Artist: Little Claw

Album: Human Taste

Reviewer: Elliott Sharp

Tiny Mix Tapes, 2010

Writing Disorders: Jargon Palsy, Idea Fever, Toxic Tedium







Longest Sentence: 71 words

Deepest Purple Prose: “The tasty screeches of dead radio ghost static whip up a particularly sick frenzy”




Elliott, your writing is one of the best examples of college student criticism I’ve stumbled across. But before you wet yourself in Tiny Mix excitement, let’s be clear that it’s not a compliment. I’m talking about the kind of writing conceived when the author gets tickled by the BS fairy and squirts out globs of jargon at the expense of his own feelings. And you must have been pumping that fairy for a fortnight because you pounded out some real stinkers in this review. Take a gander at a couple of the chunks floating in your bloated introduction:

“For, despite the construction and proliferation of this lo-fi discourse by some of the most influential indie music websites and blogs throughout the year, when it came time to organize best-of-the-year lists, the bands that were used to build this discourse were startlingly under-represented.”

“If it’s not obvious, I’m playing a bit of a trick with language myself, namely by using the term “lo-fi” as if there’s no diversity or tension among those bands that are often haphazardly categorized within it.”

Oh my God man, it’s MUSIC. It’s not the implications of Richard Arkwright’s water frame on the course of Western industry. This is a band’s music meant to be enjoyed and appreciated as a piece of art. Is that too hard for you? What the hell’s with the academic language? Jesus Christ dude, you’re a music reviewer for a second-tier indie zine, not a visiting lecturer from the Cambridge School for the Study of Independent Rock. Even if half the crap you’re rattling off was insightful, few would endure your writing long enough to find out. It’s tenuously connected, it’s dense, and it’s as BORING as whale shit. (For all the coprophiles out there, my apologies)

As if your opening 300-word barge of sludge wasn’t bad enough, you cap it off with this:

“But enough already with this political shit, let’s get down to the sounds.”

So, after pummeling us with two paragraphs of tangential jargon, you finally came to your senses? Instead of boring your readers into Erebus with all that “political shit,” might you have just gotten down to talking about the songs and saved yourself the trouble? I sure am glad – AND wiser – that you pointed out the difference between “lo-fi” and “lower-fi.” That body of musical research is woefully understudied, to the detriment of mankind. Maybe if you get that imaginary fellowship, you can probe the dark, uncharted world of “lowest-fi.” I’m sure Nobel is watching.

Despite being hardened by the first half, nothing in your review could possibly prepare me for what was to come:

“Perhaps pop, like late-capitalism, is absorptive such that even an intentional attempt to break out of it by embracing darker themes, sounds, and moods results in those theoretically contentious aspects translating into tolerable instances of practical pop-reproduction.”

Elliott, leave your computer. Go outside and take a walk. Play wiffle ball in the snow with some friends. Breathe the free air. You’ve had your nose crammed in academic books for far too long. Even if that sentence made a shred of sense, it’s so dense that any attempt to unravel it is a fool’s errand. I can’t even pinpoint how you connected pop to late-capitalism past the word “absorptive.” How the hell would one break out of late-capitalism by adopting “darker themes, sounds, and moods?” Wouldn’t you do it by growing your own food, buying fair trade goods, or something along those lines? Or is that what you meant by “theoretically contentious aspects?” If I was a member of the band being reviewed, I think I’d rather be slammed with readable insults than praised with unreadable jargon. But that’s just me.

Elliott, you need help, and I’m hoping that you learned something here today that might help change your choice in hobbies. After surviving this ordeal and getting a glimpse of your style, I’m just glad you’re not a phone sex operator.