RipFork

Artist: Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Album: Up from Below

Reviewer: Paul Thompson

Pitchfork, 2010

Writing Disorders: Idea Fever, Infectious Punctuation

Most Emo Phrase: “There’s handclaps and horns, sprightly choruses and thousand-part harmonies to go around”




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dick · move (dĭk’ mōōv) n. 1. The act of transferring one’s penis from one position to another. 2. The act of rating a band’s album a 4.1 and spending 1/5 of the review on a tenuously-connected Frutopia reference.
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Paul, go ahead and look that up in Webster’s to verify. When you don’t find it, you can slam the dictionary shut on your nose. Hopefully the shock will snap some sense into your head. What exactly ran through it after you finished listening to the album? How you were going to achieve maximum cleverness in the most obtuse way possible?  I’ve got to hand it to you; it says a lot about a man when he doesn’t even mention the band he’s tied up to molest until the third paragraph. It says Paul Thompson is confident his lengthy metaphors are worth more than the failing grade he gave to someone else’s. Let’s look at what made it to the top of your cleverness queue:

“Remember Fruitopia? How good that sounded for a couple minutes? They’d roll out these big, beautiful kaleidoscopic ads before movies sometimes, swarming strawberries in stereo, and you’d look down at your Cherry Coke and feel somehow as though you’d failed. Of course, in the lobby’s light, you came to find out that Fruitopia was not in fact made by hippies using ecologically sound methods for growing giant fruit, but rather extracted and besaccharined by the very Coca-Cola corporation that had seemed like the source of so much pancreas-punching horror not moments before. Fruitopia was, in a way, more evil than your simple soda; evil, because it tricked you into believing it was good when it wasn’t.”

Let me try to get a handle on this, son. The basis for your argument against this band hinges on you getting flummoxed about a drink 15 years ago? That’s a pretty flaccid thrust against a band. Here’s a question or two. Should a typist who got schooled by a beverage commercial be ragging on a musician? Did you suffer a nervous breakdown when you realized Fruit Stripe gum didn’t hold its flavor for 7 days like Wonka gum? Here’s to hoping. I’m sure another group of people who play instruments will be releasing an album to which you can affix that weird child pathology.

Moving on to the second paragraph without mention of the band you’re reviewing:

“As nicely zeitgeisty as their leadoff single “Dynomite” was, there was always something weirdly disingenuous about Ima Robot– that they were basically Beck’s then-current backing band led by some shouty haircut probably had something to do with it– but they came and went so fast it was hard to find the time to care.”

Paul, that sentence has me picturing you in a freestyle battle when the flow’s getting dirty. You’re forced into a corner by your younger challenger and have but one option: to throw a HARROWING mama joke.

Paul: yo mamma so obese — in the sense of a serious national problem of massive proportions (I mean no offense by that pun) where 1/3 of American adults are above the target BMI recommended by the National Institutes of Health — that she had to use a larger door. Yea YEAH.

Seriously dude, what the hell? Just TELL us what was disingenuous about the band. If you can’t settle on a reason requiring less than 20 words and a pair of double dashes, then you might be better off not forcing the issue. It’s not like this was an isolated incident either. You wrote FOUR more of these dashed-off side notes throughout the course of your review.

I did get a few laughs out of it, Paul. None was better than your take on that brightest of sparks:

“an obvious affection passing between Sharpe and Castrinos as they murmur sweet nothings.”

That’s excellent news. If the two simians then mate and produce offspring, it will fully support hypotheses concerning the effect of positive murmuring on romantic attachment among primates. Jesus, dude. I’m hoping for your sake that you paid someone to write your OK Cupid profile.

Your conclusion about this album?

“it’s humanity that’s missing in Sharpe’s mild but mannered and certainly unmemorable music, which feels focus-grouped, stone-washed, and artificial.”

Artificial, eh, Paul? Unmemorable? Despite your best efforts, I don’t think your writing is exactly light years ahead of your peers. It’s just as bad.