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I’ve seen the future of rock, but I just don’t understand it

Alison Piotrowski

by Alison Piotrowski

04 May 05:50am

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Filed under: Albums, Journalism, Music, Music Journalism, Music Reviews

55 comments

“The trio give birth to an amalgamation of vintage keyboards”

Dear Music Critic,

I have a problem with your review.  You see the thing is… I don’t actually know what you’re talking about. To me, the above quote makes me conjure up a mental image of three people give birth to old rusty keyboards. Ouch. I can see you’ve given the album four stars… but the seven paragraphs between the photo of the album cover and the four stars reads to me like a mountain of musical gibberish.

Attempting to do some research for an upcoming interview with a little-known band with an official release still weeks away, I dug up a recent review to help me with some background. Instead I developed a headache.

It wasn’t that there was a lack of information out there about the band, rather a lack of anything that made sense.

There’s been a digital music revolution. You can now get your hands on a new recording minutes after it’s leaked online. Music blogging has exploded, and every man and his dog can be a music critic. Only problem is, it’s difficult to wade through the wank and actually get to the guts of the record.

“The augmented, serrated guitar chords and disco-punk beats point to their dalliance with a sound the band described as “monolithic tech-pop”, but what was actually closer to post-hardcore than anything else”

Huh? Oh. It appears you know genres, Mr Music Reviewer. And sub-genres. And sub-sub genres.

Now while I love music, I couldn’t for the life of me tell you the difference between monolithic tech-pop and post hardcore. And to tell you the truth, I couldn’t care less.

Just tell me if the bloody record is worth listening to.

“Dropping the transparently hayseed act, the band could have turned an artistic corner; yet the first single from Only By the Night is called “Sex on Fire”, so if there was any debate about whether Kings of Leon are in on their own joke, I think it can be put to rest. If we’re misreading them, we’re missing out on one corker of a comedy album based on an “SNL”-level premise: What if Bono got lost in the Blue Ridge Mountains and was replaced by a local yokel?”

While many consider Pitchforkmedia to be the cool kids’ music bible, they’re the king of taking their reviews into new heights of wankery. Last year they slapped Kings of Leon’s 3rd album into oblivion with their long-winded review, however history will show that the punters loved it.

You should see what their reviewers write when they actually like a recording:

“The face I make when I listen to Crystal Castles is the total peace-face Jared Leto makes when he shoots up in the cab after visiting his mother in Requiem for a Dream.”

Hmmmm. I guess it can get lost in translation.

I could fill up an entire column taking ridiculous quotes from ludicrous reviews, but thankfully there’s plenty of other ways savvy types are now getting their musical opinions across.

Take Breakfast at Sulimay’s. A weekly web series that gets a bunch of oldies together in a diner in sleepy Fishtown, Philadelphia. Ann, Joe and Bill run through the latest hip hop and indie releases and film their responses.

I’ve got to tell you, there’s something captivating about watching an eighty year old woman head bouncing to Young Jeezy’s Black Knight.

Another decent self-appointed critic Anthony Fantano is a radio producer and self confessed music nerd who posts his thoughts on new releases on a daily basis on YouTube. He doesn’t use big words. He just stands in front of the camera and talks. And occasionally dances. And thousands of people watch.

Sometimes they don’t even need to words to get hungry music fans to listen.

One of my favourite music blog sites is Fluokids. It’s French and I don’t have the faintest idea what their reviews actually say but I know the songs they post I tend to like.

“Il se passe quelque chose entre grooves fragmentés et house aquarelle.”

Anyone who speaks French, feel free to translate it for me…. All I know is nine times out of ten, I like their songs. So I’ll keep coming back. Je ne sais pas comprehende?

In the age where a lot of bands choose to stream entire albums well before they release date, the music fan can already try before they buy on countless websites. They can make up their own mind. They don’t need to read paragraphs of waffle to decide whether or not to purchase an album.

But in the meantime, dear music reviewer, while editors of newspapers and magazines are still paying you for inches of filler, I dare you to take some inspiration from @1000timesyes @BBCMusic itweettunes who all manage to cut their reviews down to 140 characters.

Here’s my favourite so far:

“This band might be big now, but I am pretty sure if you bought this album you might be wiping your arse with it in the future.” (Itweettunes on Short Stack’s ‘Stack is the new black’)

Now THAT’S what I call a review.

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55 comments

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    • iansand says:

      08:11am | 04/05/10

      An inconsequential medium written about by inconsequential people.

      I didn’t know anyone even read those reviews.  Maybe very serious 16 year olds with unwashed hair.

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      08:44am | 04/05/10

      Those reviews are meant to read and sound like the music on the record, I think.
      Kind of interesting, though. Perhaps saying a record is good only for the toilet kinda gives the game away a bit too early.

      Reply

    • Ant Sharwood says:

      09:29am | 04/05/10

      Alison, this is one of the best punch posts ever, and a story that has been begging to be written. “Just tell us what the music’s like, dickbrain!” is something I’ve yelled many times when I read music reviews.

      As a working sports journalist and regular contributor to The Punch, I know my field can be full of jargon too, and I try to avoid as much of it as possible. I concede that my fair share of mysterious terminology sneaks through, but the one thing I really try to avoid is making words up, like music journos do. Ever read the Vogon poetry in Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? It always read like a music review to me. Google it and you’ll know what I mean.

      Anyway, good onya for a top piece. Oh, and to all those tryhard wanker music journos out there, remember Elmore Leonard’s golden rule: “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it”.

      Reply

    • Sarah says:

      09:38am | 04/05/10

      Ohhh Pitchfork, was once great, and is now simply the domain of indie-wankers (coolsies) trying to out post-modern-rock-ise each other. The music matters less to them than the image around the music.
      My fave music blog is “Who the bloody hell are they?” - a local Australian blog featuring mainly new Australian artists, with a bit of info on the band, then you can listen to their song and make your own mind up, without needing a skinny-jeaned hipster with plain gass glasses telling what it “means.”

      Reply

    • Lee Tran says:

      09:51am | 04/05/10

      http://ripfork.com/ is very handy if you want to find examples of unreadable, incomprehensible music reviews. Although the web has been great for music (with the proliferation of mp3s and places to taste-test what you like before buying), it has been awful for music writing, because – without the word count restrictions of print – sometimes music criticism can really get out of hand. If you want to find a good music writer, read Sasha Frere Jones on newyorker.com - funny, smart, original, knows his stuff without making you feel like a dunce if you don’t.

      Reply

    • Old Salt says:

      11:20am | 04/05/10

      Just checked out the ripfork website, awesome!!

    • Old Salt says:

      10:07am | 04/05/10

      Great article Alison.  I love music too and for quite a few years i used to read street press like Drum Media in Sydney and Rave in Brisbane.  I use to respect their reviews but somewhere along the line the reviewers started to think they were actually more important than the music itself.  They feel they have to write “cool shit” so they in turn can be cool.  I love your reference to the KOL album, my girlfriend and i loved that album, thought it was great.  Then i read a Rave “album of the year” by each critic and all of them bagged it and had favourite albums on there that no-one would remember now.  I have now stopped reading those mags and depend on my own judgement.  I might check out a few of those good music blogs you mentioned though.  But here is what i love - in 20 years time no-one will give a crap what the critics think, but me and my girlfriend will always remember how good that KOL album is and put it on and listen to it over and over again!!

      Reply

    • Markus says:

      01:18pm | 04/05/10

      Ahh, the pain that is the life of an Indie-knob.
      They spend their life insulting people for listening to pop music and not appreciating the fantastic unknown bands out there.
      Then if said band becomes recognised and popular among the masses, the Indie-knob’s world comes crashing down. How could they possibly like something that is now ‘popular’? Does that mean they have now become what they hate most?
      The only solution: Denial. Rubbish the band and accuse them of ‘selling out’, thus being comforted by the false sense of security that they are still superior, and definitely not a hypocrite.

    • Max says:

      10:10am | 04/05/10

      “Just tell me if the bloody record is worth listening to.”

      Great point, Alison! Let’s stop THINKING about stuff. It’s not what the “punters” would want. In fact, I’m going to go look at some LOLcats now!

      Reply

    • Shaun says:

      10:11am | 04/05/10

      The expectation that critics offer simple good/bad evaluations is a contradiction of the term ‘critic’. Alison, if you want simple answers, stream the music for yourself. Stick with the French site. But deriding criticism simply because you don’t understand it is laughable.

      There is good and bad writing and nothing in between. I could explain further why this article is horrible but instead I’ll deign to speak your language and simply say “this is fucking shit”.

      Reply

    • JC says:

      10:40am | 04/05/10

      I’m not a fan of music reviews, but I agree. One person telling me whether an album is or isn’t worth listening to means absolutely nothing.
      If I can get some idea about what to expect from the album, even if one out of every six words has a meaning, then at least I can make up my own mind whether I might like it.

    • Pointy Stumps says:

      03:12pm | 04/05/10

      I agree.  If I want to know what the record sounds like, I’ll just listen to it.  It takes significantly less time to download an album these days (illegally, legally) than it does to read a review.  If you think criticism is redundant, then yours is a vision of culture which I think blows huge pooey chunks.

      You know what’s worse than reading bad music writing?  It’s reading bad music writing about why bad music writing shouldn’t exist.

    • richard says:

      05:16pm | 12/05/10

      alison is after a buyer’s guide, not music criticism. she wants a molly meldrum spiel transcribed so she knows whether to go to the mall or not. good music criticism stands alone as literature; there’s a whole bunch of writing out there which i love, about records which i hate.

    • Shaun says:

      10:11am | 04/05/10

      The expectation that critics offer simple good/bad evaluations is a contradiction of the term ‘critic’. Alison, if you want simple answers, stream the music for yourself. Stick with the French site. But deriding criticism simply because you don’t understand it is laughable.

      There is good and bad writing and nothing in between. I could explain further why this article is horrible but instead I’ll deign to speak your language and simply say “this is fucking shit”.

      Reply

    • Artax, Destroyer of Chickens says:

      10:21am | 04/05/10

      I guess you’re a music critic then, Shaun…?

      You utter legend.

    • Chris Deal says:

      10:37am | 04/05/10

      There is a worse kind of music writing than Pitchfork wank - community newspaper music writing. Let me attempt to recreate some now:

      “The guitars are thick and rock heavy, the bass lines oh so funky, and the drums just make you want to get on the floor and dance the night away”.

      Shut up and get back to writing about community outrage over proposed changes to bin night.

      Reply

    • Samson says:

      09:35am | 05/05/10

      Then add a photo of the band, taken on the closest railway line, with each band member holding their respective instrument (drumsticks for the drummer) so we don’t confuse who they are.

      Ah yes, local newspapers.  At least the reviewers actually enjoy their job though.  I think the Onion got it right about Pitchfork, they just don’t like music very much.  It’s ok, but nothing special.

    • Kallan says:

      10:58am | 04/05/10

      Wonderful topic you’re tackling here.. Pitchfork is in my opinion the home of a bunch of anal poseurs who love the image that the “Elitist” brand of music they rate well presents. Seriously though, to make a good pitchfork-worthy album here are four steps.

      1. Write a bunch of nonsensical lyrics, the less relevant the better
      2. Record lots of keyboards and sequenced sounds, with some conventional rock elements - but not like a conventional “mainstream” rock band would.
      3. Vocals need to be ethereal and laden with over the top harmonies.
      4. Copious amounts of pretentiousness.

      And you win!

      Reply

    • Shag says:

      03:49pm | 04/05/10

      Doesn’t that describe the KoL album this article says Pitchfork gave a bad review to?

    • Kallan says:

      02:47pm | 05/05/10

      No?

      1 - the lyrics are fairly normal, slightly cheesy in the case of of use somebody, but at least the idea the artist is trying to convey is understandable.

      2. Only By Night wasnt a keyboard sequenced style album? I’m referring to stuff like that found on “Crystal Castles II” etc.

      3. The vocals are far from ethereal, theyre standard rock.

      4. Not pretentious. Just catchy and mainstream.

      I’m not standing up for KOL, i’ve never liked them that much, though i enjoy singing along to Sex on Fire and Use Somebody at parties. I just hate pitchforks elitism.

    • Shag says:

      11:54am | 10/05/10

      1. How is Sex On Fire ‘relevant’? When you say ‘the less relevant the better’, relevant to what?

      2. Closer (the first song) sounds pretty keyboardy. But it also has conventional rock elements, but it doesn’t really sound like Nickleback, hence fulfilling your description in your first post.

      3. Use Somebody has about a million vocal tracks in the chorus, some in harmony with others (which could be described as ‘over the top’). Ethereal is a pretty subjective description of anything; I could argue that the soaring “OH OHS!” of the chorus sound pretty otherworldly, and thus ethereal.

      4. Pretty sure the video for Sex On Fire qualifies as pretentious, regardless of your own personal definition.  Ditto the cover image in which they’re birds as well as men for some reason.

      I’m not attacking KoL, and I’m not attacking you either; rather I’m standing up for Pitchfork, who I think gets hated on now it’s huge in the same manner this article argues that KoL get hated on by Pitchfork now that they’re huge.

      Plus now that you’ve mentioned Crystal Castles, it sounds like you wrote that set of criteria specifically for them. Can you think of another act that fulfills your criteria that you think is overrated but Pitchfork praise? JJJ just made CC album of the week, are JJJ elitist too because they didn’t choose something you like? 

      Calling something ‘elitist’ or ‘wanky’ just because it aspires to be anything more than average is such an Australian reaction, and I think it’s gross.

    • Dave says:

      11:35am | 04/05/10

      I think some music reviewers some from the same family as wine tasters!!!! They all dribble the same rubbish

      Reply

    • King Matt says:

      11:41am | 04/05/10

      I hope when you were referring to the Kings of Leon’s 3rd album you meant ‘Because of the Times’ and not ‘Only by the Night’. They have 4 albums.

      Reply

    • dave says:

      01:21pm | 04/05/10

      While there are plenty of things one could say about Pitchfork, this article basically consisted of you whining about your own lack of music knowledge, and the fact that your vocabulary is inadequate.

      The description of the unnamed band’s musical style makes perfect sense to me, and i don’t even listen to indie or electro (voluntarily). it’s just that, as a music fan, i have a desire to learn about the types of music that are available for me to listen to. It’s not a particularly demanding process, it just requires a little initiative.

      If a reviewer uses a few terms you don’t understand, why don’t you use it as an opportunity to utilise the perfectly sufficient research tools at your disposal (ie google) to learn something.

      Also, Kings of Leon do sound like U2 fronted by Cleetus the Slack Jawed Yokel. If you like such bad music you should probably pick a different subject to write about.

      Reply

    • Markus says:

      02:07pm | 04/05/10

      Funny how critics like Pitchfork were screaming their praises for this “Redneck U2” up until the album that established them on the world stage.
      Poor music snobs, it must be tough keeping up that level of denial 24/7.

    • JC says:

      04:44pm | 04/05/10

      Markus, do you really think KOL put out 3 mediocre albums, and then all of a sudden came up with all these great ideas for their 4th?
      Or do you think that their 4th album was made specifically to establish them on the world stage?

      Or let me put it this way…which music do you think is better, The Cockroaches or The Wiggles?

    • Joel says:

      03:03pm | 04/05/10

      Advocating regression to the mean is no way to bolster personal feelings of insecurity, Alison. If we applied this logic to everything you didn’t understand, the world would be a bland, beige wasteland.

      Reply

    • Daniel says:

      03:48pm | 04/05/10

      There’s an old saying that goes something like this: If you can explain something really complicated to a ph.D. student, you’re a genius. If you can explain something really complicated to a ten year old, you’re a ****ing genius.

      Alison’s calling for more music reviewers to be ****ing geniuses.

    • Fez says:

      04:03pm | 04/05/10

      Heaven forbid that someone might want to write about (or read about) music that’s more involved than four-on-the-floor rock, eh?

      Wondering, though - does Alison apply this kind of easy-crit requirement to art criticism or literary criticism, too? Or does she merely go by whether the painter kept within the lines, or whether the book is bound correctly?

      Hey, I know - maybe if it looks nice it’ll be passable. Right?

      Reply

    • Bob says:

      04:47pm | 04/05/10

      Nina Simone’s advice to musicians:“if you dont feel it dont play it"and Tom Waits “I want the guy to play like their hair is on fire"are expressions I can relate to about music.Many reviewers by contrast i agree use too many words which fail to have any meaning to me.Describing music is a talent like anything else i guess.There is no such thing as “serrated chords”.

      Reply

    • Samson says:

      10:11am | 05/05/10

      I don’t think Allison is saying that all music writing should be dumbed down, or that critiscism of complex artworks should be stripped of any indepth analysis.  What she is trying to say, and what I agree with, is that inane babbling about obscure and possibly invented genres really has nothing to do with discussing the music and is more about posturing on the part of the writer to make themselves look more knowledgeable

      What would be great would be a colorful, well written review, that just discussed the music, gave an opinion, and left it to the reader to decide how succesful the album was.  The phrase “augmented and serrated chords” might sound like nonsense, but at least it’s an attempt to relate the sound of the band to reader in an inventive way, at least it would have been if it didn’t end with some waffle about ‘monolithic-tech-pop’.

      Also I really can’t understand why so many of Pitchfork’s writers love to include statements along the lines of ‘the KoL really missed an opportunity to turn a new artistic direction and prove that they’re in on their own joke”.  Maybe it’s because they like to think that they’re smarter than the band, and a better artist too.  Maybe they are.  But without any personal experience (such as recording an album ever, or in particular recording a major label follow up to a successful album with a more mainstream producer) to back up their expert commentary it’s really just meaningless filler, and distracts from the original goal of music criticism; enjoying or not enjoying music.

      WhatI really want to say is that the quality of an album simply cannot be measured in pph, as Pitchfork would have people believe.

      Reply

    • Joel Werner says:

      01:05pm | 05/05/10

      Everyone’s missed that the term ‘monolithic-tech-pop’ was actually coined by the band in question (Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire!). In the original review, the reviewer describes the sound as ‘post-hardcore’, which is quite acceptable and easily understood if you read beyond Bernard Zuel.

      Reply

    • Fez says:

      01:59pm | 05/05/10

      >There is no such thing as “serrated chords”. <

      Just because you haven’t heard something that fits the bill doesn’t mean it’s not an apt descriptor. Shellac, anyone?

      >What she is trying to say, and what I agree with, is that inane babbling about obscure and possibly invented genres really has nothing to do with discussing the music and is more about posturing on the part of the writer to make themselves look more knowledgeable<

      ‘Possibly invented’ is the key here. Just because someone is unaware of the authenticity or history of a certain genre doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. There are certain reviewers who cover very small niches - but to decry their writing as necessarily self-promoting is to deny the possibility that that music is important to somebody. THOSE people are the target audience; perhaps you’re not. Not everyone reads The Wire or Cyclic Defrost - but then, not everyone has their thirst slaked by Rolling Stone or Eleven, either.

      Lots of reviewers are posers, sure. But so are musicians and listeners. Same as it ever was. And to be frank, these days, who doesn’t listen to music they’re interested in? Almost everything can be sampled online, and surely we’ve all had enough experience with the net to assume, unless shown otherwise, that the faceless author at the other end of that screed is a jerk? 

      If people want to point fingers at the decline of criticism, point ‘em at online publishers who exchange writerly rigour for blogging enthusiasm (or, more often, youthful spleen).

      Reply

    • Ferg says:

      11:07am | 07/05/10

      Firstly, calling these people music “critics” is really a misnomer. Not that I’m a fan of actual “critics” mind, but these people of which you speak are really just bloggers who choose to write about music.

      Secondly, in the words of the great Elvis Costello “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.”

      Anyone who reads an article in order to find out about an album is just wasting their time. No words can accurately describe how music sounds - only your ears can do this for you.

      Reply

    • Fez says:

      02:14pm | 07/05/10

      One of the most misattributed comments ever - see here for more:

      http://www.paclink.com/~ascott/they/tamildaa.htm

      (To be honest, that response sounds like a muso who didn’t like the review someone wrote about them. I’ve never understood it, personally - so music is *exempt* from analysis? Tricky.)

      There are critics writing blogs; the only problem is that they’re vastly outnumbered by fanboys.

      I disagree, though - a good review (even one that’s wankily written by the standards of this column’s author) can indeed give you an idea of what music is like. True, it won’t be the same as listening, but it can provide a much better frame of reference, often, than a 15-second Amazon sound snippet will.

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Gentle jabs to the ribs

Superman needs saving

Superman needs saving

Can somebody please save Superman? He seems to be going through a bit of a crisis. Eighteen months ago,… Read more

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