Wiping the moistness from music criticism
Music journalism is in crisis, again. Can it be rescued from its wet, deferential present?
Music criticism is down on itself, but not on the music it reviews. Observant critics have noticed for years that negative reviews have fallen out of fashion. I’ve had similar conversations with colleagues, and each time I felt like we were old vultures circling dry bones, flapping impotently at a situation that had long passed us by. We’d come up with lots of reasons that contributed to the absolute state that music reviewing was in (listed below). But what could we do about it, and what did it mean?
Ableton and other DAWs enabled more people to become independent artists—just as consumer spending on physical formats began to tank (and still is)
The social distance between the artist and critic has grown narrow, as their respective industries have become economically precarious
A bad review for a new artist or one of modest means—for most websites, that’s most of the artists they cover—became an instance of “punching down”
When negative reviews are published, the writer, probably a freelancer, is more exposed to negative blowback, including:
withdrawal of access (sometimes from PRs, but more often artists, label owners or other lords of clout)
an absence of future commissions (if an editor values their access more than the writer’s articulation of a truth they supported enough to publish)
labels pulling ads in the wake of a negative review in a magazine, indirectly eroding editorial independence and further damaging writer-magazine relations
anime zealots and other Twitter reactionaries frothing to interpret a line or paragraph in the least generous way possible
Step-by-step YouTube tutorials, together with the advanced functionality of Ableton et al, increased the general competence (and amount) of the music circulating
Poptimism had cracked the terrain on which certain types of takedown were founded (i.e. a record’s aesthetic value was irrelevant if made by a lousy sellout)
The reevaluation of pop by critics in the 2010s coincided with an artistic reassessment, upending taste categories by which oldhead reviewers swore
Streaming neutered the critic’s role as middle-man (and it was usually a man), whose job of describing as-yet-unavailable music was suddenly redundant
With more music to review, editors like me filtered out the hopelessly mediocre, instead covering artists who felt, by some possibly arbitrary measure, worth it
The most energetic music criticism has turned away from matters of form towards the streaming business and redressing systemic prejudice
Twitter has turned everyone into a “cultural critic,” offering what Lyz Lenz has called “cheap clarity” in the mould of “Thread Man”
And so on. But in light of the layoffs at Pitchfork, I’ve thought less about music criticism itself than the audience it supposedly serves. Yet I keep coming back to this absence of negative reviews, and I’ve come to think these two ideas are in each other’s orbit.
It’s worth saying what reviews are definitely not. With alarming frequency they remain understood as the arbitrary expression of preference by Some Guy, wordy furniture for a set of stars or a decimal score to live in.
Emily Nussbaum, the New Yorker’s former TV critic, gave my favourite description of her job on this podcast, which was to “perform her opinion.” A music critic is a writer, after all, and we read not only to extract information, but to bloody enjoy it.
What should we expect from good critics? Context, of course, through diligent research and imaginative recombination (though there is such a thing as too much, to the extent that it smothers the subject under the weight of history).
If we’re lucky, we get prose that is itself capable of musical quality; on reading David Toop’s “Ocean Of Sound” years ago, I felt the text cast a strange synasthesic spell, as though I was reading perfume and melody on the page.
We should also hope that our critics are generous—specifically about intentions and sensibility, a willingness to follow the artist’s logic as well as theirs. Good work has the humility to interrogate its own assumptions, maybe even argue with itself.
(The child inside does, however, miss the old puerility, like a review of The Kooks in Stylus Magazine, written as an oily exchange between the band’s manager and their label, or that infamously Duchampian Pitchfork review of Jet’s Shine On.)
But the most powerful gesture available to a critic is to say hold on, or, sometimes, no. Drawing those lines represents a passion for music that has firm limits, making it all the more sincere and heartfelt. (RIP Neil Kulkarni, a model critic in this way.)
How would you define a negative review? Let me be clear that I’m not talking only about an old-school pasting; I mean any review that expresses disappointment, scepticism, mixed feelings or ambiguity.
Writing that reflects accurately the experience of encountering music—however intangible and tricky to articulate—is one that readers will always connect with. But reviews today often fail to convey that complexity of affect.
Here are some reviews, though, that I think successfully span the emotional range I’m describing:
When no is said, it’s often towards an artist whose politics, whether articulated or inferred, is found repugnant. Fine by me. I think it’s funny when people, once an artist shows their arse, issue themselves a purity certificate. (“I never liked them!”)
What I also notice are inverse situations where bang-average music is fig-leafed by a story that is too nice to knock, or a cause too important to tear down. How should today’s critic navigate this, if at all?
Like a dentist doing root canal. Unpleasant work, and professionally disastrous if you get it wrong. But when performed with sensitivity… well, OK, the artist will feel sore, and onlookers will rubberneck in awe or outrage. So what’s the point?
***
Artists and writers alike have it bad. But the person I feel sorriest for is the reader. When a magazine tells them that every record is at least a 7/10, the ones who haven’t long since given up on reading reviews must feel they’re being mugged off.
A review that defers excessively to a type of writerly politeness, one that can’t distinguish between fairness and hedging, is a convenient break clause in the social contract between writer and reader that says, “I will be straight with you.”
Writers and artists are mutually concerned about punching down. It’s a delicate issue. My feeling is that reviewing very new artists is unwise [DM for further explanation, if you like], and some other type of lower-stakes coverage is more sustainable.
I also wonder if writing about several records with overlapping aesthetic themes in the same review (The Wire does it) could be a more exciting way of talking about artists doing cool things that’d otherwise struggle to be read about.
In any case, it’s impractical to ask writers to judge the respective good fortune of themselves and the artist, or else weigh up unprovable assumptions about another person’s material circumstances.
A few modest proposals for refreshing music criticism
Several albums grouped by theme reviewed in one piece
Stop reviewing very new artists; let them grow into themselves first
Much less emphasis on the album as the unit of musical currency
Specialised editors whose role is to listen relentlessly and shape conceptual, ideas-led coverage (as opposed to those based on profiles and album cycles)
e.g. Vox’s amazing series, or RA videos like this
Assigning writers to cover records they wouldn’t normally pitch, making that a format in itself
Greater transparency about the process of critique (e.g. Notes On Process)
More direct dialogues between readers and writers than trad review formats allow (e.g. newsletters?)
[Any other ideas you’d like to share? hmu!]
The notion that only powerful artists deserve a rebuke implies that a critic should “champion” all the others (as though writers serve artists before readers). That sounds like marketing to me—in which case, invoice the label and ask for double.
The effect is to participate in a patronising activism—less a nod of respect than a pat on the head. It is, above all, a disservice to the art, whose recommendation is asterisked because it is sodden with the spittled praise of a cheerleading writer.
To be clear, I’m not saying that writers should “punch down” more—only that the notion applied to music reviews is just too vague to be useful, except perhaps in a small range of particular cases, including but not limited to:
Hyperlocal or online microscenes not otherwise attracting much attention
Citing an artist’s identity as being intrinsic to some shortcoming in the work
Toying with your prey a little too much; that serves critics’ egos more than it does readers
One last thing I want to say about criticism is that it has the power to seed doubt, if not change your mind. Greil Marcus recently recalled a debate with his shadow self, Roger Scruton, about where the “dimension of the sacred” could reside in art.
Marcus, having doubted he could find it so intensely in the art of antiquity as in blues and rock ‘n’ roll records, was later “reduced to a puddle of acceptance” in the presence of a Titian he assumed couldn’t possibly move him to revelation.
In the era of algorithmic content and reader analytics, the experience of being confronted by the limits of your distinction is becoming rare. Audiences are now used to having their opinions reflected back at them admiringly.
Criticism that disturbs the overweening certainty around what you like and believe is an opportunity to renegotiate your sense of self with the future, from the realisation that neither art, nor you, is fixed in time.
To demand more from art, to say that something isn’t quite there and to express on a kind of stage exactly why that is, is to take the music, the artist, and the writing of it seriously—a far higher compliment, I think, than half-arsed flattery.
For the artist who might want to throw a chair at me, know that there is no reviewer that can pick music clean of all its mysteries. Neither musician, critic nor reader has a monopoly on the wisdom or foolishness that an album secretes.
No consensus is settled. All art can inspire. But only some of it is good. For as long as there are any websites or inboxes left, we should say so forcefully in those places before music criticism is zero point zeroed into oblivion.
***
PS. — If I’m going to insist that critics should be more forthright about their dislikes, I thought it would only be fair to show my hand, so:
The 100-track compilation (Who is it for? Ah, your booking agent)
“‘Dreamy,’ ‘lush,’ ‘soulful’ (oh, God) pads,” to quote Moopie
Gallery wall text music (You know what I’m talking about)
Those private-press records? Respect their privacy by not reissuing them
Quote-tweeting like an old fishwife over the fence (“Oh my, isn’t this terrible?”)
Music journalism workshops (“Come on in, the water will melt your skin”)
Boomkat blurbs namechecking T++ (OK, we get it, this bad music has been produced)
** OK, one of mine—but I think it’s good!
The Microplastics Digest
What I’ve been paying attention to this past month.
LISTENING
European Primitive Guitar (1974 - 1987) – Various Artists
Il Mondo Da Una Nuvola – Patrizia Pellegrino
Cat – Hiroshi Suzuki
Searchlight Moonbeam – Various Artists
READING
Remembering Silent Servant – Chloe Lula (Resident Advisor)
TikTok Invaded This Cruise For Content – Zachary Siegel (New York Times Magazine)
The Musical Age Of Shitpost Modernism – Kieran Press-Reynolds (Pitchfork)
Constantly Hating: Eli Schoop’s Worst Albums Of 2023 – Eli Schoop (No Bells)
thanks for the shoutout :)
Refreshing perspective! I think we are way overdue for a critical assessment of the poptimism. I totally subscribe to the thematic way of writing about records. Giving additional contexts and deepening the analysis is the only way our profession can survive above being just another marketing tool.