponing that 'this is good'/'this is bad' moment (if you feel you need it at all.) it is in some ways for the reader the least important part.

if only that was even possible what with, you know, deadlines and lead times and promos

i mean i basically agree - i feel most "ready" to take on an album a few months after first hearing it - but this is pretty much impossible

I took that to mean "delay making a judgment in your writing until the end"

Yep, sorry, wasn't clear - what HD said. Although that's perhaps also because of what lex said.

there's always ways to talk about music that you've taken the time to consider -- year-end pieces, genre overviews, looks back at an artist's catalog with a news hook -- but as far as reviewing new releases go i think it's understood by the reader and everyone else that you're going with a gut instinct first impression. but i do agree that emphasizing the badness/goodness in reviews of new records is probably not a great idea, which is one of many reasons why numbers/stars do far more harm than good.

Yeah, the one thing I might take issue to in Peter's great long post (which has tons of excellent advice) is the stuff about "Why does this matter?"...I mean, I think I know what he means (you have to get the reader's attention), but a lot of reviewers might take that advice to mean "Why is this important?" (assuming the music is important --which, honestly, very little music ultimately is, in the long run), something that's often better to let the reader figure out his or herself. It's not always possible, but at least keep the "show don't tell" rule in mind. If your description of the music (and/or whatever context you put it into) is smart enough, the "mattering" can come naturally, and if your ideas are interesting, mattering might not even matter. With wordcounts under 100 per album in many venues these days --one thing that sucks about 2010 music-crit obviously -- killing two birds with one stone is frequently the only choice you're gonna have.

And obviously, another thing that really sucks about 2010 music-crit (as Lex alludes to) is the stupid universal insistence on reviews coinciding with (even preceding) release dates. Wasn't always that way, believe it or not -- and right, sometimes the smartest things written about records are written months (or years) after they come out.

emphasizing the badness/goodness in reviews of new records is probably not a great idea, which is one of many reasons why numbers/stars do far more harm than good

Strangely, one thing I've liked in the past few years about reviewing music for places like Billboard, rhapsody, and emusic (where wordcounts are all extremely short oddly enough) is that trashing records is rarely if ever an option -- It forces me think more about what makes a record singular, and what's actually happening on it, and how I can say that in an interesting way, whether I love the music or don't like it much. And since every word counts -- if my limit is 600 characters, I'll probably use all 600 -- there's little room for empty superlatives, either. Which might not necessarily make for the most memorable writing -- having strong opinions and room for wisecracks often helps criticism -- but I bet it makes the reviews useful.

okay so sure in 2010 Whiney's Twitter has dropped a nuke in the arms race to be FIRST but does that in any way prevent future consideration at length and writing of smart things months (or years) later? like in 2011 when all music criticism will be performed at length and leisure by gifted amateurs anyway?

like in 2011 when all music criticism will be performed at length and leisure by gifted amateurs anyway?

is this a given?

j/w

With wordcounts under 100 per album in many venues these days

This denies any notion of actually practicing journalism. Even if you're an editor presiding over it at some publication. Then, more accurately, one is a scheduler, a job that more accurately dovetails with
the tight lacing of every single review to release schedules.

Then there's the big quid pro quo thing.

What xhuxk describes about Billboard, rhapsody and emusic (except for the wordcount thing; I can go as long as I want, though I usually wind up in the 200-250 word range because that's how I was trained) is also true of my work for AMG. It's much more about description than rendering a hard-and-fast verdict, and I have to stay away from stuff like "an early contender for Album of the Year" because, in theory, AMG reviews aren't locked to the time they're first published or to street dates - they're supposed to linger there for when someone looks the album up for research or something.

xpost i dunno how light does a check have to be before one considers oneself an amateur?

xp I don't blame Whiney -- I blame Entertainment Weekly, 20 or so years ago. That was the first shot in this war. But sure, people can still write at length, and ages after a record comes out, on their blogs and other websites, just like they could write for fanzines in the old days. They just can't (usually) get paid for it. (And I'm not saying that's entirely bad for music criticism, either. But I dunno, for me personally, a paycheck tends to be a good motivator -- even though some of the writing I'm proudest of has been done for free.)

So much criticism seems to hit the ground running with its ultimate opinion tacitly apparent in its tone while pretending to review. Find good (even if it's a struggle), find bad (ditto), but keep postponing that 'this is good'/'this is bad' moment (if you feel you need it at all.) it is in some ways for the reader the least important part.

This is what Manny Farber (especially in the late reviews co-written with Patricia Patterson) was quite good at.

op: animated .gifs

Remember, you're reviewing the band. not the fans.

I'd amend this slightly: oftentimes you're reviewing the track or album or mix or performance, rather than the artist themselves. I think that makes a difference (and I'm guessing it's part of what ithappens means anyway), if only because a work doesn't usually add up to a whole. (I keep thinking of Scharpling & Wurster's Rock, Rot & Rule, in which Wurster's clueless book author says that Neil Young rots. "But what about . . ." Scharpling asks, naming the obvious canonical stuff. Wurster, who's only heard the bad '80s records: "That's six albums.")

NB I don't blame Whiney either and I hope that's clear. and I agree -- as with The Death of The Newspaper these forces have been in motion since long before the average home had access to broadband internet. also agreed that paid work today will almost always trump spec work today. which is sort of baked into my crack about In The Future All Music Writers Will Be Amateurs.

at this point I read 33 1/3 more than I read pfork so who knows

It forces me think more about what makes a record singular, and what's actually happening on it, and how I can say that in an interesting way, whether I love the music or don't like it much

I have to admit, my old dream/ideal used to be that one could find a way to describe how a record works that would make everyone who'd dislike the record cringe, and everyone who'd like the record get excited, all without suggesting an opinion either way. (I think I may have gotten close to this once -- a review that got loads of email saying either "you're right, this sucks" or "you're right, this is awesome" -- but this is one of those unreachable ideals, obviously.)

x-post: Totally agree about show don't tell, I was more thinking about how for years I struggled with leads until I remembered that sometimes you just need to start writing about what you're writing about and not worry about a clever way in, especially if your clever way would break the momentum, and always if it would make anyone wonder, "So why is this being written about again"?

So I don't agree that you should avoid reading other criticism, but I would avoid explicitly responding to it in your writing, because there's so much more there, both in the art and in yourself.

True to a point--you'll certainly save yourself a lot of grief, and there's something kind of noble about staying above the fray--but one of the best things for me about reading Kael and all her rivals from the early 60's was the way they'd have at each other. Kael would complain about Sarris, he'd complain about her, Simon would complain about both of them, Macdonald would chime in, etc., etc. I suppose it was quite annoying if you just wanted to know whether or not The Disorderly Orderly was worth seeing, otherwise highly entertaining and instructive. (The nobility of above-the-fray: Stanley Kauffmann, most of the time.) And Kael's "Circles and Squares," her epic diatribe against Sarris, is one of her greatest pieces of writing. (Unless you're a Sarris acolyte, in which case it's just shrill.) Maybe you just mean that stuff shouldn't creep into regular reviews. Mostly, I think that's a good idea.

It's important not to take attacks seriously too. Poor Sarris never forgave Kael, despite several attempts on her part to mend fences.

I'd have to look it up, but as I remember it, there was still lingering bitterness in the piece he wrote after her death.

Yeah, he still hadn't gotten over it.

Here's the piece. "In berths and hard cash, she profited much more than I did--in addition to its prestige, The New Yorker paid better than The Village Voice, and Pauline did stints as a consultant in Hollywood. But she deserved it for her relentless self-promotion and her artful suggestion that she was the ultimate authority on all movies because the opinions of colleagues were worthless."

And, uh, oh yeah--RIP!

hatchet jobs on other critics who are just plain wrong and stupid is so much fun, though. LOVED doing it the one time i got commissioned to do so. still regret that at the time of the taylor wift feminist débâcle i was too tied up with work to have time to eviscerate that autostraddle piece.

It's important not to take attacks seriously too. Poor Sarris never forgave Kael, despite several attempts on her part to mend fences.

idk, publishing a diatribe against someone is as definitively bridge-burning as you get.

(i don't think having a thick skin is necessarily a good thing for a critic!)

Like someone else said upthread, I don't really care too much for historico-contextual screeds about how the album fits within the artist's oeuvre. For me the key is to find words to describe the music in arresting and interesting ways. The master of this is David Keenan, who gets a lot of stick from all quarters but has an unmistakable style based around a more or less unique critical vocabulary. Any of his capsule reviews on VT would serve as examples.

I generally quite like Keenan's turn of phrase but it strikes me as heavily cribbed from Byron Coley (who I guess is pretty in thrall to Beat-ish vocab himself)

xpost Thanks for that Sarris piece, so much there.

Keenan is like a humourless, arid & v. pompous mystic version of Byron Coley.

I'm a longtime reader of the bimonthly classical review Fanfare, and once in awhile its critics just eviscerate each other in a special section in the back of the mag. Last time it was a dude whose reviews are really useful to me sonning a dude whose reviews don't do shit, but it was so harsh I felt bad for the vic.

that sounds like an awesome idea for a section though

Yeah, not on topic for music but the letters section of The Comics Journal in the mid-late 80s was a war zone, you'd have these critic vs critic flame wars that went on for issue after issue. Not like that any more sadly.

[i]idk, publishing a diatribe against someone is as definitively bridge-burning as you get[i]

Those confounded bridges. I'm good at burning them. Finding or building them, less so.

Ha, Clemenza and I have been burning each others' bridges for years (his diatribe against me is definitive), and we're still friends!

what diatribe? can i read it? is clemenza jo jo dancer?

Pretty sure it's findable at rockcritics.com somewhere, Scott. (And nah, Jo Jo Dancer was pretty easy on me, in comparison!)

I have often been tempted to definitively eviscerate my own critical writing under a pseudonym, but then I re-read my own reviews and I'm like "wow this stuff eviscerates itself WITHOUT ANYONE HAVING TO LIFT A FINGER."

I just remember Clemenza (on the Rock Hall Of Fame clusterfuck poll thread) saying 'if I told you my name you probably wouldn't recognize it anyway'...

As above, but without the qualifier. Anyway, I'm glad xhuck still counts me as a friend--we're doing better than Kael and Sarris.

John Lennon knows your name, and I've seen him.

ROCK!

sorry, t rex moment for the day.

http://rockcriticsarchives.com/features/phildellio/accidentaltheorist.html

Nice CIUT shirt. I have fond memories of "Introspective Guy Town". And in regards to the firing of TP mentioned upthread, about freakin' time.

http://rockcriticsarchives.com/features/phildellio/accidentaltheorist.html

― jaymc

Posts very much in character. :)

ρεμπετις (hope I didn't mispronounce that): Wow--don't know who you are, but I'm flabbergasted and thrilled beyond words that someone remembers "Introspective Guy Town." I'm starting to feel self-conscious, like I've accidentally hijacked this thread, but I'll just say quickly that I'm on CKLN these days. Now back to word-counts and Chief Justices and the aristrocratic style, please.

now i remember that thing. highly entertaining. and long. and kinda crazy! in a good way. i think.

i thought of one of these today: just being brutally honest about how good something is/how much pleasure it evokes upon listening. i really appreciate critics/people who separate the wheat from seas of chaff and maintain a high standard of quality, even if that means passing up loads of worthwhile bands. i've picked up albums that were all "four stars rilly good cool band ye," but there's only one or two great songs on it. like obviously we listened to the same album, you could've just told the truth in the first place and saved me being dissapointed.

*even if that means passing up loads of semi-worthwhile bands

Yet another reminder: concentrate your efforts wisely. Trying to become some sort of idiot savant when it comes to recognizing every single track from every single band that ever was is something record store clerks and DJs do (absolutely nothing wrong w/ that, but professionally it's much more useful to them; for a music critic it's nice but often not really essential).

It's a good idea to focus on music itself instead of the flippant music scene du jour or the social context where a specific genre was born-- both can turn into distractions that can make you lose your edge and cave in to cronyism, charity criticism etc etc.

So basically you should beware of the dilettante zone and aim for a kind of "new criticism" ethos applied to music: listen closely and often to the kind of music that is meaningful to you and translate that experience into words. One of the problems with music criticism these days is succumbing to the sheer weight of information and the endless search for the latest track/remix/album/band etc. Avoid both information overload and superficial value judgement; read Northop Frye's "Polemical Introoduction" on the "Anatomy of Criticism".

Can we read Althusser too?

It's a good idea to focus on music itself instead of the flippant music scene du jour or the social context where a specific genre was born-- both can turn into distractions

Agreed but with the same qualification I'd add to my thing about not generalizing about audiences, which was maybe too hasty: The history of popular music is a history of audiences, and audiences define genres, which are nothing other than social context--we're all just record-store clerks seeing who walks in and to which section to buy what, and doing guesswork accordingly. (And don't take that metaphor literally: People at shows and in stores and online for the same artist are often entirely different crowds, each more diverse and complex than we usually admit.)

Audiences shape the music too, especially in scenes. And a band's live show is just more context to draw on. So I guess I'd just recommend caution and actually talking with people at shows, and developing a way of thinking about music where there's some diversity of experience behind your shorthand. I.e.: You don't know, you better ask somebody.

And I'd say listening closely and often to what moves you includes learning about that context out in the world--I'm saying this after hanging out with a Parisian staying in Minneapolis for a few months who's been going to North Side hip-hop shows and interviewing rappers for a paper.

I went to see Factory Floor and Fuck Buttons two nights ago at a London gig venue and it was weird being in an audience of ATP beards/indie types all stood stock still, stroking beards real and metaphorical - looking at me like it was somehow gauche to be dancing. Saw FF two weeks earlier at an arts venue but everyone there (motley collection of industrial fans, acid house guys, metallers, goths and patrons of the arts all getting down - but in totally different styles. I guess it's interesting seeing in practice how seemingly functional music gets used in completely different ways.

But the hipster thing is just a red herring. I wish there was a ban on mentioning 'them'.

I grew up dancing at shows. I tend to think of it as a small-town thing, but it could just be my town/era. It's a critical mass thing.

Can we read Althusser too?
― Kevin John Bozelka, Friday, 23 April 2010 09:44 (Yesterday) Bookmark

You could, but be sure to read his critics too, and for the love of God do not take anything whatsoever from his writing style and research methods if you ever want to land a job.

The history of popular music is a history of audiences, and audiences define genres, which are nothing other than social context- Pete Scholtes

I'd say that the popular history of popular music is a history of audiences if that's the angle you choose, and that doesn't even apply exclusively to music or culture: you can get a demographic profile out of any consumer product from lawnmowers to yoghurt.

At this day and age, I'd rather focus on the historically recent facts that people 1)often isolate and create personal spaces for themselves through music(ipods, home theaters etc), and 2) somewhat paradoxically, are also more willing to listen to certain genres and artists outside of their natural social settings (like metalheads who like Stravinsky or housewives who listen to Lady Gaga). If you want to communicate with as many intelligent readers as possible, think twice before writing with a specific audience in mind; do not alienate anyone.

Finally, music like all art is created from an individualistic, solipsistic (and ocasionally misanthropic) POV. I'd rather try to assess the motivations and talent of the artist as an individual or a specific group of individuals because this is how you honour their craft and efforts, and this kind of commitment at the same time turns you into an author and thinker with a distinguishable and therefore more marketable voice.

Will.i.am has some wisdom for this thread in the cover story of the latest Rolling Stone. This is in response to the question of whether The Black Eyed Peas make songs or jingles:

"Since the 1960's, it's been a taboo for bands to fuck with brands, like they should only sell music. But music was never the product. When you played in a bar, music drew people in to sell a ticket and drinks. The first music industry was publishing, because they sold sheet music." Beethoven? Verdi? "They were selling aggregation, the ability to bring people to a concert hall."

Very interesting thread. Thanks, people.

Consumers of mass-produced products can often find an identity based around buying that product, but I trust you're not saying these identities all operate the same way, or exert the same amount of influence over their product. And is thinking about the history of popular music as a history of audiences (including individuals making space for themselves out of category) really all that popular? Books like The Sound of the City and England's Dreaming and Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap strike me as the exception rather than the rule.

yeah frankly the popular histories are usually ones obsessed w/ the auteur, not the other way around