Lazy Journalism

PS: Interpol actually sounds like... er... Wire? (At least a'la "The 15th")

Also, mainstream journalists like to call everything 'emo' so they don't have to say 'indie-rock' or 'alternative-rock'. Very, very lazy.

Our own Douglas Wolk did this in the Village Voice a month or two ago.

I think Scott Seward did this as well. He brought them up, didn't he?

I would've but I was too busy being lazy.

that's a fanboy/girl error that sounds like it was ripped straight out of the record-label bio, not a journalistic cliche

interpol sounds nothing like joy division. but what does it mean, anyway, to "sound like joy division"? i wrote about this at some length on my now-almost-dead blog a month or two ago. saying that a band sounds like any another band is absolutely worthless to me in a review

like saying calvin johnson was important because of halo benders... hell, even saying calvin johnson was important because of beat happening... it's overshadowed by K records.

or noting steve albini as producer/engineer of bush or nirvana, when it's really something completely bigger than those things.

it's just ignorant and paints skewed pictures.

2) describing a band's sound soley by using another band as a reference. i realize that sometimes this is avoidable and anyone that's ever reviewed anything is probably guilty of this, including me, but it's true. i think this rings with the interpol/joy division thing... as well as any of the revival press. you know, some of this revivalism might not be so revival-centric if we (those who write/comment/etc on music) didn't concentrate on what styles were being aped so much. i BET you there's folks out there going, "hmm, we want our band to kick ass and be different, what very unknown, cool style can we mine as an influence?" or even worse... label execs encouraging such behavior... perhaps i'm playing what comes first, the chicken or the egg? what comes first, the movement or the report about the movement?

now that i've really veered off topic...
m.

music/art defies easy word explanation and so it's easy to genrify or label something as being like another band.

bands and scenes become adjectives and descriptors and a vocabulary that only the well-read, or well-listened and well-read can properly scientifically jargon down to the genus-species.

but just as words are inherently reductionary and completely misleading... so are any and all constructions based upon words.

so if the communication is inherently evil... and we're going to commit atrocities anyways... should we just go ahead and sin away?
(sin = reductionism of language)

gurgle,
m.

I'm confused -- you're asserting that there is no band that has ever sounded like any other band before it? Or is your problem specifically with the widespread Interpol/JD thing? Because there are legions of musicians (good, bad and/or ugly) who will admit to straight-up imitation of those who inspired them... years after the plaigarism, that is.

Lazy journalism = lazy criticism? was my Norman Phay point.

I didn't read the Phay thing, but if you mean that reviewing a record in no way constitutes even the most lax definition of "journalism," then I agree with you.

Comparing bands on this level is impossible, unless you isolate single variables, or a cluster of a smaller group of variables, about the music in question when comparing it to something else. Because for your audience, "sounding like Joy Division" means very different things to different people. One of your readers might only remember "Love will Tear Us Apart," while another reader might think "Transmission" or maybe "Twenty Four Hours" or whatever. For each reader, "sounding like Joy Division" means different things, and you're doing the reader a disservice (I'm a reader, not a critic) by not explaining what you mean. An image that comes to one reader's head might be dark, depressing rock music, and on that very coarse level of approximation Interpol also seems to match. But another person might immediately associate Joy Division with a bare, tinny sound; another reader might think immediately of Ian Curtis and his nearly inflectionless but haunting all-alone-in-the-kitchen voice; another reader might immediately associate Joy Division with their later incorporation of synths, or with Factory Records, or whatever.

I mean, it's useful, in a relative sense, in a review to say "sounds like Joy Division" rather than "sounds like Nelly," but almost completely useless when it comes to describing any band's sound.

And the hot-new-NYC-bands don't even sound that much alike -- they're just tied together by their geography and the fact that they do shows together sometimes.

while i inherently disagree given that NYC is not the only region to take influence from... and that NYC owes it's own influence elsewhere... BUT... that's a nice ball to run with...

letsee:

garage rock meme: VU and television (although

electroclash meme: suicide... early hip-hop?? disco+proto-house scene?

now wave/spockmorgue/current noise meme: inherently no wave DNA, sonic youth, swans, yoko

disco punk: esg, bush tets, etc related to no wave above

so there's some nyc influence out there...

but... couldn't we say that NYC as biggest american city, cultural melting pot metaphor signifier #1, is always gonna have cultural grab bags from all over america? ultimately every weird scene in Nowhere, USA is gonna pull through NYC and spread their seed.

m.

re: interpol, someone told me they sound like joy division and someone else told me they sound like the smiths...??! they sound like neither to me.

Thanks for a nice, thorough explanation of what you meant. I think you're right about needing to be specific in comparisons of bands and their supposed "influences."

Remember that print critics (and many online ones) are working against a wordcount. It can be tough to reconcile the need/urge to go in depth about obvious reference points while still working within length limitations.

Assumed Interpol sound like Joy Division or Kitchens of Distinction or a blend of [insert bands here]. In that case I think it is perfectly legitimate to compare them. Maybe even more so if it is a cliché and it has been done 1000 times before. As it is not the journalist who is lazy but the band. Why didn't Interpol break new ground instead of aping another band? The lazy journalists are just mirroring the lazy musicians.

i mean, in this ever-reflexive age, is it even possible for anything to sound/speak/posit like nothing else before it? i think that even if a cultural artifact miraculously accomplished this, there would still be lazy journalists around who would try and compare it to something already existing within their frame of reference.

also, the problems geeta cited above re different peoples' personal experiences of these bands *still* run rampant because of the simple notion that music is wholly experienced in the head.

zzzzzzzzzz

wow. nice. of course, only if they could *wink, wink* at us to let us know that's what they were doing.

i mean, in this ever-reflexive age, is it even possible for anything to sound/speak/posit like nothing else before it? i think that even if a cultural artifact miraculously accomplished this, there would still be lazy journalists around who would try and compare it to something already existing within their frame of reference.

totally... everything new, regardless of how new it really is from a totally omniscient point of view, is totally evaluated based upon "sounds like", "looks like", etc. it's not really scientific at all. of course, the science would make it lame... or the work for those interested in "A-sharp", "3/4", "played with her feet"... which is ok... but kinda takes the spark out of it.

but it's rock coverage... so maybe it's ok... as long as... like geeta said, they clarify why or what....

i dunno.
m.

And the hot-new-NYC-bands don't even sound that much alike -- they're just tied together by their geography and the fact that they do shows together sometimes.

Much like the hot-old-NYC-bands (common links between The Ramones, The Talking Heads, Blondie, Richard Hell and Suicide, please? Yeah, "the attitude".)

Re: The Strokes & The White Stripes- while on a purely musical basis, they are nothing alike, they do share a common approach (trad rock "back to basics", loud, interest in classic punk and garage rock, "it's all about being a live band, man"), a target audience (mostly white teens alienated by Hip-Hop and "Modern Rock"; I know this is a gigantic generalisation) and they mingle. I fail to see how lumping them togheter into a "scene" is any worse than, say, lumping togheter The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, or Ian Dury and Thomas Dolby.

Q: how are the Strokes "all about being a live band"?

A: lead singer looking completely off his ass on painkillers and droning and slurring the lyrics

Not my cup of tea, either, but Strokes fans seem to see this as a major attraction.

It was never possible even BEFORE our "self-reflexive age". You can regress ANY creative act back to its precedents (ex: from early rock n roll to the blues to field hollers to African chants back to the roots of language and communication itself. All of those things sounded something like their predecessors, but rock sounds *nothing* like ancient African tribal music). It's just that in our current cultural state, this process is largely transparent to the sharp observer (and possibly even to the not-so-sharp observer). But the sooner we abandon that this silly idea of something having to sound NOTHING like what has gone before, the healthier our culture will be. This kind of thinking only serves to inhibit and warp creativity, rather than nurture it.

THANK YOU. it seems like every single review of any vaguely 'urban' product in the past year has had some kind of dismissive mention of the phrase "bling bling" in it, usually in the first paragraph. i'm so fucking sick of it. the phrase itself, whatever, it was actually a popular catchphrase for a little while a few years ago, but now all the dry condescending critics have just latched onto it as this little pet peeve and they rail on and on about it. although i do admit that i found it amusing when in an interview B.G. himself actually said "bling bling" dismissively. so it's come full circle at least. which means, hey, time to let it go.

They're probably as similar or dissimilar as Jay-Z and Nas.

Next up: The Strokes cover songs from Oliver! and The Hives sing about having sex with Jack White's seven year old daughter (oh, I'm sure he has one)

Anyway what I hate lately is the kind of cliched shit language used to describe the likes of Coldplay, all these amateurs saying how the CD is full of "warm and delightful curiosities" or "let Chris Martin and his merry men take you into their world, where the earth is a very far off beacon of hope". I mean jesus christ, these guys probably burp and wipe their mouths with their sleeves the second they finish the reviews.

I mean why, WHY? These losers are trying to make themselves seem so smart, I don't *do* personal reactions, I do reactions which I believe are very deep and meaningful however the reality is they're trite and fucking wet.

There's yer new Andrew WK songtitle.

I have to say I've been profoundly annoyed/dissatisfied with the whole Strokes/Stripes/Hives/WK/Vines/what the fuck crew as being a gateway back into 'rock' if only because rock never went away, natch -- which is of course a terribly lazy conclusion journalistically speaking! And perhaps even more so (and dare I say rockist ;-) ) to point to a particular release that's obscurer but works better for my ears on all levels that came out pretty recently, namely last year's Rocket from the Crypt album Group Sounds. But let me turn this around -- couple of years back the canard was 'what the fuck are all these people doing paying attention to Timbaland only now with "Try Again" when he was doing xyz earlier,' and we can all pick up our own examples here and there.

Stepping aside from this, maybe, to a larger point, but also to address what I think Tom is also saying above: wouldn't it be honest to approach things less from a 'we are all on the same wavelength' position and more on a 'we aren't always 'on' -- and we shouldn't expect to be'? Even in the click and download age we are not all in the same place at the same time as we're slamming into the Here and Now, and if the demands of the age are that we should in fact be there or else, that every new thing around the world must be met with the same sort of slavering anticipation -- not in the sense of 'here it is, you must like it' but 'here, it's coming and you MUST ENGAGE WITH IT RIGHT THIS SECOND,' then I'm ready to throw in the towel.

Whether it's mp3s or the net in general or blogs or even this board's particular atmosphere, there now seems to be 24-hour journalism/commentary/engagement/riding the wave as the standard. I don't trust this anymore, I think this particular medium is now the message, and it's unnerving. I barely get the sense that anyone is living in individual albums or even songs anymore, but a quick sense of instant gratification fixes instead. Doubtless a lot of you will disagree with me -- well, I WANT you to disagree with me, please! I'd actually deeply appreciate that, because I honestly think something might well be being lost.

Not me: I can hardly think of a thing you've written I've agreed with more!

(The antidote, for me, is to try to listen to albums/pieces as many times in a row as possible -- which doesn't necessarily mean consecutively, just regularly -- before I write about them. My entire relationship to a piece of music changes when I begin to know it deeply, which you really can't do without spending a lot of time with it. But then again, I'm a bit of a contrarian about new releases, -- I almost never buy them -- so the time-pressure involved in writing for print publication is always a bit of a novelty for me, in that I parcel out my hits of "wow, this is what's happening right now" somewhat sparingly...)

All these terms have their places, I think. Some words get used lots because they're so damn USEFUL and the problem is when they then overpower what they represent rather than subordinating their particular quality to a broader descripted. "angular guitar" means nothing per se, but in the context of the right phrase "angular" can be invaluble.

I used "blistering" quite well recently, I think, partly because I used it to capture an extra-musical quality at a fairly abstract level, partly because the tones of the words fit right with the sentence.

The point this raises in relation to this thread is not journalistic integrity - it's WORD COUNT. Apparently, this guy would make up sources to make his story longer, more mundane, but more balanced - nothing particularly sensational or interesting.

Here's a quote from the article:
If it's a journalistic crime for Christopher Newton to invent characters who mouth empty but passable clichés, what's the name of the offense when respectable reporters deliberately harvest the same worthless clichés from bona fide sources?

and it ends with this:
Even wire copy, which should be transparent and lucid, has become so barnacled that readers have learned to skim through the "innocuous" and "tangential" in their search for quintessence.

I used to write music reviews for a paper, and when I began, they only printed full-length reviews. Then, a new editor added capsule reviews to the format (which, I guess, is great for easily sustaining the stream of promos). So what do readers want? Of course, if all full-length articles were fully fleshed out, well written, and insightful, that would be great. Would you want a sharp, concise capsule review instead of a crappy full-length? Probably, just to save skimming time. But no careers can be built from capsules (well, maybe), and they seem like a cop-out. So how do editors see the situation?

As a reader, I find myself latching onto certain consistently good writers and also checking out critical summaries (Slate's summary judgment, Meta Critic, etc.) for quick fixes.

101 THINGS TO WHICH YOU CAN COMPARE INTERPOL BESIDES JOY DIVISION:

http://lastplanetojakarta.com/archives/2004/09/101_things_to_w.php

oy gevalt.

CHRIST, that's a lot of copy to revise. think i'll make a cup of tea first.