Mordy otm, that’s a bad review but perfectly coherent
― jeremy cmbyn (wins), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:02 (five years ago) link
When a board populated by a lot of writers and musicians has a thread devoted to parsing a writer's syntax, I think "difficult to parse" (as opposed to "impossible to parse" or "incoherent") is fair.
― The inexorable rise of identity condiments (Sund4r), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:04 (five years ago) link
Difficult-to-parse prose has its merits and I even like the creativity and distinctiveness of his writing style. What can be frustrating is that, after the writing has been parsed, I don't always feel like I have gained much insight into or knowledge about the music.
― The inexorable rise of identity condiments (Sund4r), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:08 (five years ago) link
he enumerates the songs in which she drinks herself into a ditch in the parentheses immediately after. (otherwise what would that be?)I assumed they were “key tracks” from the album, and listing a few of those is per the format of these little reviews (but I haven’t clicked over to Vice to see)
― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:11 (five years ago) link
Yeah I mean the aphoristic style requires something from the reader, but not that much in term of rendering it legible - beyond that it does require a leap of faith that christgau absolutely doesn’t deserve
― jeremy cmbyn (wins), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:11 (five years ago) link
that was an xp
― jeremy cmbyn (wins), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:13 (five years ago) link
There’s something that Xgau has done historically (and not just him; but he does it more often than some) and that’s to basically wonder why a female musician lets guys get her down and how it shouldn’t affect them and the implicit suggestion if often that maybe their music suffers for it. It’s the “hey you should smile” of music crit.
― omar little, Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:18 (five years ago) link
*is often
that’s a perfect way of putting it xp
― maura, Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:19 (five years ago) link
another shitty review along those lines was a partic vile Brian Howe Pitchfork review of an Edith Frost LP.
― omar little, Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:20 (five years ago) link
That’s what the problem is to me.. if the labor is rewarded then I don’t mind... Brad nelson’s Prose (not to make this a blow smoke up an ilxor’s butt thread) sometimes takes its time getting to its point via vivid or detailed imagery but I feel like I come away w a greater understanding of the project under the microscope afterwards; xgau’s work now seems to bank off credibility he’s earned from listening to so much more than everyone but I feel like it’s at the zone of fruitless intensification point
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:20 (five years ago) link
That was XP’s to wins although omar’s Point seems good also
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:21 (five years ago) link
It takes the barest amount of effort to see what xgau’s at, then you do and realise “fuck this guy” and move on
― jeremy cmbyn (wins), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:22 (five years ago) link
thanks deej, floating on a cloud of buttsmoke rn
― princess of hell (BradNelson), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:35 (five years ago) link
I'm not surprised he learned nothing after patting Tracey Thorn on the head for recording her feminist bangers.
His obsession with women who love their husbands and can enjoy great sex reads like the admission of a man continuously amazed that women are as awesome as he thinks he is.
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:44 (five years ago) link
I assumed they were “key tracks” from the album, and listing a few of those is per the format of these little reviews (but I haven’t clicked over to Vice to see)
― stan in the place where you work (morrisp)
Full disclosure — I just checked and seems i was wrong about this
― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:45 (five years ago) link
Still, the fact that Shook seems pissed by the “ditch” reference suggests that it may not be an accurate characterization of those songs? (Not that a reviewer should necessarily worry about pissing off an artist, if his aim is true and he’s writing in good faith — but I question his reliability here)
― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:50 (five years ago) link
I didn't have the faintest idea who Robert Christgau was or what he was meant to be until I started going on the internet for the first time back in the '90s. He kept seeming to crop up - usually in musical discussions with Americans - as someone who's opinion was worth reading, even though I'd never heard of him ever, so I checked a few of his reviews out.
From that moment on, I've never been interested in a single word the guy has written or his opinion on anything and I'm amazed that people ever were.
― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:52 (five years ago) link
As for Brad's writing - well, I'll keep my opinions to myself on that one, other than reading some of it often involves a flask of coffee and a sleeping bag.
― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:55 (five years ago) link
Xgau also sometimes writes like someone who has no idea women read music criticism.
― omar little, Saturday, 18 August 2018 17:57 (five years ago) link
Christgau's been around long enough to let you know this ain't his first rodeo, and his reviews read like he forgot to do his taxes. Still, the question remains: is he the cowboy or the clown? As far as funkless wonk goes, it beats fishing. B-
― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 18 August 2018 18:32 (five years ago) link
i generally always found xgau's longform essays good -- his chuck berry essay is a classic -- but i always found the short reviews that everyone else seemed to love kind of frustrating and glib. tbh he's written reviews i found even grosser than the ones referenced here -- his review of pj harvey's stories from the city has a line so creepy i don't even want to quote it here.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, 18 August 2018 18:53 (five years ago) link
His best essay of the last five years wasn't on music; it led me to an obscure Christina Stead novel. Maybe he should concentrate on books:
https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bn/2013-12.php
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 18 August 2018 18:56 (five years ago) link
xpost, jeez I just read that and his Rid of Me, yuck
― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 18 August 2018 19:07 (five years ago) link
Just looked them up, too... O. M. G.
― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Saturday, 18 August 2018 19:16 (five years ago) link
It wasn't too hard to locate the exact sentence J.D. was on about, it kinda leaps out at you from the screen, that!
― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Saturday, 18 August 2018 19:41 (five years ago) link
Working a hunch, I looked up his Liz Phair reviews. Let me annotate this one: Exile in Guyville [Matador, 1993]She's a rebel, and if all goes well, also a pathfinder, which isn't certain mainly because the acts and attitudes that make her a rebel are so normal. (weird negging move?) Her number of partners may be over toward the right side of the bell curve. (says who? and why’s he gotta be shaming?) She may have commitment problems. But for at least two decades, bohemian women of a certain age have displayed this much desire, independence, bitchiness, self-doubt, and general weirdness (the negging continues: “female artists older than her have been doing the same thing for years”)--while continuing to pin down the unmanly emotional apercus that make "Dance of the Seven Veils" and "Divorce Song" so gender-specific (I’m honestly lost now... is the subject of the sentence still “bohemian women of a certain age”? what does this clause mean?). They can behave this way if they want--they're just not supposed to come out of the closet about it. And while Phair knows more than enough about tunes and guitars to challenge the taboo (if she were a lesser artist, would she not be allowed to challenge the taboo?), the weirdness level of her spare, intuitive, insinuating demos-plus is bohemia-specific. (...OK?) Which is apt for sure. (Huh?) But not necessarily pathfinding. (a final, summary neg!) A
― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Saturday, 18 August 2018 19:45 (five years ago) link
To be fair, a lot of the initial press for that record had similar slut-shamey qualities. The '90s! They were a different time!
― maura, Saturday, 18 August 2018 19:47 (five years ago) link
yeah to be fair if you struggle with his writing - he's not on trial. did he invent misogyny in music journalism? obviously not - is he still out there being employed to write mysogynist shit? yeah apparently, stop paying him
― Noodle Vague, Saturday, 18 August 2018 19:56 (five years ago) link
(weird negging move?)
He does this shit constantly, and not just with women. Search up the Chuck Berry essay Alfred cites - he describes Berry's guitar playing as "limited but brilliant" and given the context, I feel like he was much more compelled to write the first two words than the third one.
― grawlix (unperson), Saturday, 18 August 2018 19:59 (five years ago) link
What a time we live in to see Xgau link this on twitter and get pushback from women for his sexism, and still a MAGA chud pops up to call him a “white knight”
― omar little, Saturday, 18 August 2018 20:01 (five years ago) link
Oh man I remember that Edith Frost review, extremely shitty.
― JoeStork, Saturday, 18 August 2018 20:15 (five years ago) link
I FUCKING HATE THIS
https://www.weeklystandard.com/dominic-green/john-coltrane-and-the-end-of-jazz
― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 17:38 (five years ago) link
The story goes that Coltrane was using LSD after 1965. If so, then the overreach and incoherence of his final music, and his mingling with admiring but inferior talents like Alice Coltrane, the Yoko Ono of jazz, suggest that Coltrane might be the sixties’ first and foremost acid casualty, flailing out rather than flaming out, the peak of his late style already behind him.
― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 17:40 (five years ago) link
Coltrane’s late style began on the legendary Davis album Kind of Blue (1959), and jazz began to die there too.
lol the yoko ono of jazz, great job
― tylerw, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 17:46 (five years ago) link
holy god
― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 17:50 (five years ago) link
I find the Yoko Ono of Jazz to be a kind of compelling and entertaining idea, but probably not for the reasons that writer intended
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 18:02 (five years ago) link
innovative, collaborative, deeply spiritual, great discography, underrated and unjustly maligned thx to misogyny = yup checks all those boxes
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 18:04 (five years ago) link
haha yeah. amazing that we're celebrating 50 years of yoko as a shitty sexist punchline this year! she must be doing something right.
― tylerw, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 18:14 (five years ago) link
https://www.xlr8r.com/reviews/review-houghton-festival-2018
do you think they regret any of the sets they missed?
― boxedjoy, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 20:38 (five years ago) link
That Yoko / Alice thing made the rounds on twitter, and while I get that it's tone deaf, I don't have a problem with it necessarily for two reasons: 1. like Οὖτις says above, it's actually a flattering and apt comparison in spite of itself, and 2. while it may be a bullshit and wrong opinion, people are allowed to have those
― Paul Ponzi, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 22:05 (five years ago) link
You do have a problem with, you think it's wrong and bullshit.
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 22:10 (five years ago) link
omg
The next morning, rumours abounded that Jane Fitz had played a mind-bending techno set at Houghton’s secret stage deep into the small hours; while access last year required a train journey, this year it was reachable by a short walk back through the campsite. Options inside the arena were so good that I never felt the need to work out the hidden spot’s exact location, but Fitz’ performance generated some envy-inducing hype
― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 22:17 (five years ago) link
2. while it may be a bullshit and wrong opinion, people are allowed to have those
― Paul Ponzi, Tuesday, August 28, 2018 3:05 PM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
referring you back to the thread title
― princess of hell (BradNelson), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 22:52 (five years ago) link
Who is the Yoko ono of acid house?
Or of crunk?
― Runcibly spooning (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 23:33 (five years ago) link
That article is chock full of shitty jazz opinions besides the Alice stuff!
― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 29 August 2018 00:51 (five years ago) link
There are some aspects of it I agree with. If I had to pick just one John Coltrane album to listen to for the rest of my life, it would be Crescent, not A Love Supreme and certainly not Ascension or anything after. I also think Hank Mobley doesn't get nearly enough critical love, and was glad to see his name pop up.
― grawlix (unperson), Wednesday, 29 August 2018 01:33 (five years ago) link
John Coltrane really does bring out the worst in people (music writers):
Coltrane enters with a vortex of obsessively involuted streaks of chordal fragments that yield to furious, sound-shredded shrieks and bellows that suggest the will to break through the stuff of harmonic investigation to sheer expressive sound, the swinging patterns of pounding rhythm to shifting biocentric undulations.
From:https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/sun-ship-the-complete-session-john-coltranes-musical-documentary
― dinnerboat, Monday, 22 October 2018 21:03 (five years ago) link
mmm I love a good medium rare streak, the chordal the better!
― You like queer? I like queer. Still like queer. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 22 October 2018 21:06 (five years ago) link