New Christgau Consumer Guide From MSN Music

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I think all prominent indie outlets would have been too terrified to talk shit about Ys, its momentum was pretty fearsome

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:15 (seventeen years ago) link

is there anything he doesnt like?!

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:15 (seventeen years ago) link

Stylus' positive review betrays a considerable ambivalence.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:17 (seventeen years ago) link

That Stylus review is evidence of why letter grades suck. At best (say, with most xgau), they're just redundant. At worst, they're a cheap way to imply a value you weren't able to argue for with actual words.

― Zwan (miccio), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:22 (seventeen years ago) link

all this talk almost makes me want to hear the newsom album. almost. some people had problems with fiery furnaces in the same way, no? 2nd album full of long-ass prog experiments. (i really liked that blueberry boat. never liked anything else half as much though. or played anything half as much.)

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:23 (seventeen years ago) link

nothing i've read makes me want to hear that tv on the radio album though. and i kinda liked that katrina/dubya song they had on the internet.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:24 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm really embarassed that Xgau felt the need to quote "I was a lover before the war." Did ANYBODY'S review not quote that fucking line?!

― Zwan (miccio), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:26 (seventeen years ago) link

his TVOTR review is actually really good. one of the best and most succint. the last line is especially OTM. mostly this sums up the record a bit too easily though - "I filed this under overwrought"

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:27 (seventeen years ago) link

I think with Xgau they're often almost an instrumental flourish, to strain a metaphor - if you read his stuff out loud and say the letter grade at the end, it puts a cap on the thing, like a more weighted "The End." Otherwise co-sign completely in re: both letter & number grades, they've been unhealthy for crit in general & I'm happy that the only place you see 'em in book reviews is in fucking People, which is exactly where they belong

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:31 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm really embarassed that Xgau felt the need to quote "I was a lover before the war." Did ANYBODY'S review not quote that fucking line?!

This makes me realize that I've never actually read a review of the album before Christgau's! At least I don't think I have. I was almost going to say that he really goes out of his way to squeeze a vague art-rock square peg into an un-vague political protest hole to justify PBS-style his not disliking it as much as he did their debut, but then I re-read the review and Bob really does make a case for it as a protest record of sorts. Not that that makes me remotely more interested in going back and listening to the thing again.

― xhuxk (xhuck), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:35 (seventeen years ago) link

When he read some CGs out loud at a reading last year, he'd often forget to throw in the grades. Most of the time they had plenty of flourish and finality without them, and in the cases where they didn't, the ambiguity was more honest and welcome for it.

x-post I'm glad he admits that a lot of the appeal is that its prettier. But yeah, political acknowledgement can be an easy bump to A- for him.

― Zwan (miccio), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:39 (seventeen years ago) link

And if Peter Gabriel opened his next album with that line, Xgau'd give it a big raspberry.

― Zwan (miccio), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:42 (seventeen years ago) link

well yes because it would be on a Peter Gabriel album

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:57 (seventeen years ago) link

since when was it not a Peter Gabriel album?

― Matos W.K., Wednesday, 21 February 2007 20:13 (seventeen years ago) link

OMG his Newsom pan offends me mostly by presuming that I haven't already spent FOUR WHOLE UNDERGRAD MONTHS reading, re-reading, and writing several papers about The Faerie Queen.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Other than that, I don't think it's necessary to read any kind of buyer's remorse into this: it sounds like he enjoyed the first one, but found the new one overblown and self-important. The "original vs. worth doing" thing might be less about Newsom's style and more about the decision to do a grand suite with these conceits and this structure -- I mean, he suggests here that her songs should be simpler, which gets at the main difference between this album and the debut.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:17 (seventeen years ago) link

i love this sentence:
"Supposedly inspired by milestones in Newsom's life, these whimsical pastoral allegories reveal only that her taste for the antique is out of control."

but i disagree and have to ask what is so bad about having out of control taste for anything? i get how it jibes with the opening sentence, but it's a rather conservative position to take. also it probably wouldn't be too difficult to frame beyonce in the same way, but beyonce doesn't get that treatment because she isn't indie?

josh. (disco stu) on Sunday, 11 February 2007 04:58

He focused, like all critics do, on one observation in order to dismiss the album.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto) on Sunday, 11 February 2007 05:01

That sentence struck me as conservative as well.

― Tim Ellison, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:23 (seventeen years ago) link

[i]When he read some CGs out loud at a reading last year[i]

the coffeehouse audience snapped their fingers and somebody shouted "go man go"

― m coleman, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:39 (seventeen years ago) link

I mean, as Ray Manzarek once said, "The whole thing started with rock and roll (and) now it's out of control."

― Tim Ellison, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:42 (seventeen years ago) link

Best Peter Gabriel album ever.

X-post obviously.

― JN$OT, Thursday, 22 February 2007 16:01 (seventeen years ago) link

The distracting sense privilege is precisely what keeps me from opera and classical music. I mean, as if! Fucking white, over-educated blue bloods and their expensive instruments. Go back to the conservatory and unlearn that shit. And while you’re at it, pick up the new Clipse album, “Genius of Modern Music” and that Freedy Johnson album to learn how to keep it real.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 22 February 2007 17:04 (seventeen years ago) link

Johnston, even.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 22 February 2007 17:04 (seventeen years ago) link

As a nod to Christgau's New Journalism start, I will henceforth refer to the Consumer Guide as Paracriticism.

― nabisco, Thursday, 22 February 2007 18:30 (seventeen years ago) link

one month passes...

http://music.msn.com/music/consumerguide

A+ for Arcade Fire?? didn't see that coming

― gershy, Friday, 20 April 2007 22:37 (seventeen years ago) link

7L & Esoteric: 'A New Dope' (Babygrande)

A minus

!!!

― deej, Friday, 20 April 2007 22:41 (seventeen years ago) link

one month passes...

new one out
http://music.msn.com/music/consumerguide

OH SNAP! paris goes to jail, then gets a "dud" from xgau

(i feel his reviews are somehow less predictable now that he's on msn - not sure why.....)

― gershy, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 04:32 (sixteen years ago) link

The column seems more shallow this time around - not as densely layered. And is there really so little new music that he needs to review Girl Talk and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah?

― Mordechai Shinefield, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 05:51 (sixteen years ago) link

I wish he tied the idea that the Girl Talk album is oppressive more to its never coalescing into something deeper rather than its proving filthy rappers are bloody good fun. And even more than that to the fact that Night Ripper is a mash-up album with all the significance and longevity that implies.

I top tened this record but with reservations. Something about it always disturbed me. And Xgau's review has now lead me to figure out why (however unwittingly). The obviousness of the samples only underlines our inability to escape information-as-commodity or at least to step outside of it (to whatever extent), perhaps even to make something, well, deep of it. This never bugged me with "The Payoff Mix" or DJ Shadow or The Best Bootlegs in the World Ever (though I never got what The Avalanches were doing) because mixology was never a career option for Double Dee & Steinski and because Shadow did something fathomless with his samples and because the mash-uppers on Best Bootlegs were so anyonymous and most of the song one-offs. But mixology IS a career option for Greg Gillis whose name is displayed in the review and whose face is displayed on the CD (or one of them, I forget). And I fear that no matter how much is renown increases, we'll never get to know who he really is which means we'll never get to know where HE stands in relation to his samples which means we won't discover a new, inventive relationship with information. Which means I may be transforming from a pomo yaysayer to a modernist crank.

― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 08:01 (sixteen years ago) link

how much HIS renown increases...

― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 08:17 (sixteen years ago) link

seven months pass...

The 2006 Dean's List

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/deans07.php

― The guy who just votes in polls, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:16 (sixteen years ago) link

Um, he dug the Burial album? I'm stunned. Is there a review anywhere?

― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:18 (sixteen years ago) link

Yeah, I was surprised, too. I best it will be reviewed in Feb's MSN Consumer Guide.

― The guy who just votes in polls, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:20 (sixteen years ago) link

I bet

― The guy who just votes in polls, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:21 (sixteen years ago) link

45. Daft Punk: Live 2007 (Virgin)

!!!

― Matos W.K., Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:22 (sixteen years ago) link

ditto. i guess i'm allowed to own that shit now.

― gabbneb, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:23 (sixteen years ago) link

No Age, too. Great record.

― kornrulez6969, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:23 (sixteen years ago) link

Goddamn that's a shitty list

― Bill Magill, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:41 (sixteen years ago) link

lol on Lucinda Williams, a permanent member of his Unimpeachable Canon.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:47 (sixteen years ago) link

I'd be hard pressed to come up with 10 albums on that list that I enjoy.

― stephen, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:54 (sixteen years ago) link

lol on Lucinda Williams, a permanent member of his Unimpeachable Canon.

who made a really pretty good album with a great single on it

― gabbneb, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:56 (sixteen years ago) link

Yeah, but still, that list blows.

― Bill Magill, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 19:59 (sixteen years ago) link

Lil Wayne: The Carter 3 (Purloined Datadisc)

lol

― Alex in Baltimore, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 20:15 (sixteen years ago) link

http://www.dickdestiny.com/nomorepeas.jpg

Please Mommy, stop reading teh Christgau to me!

― Gorge, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 22:57 (sixteen years ago) link

That's how I felt after going to Christgau's website (1996 graphics and all) and checking his Sabbath reviews on the archive. This guy gets paid for this shit?

― Bill Magill, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 22:59 (sixteen years ago) link

http://image.blingee.com/images15/content/output/000/000/000/2a0/33828693_860182.gif

― omar little, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 23:17 (sixteen years ago) link

2006? am i missing something?

― pshrbrn, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 23:18 (sixteen years ago) link

Lil Wayne: The Carter 3 (Purloined Datadisc)

lol + o_O

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 23:19 (sixteen years ago) link

2006? am i missing something?

yeah, a typo

― Matos W.K., Tuesday, 29 January 2008 23:23 (sixteen years ago) link

Lil Wayne: The Carter 3 (Purloined Datadisc)

lol + o_O

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, January 29, 2008 5:19 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^sfj's #1 of the year

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, 29 January 2008 23:25 (sixteen years ago) link

i mean he didn't even bother saying like "bootleg" or something

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, 29 January 2008 23:26 (sixteen years ago) link

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