the role of music criticism as a buyer's guide

most msm music criticism is useless AS A BUYERS GUIDE cause the critics don't buy music themselves

when you don't have to pay suddenly all kinds of stuff sounds pretty good -- just ask a file-sharer ;-)

music criticism's primary function is to take the piss out of musicians who are knobs, anything else is a bonus.

Most music criticism does not do that. I kinda trust Christgau giving something an A, but still usually read several reviews and lsiten to samples first.

Of course it's justifiable! There's no requirement for any amount of writing you need to be reading about music (or for that matter no requirement for how much music you need to be listening to).

The hothouse image of a writer fully in touch with everything and anything and able to write eloquently on every last 'important' release, however defined, is just that, an image. It's a fine ideal to aim for but reality is something else again. Similarly, if you're trying to find something out there of interest, you *can't* hear it all no matter how hard you try. Hell, I live on my own, have a low-key job, very little outside stress in my life -- and can I read it all, hear it all? Christ no. There's life to be lived, many other things to do.

As you say, music criticism can and does have many roles, and a lot of them are determined by context as much as by content. The in-depth historian of a style and scene who finds a way to explain the particular interest and importance of a song, an album, a group or performer will write something different from the casual listener intrigued by the same thing, and a third writer could write something different again in a much more general context than, say, simply 'music writing' or whatever one wants to call it.

The buyer's guide model -- which quite obviously I've contributed to all these years with the AMG -- has its place in all this, and perhaps one of the most perversely amusing ways it now functions is how those AMG reviews are used for content on mp3/rar blogs; there's a hell of a lot of copy/pasting going. But if the concern has been that the rise of those blogs further undercuts the perceived need/role of criticism, then at least there's *something* being provided, however inadvertantly and however swiftly.

I've met a lot of polymaths in my life, folks with interests that range widely and deeply. But even most of them -- and they would admit this -- parcel out their time, however unconsciously. It can and does affect what one creates, what one writes about, what one reads about, and that's just three broadly defined areas. The choice you've made is a perfectly justifiable one for what you are aiming for right now, and if you decide to aim for something else later on, that's your decision to make.

Absolutely nothing wrong with using music criticism as as buyer's guide. I know that's why I read Adorno.

George Smith has repeatedly pointed out that the original 1979 "red" edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide makes an exellent buying guide if you stick to buying the albums by rock bands who consistently get zero or one stars in the ratings.

amirite

It does play a role as a kind of filter for me, but I tend to place more stock in the volume of criticism than in its content. For example, bands like Television or the Velvet Underground, who get praised consistently and in relatively varied contexts, tend to be worth checking out. Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting. I guess this is a long way of arriving at my own version of The Canon.

The other use of criticism is when I come across a gushing piece in an unexpected place, or one describing a song or band in unexpected terms. Obviously this only works if I don't actively seek it out I have discovered/rediscovered loads of tunes in this way, and ILM (or the Number Ones blog on freaky trigger) is a pretty useful source for this.

Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.
Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.
Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.
Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.
Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.
Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.
Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.
Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.
Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.
Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.
Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.
Bands like Big Star or Wire, who got loads of praise when Teenage Fanclub or Elastica came out but go unmentioned elsewhere, tend to be less interesting.

I would be interested to hear how exactly people try to make you feel guilty for the methods you use to find music that you enjoy. Stealing from your roommate, cheating on your boyfriend or girlfriend, littering-- these are things to feel guilty about.

music criticism's primary function is to take the piss out of musicians who are knobs, anything else is a bonus.
but who will watch the watchpeople?

Very good. Now piss off.

C-

The best critics barely put across what their own opinion of a record is, they merely tell you what it sounds like. IMHO.

That's why I trust the Wire like a bruddah.

I see music critizism as first and foremost a buyer's guide. Which means it is important that a reviewer has a positive attitude toward the genre a particular record is in. He doesn't need to like the record, but he needs to like the genre, or the review becomes pointless for those of us who are into the genre and wonder if this record is worth buying or not.

when you don't have to pay suddenly all kinds of stuff sounds pretty good

But then, explain why a lot of mainstream hit music has always been hated by critics.

one-upsmanship

@Ned: I agree that there's not enough time to keep up with everything. And I agree that music crit serves many functions. I think the question of "How much time am I willing/should I be willing to spend on this?" is at the center of what I was trying to get at. There's just so little time and so many bands and so many critical pieces that it *is* impossible to keep up with it all, especially when you yourself are not a critic and are thus only able to do this in your (increasingly limited) free time.

@Ismael: Great points. I'll often get into an artist if they're being mentioned (positively) all over the place too. Also, if I'm reading what you said correctly, I agree that sometimes it only takes one piece to make me want to get into an artist.

@Mark R.: The guilt comes more from within. Sometimes I feel bad that I'm not keeping up as much as everyone else seems to be able to. (Other times I even feel like the more I try to keep up the less I'm able to!) It probably eventually comes down to acceptance -- admitting to yourself that you're just not going to be able to keep up as much as you'd like and come to terms with that.

Also, I just find it really saddening for some reason sometimes when I start browsing through my iTunes library and notice that I listen to I listen to because I read a good review on Pitchfork or Styles.

The idea that a publication, acting as a filter for me, constructs my taste really scares me for some reason, although I assume all of our tastes are constructed in a way the moment we take a recommendation from anywhere. I'm not saying I'll force myself to like something I don't like here, I'm just saying that because I read certain publications, if they praise a record I'm much more likely to go out and buy it to try it out than I'd be willing to if I stumbled across a random band's mySpace page (and I don't even really have time to do that.) So, inevitably, certain sources ferret out what music I hear.

*notice that I listen to WHAT I listen to because I read a good review on Pitchfork or Styles

I also think part of my question is: Is it OK to listen to music just for itself if you have no idea about the context from whence the music itself emerges? Is it OK to listen to TV On The Radio and Burial and other critically acclaimed bands just because you know a lot of critics like them or should you really know WHY these bands are so popular?

Just more stuff I've been thinking about.

Martin Popoff does buyer's guides. His book on 70's hard rock takes the basic format of Christgau's buyer guides, adds pictures, and substitutes a few paragraphs per album for RC's one and two sentence lectures on an acts merits as human beings.

Christgau's Seventies guide was useful to me in the same way as the Rolling Stone "red" book standard. It's not quite as good, but close.

By the time I bought Popoff's book on 70's rock, I didn't need a buyer's guide. However, if it had been published in '78, it would have been great and I would think it would be very useful to someone coming to it sight unseen and looking for advice.

The music journalists who write for the Los Angeles Times, on the other hand, are a pathetic bunch if you expect good consumer choices. They're the worst writers at a very large newspaper. And they manage to cover virtually nothing of genuinely varied interest outside of magazine cover story fodder (last weekend, it was Kid Rock's latest) while having at their disposal more resources than any other newspaper outside of the New York Times.

What they do focus on are things which are massively hyped and publicized everywhere. They provide their own marginally different spin, following the music news industry standard procedure of "Who is to be sucked up to this week on the big schedule?" So if you subscribe to the newspaper as well as the New York Times, you can read almost exactly the same thing about Bruce Springsteen or Radiohead, done at two newspapers 3,500 miles apart, by two different writers or sometimes three.

One might argue this is more like sports-writing -- the coverage of the big college or Monday night football game -- than consumer advice. However, in every sports section there are writers who are better stylists, people who find it within their power to sometimes tell jokes which are actually funny, making for a section which entertains rather than deadens.

So if they had to take up sports writing or perhaps something even harder -- like covering crime, the big time music journalists at the newspaper would fail.

And although I haven't read it in awhile Popoff writes for Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles and I always found the format to be suitable as a buyer's guide or tip sheet.

How about we assume that music criticism is a buyers guide.

Does it work?

Not for me. There's a very loose correlation at best between what I like and what critics say is good. Go to AMG and look up a band you like. Does the album you like best get the best rating?

no music critics have a close enough opinion to mine for any of them to be completely trusted. if i find a critic who knows one aspect of what i like, i can trust them for opinions on that one aspect of what i buy. but my ears make the final decision. some friends of mine know what i like enough that they can tell when they hear something if i will like it or not, i can trust them.

You want to discover something great on your own probably. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe you should try purchasing records based on how attractive the cover art is. Or, I don't know, based on a musician's interview. Question how often are you pleased with what you've been recommended?

Gorge and Chuck Eddy may view hard rock differently than the Rolling Stone Record Guide or Christgau, but if one reads enough reviews they can decide who to trust more as a gatekeeper (or none of them or look at lots of reviews in addition to whatever internet approaches are available to hear stuff yourself). Gorge suggests above that the LA Times and the NY Times are somehow running nearly identical reviews of Springsteen and Radiohead. While I have not done a specific review by review comparison, I know that I can see, in general, stylistic differences between Jon Pareles, Kelefa Sanneh, Ben Ratliff (all 3 with the NY Times) and Ann Powers at the LA Times. So I am not sure what Gorge is talking about.

But all kinds of stuff sounds pretty bad, too. And not all of it sounds as good as everything else. (Critics can only fit 10 albums on a top 10 list, and most of them tend to put those top 10 lists in order.)

So while I'm willing to concede that criticism is not always the best buying guide (despite the fact that I've been using lots of it as a buying guide myself for decades), I'm not really buying this point. (It's a myth, too, that critics get everything for free. But even if they did, a reverse phenomenon might be when someone spends money on an album, and feels the need to convince themeselves it's good because they don't want to feel foolish for having made that financial decision. I know, in my own case, I'm usually more likely to overrate a record that I've actually have a vested interest in -- i.e., I paid for it -- that one I got for free. Not that I don't frequently overrate -- and maybe even underrate -- plenty of those, too,)

Aaargh.... That wasn't an answer to curmudgeon; it was an answer to this:

when you don't have to pay suddenly all kinds of stuff sounds pretty good

Critics aren't the perfect buying guide, but - provided they don't review genres they dislike - they are way better than hitlists.

C'mon, guys, realistically speaking, the Rolling Stone Record Guide(s) and Christgau's '70s Consumer Guide were obviously not the best places to look for hard rock/metal recommendations, then or now. I mean, that's what Eddy and Popoff--as well George Smith and Phil Freeman and Ian Christe and Scott Seward--were put on this Earth for, right? Stone and Xgau, on the other hand, were great for classic rock, soul and R&B recommendations when I was starting out with my "collecting" in the late '70s; and that was just fine as far as I was concerned. Xgau was also great on punk/new wave, natch (yay!); and the red RS guide had a pretty damn great jazz section, written entirely by Marsh, I believe. That was nice for a teen novice who knew virtually nothing about the seemingly alien universe of jazz. So, just because both books ended up being a good resource then, doesn't mean that I, or anyone else, has to take their respective author's edicts concerning prog, metal, fusion, etc. as the gospel truth.

that's a rather massive (and likely quite tedious) x-post, y'all

(ugh! that *yay!* was meant to follow punk/new wave, not natch.)

Discovering music with no extraneous input is a difficult proposition and one that would likely limit one's exposure to the options. I can say that self-discovery through digging is the most rewarding of pursuits but hey, this isn't my life, so getting a little help from other folks and/or other resources is necessary to round out the experience.

That being said, could it be that professional reviews are just another mechanism of the industry to keep the populace next-in-line for the latest and greatest? Lured with the promise of advanced promo material and vast arrays of free samples the "judgers of cool" are the first witnesses of the nuveau-chic (even though many don't possess the social skills to parlay it much more than finger pointing). Culture is awash in new bands and somebody needs to go through and identify the truly new ideas. But, most of what's new doesn't usurp this lofty designation and ends up being just another record. The industry keeps releasing new material so the critic just keeps adding things to list that "you have to have". Consumerism is the drive here folks; it's not art, it's not expression -- it's the industry trying desperately to move more and more copies "of same".

I'll concede that a resource like AMG is a great encyclopedic reference for timelines and details - and is accomplished in helping one discover new artists or in wading through large back-catalogues. I'll also concede that are many records that i might not have heard about if it weren't for Pitchfork (et al) and it was a particular review that defined the pathway. They're both useful - but the act of distillation is by definition also a homogenizer - so it's making our collective loaf more and more like Wonder Bread every day.

I was watching a bit of a documentary the other day that had to do with food banks and the distribution of unused and overstock grocery items to the needy. The staff at the food bank opined that while they had availability of several organic and whole grain artisan breads -- the first thing that moved off their shelves was the pre-sliced white bread (easy to use, easy to please, and almost complete devoid of any nutritional value).

So you would prefer less reviews of your favorite music because more reviews turns them by definition (you say) into devoid of nutrition white bread?

Um, again, yes the industry wants reviews to help them sell their product (this is nothing new). And you/me the reader (or writer) makes up our mind about whether the review is interesting to us intellectually and to a decision on whether or not to buy something.

The initial notion of "not moving beyond the Best New Music section of Pitchfork" is the "yeast of ingredients".

Let them eat cake you mean?

Are faves in the once a month Pitchfork dancehall column (and other once a month type columns they used/still? have) ever reflected in the Best New Music section of Pitchfork?

Or brioche.

>The best critics barely put across what their own opinion of a record is, they merely tell you what it sounds like. IMHO.

Did everyone else read this sentence and find that it made perfect sense to them? Because it passed without comment, and I find it almost lobotomizingly bizarre.

More like everyone here shook their head in wonderment and left it at that, I would think.

stylistic differences

In newspaper music journalism, that means almost no difference at all.

When they bow to straight-features writing in service to the schedule-for-this-week standard, they do material that's indistinguishable, particularly if you're a reader who doesn't care about the particular identities of the critic. One of the better examples was the LAT's and NYT's coverage of the Dixie Chicks' last album, about a year and a half ago. They read like they'd been through the Chicks' p.r. queue at almost exactly the same time.

Earlier this year, their Miranda Lambert pieces were functionally indistinguishable. The NYTimes piece was done by a staffer, the LAT's -- a free-lancer. However, it wasn't just exclusive to those papers. The newspaper journo corps largely ALL printed identical pieces, almost all at the same time, which read from Lambert's publicity script.

I wrote about this years ago when I first put up dd.com, which would be just about seven or eight years ago. You can use a Lexis search to show how music journalists at newspapers usually write about the same subjects, at the same time, identically, always using what easy p.r. scripts fall to hand. Some of it is the nature of newspaper writing. But much more of it is just lazy. Sometimes it pretends to be consumer journalism, a tip sheet or a buyer's guide. Most of the time, it is not.

The LA Times USED to run Robert Hilburn's 50-dollar guide about once a month. Regardless of what one thought of Hilburn, it was a serious and regular feature aimed at being a tip shit with an eye toward your wallet. When Hilburn was retired, the section shitcanned it, although he continues to contribute as a free-lancer.

realistically speaking, the Rolling Stone Record Guide(s) and Christgau's '70s Consumer Guide were obviously not the best places to look for hard rock/metal recommendations, then or now

At that time they were indeed the only places you could see a great number of records listed and rated in a book form. And it's acceptable to make choices based on the words of a critic who reliably has tastes which run exactly opposite to yours. That is, in these cases, if they admired a certain piece of hard rock, they liked it for reasons which no one who actually liked hard rock would care about. However, if they detested something, often the things which inspired loathing were just what the average buyer was looking for.

He's right most of Christgau's attempts to write about metal/hard rock acts are embarrassing. My take is, if the guy can make an absolute fool out of himself denigrating a band I like (see, e.g., his retarded Black Sabbath reviews), then maybe I should seek out the shit he disses.

Yeah, that's true about those books being pretty much all that was available at the time for hardcore record collecting geeks. Still, I'd say most of the hard rock guys I knew back then were far more likely to be reading Hit Parader, or Circus, or even Creem for a heads-up, rather than RS or Xgau. But yeah, I can also remember getting that red RS guide and thinking wtf about their Purple and Sabbath and Nazareth reviews, sure. Just never realized at the time that anyone would use their reviews in the negative as a way of making informed buying decisions. That's kind of facinating really when you think of it. I wonder how widespread that activity was among post-boomer kids?

xp

Oh yeah, much as I respect his opinions, I admit that he's toatally clueless when it comes to metal. Not that he or any other critic really needs to know everything about every mucic genre ever, y'know.

x-post

Gorge, I read your Miranda Lambert argument on Rolling Country and I am still not sure I agree that everyone is just rewriting press releases argument. Sometimes what is in the press release may be worthy. The Miranda from a small town thing may be worthy of coverage even if it is in a press release (and even if you, Gorge, got out of a small Pennsylvania town and moved to Los Angeles and are cynical about small town theories). On the other hand, I am on record as complaining about how few African and latino records get reviewed, so to a certain degree I can see your point regarding your examination of what is reviewed nationwide. But you also have to factor in the role of editors, the music biz, radio,class, the cultural divide, etc.

When they bow to straight-features writing in service to the schedule-for-this-week standard, they do material that's indistinguishable, particularly if you're a reader who doesn't care about the particular identities of the critic. -Gorge

The New York Times also has a Sunday "Playlist" with various Times writers and others(including musicians) listing what they are listening to. This sometimes goes beyond "schedule of the week." Is the NY Times or LA Times obligated to cover Radiohead or Springsteen? Maybe not, but wouldn't they say that ignoring them would be like oh, ignoring Gore's Peace Prize, or even just like ignoring the release of a Harry Potter movie or something? Also since you want the the NY Times and LA Times reviews to be so completely different from one another so even someone who doesn't know Powers from Sanneh can see the difference, well you'll have to issue the memo telling the NY Times to review the cd based on the artwork, while the LA Times will have to do so based just on the liner notes, I guess.

Maybe not, but wouldn't they say that ignoring them would be like oh, ignoring Gore's Peace Prize

Harry Potter movies and Springsteen records are entertainments which one pays for, perhaps somewhat less so for a Springsteen record. The yearly batch of Nobel prizes are not entertainments.

Plus, if we get away from a celebrity like Al Gore for a moment and consider what Nobel prizes are primarily about, it takes more than a standard schedule-of-the-week piece of music news journalism to describe why the various scientists who won them last week - uh, won them, than it does to review Radiohead's new record.

Also since you want the the NY Times and LA Times reviews to be so completely different

Heh. No I don't. I don't subscribe to these newspapers because of the features section. However, I do read them along with the rest of the papers. My best friend, who works at the LAT and who copy-edited me for many years, sees no distinctions in music writing at newspapers, something she has reminded me off and on of for over ten years when I've pointed various things out to her.

Our opinions vary. This is not so novel.

I have several friends who years ago used the Red RS Guide as others have stated. It led to some great discoveries, but also to too many Bloodrock albums...so it's always dicey...