Lana Del Rey

hey, she was ahead of her time. in more ways than one.

Video Games (video game version)

pitchfork

i don't agree that you can 'just' discuss the music, because the music is approximating feelings & ideas & concepts that are entirely context-dependent. Sorry dudes

but i know you know what we mean when we contrast "discussing the music" with discussion personae, critical reaction, "is she indie?" and all that other stuff.

the real problem is that talking about music requires somewhat specialized knowledge and training and stuff and for some reason almost NO rock critics bother with that stuff. while somehow there are many (not most, but many) film critics that have some understanding of how to analyze film, how it's made etc.

xpot

wot DJP said

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Sunday, January 29, 2012 7:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i don't care about 'is she indie' but on what planet does persona not enter into the reception of 'the music'? you can't just dissociate them like that

I guess the argument would be that those things - feelings, concepts, and matters of personality - are all a part of the music. A writer may deal with those aspects in specific relation to the music or more abstractly.

pitchfork

― encarta it (Gukbe), Monday, January 30, 2012 8:04 AM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Pitchfork otm

i already said that you can't "purely" talk about the music, and surely questions of personality and persona are part of the music. and frankly i don't think her music is worth discussing, so i couldn't give a care what people write about LDR. but in general people skip over some basic musical things -- like the kind of instrumentation, the overall formal shape of a piece, just like, you know, WHAT IT IS DOING MUSICALLY, in a concrete and describable sense (and as DJP points out, lots of people write all kinds of stuff about this sort of thing, usually w/r/t to classical or jazz music)... people skip over this to the stuff that's easier to write about, that doesn't require specialized knowledge or terminology. but a lot of the "impressions" and "associations" that people love to discuss endlessly are founded on some basic formal patterns in the music, which most critics will barely broach.

i'm not saying that critics SHOULDN'T write about persona, marketing, etc. etc., but in rock criticism the amount of real or virtual ink expended on these "broader," sometimes more nebulous aspects dwarfs the amount of ink used to discuss the formal qualities of the music by a million zillion times. so when i say i wish music criticism (or scholarship) discussed "the music" more, i mean i just wish there was a bit more space for formal analysis in the discussion of popular music. well, a lot more space.

i think rock critics have gotten very good--too good even--at talking about certain things, and are generally very very bad at talking about other things. sometimes i think they've basically expended certain familiar concepts, and now we repeat the same discussions over and over and over (see above) while this whole other realm just sits there waiting to be discussed and analyzed in sophisticated, careful, rigorous terms.

again i could give a shit about LDR--her music seems terminally boring, although i'm sure someone could parse it in ways that would be somewhat interesting. but i'm making a larger point, one i've made before. obviously aside from dan and a few other folks i haven't won any converts, and indeed some folks (chuck eddy IIRC) seemed to take personal offense at the idea that rock criticism could or should be something other than what it is at present. oh well.

i think rock critics have gotten very good--too good even--at talking about certain things, and are generally very very bad at talking about other things. sometimes i think they've basically expended certain familiar concepts, and now we repeat the same discussions over and over and over (see above) while this whole other realm just sits there waiting to be discussed and analyzed in sophisticated, careful, rigorous terms.

I think I said as much when you actually were running with this crusade amateurist, but IMO it's important not to make this into an either/or between blog writing and musicology.

Music criticism should reflect (though not passively or reflexively) what music is used for and how it's used, and this encompasses both of those things, but more importantly encompasses their subtle intertwinings, and many other things besides - most crucially, for me, how certain sounds or modes of performance have connotative or associative qualities that matter (for the creator, for the listener, for the dancer, etc.) in ways that cannot be captured by traditional music theory alone.

i don't care about 'is she indie' but on what planet does persona not enter into the reception of 'the music'?

when you don't know about persona? it's impt to distinguish between the persona that's conveyed in the song and the persona that's conveyed by all the stuff around it.

lex Tim F and deej chin stroking about the role of music journalism... i give this topic six, maybe seven posts tops

grady stop picking at old weeknd scabs, you'll never heal otherwise.

Music criticism should reflect (though not passively or reflexively) what music is used for and how it's used, and this encompasses both of those things, but more importantly encompasses their subtle intertwinings, and many other things besides - most crucially, for me, how certain sounds or modes of performance have connotative or associative qualities that matter (for the creator, for the listener, for the dancer, etc.) in ways that cannot be captured by traditional music theory alone.

― Tim F, Monday, January 30, 2012 3:08 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well sure yeah, but in criticism one side of the equation is like infinitely larger than the other. i'm not asking music criticism to become "traditional music theory" (TBQH there IS little "traditional music theory" when it comes to pop music, it would have to built up from aspects of music theory as its been developed for other kinds of music) -- just that pop music criticism and scholarship do a bit more musical analysis. a lot more. which wouldn't take much, because as i see it, music criticism is basically allergic to this sort of thing with very few exceptions.

to put this another way, let me parse this nice phrase: how certain sounds or modes of performance have connotative or associative qualities that matter

rock critics have become too good at describing "connotative or associative qualities." what they can't do so well is isolate and break down into parts "sounds or modes of performance" and suggest how they function in terms of patterns of expectation and surprise, etc. critics get very vague when it comes to this stuff. just see above. there are maybe two posts in this whole thread that actually try to describe the formal properties of the music as opposed to analyzing lyrics or describing the holistic persona/vibe/etc. that seems to emerge from the music (at least for some).

i mean i'm the first to say that i'm not qualified to write the sort of pop music criticism i want to read. but jesus god most pop music criticism is boring -- just an endless retread of the same clichés, the same debates.

i dont really understand what it is you're looking for music crit to do, specifically

break down into parts "sounds or modes of performance" and suggest how they function in terms of patterns of expectation and surprise, etc. critics get very vague when it comes to this stuff.

like, i think this is a very vague description of this stuff

Presumably he wants more on how the voice, structure, arrangement etc work. You can say a lot about all those things in, say, Video Games without getting into listing the chords.

to me, in my experience, the main problem i have with amateur critics i read is that they don't make the connections between the descriptive and how the things they describe make the music 'work' or what the role of those particular aspects of the song are for the listener. So I don't really see too many music writers ignoring 'how the music sounds' at all

so, say, talking about a song's textures without indicating what the cumulative effect of those textures is for someone hearing them, without making it clear why they're bringing up a description of those textures. Because no one needs a straight description when they can listen to the piece on its own. Instead, the writing I'm most interested in is highlighting things about the music that make it worth paying attention to, worth pulling from the tremendous cloud of Other Music That Exists

i don't really know how increased attention to why the artist did or did not use a sus chord is really necessary

although actually, if an artist is using sus chords to imitate a weather broadcast that might be a relevant thing to bring up

Presumably he wants more on how the voice, structure, arrangement etc work. You can say a lot about all those things in, say, Video Games without getting into listing the chords.

― Meme Rogers (DL), Monday, January 30, 2012 3:55 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is this really something rare in music crit? i feel like i read descriptions of 'swelling string sections' and such all the time

xxxxxx...post

good question. "swelling string sections" is an extremely general and vague description of something that could sound like a lot of things and have a lot of different effects. "swelling" seems to mean either or both: (1) increasing numbers of string instruments in the arrangement; (2) certain number of string instruments increasing in volume. that doesn't say a lot. at all. if you don't realize that, then you--and myself, to a great extent-- are symptomatic of the problem (which i'd characterize as a kind of musical illiteracy).

my main point is that we need better ways of describing this stuff. more precise ways. richer description, with more concepts and words.

let me answer w/ an example....

this is really basic stuff and not amazing but it's what i could easily access in a few seconds. here's an analysis of a song from mahler's kindertotenlieder. it's not groundbreaking, it's not particularly novel or even all that rigorous in its musical analysis, but it's something that rock criticism rarely does:

http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/mahler/kindertotenlieder/ktl3.php

an excerpt:

Wenn dein Mütterlein – When thy Mother dear – is the only song specifically about Rückert's daughter. In fact, as we have seen, it is the only song that is about one specific child; the others are about both children or either child. The song states its intentions with the very first line (even if you don't speak German, say these words to yourself, with a heavy step): Wenn dein Mütterlein / Tritt zur Tür herein. Note the simple but effective rhyming of Mütterlein and herein; we'll see an even more effective rhyming at the end of the song. The action of the mother – walking – Mahler portrays by pizzicato bass notes and a steady tread. She appears at the door, and the father sings. But when he does, we are faced again with the awful truth. Most of us know what this first verse is about: When the mother enters the room, the father looks not at her, but where his daughter's face would have been, bright with joy. Starting on a low G, the parent sings two identical upward lines, coming back down to rest on D. The next two identical lines start on middle G and proceed down, coming to a devastating halt on the same D. This upward and downward motion conveys the parent's listless, restless (rest-less!) pacing across their now silent room. But there's much more. Mahler constantly changes time signatures so that the feeling of aimlessness is even more pronounced. In the seventy bars of music there are over twenty changes of time (Henry-Louis de La Grange for sure counted them, but I just can't find the notation). Russell calls this song the most symmetrical in the whole cycle: Not only is it strophic, but "In each stanza an orchestral introduction in 4/4 time is followed by a vocal section in which 3/2 time alternates with 4/4 time." But combined with the steady tread of the cellos, the effect of the alternation is downright disorienting.

i mean i want to know HOW robert wyatt's "sea song" makes me FEEL, or at least why it captures and retains my attention. or indeed why LDR doesn't do this at all.

and the answer isn't just that the wyatt sounds "melancholy" or has a "swelling mellotron" or something. which is nearly as far as rock criticism will usually go in describing a piece of music. perhaps they would try to convey the dynamics of the song in a metaphorical way, which is valid. but it is still imprecise.

I can see the strength of that kind of criticism but I think it's alienating to most readers.

On another note…

P!tchf0rk prediction?

8.1

― piscesx, Thursday, January 26, 2012 5:08 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

5.9

― Meme Rogers (DL), Thursday, January 26, 2012 5:14 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Lana Del Rey
Born to Die
Interscope; 2012
By
Lindsay Zoladz
January 30, 2012
5.5

Because Rob was first? And the format wasn't hackneyed at that time?

Except that most pop music (wide definition of the term here) is not really complex enough to make that kind of analysis particularly interesting or appealing or worthwhile, certainly not as far as LDR is concerned.

Actually if critics did care about this stuff as much as the care about other things it would have completely altered the underlying structure of pop music decades ago.

Except that most pop music (wide definition of the term here) is not really complex enough to make that kind of analysis particularly interesting or appealing or worthwhile, certainly not as far as LDR is concerned.

i very very strongly disagree. good pop music isn't "simple", it's just complex in different ways from the mahler. i sincerely believe that. i'd read a formal analysis of the cookies' "take good care of my baby" as soon as i'd read an analysis of the kindertotenlieder. it's just that nobody wants to write the former!!!

as for LDR, yeah, i imagine any analysis would be pretty concise. and might have to explain to me how it is so fucking boring. :)

I think this is done all the time in dance music writing, it just doesn't resemble traditional musicology.

That's why I was surprised by shakey's quote.

Heaps of dance music criticism gets very specific about the rhythmic effects, the production techniques, the kind of synthesisers used, the deliberate use of bpms etc. etc.

tim, can you point me to an example. i don't read dance music writing. that sounds exciting TBH. dance music fans seem more amenable to thinking about their favorite genre in formal terms.

to follow up on previous post, i'd read in a heartbeat an essay that simply described and analyze how the different melodies and counter-melodies in "cry me a river" (the j.t./timbaland record) thread through the record, and how they provide patterns of sameness and difference, convergence and divergence, etc. our brains enjoy a pop song's complex mix of familiarity and newness, and describing how that works in a dynamic process over 3 or 4 minutes is a totally admirable and worthy endeavor. that nobody seems interested in doing. :(

Do you think that's because most people aren't interested in reading it? Not being snarky - it just seems like a niche approach.

And growing up I found a lot of that criticism afflicted by what I would call an emotive paucity, excellent descriptions of what the music sounded like and in one sense how it functions, but so myopically focused that it failed or never bothered to connected that functioning to bigger picture concerns in any manner beyond the rote.

xx-post - it's not really that exciting most of the time!

that nobody seems interested in doing. :(

isn't it more that few rock critics have the skills to do it?

i'd be totally interested in reading essays from that perspective - as i've said before here, even offhand comments along those lines on sundry pop songs from people like DJP or K8 can be v enlightening.

i don't have anything like the background or training for it but even my very very basic knowledge of music theory seems to be more than a lot of rock critics - the number of times i see musical terms misused, ouch.

Do you think that's because most people aren't interested in reading it? Not being snarky - it just seems like a niche approach.

i don't know about that! i've never heard that mahler piece but the para amateurist quoted immediately made me want to.

as tim said taking this approach doesn't have to mean taking this approach exclusively.

many xposts

lex, exactly -- few are qualified to do it. and thanks for making my point for me: i'm not asking that everybody do this sort of thing. just that it would be kind of useful and fun to have it as part of the dialogue. to open up a little space in pop music criticism for formal analysis (and not just fleeting observations but reasonably sustained analysis).

And growing up I found a lot of that criticism afflicted by what I would call an emotive paucity, excellent descriptions of what the music sounded like and in one sense how it functions, but so myopically focused that it failed or never bothered to connected that functioning to bigger picture concerns in any manner beyond the rote.

well yeah that's terribly hard to do. we know so little about how and why music affects us emotionally. few people attempt to write about this let alone succeed. however musicologists have been trying. starting with the great leonard meyer. i don't think it's impossible. and even if you don't make the leap to emotion, there's a lot of interest (to me anyway) in just breaking down ... or reverse engineering, if you will ... the music and its formal patterning.

but yeah even within the academy this sort of thing is a niche. traditional musicologists aren't much interested in popular music, and those writing about popular music (aside from ethnomusicologists) are largely interested in pop music as a social phenomenon.

so maybe not many people want to read it. but that strikes me as a shame and probably symptomatic of what's traditionally been on offer. again, i'm not asking for a wholesale transformation in how pop music criticism is written, just a little space for something different.

Makes me think of this piece:

http://rougesfoam.blogspot.com/2009/06/loving-wonky.html

btw this book is not light reading but it is crazy awesome: http://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Meaning-Music-Phoenix-Books/dp/0226521397

there are a few books that have followed in its wake; just check the "people also bought..." list on the amazon page.

Of course this remains the gold standard for me:

http://www.garagemusic.co.uk/2step.html

I think as well that with a lot of today's music the good music criticism has already absorbed or created its own equivalent of formalist music criticism and anything more comes at the risk of being misapplied: rap of course is all about the grain of the voice, the texture of words and their juxtaposition and all those other things that get wrapped up in the idea of "flow" - "wrapped up", but also frequently unwrapped and broken down and debated in minutiae by fans as well as critics. e.g. to use an ILX home grown example, deej and jordan's 30 best gucci mane tracks of 2008.

for me at least, the dance music equivalent of "flow" is "groove", and again I think a lot of music writing spends a huge amount of time trying to break down how this functions. I think I tend to be more allusive than formalist in my own approach but I think both methods can get you to the destination, capturing and pinpointing exactly what it is that leaps out at you and grabs hold of your heart or your hips in a way that at first seems almost beyond words.

i very very strongly disagree. good pop music isn't "simple", it's just complex in different ways from the mahler

I didn't say it was "simple", but no, 99% of pop music isn't as complex as Mahler. It doesn't really matter, because complexity is far from being the only virtue, I'm just questioning whether that level of analysis of LDR would be of interest to anyone really.

I think this guy writes about pop craft/composition in a really refreshing way: http://plaguehouse.blogspot.com/2010/08/madonnas-holiday.html and http://plaguehouse.blogspot.com/2010/11/hang-with-me-how-to-finish-song.html

Also the guy who does Pushing Ahead of the Dame frequently drops musicological science without being ostentatious or dry, eg:
http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/absolute-beginners/

i dunno amateurist, i have actually had musical training, played trumpet for somewhere around 10 yrs & took theory classes in college, but I don't really think much of that stuff is necessarily applicable. There are certain times that i enjoy knowing say what a hemiola is, or find it useful in some manner or another, but the overarching goal of writing, it's fairly marginal stuff, because you're trying to communicate ideas to people who also are unlikely to have that knowledge, and really if they don't then it's probably not that interesting of a point anyway. its like needing to know klingon in order to enjoy star trek or something

I kind of think formalist music criticism (or at least its take-up) is hindered by the preciseness of the vocabulary. The gap is too huge so why bother.

Partly thinking that because I know amateurist is coming from a film background - which has a formalist tradition that is a lot less precise/dryer than musicological formalism. See something like this: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2010/09/15/bond-vs-chan-jackie-shows-how-its-done/

My favourite reviews ever were Record Mirror's late 80s, concise-as-hell descriptions of the club tracks of the day.. many 'burbling bobblers' and 'squelchy parping' acid lines. It's easier to do this with more distinctive stuff of course.

I do hanker for some insight, especially regarding stuff I've yet to hear, as regarding 'how does this make me feel' and 'how does it make that happen'. This doesn't have to be musicological, indeed it can be pleasingly abstract and speculative, 'cause that's what you're dealing with.

waiting for pitchfork to disown lana & pan the fuck out of her album once they see light

― cuddles (the kid), Friday, September 16, 2011 11:48 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

P!tchf0rk prediction?

8.1

― piscesx, Thursday, January 26, 2012 12:08 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

5.9

― Meme Rogers (DL), Thursday, January 26, 2012 12:14 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the kid and DL get the prescience award i guess

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyk4sx8l3J1qano1po3_250.gif

never forget 01.30.12

XD

Personally I love thinking about pop music through the lens of theory/composition/arrangement/production etc. The gold standard for me is Alan W. Pollack's writing about The Beatles.

I wrote a few pieces where I tried to do the same thing -- one about Bowie's Life On Mars, one about The Zombies' Rose for Emily, and two about my own songs -- but I definitely struggled to make them accessible to a broad audience. Then again I was explicitly coming at it from the angle of compositional analysis rather than a broader "music crit" perspective.

This all just makes me think of the Beatles joking about how they were being praised for their use of aeolian cadences.

Oof on that pitchfork review. "Like a faked orgasm".

Again they mention her being critiqued on her appearance, and how i signifies sexism. Tbf, I think if a band came out that had a male who gave himself lip injections we'd hear the same kind of stuff.

But they were using aeolian cadences and it might be interesting to talk about them.

Like your Zombies analysis a lot, Steve!

@jesshopp Jessica Hopper
Funny how a lot of the Lana Del Rey review are more or less aesthetic slut-shaming, esp. when you isolate the critical phrases/language used
34 minutes ago via TweetDeck

@jesshopp Jessica Hopper
This attitude about her audacity, sexuality, trying too hard, coming on too strong, how cheap a ploy her looks/sound/lyrics are.
33 minutes ago via TweetDeck