can we trust critics ? (george g)

Because I o ly do one or two reviews a week, I prefer to focus on what is interesting out there, thus leaving the miedocre and the boring for others to criticise - i'm assuming ppl willhave the good sense to know mariah carey's album is shite, but they may not know that Jason Walker's new album is the album that people were expecting from ryan Adams, except they got Gold isntead... Mind you, I've savaged some albums in the past and willa gain - a lot of it has to do with how much publicity the album gets, etc, and what kind of disasters...my theory is also for the really big artisits, all publicity is good for them, but silence robs them from their ego trips, which i enjoy. As to whethre I'll buck a trend, fuck yeah - again, it depends on the publicity being given etc...I certainly won't give a CD a good review just because others are, and i also wouldn't give them a bad review if others are...

There was an interesting discussion on this here

I receive a lot of free cds for review purposes and they generally stretch from mediocre to mildly interesting, interspersed with the occasional treasure. I still spend absolutely huge (from my perspective) amounts of money on cds which, because I chose them, are generally much better. This means that for me at least the sense of the monetary value of music is still quite urgent and key, and I imagine this is true for a lot of critics.

I think when people lambast critics for certain types of behaviour they often overlook the fact that the same sorts of behaviour are quite common among non-critics - the unifying factor is not receiving free stuff and discussing it in an officially-designated space, but rather listening to music and engaging in an exchange of ideas about it (one-way or two-way). Eg. what's the difference between a critic who hypes up The Strokes to her/his audience and a non-critic who hypes up The Strokes to her/his friends? Potentially a lot, perhaps nothing. That one received it for free (or not, as the case may be!) and the other had to pay some money seems to be of little importance. I know of a lot of non-critics who are eager to be hip, who are eager not to rock the boat (or conversely rock the boat for the sake of it), who are eager to jump on any trend. I know quite a few critics whose major problems are, well, not very interesting tastes and boring writing.

If there are universal problems with being a professional critic, I think they'd be the following: a) not choosing what you review (at least in my case), b) tiny word limits, c) small turnarounds. My blog is the antithesis of this set-up, natch.

Weird thing is that my AMG writing has meant I've now been able to work with the 300-word limit usually asked for very well -- it's actually quite a flexible little format, reviewing in miniature. But I do draw a definite stylistic division between them and my longer-winded rants in FT, CTCL, here, etc.

I've suckled at the corporate teat before, and I can tell you this: Very few record labels have a hit-to-miss ratio high enough to justify sucking up to them just so the releases wouldn't stop. Invariably you have to wade through a ton of shit to get to the jewels, when they're sending it to you for free, and sometimes the inclination might be to pan it all just to get the misery to stop. I never felt overly compelled to say great things about mediocre releases just because I got it for free. As stated above, I still bought the majority of my releases, and from a time/money perspective, there'd probably still be more value just dropping the money on the things you liked rather than praising hundreds of shitty releases just so you didn't have to pay for 'em.

Tim, perhaps it is that your relationships between money and effort and enjoyment are more er discreet than for others. Recommending a CD implicitly says "I think this is worth $15 of your money" -- to trivialise this is to ignore the $15 hit that consumers take. If in a month you're sick of that particular CD and have changed your mind about it, then you haven't wasted the $15 your friend has if you got it free. If you paid for it I'm sure the cost is more of a factor simply because you were forced to address cost in the first place, something a little trivial in the grand scheme of art perhaps, but a requirement for the majority.

I've seen lot's of big CD/LP collections -- mostly paid for and perhaps prioritised by their owners. Each new CD bought is $15 spent post the experience the owner's had with his/her collection already. Critics can avoid a lot of the purchases involved in building that critical perspective -- oh, they have to plough through lots of "spam", but they didn't have to spend a cent to get those experiences -- earning money is "effort spent on something you would otherwise not do", it is wasted time, pain put up with, pleasure forgone. Don't forget that reveiwers can still sell the unwanted product on the secondhand market, so they never lose on the deal. And don't forget critics are often sent CDs in the area of their speciality/interest anyway, for more qualified review depth. Don't make us feel sorry for critics, because if they don't want the job there will always be someone else there to take it.

It's just that these days most reveiws I read reveal a critic tired of all the listening the job entails anyway (oh, poor critic) and perhaps cynical about the whole industry, especially "indie" materials "marketing", and yet forced by the review format to produce some observation or comment, some job to do of fitting the material under review into the wider scheme of things. It's like reveiwers seem to me to read like passionless librarians slightly pissed off with their lot but usually admitting to some good points, some notable addition to the canon. It's become so formulaic. Rarely will a reveiwer simply say "I'd play these 3 tracks ten times again in my whole life and probably never listen to the whole CD right through again", but we all know that practically speaking that would be true for 90% of the music released out there.

Because reviews in the 21st century have now gone beyond a simple "bill of road worthiness", for literary criticism inpired reasons, most music will get some opinion spin, some valuation, some redeeming quality. The reveiwers job has been abstracted right away from someone saying "in the end, this release is still a waste of your money -- why not try XXX, from '72 and still good". Now a reveiwer will say "well, it's similar to AA with a skew of BB and DD, so if you like AA + a bit of 'rock' [or 'space'], this _will_ [shake your booty]". Actually that's too good to ask for. Lot's of reviews will fill up the un-inprired hack-yard with descriptions of labels, genres, gossip. None of this is the bottom line.

It's not this "look at this new developement" thing -- critics aren't scientists commenting on the harmony of the spheres, they're "aesthetic advisors" which means addressing all the material already purchaseable with that $15 and telling us whether this new release makes any difference to the listener with $15. It's that simple.

Please don't forget that someone else on the other side of the world may be making a decision based on your review, maybe relying on the reviewers casual dandy-ish commentary on the state of the art, and perhaps diving into a one-way purchase. If you think that's a trivial deal in the first place examine the value in $ of your collection and consider how many promo $s allowed you to make more informed purchases yourself.

Your duty to music buyers should be more important than the tragedy of word limits or of tying deadlines to release scedules.

And please don't pretend that reveiwers aren't deeply sunk into their own heuristics and styles of writing, owing more to the _real_ _trivialities_ of the PR, music and publishing industries, from whence the free product under review strung.

"It's just that these days most reveiws I read reveal a critic tired of all the listening the job entails anyway (oh, poor critic)..."

It's true, the prospect of getting $6 dollars back for selling a cd I dislike (and I say $6 dollars as in *Australian* dollars ie. $3 American) after I spent over an hour writing about it and at least three hours listening to it *doesn't* fill me with joy, or inspire me to thank my lucky stars for being a critic (as far as paid writing goes, non-salaried music reviews are on a rung merely inches above non-salaried movie reviewers).

And if anyone's going to go out and buy a cd immediately after (and solely due to the fact that) I gave it a three-star review and essentially said "fine, not brilliant", they're not gullible, they're foolish - the implication is that they've felt an emotional connection to my *judgement*, and to my emotional attachment to the album, neither of which are particularly unusual or strong. Arguably they would have bought the album if *all* I'd said was "fine, not brilliant - 3 stars".

On the other hand, if having read my review they went out and bought the album because of my *discussion* of it, in which I teased out various themes, contexts, directions, comparisons, contrasts etc. which they *independently* thought sounded highly appealing despite the fact that my pleasure was no more than adequate and/or fleeting, then I think they're doing what most people who buy as a result of record reviews are doing, even if it's only a part of their reaction, or an unconscious one.

(Your argument hints at a certain distrust of contemporary music. Am I wrong in this regard? If I'm not then we'll just have to agree to disagree - I can't deny a certain emotional investment in the idea of musical developments as a series of intertwining adventures occurring in the present tense.)

"If in a month you're sick of that particular CD and have changed your mind about it, then you haven't wasted the $15 your friend has if you got it free."

At the beginning of the month, when the consumer (having paid for the cd) makes an unreserved recommendation to their friend, they have yet to waste their $15 either. How is the substance of their recommendation different at this stage? Sure, in a month's time they might have soured on the CD and bitterly resent the money they've wasted (although my memory of being a consumer layperson only twelve months ago - before I was tainted by becoming a critic - suggests to me that it's much easier to be philosophical about that wasted money after a month's enjoyment) but unless they offer a personal retraction to each friend they made their recommendation to (if it's not already too late) the effect is the same. Again it comes back to the inevitable problem of weighing in with an opinion before that opinion has firmed up - a criterion that I'd argue isn't even necessarily always a good one: sometimes the best reaction is one in the heat of the moment, in the first flush of enthusiasm.

P.S. post-napster there's increasingly less excuse to buy music without listening to it first, and it's not like listening towers haven't been around for ages. I imagine that most people who do take a leap of faith based on a solitary review are resigned to the risk of failure (if nothing else, sometimes people's tastes are just different!), and if not then they should be.

George is basically asking a trick question.

It's good to know that George knew the back-end of what we all go through when we review records, so much so that apparently we didn't have to bother answering. By his logic, I feel cheated that I went out and put my time into answering and want my money back. (ps. I will hold a lingering resentment of him until the end of time for steering me wrong here, and will never trust another question he asks because of this. O lost!)

one thing i don't understand. this thing about non-professional critics (ie. people like me). er, we don't pay for everything at all. much of my music is taped for me by friends, and now, of course, there is audiogalaxy.

I don't think the point of critics is to trust them. I just want to be entertained by them.

Like the folks that work at the sewage plant, I find what they do is distasteful but I happily make use of their labour. I'm even happy to pay money for it.

Its hypocracy on my part, at least I would hopefully say to guys working at the sewage plant they earn an honest living - something I am unwilling to say to critics. Even if I was upwind of them.

The activity of critisism is an inherently judgemental one and that for me is the moral vacuum right there, anyone who can stand in judgement is not to be trusted and so the only critic you can trust is a worthless one.

I try really hard to avoid being a critic, I hate speaking to people in bands I dislike - I don't have the right to judge other people's musical creations. I wrote a note about a band called Metropak once on a website. I didn't like them much so I said so. I got an email from one of them and he was nice and saying it was a shame I didn't like them.

I felt rubbish about that, here is a guy, 20 years after a band he obvioulsy loved and had great memories of goes looking on the web and finds my offhand dismissive comment - and I was one of the people who had bought his record. I was too upset to reply to him. How proper critics have the ego to live with their activites is beyond me.

On the web and in a converstaion like this where there is a relationship of equals I can just about cope slagging off things I hate, (if Primal Scream are reading this I say PLS STP MKNG SHT MSC), I'm glad I can pay others for the distasteful task of slagging people where the dynamics of equality between critic and critisised are less fair.

George -- It sounds like you want Consumer Reports for music. Such a thing does not exist, nor should it. Why do want art to be boiled down to how much money it's worth?

I'm glad I can pay others for the distasteful task of slagging people where the dynamics of equality between critic

i am lucky in that i do not pay for anyones opinion, i listen to friends opinions on music, and i trust them not to be hypocritical, and to tell it like they see it. similarly, i get the same here, from people like tom, ned and alexander

Yancey, critics hold themselves out as advisors on how they think you should choose amoungst art in spending your money. It's not art that has a monetary value here then, it's the critics opinion. If all music was free this problem would not exist, but forces in the music industry have vested interests too large to let things get any bigger than audiogalalxy, which has kept below the radar line with zero publicity and a "fair use" discussion of merits of music as modus operandi -- ideally there shouldn't be a problem with that. For the majority though, they still buy "critics music" based on what critics say -- nothing to do with $ value of art -- you can blame "the industry" on that, which may include some critics and not others.

Alexander, if young rockers, artists etc. are going down a dull track musically then it might be a nice thing to do to let them know that at least someone thinks they suck. That's in your objective assessment -- hey, it might mean they try something else more interesting.

People in bands are often like young parents : no-one told them what was the wrong thing to do, so they may parent/rock badly. Why is it such a crime to give such people a helpful nudge, for the baby's/audiences' sake ? If they were young and formally training at art school, then they'd be doing lot's of constructively critical workshops to hone the art. But not young bands -- no, let them get up there and make a loud mess of things, ruin your hearing and perhaps your evening, and politely clap, like the rituals of the opera, where telling someone to shut-the-fuck-up is not done, (or in the rock'n'roll world, not cool).

If a critic thought he was deeply subjective, well, beyond any realistic goal of trying to get to being moderately objective, he'd be no use to anyone, so he should shut-the-fuck-up too (he should give up the job).

Clearly people DO NOT listen to critics. Look at the Top Ten of the Billboard charts. Look at what's popular. How many of those records received a favorable critical review?

Within the indie community critics do have more importance -- and with good reason. Someone has to sort through everything that comes out and let people know what's worth checking out and what isn't. There are so many new artists and labels coming out every single week. Would you have known about all of these acts without reading critical opinions? Maybe, but critics certainly serve a purpose.

Blaming critics for poor purchases seems like a dead end to me. If you purchase a bad meal who do you blame? If you buy a piece of clothing that looked good in the store but doesn't at home, who do you blame? You are the one that plunks down the money. You just may have different taste than the critic. Sure, if someone at Rolling Stone recommended the Jay-Z record saying it was the MC5 incarnate, then you have a problem. But if someone says, "Hey, this record is really good!" and you buy it and think, "Hey, this record is really bad," I don't think that critic owes you $15. Which seems to be what you are advocating.

I think the other part of the solution is that you as a reader/record buyer should pay attention to critics and the sorts of things they seem to like before trusting them blindly. Critics, like the listening public at large, have different tastes, which is what makes life interesting. If you're the type of person who uses record reviews as your method of determining your next purchase, then it's YOUR responsibility to make sure you're listening to the right critics, and weigh advice accordingly. (You wouldn't just walk in to a record store and take the advice of the first clerk you spotted, you'd want to feel out their tastes and other recommendations first.) In other words, it takes two to tango, and either party can throw off the balance.

nah, critics by thier very presence in mags of general interest to a particular subset of the public, my provide the only initial point of view to the public, that's _before_ anyone has taken the gamble and bought the music.

You have to live with music for a period (maybe 5 spins, maybe, if it's good, 100s of spins). Since a critic will often be given advance info and warning re: imminent release _as_well_as_ the music _free_, we must expect that critics, in providing this early opinion of newly released music, to be aware of the implications of someone spending money based on that critic's opinions. You can say the buyer should do their own investigations. If no reliable friends have bought it, are you trying to tell me that a ten minute time on a listening post while the rock music continues louder in the background is a reasonable chance at checking it out ? Like we all buy CDs so we can listen to them wearing headphones while others talk and loud rock music plays in the background and were're forced to stand up ? I do not want music listening in my preferred listening enviroment to be anything like that.

On the other hand, we expect critics to spend some time with the music and tell us whether the music will endure 100 listens or burst it's bubble aftyer 5 (ed pop music).

Should we have to choose critics ? If one critic pans a CD in "The Wire" that's often all the info we get. "Opprobrium" veers between useful meditations on the music under analysis (Aberhart, Bywater, Collett, Cummings, Hazell .., the minority) and throw away generalisations about how we all know this and that about the scene anyway, and oh, compare it to this or that but do not distinguish, dont' forget to slap bro' on the back to help sales and uh, if it eventually gets a bit palling [actually two listens, as I'm so busy with all this free stuff I'm sent] it might eventually make it to the top of the christmas tree (Nick Cain, Bruce Russell, Nathan [please, Sandoz lab technician for christ'sake?]). "Opprobrium", used to be a mag. but, well, just a web site now (which is all it should be, a footnote to Perfect Sound Forever, Forced Exposure) renders most reviews so labourishly with incestuous insider wanna-be rockstar gossip that it is beyond any relationship of trust with it's readership at all.

Remember, you can have a two way conversation with a friend rendering a recommendation, and ultimately arrive at a conclusion. Compare this to the memos from the ivory tower style, the self importance and word to the wise guy unilateral "expression of artistitry including attempt at review" that we routinely get from the exalted established reviewers within the supposedly independent scene. Aren't these guys just more fashion-mongers. Trust these appengaes to the industry ?

And please, answers from listeners, users of reveiws, as well as and perhaps instead of just posts from reviewers pushing some self- justifying agenda.

Let me see if I get this straight: you want someone who's reviewing an album to always speak exactly to what YOU, George Gosset, will think when listening to that same album through, say, 28 or 57 spins, and you still expect said review to say something to every other everyman or everywoman who just happens to be reading the same review, in a completely objective way that will make it absolutely clear to everyone in the entire world just how damn good or bad an album is, even though musical tastes are subjective? Okay, then, sure, that's coming right up.

Sean, that's silly. Look, the tone of a review will often make the music sound interesting. Well lot's of music is interesting. Remember this though. I don't see any critics hallowing the days of '70s disco, and yet this is what young people have be it foreground and background. They've just got to have it.

Having said that, do you seriously think anyone will give a damn about the more recently fashionable music. Electronic music and dance music are not the same thing, but in 20 years time when we reflect on the naivete of these times and how musical instruments of those times sounded and dated, they will seem as glaringly then obvious as a duran duran synth sound might today.

No Sean, someone has to look to someone else'e recommndations often in arriving at a purchase decision. Had you forgotten how much there is of retail music distribution now, compared with that not-so-noisy store with the standing room only listening stand has to offer? You can only listen to three minute pop songs on listening posts successfully -- it's not really taking it in at you leisure is it ?

Amazon only promote music to sell it, often with mysterios "genre qyut-hop editor" recommendation, and if you buy something, Amazon will say "you'll like this too" !

If i'm on the other side of the world and don't want to throw lot's of money at hitherto unknown music do I trust the critics ? if not, do I expect one of my friends to have it so I can at least here it

Sean, that's silly. Look, the tone of a review will often make the music sound interesting. The reveiwer will have their own stylistic prose tricks that, in all high-handedness, they prefer as a matter of style and incestuous musical camaraderie to proclaim "yes, and .." simply catogarise along with lot's of music deemed "of interest". Remember this though. I don't see any critics hallowing the days of '70s disco, and yet this is what young people have be it foreground and background. They've just got to have it.

Having said that, do you seriously think anyone will give a damn about the more recently fashionable music. Electronic music and dance music are not the same thing, but in 20 years time when we reflect on the naivete of these times and how musical instruments of those times sounded and dated, they will seem as glaringly then obvious as a duran duran synth sound might today.

No Sean, someone has to look to someone else'e recommndations often in arriving at a purchase decision. Had you forgotten how much there is of retail music distribution now, compared with that not-so-noisy store with the standing room only listening stand has to offer? You can only listen to three minute pop songs on listening posts successfully -- it's not really taking it in at you leisure is it ?

Amazon only promote music to sell it, often with mysterios "genre qyut-hop editor" recommendation, and if you buy something, Amazon will say "you'll like this too" !

If i'm on the other side of the world and don't want to throw lot's of money at hitherto unknown music do I trust the critics ? if not, do I expect one of my friends to have it so I can at least hear it ? If I do, lucky me, lucky because unlike some other aesthetic media, with music one can't try before one buys. So the music industry wins. And the critics get sent more free CDs.

The critics thus form a valuable nexus between consumer and reveiwer. Critics have a vested interset; encouraging more free CDs to be sent. To keep the public guessing as so many critics do is to bring in (a) literary games -- reviewer "artistically" riding the tail wind of musical artist and so become a "commentator" and "chmapion (b) covert influence movements in sales towards the critics' lobby groups (maybe industry mates) and (c) set themselves up as music gurus what with their wealth of free material -- become untoachable -- become a celebrity and (4) set up their own record lablel so their mates in the industry let them in on a piece of the big pie.

I have deep reservations about theseaspects which we see ao oftne in reviews we take them for granted

as a footnotoe: many web 'zines are lttle more than web-sites by true fannies -- if evryone/fan posted a review (and we're headed in that direction) nobody's opinion will mean very much.

So I say again to magzines (and the web sites that count PerfectSoundForever (they accept interesting material unsolicited), not Opprobrium (title mean "disgraceful, infamouse (ha!), despised")),

critics: please polish up you act -- critism is _not_ about whipping out a complimentary and original piece of prose in return for compliemtary CDs -- let's see some of the learned interest in music that led to the critic becoming a critic on display.

I do have some fave reviewers at opprobrium adtally; Jon Bywater, Dave Ramsden, Kerry Aberhart (non-exhaustive list)

but the industry bullshit ends with editor _and_ reviewer; most editors do not themselves get involved in any criticism (eg Rob Young, editor, not reviewer of The Wire). Imagine thinking your reviews were so OTM that you felt OK anout being your own editor. Opprobrium might not be financially well of, but these artists could be the artistic microsoft, withese guys Russel and Kain issuing the latest buy notives, taking a hard line (in Kain's case one man search/destroy). Even worse, what's Bruce Russell, record label owner and member of infkuential/controversial Dead C, doing reviewing music by pals in the USA ?

and, hey, hope you can all dig it

i started a new thre on this here.

Only reveiwers got involved -- i want everybody who' bought something based on something they've read, or perhaps seen on the net.

I also screwed up paragrah three of my previous post, so here is the proper vesion: -------------------------------------------------------------------- No Sean, someone has to look to someone else'e recommndations often in arriving at a purchase decision. Had you forgotten how much there is of retail music distribution now, compared with that noisy store with only stand-only listening stands has to offer? You can only listen to three minute pop songs on listening posts successfully -- it's not really taking it in at you leisure is it ? --------------------------------------------------------------------

check out these sites below if you like -- Nick likes his position in the overall clique of things -- he's an editor of his own work -- some of his reviewers take a different track than him though -- it's not all bad. However browse all of Nick's reviews and the interview if you like and I can tell you which of his free CDs he thought were wonderful that he flicked off to the local record store where I was able to buy them secondhand, all-the-while wondering if these 'critics' who had said these CDs were so cool, why would they be selling them ?

DO NOT TRUST CRITICS

nick cain interview

The great thing about George's anti-critic tirade is that around the edges of it you can see glimpses of what looks like a totally fascinating critical approach to music.

'Fascinating' as in 'insane', sadly.

The further this thread goes on, George, the more I really have no clue what it is you really want, except to vent out some anger because someone steered you wrong at one point. That's fine and dandy, but it seems to me like a lot of wasted energy here, for all of us: you seem to want to tar all critics with the same brush, and no matter what any of us say here, it's "silly", even when it's something as straightforward as "reviews are subjective, so make sure you know where a reviewer is coming from before you blindly trust their recommendations". Since this whole thread seems to be troll- bait more than anything else, that's it for me for now. Bye please!

OK Sean, bail out. Tim, how do you get to "insane" (I can live with "fascinating").

Why do I keep asking the questions; because I'm not getting any decent answers to any points I've made; troll, critic-baiting, rubbed- someone-up-the-wrong-way, Jeez, how about an appraisal of the level of criticism in rock music -- do we need it ? does it work ? you can't reductively bow out of these issues with one-liners -- the level of scepticism about fabulous music in "I Love Music" is pretty shallow.

And again -- did i get any answers from consumers -- oh, nobody takes critics seriously so why bother with this thread -- or perhaps more sacred turf worthy of childish "insane" speculation. Makes me wonder if "people who love music" are "people who can have a conversation on wider issues" or "people who can read" or "people who bother thinking".

Well music was always a cult. Call me a heretic if you like, but "insane" -- a trite dull one-liner -- what more should I expect from a music devotee likely more interested in swapping club sandwiches.

There have been plenty of good points made upthread, they're just not the points you want to hear. The reason that no one seems to want to get involved in this discussion, I'm guessing, is that there seems to be very little point in arguing about this any further.

By the way, just as an administrative public service, your link above to the other discussion actually points back to this thread. Interested bystanders who want to see the other part of this discussion can click on over to here for more details, though it plays out much the same there as it does here.

how cud i become a reveiwer for rockstar