Bless you, Stephen Thomas Erlewine (and your reviews of the new Bright Eyes albums).

you don't say

Ha ha! I remember that.

Which is like, pretty much the same thing in far fewer words, right?

100 Alternative Press
A raw portrait of a 20-something disenchanted with his city, his country and his life. [Feb 2005, p.81]
100 Q Magazine
The finest alt-country album this side of Gram Parsons. [Jan 2005, p.129]
100 Drowned In Sound
It’s the closeness and the honesty which makes ‘I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning’ a thing of awe.
100 Los Angeles Times
An album with the simmering glow of a masterpiece.
100 Stylus Magazine
Bright Eyes may well be on the verge of finally bridging the gap between his precocious talent and the maturity of an ageless songwriter.
91 Spin
An often-great set of songs about loneliness. [Feb 2005, p.85]
90 Uncut
Where Ryan Adams replicates old records, this is something new. [Album of the Month, Feb 2005, p.72]
87 Pitchfork
I'm Wide Awake weaves the personal and the political more fluidly than most singers even care to try, and the consummate tunefulness just strengthens those moments where he pinches a nerve.
80 Playlouder
The quality is high throughout.
80 The Guardian
Lyrically, he's never been better.
60 Delusions of Adequacy
I’m Wide Awake is an uneven product, full of everything there is to loathe and love about Oberst.
60 Village Voice
A handsome channel 13 complimentary tote bag of an album that polishes his image as the fantasy rebellious son who hangs at socialist bookstores and swipes your Gram Parsons records.

heavy-handed pretension in the words

lacks the most basic musical skill, which is to know how to make music sound good on a sheer sonic level

There aren't any examples cited to illustrate these points as far as I can see (the closest is when he names "Road to Joy"). Kind of disappointing. I haven't, to the best of my knowledge, ever heard Oberst, and this doesn't really give me any idea of what I'm (not) missing, except that Erlewine doesn't like it.

AMG scores used to be included in the metascore.

They really did stop using the AMG scores? What crap. I can't believe meta would ditch AMG but still use Amazon.com. I mean, they obviously don't have an agenda, right? What retailer would say, "Never has an album failed more miserably to live up to its hype. Don't buy this crap." ZURICH IS $TAINED!

As opposed to what, an olfactory level?

Wait, what did you do?

Longest AMG review evar?

Not. Even. Close.

;-)

Oh, and STE is totally OTM.

I'm totally turned off by Oberst's personality. Self-pity--coming from a guy who's seen incredible career success--is not only galling but rather unconvincing. And shame on Jon Dolan, who stood idly by while the tripe flowed from Oberst in the SPIN interview this month.

Also, I'm still waiting for someone--anyone--to explain the "Dylan of his generation" mantle. It's so preposterous that it shouldn't be allowed to appear in print.

I'm not sure what the longest review is, but if Carl Carlton's isn't the longest biography, it's the most *inappropriately* long biography:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:13ri282c051a~T1

I leave the debate on the merits of the review to you experts. All I'll say is any negative review of Bright Eyes is a good review.

haha! But my ego! I must claim all happy comments for MEEEEEEE.

Clearly this will happen when he STOPS SUCKING SO MUCH. Excuse my harsh language.

STE doesn't hesitate to announce how much cultural bile comes behind his negative rants, which is so ironic and sad.

Best part of the review, actually.

agree on the first quote you cite (which is observational), totally disagree on the second (which is subjective).

Also - where are these bad lyrics people! Don't make me go a googlin...

Link to Springsteen's "Born To Run"

I like to picture this Stephen Thomas Erlewine getting all huffy and puffy every time he sees a picture of Oberst. Stomping his feet and clenching his fists in a little tantrum. "I'll convince everybody... really I will... I have at least 50,000 more words I can write on the subject..."

I find the reactions on this thread to this review surprising, considering the amount of writers weighing in here. No matter how much you agree with Erlewine on the album or artist, it's a really poorly written piece, marked by a shitload of logic leaps and unsupported claims.

this is just wrong.

also he seems to take for granted that Springsteen/Stipe/Dylan are better songwriters, or less precious than Paul Simon.......

Shouldn't STE get a word limit? Any decent editor does that. Does he have any idea how taxing it is to read this block of text?

-- m0stly clean (mostl...) (webmail), January 26th, 2005 2:40 PM. (m0stly clean) (link)

OK DOUCHEBAG WHAT IS THE MOST BASIC MUSICAL SKILL

Ha, this is a pretty good point. (Though I've never heard/read an Oberst line that didn't make me cringe, but whatever.)

ha!

n 1: wisdom that is recondite and abstruse and profound; "the anthropologist was impressed by the reconditeness of the native proverbs" [syn: reconditeness, abstruseness, abstrusity, profundity] 2: the intellectual ability to penetrate deeply into ideas [syn: astuteness, profundity, depth] 3: the quality of being physically deep; "the profundity of the mine was almost a mile" [syn: deepness, profundity] [ant: shallowness] 4: intellectual depth; penetrating knowledge; keen insight; etc; "the depth of my feeling"; "the profoundness of the silence" [syn: profundity] [ant: superficiality]

To have or possess as property: pwns a chain of restaurants.
To have control over: For a time, enemy planes pwned the skies.
To admit as being in accordance with fact, truth, or a claim; acknowledge.

That must be the second dumbest bit.

Giving Violator a one-and-a-half is COMPLETELY beyond my comprehension!

1) STE needs to quit using the adverb "sheer." It's gratuitous when he does, and it scans like an Oberst lyric.

2) It's engineers and producers who really need to understand and know the most about making the music sound good, not the artist.

3) I think the most basic musical skill is far more basic then how to write good songs or play well or whatever STE means by "make music sound good." I know kids who can play 3 chords on a guitar and are learning to sing and play at the same time, and I would likely grant that they already have "the most basic musical skill."

4) Further, I think the "most basic musical skill" isn't even on a [sheer] sonic level. First you learn how to play the instrument. Then you learn how to augment your playing to add more expression, etc. It's the second part where you spend the most time developing a "touch" or "style" that makes the sound unique, expressive or just "good on a [sheer] sonic level."

I agree with STE, and I think Oberst is as hamfisted a guitarist as he is a writer (of both lyrics and music), but unfortunately there are a couple chunks of that review which are equally heavy-handed and awkward.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:40rsa9ygw23s~T1

I dunno what you mean by "Courtney Love size targets" either. Surely you're not implying that Phair is the same kind of target. Phair has turned into a bad imitation of herself. Courtney at her worst moments is more like a parody.

It's just kind of lazy.

[French prolifique, from Medieval Latin prlificus : Latin prls, prl-, offspring; see al-2 in Indo-European Roots + Latin -ficus, -fic.]

pro·lifi·ca·cy (--k-s) or pro·lific·ness (-k-ns) n.
pro·lifi·cal·ly adv.

I love the STE reviews where he gets so worked up that he can't censor himself and just starts going stream of consciousness on our ass. It's like the review tries to be friendly and free of an attitude but it quickly digresses. It's like "Here at AMG we do our best to be fair to the artists and the demographics that might enjoy this album and find this review and our site randomly on Google... - ...actually... wait, you know what? I'm sorry, I can't do this BS today I mean if I don't write a 2,000 word review where I talk about everything that bugs me about this album and singer I am going to put my fist through the wall so check the doors, make sure that mom and dad are sleeping and that nobody can read this review over your shoulder because hot damn things are about to get ugly up in this review..."

Another great example of this type of writing: his review of Lindsay Lohan's first album.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:d9foxq8sld0e

...So, there are songs that allude to her partying ways -- most explicitly on the lead single "Rumors," where Lindsay bats her eyes for the camera as she pleads to be left alone (it's inexplicably called a bonus track here, btw) -- and the music is a blend of old-fashioned, Britney-styled dance-pop and the anthemic, arena rock sound pioneered by fellow tween stars Hilary Duff and Ashlee Simpson. Lohan may be a better singer than Britney -- she's mannered, but her voice is fuller than Mrs. Federline's razor-thin squeak -- but her record feels a lot more cynical than the equally calculated and polished efforts by Hilary and Ashlee, and it all boils down to this: <<<<uh oh, here it comes Lindsay Lohan comes across as ridiculously oversexed and crass. On the cover, the starlet -- who officially turned 18 in July of 2004 -- looks like a thirtysomething porn star, and she has the heavy-breathing voice and double entendres to match ("I wanna come first" on "First," the lead song, or "I'm not above being under" on "Disconnected"); add to that, she's posed in nothing more than an unbuttoned dress shirt in the liner notes, while there's another picture of her with the word "sex" scrawled over it, twice. When paired with the loud, relentlessly ProTooled dance-pop and hooky but unmelodic songs on Speak, the whole thing is a slick, ugly nadir of 2000s pop culture -- the kind of thing that makes Blue Staters think that, gee, maybe the Red Staters were right when they said the U.S. is going to hell.

Who can forget a review like that?

ThisKaty Perry review is a STE breakdown starting halfway through the first sentence.

...and then there was this oldie but goodie re: QoTSA. Maybe I've got some amnesia, but was there really that much of a fissure vis a vie "style" between them and the Strokes in 2002?

That's another favorite review, though he eventually listed Hot n Cold as one of his singles of the year.

"the kind of thing that makes Blue Staters think that, gee, maybe the Red Staters were right when they said the U.S. is going to hell."

This is one of the best last lines of a review ever.

I love that Katy Perry review...

awww i feel bad, some of my friends know kp and i'm told she's nothing like that.

"she sinks to crass, craven depths that turn One of the Boys into a grotesque emblem of all the wretched excesses of this decade."

Another gem. I eagerly await the next oversexed teen-pop album to attract his ire: "A vile affront to human decency, symbolic of the bottomless depravity of the Great Satan, America. On the other hand, solid production from Max Martin."

this one's a gem too: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:jvfyxqudldse~T1

"A vile affront to human decency, symbolic of the bottomless depravity of the Great Satan, America. On the other hand, solid production from Max Martin."

hahaha

loving "Montag monster"

I eagerly await the next oversexed teen-pop album to attract his ire: "A vile affront to human decency, symbolic of the bottomless depravity of the Great Satan, America. On the other hand, solid production from Max Martin."

LOL, I'm imagining him sharpening his zings in anticipation of Leighton Meester's lp.

His OTM review of Justin Timberlake's last album articulated so many things that bug me about JT and his music:

http://tinyurl.com/yk3j4de

"Graceless he may be, but Timberlake is nevertheless kind of fascinating on FutureSex/LoveSounds since his fuses a clear musical vision -- misguided, yes, but clear all the same -- with a hammyness that only a child entertainer turned omnipresent 21st century celebrity can be. Timberlake yearns to be taken seriously, to be a soulful loverman like Marvin Gaye coupled with the musical audaciousness of Prince, yet still sell more records than Michael Jackson -- and he not only yearns for that recognition, he feels entitled to it, so he's cut and pasted pieces from all their careers, cobbling together his own blueprint, following it in a fashion where every wrong move is simultaneously obvious and surprising. There is no subtlety to his music, nor is there much style -- he's charmless in his affectations, and there's nothing but affectations in his music. At least this accumulation of affectations does amount to a semblance of personality this time around -- he's still a slick cipher as a singer, yet he is undeniably an auteur of some sort, one who has created an album that's stilted and robotic, but one who doggedly carries it through to its logical conclusion, so the club jams and slow jams both feel equally distant and calculated. There is, however, a flair within the production, particularly in how foreign yet familiar its retro-future vibe sounds."

His aint-I-adorable child actor mannerisms are also present in all of the talk show interviews and broadly acted comedy bits I've seen him do.

These bits are also great:

"Like the Arctic Monkeys deploring the scummy men who pick up cheap hookers in Sheffield, Justin has read about the pipe and the damage done -- he may not have seen it, but he sure knows that it happens somewhere, and he's put together an absurd Stevie Wonder-esque slice of protest pop in "Losing My Way," where he writes in character of a man who had it all and threw it all away...or, to use Justin's words, "Hi, my name is Bob/And I work at my job," which only goes to show that Timberlake lacks a sense of grace no matter what he chooses to write about."

"Each of the three opening songs has "sex" sandwiched somewhere within its title, as if mere repetition of the word will magically conjure a sex vibe, when in truth it has the opposite effect: it makes it seem that Justin is singing about it because he's not getting it. Surely, his innuendos are bluntly obvious, packing lots of swagger but no machismo or grace. They merely recycle familiar scenarios -- making out on the beach, dancing under hot lights, acting like a pimp -- in familiar fashions, marrying them to grinding, squealing synths that never sound sweaty or sexy; if they're anything, they're the sound of bad anonymous sex in a club, not an epic freaky night with a sex machine like, say, Prince. "

who is poortheatre these days