Album Rating: 5.0

Talk is cheap!

This review could be used for literally any album in existence and would have no different meaning. Other than swapping song titles

Album Rating: 5.0

yes

Album Rating: 5.0

damn well written

Album Rating: 5.0

Talk is cheap!

Album Rating: 5.0

thank you jackson

"Sales mean nothing to me though and I’m only peripherally aware of them."

I mean, it's not like I'm following the Billboard 200 charts every week. But if an artist starts to succeed commercially, I'd consider that a good thing, in general. Really depends on if the artist capitlizes on the success, or coasts on it.

Album Rating: 5.0

Talk is cheap!

Album Rating: 5.0

couldn’t you also classify it as “punk?”

Album Rating: 5.0

Quintessential spring album

Album Rating: 4.0

Zak roasting Noler without even realizing it what a guy

Album Rating: 5.0

Talk is cheap!

Album Rating: 4.0

@op-noler apropos nothing I was browsing your last couple of reviews out of curiosity and had a good ol time tbh - you've got a strong sense of clarity and frankness, and it'd be good to see you write more. And - BUT - for a while after I had this one ticking over; I think it raises a lot of valuable questions, and I'm not sure that any of them were adequately addressed itt, so while I've still got it on my mind hwg



For a review directed at music journalism, I found it surprisingly difficult to get a read on what you think writing on music is, or is for. The rev addresses three different paths of criticism: corporate filler as per the pencil pusher caricature, summarising albums' contents as per your first para/first 2 sentences of second para, and hard n fast interpretation as per the rest of the second para.



Out of these, I think that the former only represents a minority of online writing (and definitely doesn't overlap with volunteer sites like Sput), that summarising should only ever be a critical tool and never an end goal (if all you're doing is describing music, chances are you just don't know how else to approach it; I've defs been there when writing to get albums a thread/attention and it ain't fun), and that interpretation is hard to generalise over because for every over-politicised Pitchfork mouthbreather you'll have a well-informed contextual mapping that may well have something more incisive to say than artists' actual intentions ever could.

Album Rating: 4.0

Anyhow, I think what's missing in your combined snapshot of music journalism is a balanced take on what it can actually do outside of publicity or promotion, although you come very close to the heart of it right here :



But it can be helpful to remember that listening to music is an intimate experience between you and the artist. It is not an intimate experience between you, the artist, and some snobby pencil pusher



I agree with this big time: that relationship is a precious thing to hold onto and all too easy to lose sight of sometimes. However, I think it's a little simplistic to recognise the value that it plays in your engagement with music without factoring in that there has most likely been something equally valuable between whichever critic you're reading and the album you're both engaging with, however different your perspectives or attitudes might seem.



Personally, I think that if music journalism has any single 'point', even more than persuading you to check out something you haven't heard, it's to add either depth or a counterpoint or both to an experience you're already at least somewhat in tune with. This doesn't mean replacing your experience as a listener with the critic's, or replicating the experience of listening to the album, which I completely agree is a waste of time. It means offering a complementary perspective that prompts you to ​engage with the album from a different angle, whether that's informative or purely opiniated or (usually/ideally) both.



I don't think that everyone needs or wants that kind of secondary engagement, which is ofc fair enough, but if you ignore that the critic's voice is ultimately as personal as yours, I think you can easily hit a wall of bad faith.

Album Rating: 4.0

On that basis, I think the idea of you having a love/hate relationship with music journalism is pretty self-explanatory; I've often seen you take a dismissive attitude to criticism that isn't written in either (what I'd consider) prosaic or anecdotal terms, often slighting the register without engaging with the content (which many would perhaps rubberstamp as reverse snobbery). This was what originally made me curious about kinda reviews you would write personally, and I'd guess it has to do with how much you v rightly value in relying on an emotional or intuitive connection with music, which isn't as obviously represented in those pieces, though maybe I'm off the mark here.



Either way, I think if you're going to take issue with the standpoints or registers other listeners are writing from, your experience of their work is going to be accordingly narrow. I get caught up this a lot tbqh with certain sentimental music-and-me! writers, and I've only recently started noticing how much my bias against their tone and ethos obstructs the meaningful parts of what they're actually saying.



Also, separate point entirely, but I'm not sure how historically accurate any of your Beatles wrote sonic experiences paragraph is - I don't get how they rendered the need for verbal description obsolete or threatened the role of the press when they gave music journalists an unprecedented degree of relevance and a fresh vocabulary for describing popular music that endures today.



/post. Part of the reason I bothered with this was that I found it v interesting and productive to churn over - there isn't nearly enough discussion on sput about what music criticism really is or is for, so nice one addressing that - but mainly I'd be interested to see your response and uh peace out ig !

Album Rating: 3.5

caribou is a great career opener



john [2]

Album Rating: 4.0

who put adderall in johnny’s ramune again

Album Rating: 4.0

thank you, automated nugget shitpost bot



lol Caribou is iconic, huge tune

Album Rating: 5.0

Talk is cheap!

Album Rating: 4.0

the nol sell

Album Rating: 4.0

posting candid so you shitpost your own thread is cheap talk agreed