target practice, or: what good reviews do
"Waits is preoccupied with specifics, never once mewing a vague scenario or untied emotion. His songs may be tremendously bizarre, even ominous-- but they're always exceptionally real; every character has a pair of trousers to wear, a meal to chew, a task to complete. And there is always a place that Tom Waits thinks it would be best for them to avoid."
(from a 2004 review of "Real Gone" on Pitchfork's website, by Amanda Petrusich. for full text, please visit http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/23068/Tom_Waits_Real_Gone)
This is a "bull's eye" music criticism - it hits the mark mightily, yet even in the act of aiming, opens new channels for discussion from within the work itself. Like a penny tossed into a pond, its impact ripples out in concentric circles from the center of the work - the heart of the song, one might say - itself. Rather than simply shooting holes in the artist whose intentions it purports to clarify, the critic actually expands the dimensions of the target. As the bull's eye of the discussion widens, our understanding of the work deepens, and we see that what we are really aiming at is ourselves: our own lives as we experience them, as underfed, oversated or apathetic as they deign to appear.
One senses that the artist, too (in this case, the illustrious tomcat, Right Rev. Waits) might emerge from the review with a keener understanding of his own songwriting, and possibly with an insight or two into how he might further hone his craft.
(from a 2004 review of "Real Gone" on Pitchfork's website, by Amanda Petrusich. for full text, please visit http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/23068/Tom_Waits_Real_Gone)
This is a "bull's eye" music criticism - it hits the mark mightily, yet even in the act of aiming, opens new channels for discussion from within the work itself. Like a penny tossed into a pond, its impact ripples out in concentric circles from the center of the work - the heart of the song, one might say - itself. Rather than simply shooting holes in the artist whose intentions it purports to clarify, the critic actually expands the dimensions of the target. As the bull's eye of the discussion widens, our understanding of the work deepens, and we see that what we are really aiming at is ourselves: our own lives as we experience them, as underfed, oversated or apathetic as they deign to appear.
One senses that the artist, too (in this case, the illustrious tomcat, Right Rev. Waits) might emerge from the review with a keener understanding of his own songwriting, and possibly with an insight or two into how he might further hone his craft.