OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

I just hate that article so much. The writer wants Grimes to be a totally different kind of musician and doesn't even once engage with the album on its own terms.

that twang review is good in an nme eating their own sort of way

the old build em up knock em down?

the twang were awful so i doubt anyone will have much sympathy

uh I don't know what is crossposting with what anymore but julianne is a really great writer who's explained that piece before and imo doesn't deserve to be mentioned with the stuff in this thread

Idk anything abt the writer. It's definitely a competently written piece i just fiercely disagree with it.

Like, i don't want to disparage this writer as a whole and god knows i appreciate the difficulty of writing criticism without overreaching in one's claims, but this particular article struck me as extremely off the mark to the point where i found myself thinking about it tonight, two years after reading it.

Julianne is a good writer sure but this piece is grossly conflating "what I'm hearing and typing" with "the axis of the author's abilities/intentions". Any discussion of Grimes sounding "infantile" has got to acknowledge that her choices on this record come from the fact that it's The Third Record That She Has (Self-)Produced. Ascribing notions of negating-self and erasing-womanness because she is a junior-producer (compared to Carey's male crew of hirelings) is, to me, exploring the extant reaches of divergence between "what you think it is, as a writer-listener" and "what it actually is, as a musician"

On a baseline level, early crit of Grimes' "I made this on Garageband" statements (equal parts disclaimer and statement of fact) led some to believe that she was deliberately pursuing a twee, thin, amateur standpoint; she had nothing but a computer and a keyboard when making this record so save these discussions for your major-label drop-screens, I guess?

I don't think this Grimes piece doesn't belong in a "worst music writing ever" thread but definitely could start its own "Poptimism proved its point many years ago, we all love Aaliyah now, please stop this myopic exclusion of homemade/DIY/reactionary/feminist/transgressive music based on the fact that it sounds 'unprofessional'" thread

*belongs, not "doesn't belong".

julianne is a really great writer who's explained that piece before

Hmm. I don't know what this means exactly, but if you've had to "explain" something you've written then the original piece has surely failed in its intent.

nme twang review is fine, i really don't see what is "bad music journalism" about it, unless you are a member of the twang.

A 150-word Twang review is stretching the definition of writing anyway - what would be a good one? - but I hate stuff like "trundling about aimlessly like a doddery tortoise who can’t remember if it even wants another bit of lettuce but is ambling on regardless". Just meaningless and unfunny. Why do you need "trundling", "aimlessly", "doddery" and "ambling" in the same sentence anyway? We know how tortoises move.

it means she's addressed this criticism before, forget where

I don't think this Grimes piece doesn't belong in a "worst music writing ever" thread but definitely could start its own "Poptimism proved its point many years ago, we all love Aaliyah now, please stop this myopic exclusion of homemade/DIY/reactionary/feminist/transgressive music based on the fact that it sounds 'unprofessional'" thread

Pretty OTM here.

Re: that Grimes piece, I wish critics would at least think twice before calling music "asexual" or "sexless" or whatever, and think about if there's maybe more precise verbiage they could use. When I read shit like that, more than anything it makes the critic sound like a dopey college kid who just read Freud in a literary theory class.

My Husband's Stupid Record Collection just published her take on Albert Ayler's Spirits Rejoice. I really don't know if it belongs in this thread but I am fascinated and deeply disturbed by this blog. I can't decide if it's the ultimate troll or there's something more there...

http://alltherecords.tumblr.com/post/79768774507/albert-ayler-spirits-rejoice

I wish critics would at least think twice before calling music "asexual" or "sexless" or whatever, and think about if there's maybe more precise verbiage they could use.

i don't think it's about verbiage, i think it's more about that fact that demanding artists be "sexual" -- or in this case, tap into the "dark arts of womanness" (sic) -- is a weird thing to do.

xp

that is how like 99% of the living human population would respond?

it's one of my favorite records ever (actually the only ayler album i've heard entirely) but i find her review less annoying than his bit

i don't care what most people would say. it's not cool to use the expression "the emperor has no clothes" ever, really, but especially in regard to albert ayler.

xp I didn't word it well, but that's what I was trying to get across. It's demanding artists express a very specific version of "sexuality," whether or not it's aligned to the artists' goals.

I feel like in the post-poptimism age, "asexual," "sexless," or similar terms have become as stale as old rockist dudes saying something isn't "dangerous" or "rebellious" or whatever.

It did however, lead to this exchange after that WaPo Arcade Fire review:

https://twitter.com/Chris__Richards/status/395251870622425088

intheblanks onthemoney

lol it's made it to fact http://www.factmag.com/2014/03/16/a-librarian-rates-her-husbands-stupid-record-collection-one-at-a-time-on-this-ace-blog/

not sure someone's perfectly genuine thoughts about their husband's record collection should be lumped in with examples of terrible music criticism, but feel free to snark away everyone.

No idea why people're being such dicks abt this blog tbh, it's exactly like zachlyon said, vast majority of ppl wld respond like this to Ayler etc

Otoh I'm beginning to enjoy her blog quite a bit so

the copy of INFINITE JEST and the iPhone and the coffee all in the frame is just too much

"Before I started listening to this, I was waiting for my tea to be ready, so I sat down and looked at the cover."

OK, every time I try to read that blog, it crashes my browser (it must have some autoembedded player in it) but from what I've read, it is very, very different from what I was expecting, due to the comments in this thread.

What raises *my* feminist hackles is when a woman does a thing, and then everyone goes on to criticise her for the thing being ~too stereotypically feminine~ or ~not stereotypically feminine enough~ ergo whatever the woman has done, it is RONG and use "~feminism~" as a justification for it.

I was expecting her to make a big deal of her gender, and she doesn't. What she makes a big deal over, is that she is a Non Music-Fan, and describes how a Non Music-Fan listens to and processes unfamiliar music. At some point (and I'm not sure where, because I don't read it in her writing, but I sure read it all over this thread) the responses of "Non Music-Fan" has been gendered into "clueless girl". Combine that with pictures of an attractive hipster-ish young woman: ILX OUTRAGE.

I dunno; I don't *gender* her responses. It happens to be a woman writing about her husband's record collection. I have several confused and confounded ex boyfriends who could have written *that exact blog* of wrestling with my record collection and going "WTF is this Experimental Audio Research record, I think there are maybe synths on it?" But I doubt that would have attracted anything like the attention, because: gender. People are reading this blog, not as "non music fanatic listens to records" but either as "ISN'T IT SO CUTE WHEN (CLUELESS) GURLS LISTEN TO MUSIC" or as "OMG ISN'T IT AWFUL WHEN PEOPLE CALL GIRLS CLUELESS ABOUT MUSIC, I DON'T LISTEN TO MUSIC LIKE THIS!!!"

When the thing is, at no point does *she* ever seem to conflate "clueless" and "girl" and "non music fan". She admits to being "non music fan" and yes, it's sexist to conflate "girl" and "clueless" and "non music fan" but it's the people reading that blog and bringing their preconceptions and doing the heavy lifting of generating the sexism here.

But, like I said, there is nothing ILX likes to do more than hate on attractive young women Doing Things in public, and extra double ILX points if you can somehow position your hatred as "feminist".

- usually enjoy writing about music from an outsider perspective and BB otm that there's not necessarily anything wrong with the project per se but that woman's writing voice is really annoying BUT what are we doing going in on amateurs without a significant audience when this world is full of terrible professional writing

- julianne e.s. is one of the best writers in the game right now and while i wouldn't criticise grimes on those terms i don't see anything that bad about that piece

npr yuppie /= clueless girl

the annoyance and focus on this obscure little blog is bizarre though. someone somewhere on the internet is a moron, what else is new. at least w/ ott you have the angle of someone who was a tiny part of something huge now when it was also tiny and you get to watch and wonder when he's finally going to kill himself and how many other ppl he's going to take w/ him. this is just daniel stern's character from diner crossed w/ some denis leary mtv spot.

julianne e.s. is one of the best writers in the game right now nine years ago

have long thought most pop cult crits should have short shelf lifes anyway and then move on to something potentially productive (actual journalism maybe, like john leland, or, if all other options have been exhausted, become an actual musician, create something, test yr theory), and shepherd's just another example of why.

Criticism is creating something though.

Thank you v much BB/otm

"have long thought most pop cult crits should have short shelf lifes anyway and then move on to something potentially productive"

that's nice, are you offering everyone jobs

i think its pretty disingenuous to act like that blog everyone's talking about isn't written in the midst of huge shared cultural context regarding music knowledge and gender and nick hornsby and whatever, and its pretty disingenuous to act like the "oh look there are lots of words" uptalk-ish voice isn't just a _bit_ of a put on with some pretty gendered connotations. and as a whole the idea that there isn't some notion of how men and women listen to music latent in that blog, at least implicitly, and if someone sees something then its something "they" are bringing with them, that sort of puts the hammer down on most any cultural criticism.

i mean that said treating the blog as evil or something is pretty dumb.

crit can be creating something if it's fostering and developing a new idea and the art criticised is just a useful model organism, if there's some larger insight that still urgent long after whatever guinea pig you've spliced open has had an ihc run on it. this describes maybe 1% of the pop crit out there though. not to say other pop crit can't be useful as a consumer guide (whether the internet has rendered this purpose more or less necessary is still up in the air apparently), but even here at its peak its usefulness didn't compare to a record store clerk or dj. if you're part of that 99% and yr calling means that on a good day you still aren't as beneficial to humanity as a record store clerk after a few years it might be time to set yr sights higher, grow up. yknow, like daniel stern at the end of diner.

katherine - https://fafsa.ed.gov

yeah, i don't think it's evil. it just bugged me. especially how the husband gets the last word on a lot of entries and "explains" things after she is done. there is a great piece of writing to be written about male/female music relationships and the tyranny of the record collection, but this isn't it. i see a lot of women stand behind their husbands/boyfriends in my store while the husband/boyfriend looks at records and the woman is literally only looking at whatever the man decides to look at and in a lot of cases - brace yourself - he will then hand the records he wants to the woman to hold for him as she follows him around the store and it drives me a little crazy. so, this blog just reminds me of that for some reason. i wish them well though. even if they bug me.

but okay maybe i should have looked for a thread about blogs that bug you or whatever. sorry. i knew this would get attention from other sites though. the pomplamoosification factor and all.

yeah focusing on this blog reminds me of the naming and shaming of bigots on twitter only there at least it's ppl saying actually toxic shit, there's an argument for heaping derision on anonymous morons. here the worst thing said is 'man i do not get this albert ayler record'. someone doesn't get free jazz the first time they listen to some. who would have imagined such a thing was possible.

ok, the fafsa site, cool, will go pass that on to any 17-year-olds reading this

as far as the blog my only thought is "oof I might not put my initial thoughts to paper if it were me, but it isn't me, you go do your thing" -- I mean, more people probably have rather similar initial reactions to records than would admit it, and the thing's hardly 300 Sandwiches

especially how the husband gets the last word on a lot of entries and "explains" things after she is done

lol it kinda is 'mansplaining: the movie'. there have been alot of these 'let's play some hip obscure music for some old ppl/children/general unknowing innocents and then record their hilarious wrong reactions' things, a means of making fun of animal collective and making fun of ppl who don't even know this is animal collective how do you not know animal collective. there are small pleasures to be had from this - my dad used to always ask 'is this inxs?' to anything i played in the car, unless it was actually inxs in which case he would ask 'is this eurythmics?' - but they are small pleasures (and on the flip side i would usually ask 'is this the doobie brothers?' to anything he played in the car but tbf it usually in fact was the doobie brothers).

I didn't read much of the blog, but it struck me as an expanded version of what a bunch of us were doing on the albums of the year results thread.

BOOM

i totally did this with pitchfork's top 100 singles on my blog! and i was just as faux-clueless. but i'm OG faux-clueless. pre-blogger faux-clueless even. i'm probably just mad that everyone jumped on my steez over the years.

naive comments are only illuminating if the person writing them makes them so -- if the writer's background somehow informs the decisions in an interesting way or whatever. i can see these two people finding this endeavor fun/amusing on a private level but i don't know why the rest of us need to be dragged into "the conversation". she's not really saying much of interest.

It's not like they're forcing anyone to read it!

that's true
i didn't read much of it

so she isn't dragging anyone in to it