OK, so, Animal fucking Collective. I might hate Tumblr more than them, what a mess of a platform that is - how the hell you all keep track of what anyone's saying I've no idea. Hence, posting this here
( Read more... )
I think that Rodney and Lex's "0" blurbs for AnCo are hilarious. I'd give AnCo a 5 or a 6. I think that Lex's "0" and Ian Mathers's "1" blurbs for Das Racist are funny, too. I gave that one a 10.
The only time I get my boxers in a bunch about what other people rate music I like (or don't like) is when they just get the music wrong. If they project what they want the song to be about onto what it IS (or reasonably might be) about, for instance, whether they loved it or hated it. But if the criticism stands, and I think in all cases I've mentioned it does (Rodney and Lex have both clearly spent enough time with "My Girls" to write fair reviews of it -- they aren't misrepresenting the track or pinning some ridiculous beef to it that doesn't stick; their interpretations of what it's "about" are plausible even if its defenders don't happen to like that interpretation, etc. etc. etc.), then there's just no point in getting sour grapes about it.
I happen to quite like Radiohead's Kid A, and I think that Robert Christgau said a lot more
( ... )
Just "re-"saw it, anyway, prompted from a Haloscan exchange over on Bedbugs. But I don't want to get into those things again, they're just fresh in my mind.
Oh yeah, that annoys me w/r/t individual reviews of a piece of music. What annoys me about eg the AC critical reaction is the general suffocating insistence that it's "consensus", the general "en masse" feel of the plaudits, kind of like it's being engineered into the canon. Breaking it down to individual opinions, whatever, but none of these individuals seem to be very self-aware of the larger critical machinery.
Pretty much all AC defenders seem to be clueless when it comes to reacting to AC attackers, mischaracterising and misrepresenting or just plain not engaging with our arguments, and that's what the irritation here is about. I still want to see one of these people who pompously declare its Importance as an unarguable fact admit or at least respond to the whole "your tiny indie hole is not the centre of the musical or critical universe" charge.
Well, I'll react to the "your tiny indie hole is not the center of the musical or critical universe" charge. I'd say that by and large, indie kids are the rank and file audience for music criticism, the ones who most care about criticism as a way of communicating about music and discovering music. Obviously they're not the total audience for criticism, or else the alternative press would be even more indiecentric, but they're fundamentally the most committed to the reading and the writing about music. I'd say that indie is a genuine folk movement, not that they represent The People - most people aren't fans of indie, and no music gets to be the people's music and no people get to be The People, but nonetheless they're a popular movement, a strong constituency that's not going away and that cares about music with a religious devotion that equals mine or yours, and they support their music. --But then "indie" doesn't mean the same thing to everybody, and I felt a lot of affinity with what Chris Weingarten was trying to do at Paper Thin
( ... )
Yeah, I basically agree. I don't think this is a good status quo! So either the indie-centrists who dominate criticism need to open up to other genres - and NOT in that infuriating "we like X when it's not really like X" tokenistic way - or non-indie-centric voices need to pitch in.
I mean, there are plenty of non-indie-centric voices out there; it's not like R&B, hip-hop, soul, any genre you care to mention - they have their own media and their own writers. But because none of those writers make any claims to be the centre, and tend not to care what the indie-centric mainstream thinks, they don't get involved in conversations like this. Which probably means they win.
Indie-centrists don't dominate criticism, even if they're an overstrong presence. What they dominate is the audience for criticism, which makes for an interesting tension.
The only time I get my boxers in a bunch about what other people rate music I like (or don't like) is when they just get the music wrong. If they project what they want the song to be about onto what it IS (or reasonably might be) about, for instance, whether they loved it or hated it. But if the criticism stands, and I think in all cases I've mentioned it does (Rodney and Lex have both clearly spent enough time with "My Girls" to write fair reviews of it -- they aren't misrepresenting the track or pinning some ridiculous beef to it that doesn't stick; their interpretations of what it's "about" are plausible even if its defenders don't happen to like that interpretation, etc. etc. etc.), then there's just no point in getting sour grapes about it.
I happen to quite like Radiohead's Kid A, and I think that Robert Christgau said a lot more ( ... )
Reply
Reply
Pretty much all AC defenders seem to be clueless when it comes to reacting to AC attackers, mischaracterising and misrepresenting or just plain not engaging with our arguments, and that's what the irritation here is about. I still want to see one of these people who pompously declare its Importance as an unarguable fact admit or at least respond to the whole "your tiny indie hole is not the centre of the musical or critical universe" charge.
Reply
Reply
Reply
I mean, there are plenty of non-indie-centric voices out there; it's not like R&B, hip-hop, soul, any genre you care to mention - they have their own media and their own writers. But because none of those writers make any claims to be the centre, and tend not to care what the indie-centric mainstream thinks, they don't get involved in conversations like this. Which probably means they win.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment