#93

They’re still going apparently,

no idea how/why.

#94

yeah i find it a bit of an easy joke to go after obvious bands like Jet, but the Black Kids one was terrible seeing as they’d been hyping them up and given their EP a glowing review and a Best New Music tag less than a year earlier. if you think they’ve suddenly gone shit (i only ever heard that one fairly annoying song so don’t know how much a difference there was between EP and album) then just fucking write a review about what’s changed instead of acting like you’re oh so above it.

reminds of the kid at school who starts talking about some cool new band you should check out and then they get big and everybody hates them and he tries to pretend he never liked them in the first place.

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#95

know very little about Cast other than that everyone thinks of them as a joke from the 90s. i’m slightly too young to actually remember them i think, unless they had some big song that i don’t know is them.

#96

Ah, interesting. Well compared to some of the strange stuff I used to listen to, The Music are like U2! I’ve got so many 7 inches on short lived labels from the 90s. Not willfully obscure acts, some got SOTW in NME and toured a bit…but are lost in the mists of time.

As you say, I might do it and surround myself with my own ‘like minded weirdos’. :wink:

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#97

They had four or five ‘big’ songs, I guess. Alright, Finetime, Walk Away (with the impossibly high, grating vocal) and then they had a half decent track opening their second album called Free Me.

The thing is they were just such a boring plodding guitar band. I mean if they were ‘your’ guitar band then you would like them but I recall I didn’t buy the first album because it just seemed so bland and - mate - I had albums by Skunk Anansie, Garbage, Oasis, Blur, Elastica, Supergrass…

#98

Sandstorm was one of their biggest wasn’t it?

#99

Oh yeah, I forgot that one. It was bad.

#100

I can’t wait to hear how wrong I am to love this Cast song.

For me it’s the sound of drinking Pepsi on holiday, age 12.

#101

That Jet one worked so well cos a chimp pissing in it’s own mouth is the perfect description of Jet. Any other band it wouldn’t have been as funny.

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#102

Unless it’s a long indepth article about a band you love, written By someone who can write well (not just a fucking reviewer) then music journalism is mostly itter toilet. Also increasingly pointless. And I’m unsure if it’s a noble pursuit - shitting on artists or - wow so edgy - shitting on manufactured acts.

You can click and here most music yourself in seconds. You don’t need these “in” people anymore to tell you what’s great.

Blogs that point out new acts are good but most of them are infiltrated with industry - look at BBC Introducing.

I did a lot of reviewing online, wrote for other people, didnit for a few years. I wasn’t bad (I wasn’t great either) but in the end I couldn’t see the point. The best reviews were the ones that Didn’t talk about the music but something else. Which is normally the case with all reviews.

Ripfork.com is good at highlighting how lame music reviewers are.

Give it a read you fucking sheeple.

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#103

Ooh, Ripfork - never seen this before. How exciting. Thanks.

#104

I was gonna say that I’ve stopped reading reviews nowadays, but then I realised I’ve been reading the AV Club TV reviews fairly religiously and think I’ve basically just found the style I like most.

For me reviews are best when they’re written by someone who on some level actually gets what the show/album/band are trying to do, even if they don’t like it. That way the review reads less as someone working out whether it is good or bad, and more like someone piecing together what exactly they like about something, or working out how something works within the context of its other work.

For example, this R.E.M. retrospective made a great read, even though I disagree with huge amounts of what he says, because it feels like a fan working out why they care about one of their favourite bands - a feeling I can obviously relate to. More importantly, it prompts me to think in new ways about things I’ve already listened to and have kind of compartmentalised in my head (English Lit grads think Defamiliarisation). This is why I think I like reading reviews of things I’ve already listened to or heard at least once.

As a result I don’t think it bothers me too much if a review looks massively at social context or focuses only on the guitar tones as both approaches provide an equally valid way of looking at the music. It’s hard for me to think about The Suburbs, for example, without thinking about where I lived at the time I heard it and the context of my life. Likewise as much as she really annoys me, this Amanda Palmer piece on The Cure is really engrossing because she doesn’t want to work out what’s good as much as work out why she feels a certain way about them now, which is much more interesting to me.

The problem is neither of these styles are that appropriate for a site like DiS that needs to review all new releases, so I don’t tend to read much (I guess fangasm is going in this direction). But at the same time it’s the reason the forum is a good place to discover music, as people are much more likely to talk about their personal experiences with records or gigs or something, and I’ve got into some great stuff as a result.

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#105

^ this is really good

also, imagine thinking that you want music reviews to be objective. i cant imagine anything more dull than an objective music review. fuck

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#106

An ‘objective’ review is surely impossible- anything beyond a simple factual description of a record is bound to be subjective.

I think what people mean is that they want reviews to be fair minded, which I think means not pre-judging and giving a record a fair chance before offering an opinion.

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#107

whats the point though? context is important

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#108

I’ve just looked at this. As I don’t read much online, I hardly see these stupid articles Ripfork goes for. Jesus wept.

#109

IDEA FEVER is every pitchfork article ever

#110

Haven’t read this thread in completion so this may have been stated but what works best for me is to find writers you like then just follow them on Twitter. Then you get the reviews when they post them. I’ve read good/great reviews from just about every major site. Dont really subscribe to the idea that any of them are better or worse than the other any more. They all have their lanes and they employ some good and some horrible writers.

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#111

I’m not sure what you mean.

I don’t mind someone slating a record if it deserves it. But there’s not much point someone deciding to slate something without listening to it, for whatever reason, and then doing so.

#112

But that is often a value judgment. I do agree that snide sarcy reviews that are just trying to amuse then actually give a valid criticism are a little shit. But you find writers you broadly agree with. Which requires those reviews to have opinions. Sometimes strong opinions

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