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

GLENN: well, yeah

"wow, imagine saying that about a MAN" is one of the most useless criticisms in 2018 and also ever

ACTUALLY, it isn't. (see what i did there)

The hills and slopes of Jeff Tweedy's body are built for optimal viewing at long distances

Caity Weaver is great tbh

i like her writing a lot although i feel like music pieces in general-interest magazines always reveal editorial seams (knowledge limitations on parts of editors, higher-ups' desire to present their cultural remit in a certain way) and this suffered from that issue here and there. also the 'this woman EATS' trope is a bit overdone

i hate 100% of the scene-setting done in these interview pieces. "dafoe glides in, as smoothly as if his body were on gimbals, and the room is illuminated suddenly, like a large exotic bird has settled in to land, and we are its tree. cream-colored scarf, aviators, he has a discreet word with the head waiter and they share a small laugh. i've brought my digital recorder but, i think, nervously, beads of sweat breaking out on my upper lip, have i brought batteries?" etc

10,000+ words!

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, March 28, 2018 1:27 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(not unlike Tyranny in that sense) xp

― Simon H., Wednesday, March 28, 2018 1:27 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm sure the reason there are this many paragraphs is bc the space between each resembles the line of coke he did before writing it

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, March 28, 2018 1:28 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I probably shouldn't admit that that was actually one of the best pieces of writing I've come across this year, but what the hey

Also, though, I'm a big Voidz fan and a big Michael Nelson fan, so

lol you do you ray, i eventually felt mean ragging on it

I mean, it IS probably 400 words too long, and it's just really long and takes some time to get to its point. BUT: This piece is dead-on and satisfying. I get it, he's doing the 1997-2001 Might/MicSweeney's fake-out thing where he's smuggling 2-3 larger points under cover of "awkward writing" but I still this is is exceptional. I know the approach doesn't count for much in an era where there's so much writing available, and most of the articles this long are edited to the hilt New Yorker/Atlantic articles.

Eh, I'm just grousing. Clearly you guys had fun with this on some level :)

Nelson is a really good writer. I didn't say anything in the initial wave because I have a vested interest (he's my editor at Stereogum). And I didn't care much about that specific piece because I've only heard one Strokes song ever, never mind anything by any of the members in other contexts.

i also found that part of the cardi b piece (+ the others that suddenly reverted to similar comments) very uncomfortable, altho i enjoyed other parts of the profile

Bro, if you work for Stereogum there’s no way you’ve only heard one Strokes song ever. Come on.

yo is it true phil got broed by a wite kid after a stereogum beef??????

Bro, if you work for Stereogum there’s no way you’ve only heard one Strokes song ever. Come on.

I write their monthly jazz column, and the occasional anniversary piece on a metal album.

also the 'this woman EATS' trope is a bit overdone

― maura, Monday, April 9, 2018

hard to believe it's already been 8 whole years since TRUFFLE FRIES

Nelson is a really good writer

everything i've read by him needs at the very least two more passes from an editor. i also think he has nothing intelligent to say about metal

but ymmv

Thanks hip-hop writers from New York for your interest in Kacey Musgraves, but we’ve got this handled. Or as Kacey Musgraves would say, “Mind your own biscuits.”

xp he's good at writing about the music business, i find him lacking when he writes about the artform itself

I still think it’s funny that Michael Nelson called the band name Dog Shredder “gross and indefensible”

i think it was weird that, given his casually enthusiastic style, his pallbearer review was p much all comparisons to other records, which made it p impenetrable to someone not acquainted w a lot of the records mentioned, but also sort of meaningless even w the ones which which i was. like, if the progressions are so great, try to describe them? he mentions a chord change that struck him once and doesn't expand on it

tbf dog shredding is more gross and indefensible than most things

no way, a german shepherd busting out some sweet lightspeed yngwie licks on a neon-green flying v is cool as shit

bizarro is right as usual. Are we talking about dogs who play fast modal tapping solos on guitar? Or are we talking about dogs being thrus in Fargo-esque woodchippers?

participles are confusing

What if the shredder is a dog?

(...should’ve read the other replies first...)

bizarro is right as usual.

more of this from the rest of the board too pls

i like Nelson's stuff usually (a lot more than Brad, apparently) but again:

10,000+ words!

on the Strokes guy's not-the-Strokes new band!

serious question: is Nelson paid an annual salary by Stereogum? he's on there enough, i assume he's on staff.

and if so, did Scott, like, tell him he could take a week off of doing news updates or w/e and write that piece?

and if so, then I guess they think 10K words on the Voidz is clickworthy enough to go a man down on day-to-day stuff?

or am I way off base here and Nelson's a freelancer and he pitched a thousands-word-count story?

i'm never going to read the thing, but i am kinda interested in the economics and logistics behind it.

Michael Nelson is the managing editor, and he doesn't file that much copy in comparison to the others who are on staff. (I wish he'd do more on the music business - when he did that string of pieces on streaming in 2016-2017, he was knocking it out of the park every time.) Why do I know this? Because at this point, Stereogum is my favorite music site.

saving country music is a horrible blog

it really is.

xxpost thanks Raymond!

de nada, alpine static

The Saving Country Music guy is just Neill Jameson (Decibel's go-to essayist for incoherent anti-Antifa grumblings and other "defenses" of "keeping" "metal" "dangerous") in a cowboy hat.

So Tracey Thorn complained about a review on Twitter:

A 55 year old wife and mother. God the more I think about it the crosser I'm getting. 55 year old husband and father. I'm trying to imagine it as a description in an album review. Nope. Can't do it.

— Tracey Thorn (@tracey_thorn) April 13, 2018

And I figured it was probably just some random UK jagoff. Turns out it was King Jagoff, typing with his dick again:

Tracey Thorn: Record (Merge) Calm, deliberate, undemonstrative, Thorn is a singer some find magical and others prosaic. I've always tended other, but when a 55-year-old wife and mother claims she's recorded "nine feminist bangers," I pay attention.

Is this a "dog walking on its hind legs" situation for him? "She's old and married with a kid...but she says she's a feminist! This is a job for Christgau, The Dean of American Women's Studies Rock Critics!"

In four other songs, decent but fundamentally clueless guys mess with various women's lives, while two others evoke a motherhood you assume is autobiographical

Do you? I don't, any more than I assume George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher has really murdered all those people.

*face palm*

And this one comes exactly one week after his Amy Rigby review. He's on a real roll.

Rigby's response, in part (the whole thing is worth reading):

All I know is that it was fine when he’d conjecture about me as a single mother, my work, my songs, hell even my breasts. It was fine cause I was hungry then – I wanted what ever any critic would say about me as long as it felt sort of like a compliment.

But I don’t feel that way anymore. I don’t want his praise that feels like a put down. I don’t want him talking about me in terms of my first husband who, bless his heart I have not been married to for twenty years. I don’t want him praising while panning and damning my partner, my husband, by saying he’s kept me too busy to do much work on music when he’s done nothing but encourage me to work. I don’t want him dismissing my hardworking husband for taking the easy way and living on the past when he’s done nothing but try to outrun the past.

I don’t want his readers thinking something’s a rave review when it feels hurtful and personal and dismissive.

I think Christgau’s issue (one of them) often is writing positive reviews that feel like condescending pats on the head and when they’re aimed at women they feel just really paternalistic and the winking asides and mild caveats come off as even insults. And he still can’t write about women without regarding them as equals (he’d say otherwise and then pause to be dazzled by their looks or juggling of the domestic chores with music-making.)

Christgau’s reviews seem largely worthless even just on the basic level of talking about the music (never mind the issues discussed above). I’ve never understood why he has such a rep.

That Amy Rigby piece is terrific, btw

change my comment above to *disregarding them

https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348047913l/341633.jpg

Although Artificial Intelligence's sleeve notes had insisted that the new electronica "cannot be described as soulless or machine made," what's most interesting about Autechre's work is the absence of heart and humanity, the way that the listener's impulse to forge an emotional connection simply ricochet's off the impenetrable, gmonic surfaces of their sound. At times you can't help wonder if the "aut" in their name stands for autism; listening, the mind's eye conjures up a vision of two small boys surrounded by techno toys, lost in a preverbal world of chromatics, texture and contour.

20-year-old music criticism in problematic attitudes to autism shocker

The Impenetrable Gnomic Surfaces is the name of my Autechre tribute band btw.

jeezus fucking christ

This is why I only write for Consumer Reports now

almost certain that it does stand for autism and that sean autechre is proudly autistic

yours, someone w/ mild autism

the only problem with that bit of writing is that autechre DOES contain emotion and feeling, but u neurotypicals don't get it I guess