#41

Anyway…
Fuck pitchfork for reporting at all on lil peep, absolutely one of the worst things I’ve heard ever, and I own the second Frutellis album.

#42

The second :smile:

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#43

I fucking loved it as well, Like properly listened to it all the time for about a year because I could only buy the 2 cds for £10 3 times a year, and the only other way to get music was getting iTunes gift vouchers. simpler times

#44

Is that the one with the steampunk circus guy on the front? I do like that album cover.

#45

That’s the one

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#46

“fucking someone over” is something i would say if they left a debt unpaid or went out of their way to make life difficult for someone. this guy found an unconscious woman and raped her behind a dumpster. what the fuck is this article

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#47

The Quietus although a bit pretentious always showcases some great music I have never heard.

RA is a must for electronic music and has some great feature articles

#48

I do get this. I’m definitely not somebody who thinks art / entertainment should be separate from politics, but I do nonetheless find myself getting irked when I read something that just reads like the writer insisting that they didn’t waste their time with something as frivolous as listening to music, because they were instead engaging with “a contribution to one of today’s wider, more prescient conversations from a vital voice”.

Obviously this should be a part of music criticism, but I sometimes feel like it’s as if I wrote a review of an album and spent my word count pontificating on the snare timbres and nothing else.

But it also probably is nothing like that. Or anything. Bye.

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#49

If you’re wondering why music journalism is shit these days, ask yourself when it was that you last paid money to read some music journalism.

Not having a go, by the way, it’s at least ten years since I bought a music magazine.

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#50

I get what you’re saying. But if what you’re implying were really an issue, then it seems to me that we’d be facing the opposite “problem” to what’s posed in the OP.

The OP’s problem seems to be that things are too politicised now. They appear to want objective reporting of facts instead of earnest criticism.

Earnest criticism is probably a lot less profitable than objective reporting of facts. We could chat for hours about “authenticity” and, if you will, “poptimism”; but if the lack of funding has had any impact on music criticism, if anything it seems to have made things less safe and more open minded.

Drunk too much; not articulate enough. I know what I mean.

#51

Has music journalism ever not been generally shit? Either it’s just general platitudes, hype building advertisements or pompous crap

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#52

Someone I know through The Internet has started a music reviews and articles site and it’s had some good bits and pieces so far.

https://trackseven.net/

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#53

Well, obviously the internet changed everything, now no one pays for music and no one pays for journalism. Well, not quite, but as good as.
20 years ago a music review would be the only way you were likely to find out what a record sounded like. It was important. Nowadays, you want to know what a record sounds like, you just go and listen to it. Music reviews mainly exist to remind you that a record exists. If they don’t tell you what a record sounds like, that’s because they don’t need to.
Also, good music journalism is really just good journalism. You just need good writers. People who are good writers used to want to be music journalists and write for the NME or whoever. But it takes time and effort to be a good writer, and the reward from music journalism these days is so small that the vast majority of good writers are inevitably ending up elsewhere. I think that’s the real problem.

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#54

i do a few reviews as a hobby and i’m not very good so i think this thread is probably accurate.

#55

Just reading this bit again, fucking hell. ‘Why even bring up the fact that your guitarist died of cancer last year and this is your first album without him? It’s just getting in the way of what I want to talk about from longer ago.’

Imagine how weird it would be if they’d no mention of him dying at all.

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#56

Dunno why you would take offence at this tbh. I love the work of some shady people and agree with separating art from the artist but as long as it doesnt impact on the impressions of the work, it deserves bringing up

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#57

Though I use the internet a lot, I don’t spend much time reading reviews online. Don’t know why, I just prefer printed media and a beer when doing this. So I read, and largely trust the G2 reviews from the Guardian on a Friday. Observer Sunday review section and Q. Between these I can get a feel for what I ought to go and check out.

I think Alex Petridis is good. He sits somewhere between a critic and reviewer IMO. He is very knowledgeable about music, and can often be funny in his work. Plus, when he has reviewed stuff favorably that I hadn’t previously even been interested in, most of the time I enjoy as well.

I used to review music for the university magazine and quickly realised it’s hard to do this week in, week out and make it interesting, so I have some sympathy for people who have to churn this stuff out.

However, I do read some dreck these days, pretentious waffle that turns me off sometimes. I mean online reviews when I do look at them, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Paul Morley is someone, who I kind of respect his knowledge and passion, but his writing can really turn me off.

Here are a couple of recent Petridis reviews to illustrate what I mean about what I like about him.

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#58

Largely pointless. I do use certain sites to get an idea for what’s being released soon, or what’s getting favourable reviews, but it’s impossible to glean what an album sounds like from a review and it’s so easy to just listen to it yourself nowadays.

#59

Yeah, it’s brilliant for that. But do you actually read the reviews? I find them mostly impenetrable and they don’t even give a rating. They may as well just embed an Apple Music/Spotify player in the page and say ‘check this out’.

#60

Compared to Tiny Mix Tapes, Quietus reviews are lucid and engaging.

Don’t know what happened to TMT. It used to be just that - mix tape suggestions based on prompts - but now they’ve gone full pseud. It’s unreadable.

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