Xgau takes music criticism to a new level

Q Hi! Can you recommend please any specific greatest hits CDs by The Four Seasons, The Flamingos, or The Shondells? I know and like a few songs by each of them but don't know if any of these oldies groups are really worth buying a CD for. Thank you so much. -- Elena B., Brooklyn
A Know this, Sezzers. This person was not born Elena. He was born Joseph, and has no transsexual tendencies I'm aware of. Joseph suffers from a rare psychological disorder called greatest hits fetishism and, because I'm the only rock critic who takes the compilation seriously, is always trying to get me to answer questions like this, leaving me less and less inclined to be his enabler. He's posing as a woman here because he knows something deep about me: I wish the whole enterprise I set in motion with the Consumer Guide in 1969 wasn't so Boy. I love women. I've been learning about music from women for more than half a century and have had sexual relationships with two dynamite rock critics, the latter of whom stuck at trying and ultimately succeeding as writing dynamite fiction instead (Carola Dibbell, The Only Ones, now available in French as well as English). So far, 17 of my 45 A records this year are either by women or feature them definitively (that's Wussy and Yo La Tengo). So if any of you guys can persuade the female music lovers I hope and believe are in your lives to visit here, I'd be grateful.

― Josh in Chicago,

This guy apparently stalked Christgau not long ago, enough for Xgau to report him to the cops.

wld've been cool if he'd just said that instead

there's a lot here but I'm still stuck on bragging about a whopping 38% of one's records being by women

Serious question: why has anyone ever given much of a shit about Xgau? I'd rather read what pretty much any ILXor has to say about a piece of music.

I doubt many people give much of a shit anymore. He wrote well about some of my favorite acts twenty years ago.

He was doing it before ilx tbf.xp

Was he, though?

Was he?

I was on a kick for a while, picking up old out of print record guides from used bookstores, and I was so psyched to find an old Xgau collection until I actually tried to read it.

Yes, on me they were, especially his essays (Consumer Guide not so much, but I read that too). As I got older and more confident and my tastes developed, I noticed his blind spots.

Now they're abysses. But he's also over 60.

No, sorry, he is the actual best still.

This guy apparently stalked Christgau not long ago, enough for Xgau to report him to the cops.

this is even stranger then because the standard advice for dealing with stalkers is to document everything but not respond or give them any acknowledgement of their existence/that their communication was received

I'm often hard on him but Alfred OTM, really.

yeah I dunno Xgau's relations with his fans. I'm not sure why he had to answer Joe's question.

If that guy was a real stalker then yeah, why bring it up? And if he wants more female readership, he really shouldn't think boasting about having sex with female critics while namedropping Wussy and Yo La Tengo is the way to do it. Especially given the (shocking!) skeeviness of many of his reviews.

In the pre-internet years (aka most of them), one often learned about music through people writing about it, especially stuff from outside the western speaking world or indie stuff, and Xgau was one of the few that covered that music with any consistency, almost compulsively, so he was a pretty invaluable guide even if he was a less valuable voice, per se. The '90s broke him, though. And now ... I think most critical voices have been devalued for a confluence of reasons, but for better or worse but mostly for worse he has stubbornly refused to alter his approach or attitude to adjust for deficiencies in his field.

Yeah, I guess tbf I didn't become aware of Xgau until the mid-'90s. The era of peak appreciation had probably already passed at that point.

But I guess by way of comparison I was also reading older criticism by Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs at the same time and, whatever their faults, they seemed at least way more into their subjects of inquiry. I guess I just prefer obsessive and passionate to flippant and cranky.

xgau's writing reminds me of that one review of "the incredibles 2" that came out earlier this year.

The '90s broke him, though.

"Dad, They Broke Me: The Death of Rock-Crit, 1991 – "

Was fascinated by how much he could convey in a few chopped sentences, in those days when space was a premium and skeeviness a given. A voice kinda like the best classified ads in the back of the rag. But The Dean thing? Never scholarly thing about him, not like R. Palmer or Tosches. His opinions shat on those I idolized, and rarely did I hear a thing in his rated-A records.

he is admirably & mercifully concise

hes a horrible smug wanker

i like many of christagu's capsule reviews, some pages on his website kinda chart a gradual evolution of ideas i find fascinating (i like the way his al green reviews talk to each other), i love his advocacy for r&b records even as they received less and less critical focus (he and i share a favorite record in debarge's in a special way, and his review of it rules https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_album.php?id=988), i think he's written one of the great essays about elton john, but he's always been a huge shithead about women and his style has pretty significantly curdled for me

Now it comes pre-curdled but without the probiotic benefits. Even when it doesn't make you barf it still leaves you a little queasy.

What are his abysses? His early and consistent support for all sorts of r'n'b and hip hop (and pop) at least is what was unique and valuable to me. I don't understand preferring any of the other early guys, especially in a dismissive way. In many obvious ways he was ahead of the curve imo.

i enjoy reading his stuff in the same way i enjoy reading a lot of vintage critics, it's interesting to see his takes. like in the same way it was interesting to see Ebert or Kael's takes. some of his issues with women *could* be chalked up to "it was a different time then." at least he doesn't call them bimbos anymore.

What are his abysses? His early and consistent support for all sorts of r'n'b and hip hop (and pop) at least is what was unique and valuable to me. I don't understand preferring any of the other early guys, especially in a dismissive way. In many obvious ways he was ahead of the curve imo.

― gospodin simmel

Actually, in the long run he didn't care much about contemporary R&B, and I recoil from his (and Marcus') class-based suspicion of quiet storm and what Nelson George called retronuevo.

I can still read him, though.

in the long run he didn't care much about contemporary R&B

what "contemporary" is this

R&B after 1980. Points for embracing Jazmine Sullivan, though.

i guess i'll defer to someone who knows his work way better than i do

The Songstress [Beverly Glen, 1983]
In a time when the only black people with the guts to go for the soul are Mississippi recidivists and moldy oldies, this L.A. sophisticate has the audacity to pretend she can make pop music out of the shit. The violin and woodwind touches hark back to when soul had something to sell out with, the jazzy guitar comps look forward to when it'll storm the big rooms, the funky bottom bespeaks commitment, the hooky songwriting bespeaks smarts, and the voice sings. B+

then get to the next two Baker reviews

it's true that his opinions on anita baker do suck

I always hated both the concept and execution of the "Consumer Guide", but I will admit that my understanding of his writing changed pretty much _completely_ after hearing him read a 20-minute piece aloud at PopCon the first time. I think it's possible that brevity was actually the soullessness of his wit.

I guess what I'm saying is Xgau's taste and approach is the closest among that generation to a sort of taken for granted poptimism od today? Dude did serious writing on things like philly soul and disco and early hip hop and eurodance when that wasn't done. He was also early and important for the James Brown reappraisal. Sure, he hates metal and retronuevo and isn't big on electronic music but all of that makes sense given his likes. Feels weird to take all of that for granted or dismiss it. Especially on ilx where his aesthetic is a lot more at home than Bangs or Marcus or whoever. Anxiety of influence I guess.

"poptimism of today"

Yeah. It was sort of argued about ten years ago. Now it just is. Or am I wrong about that?

I mean, poptimism was always a no brainer sort of attitude for me and that came from reading Xgau.

I could say the same thing, except the exact opposite.

fine

insert appropriate "semi-poptimism" joke here

Remembering also Greil Marcus’ introduction to the reprint of The Aesthetics of Rock where he discusses the fact that Meltzer wrote about Tommy James and the Shondells on the same ground as Jefferson Airplane or whatever his example was and that this wasn’t otherwise done at the time (possibly even by ‘60s era Christgau).

I don't know about Tommy James, buy Christgau was raving about the Box Tops in 1969 ("Each new instrument, each pause, works to build tension and qualify meaning, yet final control seems to fall not to critical intelligence but to some crazy kind of rapacious commercial instinct, an instinct that might seem pretentious if it weren't so busy being delighted with itself--Phil Spector with economy, sort of.") and was not immune to the charms of "Yummy Yummy Yummy", but maybe this was a couple of years after Meltzer?

Also Richard Goldstein may have been doing it before any of them. When reading through Goldstein's Village Voice column, I was surprised that Christgau basically replicated its structure in his subsequent Rock and Roll column, right down to the little items at the end about what was playing the radio.

"It's so reassuring when the indie rumor mill isn't just licking its own asshole."

It's pretty awesome when you can start a review with that.

insofar as an indie rumor mill exists

sounds like maybe he had subliminal crusties on his mind

Haha, I'm going to guess Wet Leg

That quote was from 2002. I just thought it was great that a print editor could see that and say "looks good to me - print it!" Alternative weeklies were awesome.

(Also it was for Spoon)

Indie rumor mill always noted for its remarkable flexibility.

Well, with assholes involved, who wouldn't be?