New Christgau Consumer Guide From MSN Music

yeah, i noticed the getting weirder part too, which i think was part of what put me off her

i'm kinda disappointed xgau didn't uncharacteristically laud technical skill - i was all set with my petitions on behalf of mariah carey and the indigo girls and hair metal

any artist that has ever personally criticized him is honored with As to A-s for life

Who else beside Lou Reed? He also likes artists who are married. But yeah, he is one of the greats.

Whoops, make believe those are italics, not a hot link.

Sonic Youth have gotten a lot of good reviews from him, but didn't start getting consistent A's for every album until about 5 years after "I Killed Christgau With My Big Fuckin' Dick."

i.e. when they started improving.

Except after that, they stopped improving. And he kept giving them A's anyway. (Of course, he wouldn't agree that they stopped improving.)

Either way, I think there are enough differing opinions about SY's catalog that it's not fair to just say "of course Sister was the first album that got an A, they weren't very good until then."

Also, I think Xgau started liking Pavement/Malkmus more after they gave him a coded shout-out on "Embassy Row":

Old intuition, on your dock we’re fishin’,
Come on now, give us a grade,
A for effort, and a B for delivery,
C for devotion, when the world starts encroaching on your plans.
Where is the savoir, where is the savoir -- he’s not here right now.
Where is the savoir, where is the savoir-faire?

I don't think that necessarily refers to him, and the grades seem to have worsened after it

http://image.listen.com/img/170x170/8/2/7/9/279728_170x170.jpg
You believe it or not
I wanted to play football for The Dean

I think the Xgau interpretation is most likely. And, fwiw, the albums worsened after that - but Malkmus is still getting consistently favorable Xgau reviews for his wilderness-years solo career.

xpost

i don't know the solo stuff so can't judge how much the falloff, but he's getting honorable mentions to A-'s rather than consistent A's with a few A-'s

I just think that the B+'s and A-'s now, for a solo career that is increasingly ignored by other critics, stand out more than A to A-'s did for a band that was a widely-hailed critical darling. Perhaps it just shows Xgau's loyalty.

I don't think Xgau does much following of other critics

That SOTL review kind of sums up much of what I like, dislike, and find puzzling about him. The first sentence is classic. The review (like his AFI review) basically summarizes what I like about an album he doesn't (though I don't think it's their best in this case). Then he ends with a snide quip, indicating that it's not his cup of tea.

Holy shit, I just noticed that Nine Inch Nails is on his list!

(I admire the eclecticism of his list. I'm mildly curious, though, whether he's even still writing for an audience that's bigger than the kind of people who read this board. Are there a lot of people out there going "Holy shit, I better pick up Nigeria Special, Fountains of Wayne, a new Public Enemy album, Girl Talk, and Los Campesinas!"? For this, he's classic.)

(Actually, the SOTL review is completely readable as straightforward grammatical English so it doesn't sum up the things I dislike about him.

I don't think Xgau does much following of other critics

-- gabbneb, Friday, February 1, 2008 1:56 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Really? It seems to me like a whole lot of what he writes about records is in reaction to what other critics have already said (or at least about whether it's generally been getting good or negative reviews).

The SOTL review would surely seem to suggest that.

Really? It seems to me like a whole lot of what he writes about records is in reaction to what other critics have already said

What I said (i.e., I mean "following" in the sense of tuning opinions to, rather than keeping up with)

xp

Depends what you mean by "following." He's obviously very curious about what other critics are saying (hell, he ran a critics poll for a few decades and wrote a lengthy essay about it every year, and he quotes or refers to plenty of critics all through that Consumer Guide), and he's pretty meticulous about keeping up with most of the albums that score in the Pazz & Jop (and now Idolator) polls (and on metacritic, apparently.) So he's certainly not oblivious to what other critics are saying; far from it.

or maybe I misunderstood that nate meant that the sum of other critical opinion might be more likely to be correct than xgau, a thought that would never occur to me

He's stated in the past that he reviews albums that he's missed that charted in P&J. I think he likes to correct the balance on albums that he feels are unfairly maligned or praised at the time of these year-end things.

One of his good qualities is that he is not a bandwagon-jumper. He also seems willing to seek out the new work of artists he's liked in the past, regardless of their current status in the music world.

it seems to me that he mentions critical responses to albums more than most critics and i think it has a lot to do with the fact that he doesn't have any deadlines for reviewing things for the consumer guide so he's constantly reviewing things that have been through their critical cycle

The A-list perennials that have complained about his shizz include Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Public Enemy (that whole thing with tate) and Sleater-Kinney (Corin Tucker evidently wrote to him taking offense at some reference to kiss-blowing during an early show or something). I think I heard Billy Joel used to read one of his reviews on stage and then tear it up, so there's the exception that proves the rule.

Supposedly Michael Gira sent the dude some spooge in an envelope, and oddly Xgau has ignored his career ever since 1984, when the Swans got a B+ (putting them above SY at the time!).

I feel like lately he's been really overrating a lot of Hip Hop.

1. Hip Hop is Dead
2. Kingdom Come
3. 8 Diagrams
4. Curtis

Were all overrated by him in my opinion.

Also, I didn't hear Soulja Boy's whole album, but was that really an A-?

Once saw the Tuff Darts dedicate "Slash" to his mother. I don't think it helped their career much, though in fairness they never put out another album. Not until recently anyway. Sadly their guitarist just passed away of a heart attack.

I guess the rule is if you're gonna complain you ought to at least be funny about it.

"I didn't hear Soulja Boy's whole album, but was that really an A-?"

YAHHH TRICK YAHHH!!!!!

he was so exquisitely RONG about sonic youth at first, all the subsequent A's seem like over-compensation.

RONG!

And Soulja Boy deserves an A.

I feel like lately he's been really overrating a lot of Hip Hop.

1. Hip Hop is Dead
2. Kingdom Come
3. 8 Diagrams
4. Curtis

Were all overrated by him in my opinion.

Also, I didn't hear Soulja Boy's whole album, but was that really an A-?

-- Colin_C., Friday, February 1, 2008 9:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

was definitely better than the other four you mention

Ok deej David Drake

uh, wasn't Curtis his Dud Of The Month?

and didn't he give Kingdom Come merely an honorable mention? Which yeah, is overrating it, but its not like he gave it a rave.

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=kingdom+come

a humongous abstraction perfect for flattening the medulla oblongata

haha - he could be talking about Kingdom Come!

All of those albums I listed, I can't even listen to all the way through due to the terrible beats and in many cases terrible rapping.

Most of them shouldn't have been anywhere close to Honorable mention or even B, let alone A- status.

He gave Kingdom Come the same grade as Reasonable Doubt!

I feel like his grades have been inflated lately.

I'm sorry, he gave Kingdom Come the same grade as Illmatic and a better grade than Reasonable Doubt!

www.robertchristgau.com

I don't know maybe I'm trippin.

I'm listenin to Kingdom Come via Youtube and I'm actually enjoying it.

http://www.najp.org/articles/

Okay, rock critics of ILM, post your heights.

Haha he's got a point, the shortest I've ever felt was the one time I hung out with Tom and Jess at the same time, since I'm only just a little over 6 feet tall (I think Tom is actually more like 6'11" than what Christgau guessed).

I'm 6'4" and am so not used to being around people taller than me (always was the tallest kid in class from kindergarden through high school) that I almost have a bit of a phobia about it. Obviously picked the wrong scene to roll with.

Yeah, try having a conversation with both Tom and Jim Breihan, and you feel like a speck.

I thought about trying to get a rock crit basketball team together when I move to NY but now I'm worried I'd wind up the sixth man or something.

LOLZ at "unless Harvell is checking in electronically from his native B'More"

native!