RipFork

Artist: The Rumble Strips

Album: Welcome to the Walk Alone

Reviewer: Rebecca Robinson

NME, 2009

Writing Disorders: Infectious Punctuation, Scorn Disease, Detachment Syndrome

Number of Hyphens: 25

Longest Sentence: 59 words

Most Emo Phrase: the underlying laziness that makes its advert-friendly wipe-clean Stepford Wives-rock so hard to stomach.

I was going to go a day without posting since there were too many 6.8’s and 7.0’s to really sink my teeth into, but luckily I got this baby gift wrapped in my inbox. Thanks to Morwenna Ferrier for sending me such a choice morsel from one of NME’s summer issues, written by Rebecca Robinson.

Rebecca, you seem a little angry. And I figure it’s more than just knowing you’ll never beat out Miss Texas 2009 on a Google search for your name. Take this bit you wrote, for instance:

The Next Big Thing turns out to be just another indie-by-numbers, stadium-filling, over-produced, shamelessly derivative, five-man, smug-faced shit factory.

David Attenborough: A solitary and pugnacious creature, the Rebecca Robinson will not take kindly to burgeoning indie bands that don’t tickle her fancy. A full-grown female will mount a stout defense, hurling sequences of hyphenated phrases with reckless abandon. If this formidable array should prove unsuccessful at deterring the bands, the enraged female Robinson will somersault into a handstand, spraying a cloud of longwinded insults from specialized anal glands. Goodness, here comes the cloud!

‘Mark Ronson-produced’ has already become synonymous with ‘garish and unlistenable’

This album is the solitary cockroach scuttling around in the post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteground of British music circa-2001

It’s shameful. Well presented and immaculately recorded, but still shit sub-Maccabees schlock.

Becca, there are plenty of bands I haven’t particularly enjoyed. And I too wrote like a craven asshole when I reviewed music. But I have to say that even at my most verbose and dickish, I never attacked a band with the kind of drama queen fury that you unleashed on these Rumble Strip fellows. “Exaggeration” is a bit of an understatement when describing what you scribbled out here. Example number one:

‘Welcome To The Walk Alone’ may have the skeletal blueprint of pop genius running through it like words in a stick of rock but it verges on insulting.

Really? You’re insulted by that? I don’t like to make generalizations, but most folks are usually insulted by things like paraplegic jokes, racism, sexism, genocide – that kind of stuff. But I suppose that since whatever you were talking about only verged on insulting, you can save your energy for the off chance of being told you have sardine breath when you haven’t eaten fish.

Let’s take a gander at some more hyperbole, shall we?

Charlie Waller’s voice verges on the vomit-inducing.

Are you serious? Listening to this album actually made you nauseous to a point just shy of reverse peristalsis? You might want to get that checked out, Becca, because it ain’t natural. If you nearly blow chunks when you hear some pop guitars and a falsetto, do you spontaneously combust when someone mentions child trafficking?

But I get it. I understand how easy it is to write about how a band is ruining western civilization when the most heat you’ll catch for it is a couple of miffed comments in the page footer. It’s an opinion by law. But Becca, I have a problem with your choice of pronouns when doing it. You see, you have a tendency to avoid owning your dickhead diatribes by writing your opinions as if they were formulated by someone other than you. Ahem…

We can’t help pining for the vibrant and enthused band

we’re saved the inevitable crushing disappointment

We like to imagine the recording process involved Ronson beating them with sticks and screaming

We barely remember what ‘Sweet Heart Hooligan’ sounds like

Look, Becca, I know it’s probably embarrassing for you to write that you personally like to imagine a producer beating a band with sticks, but please don’t include the rest of us without our say-so. Just like Jeffrey Lebowski doesn’t quite get away with the royal we…you know, the editorial…you don’t speak for me. Unless you list at least one other person who agreed with you, then write in the first person singular. At least then you own your opinion. And after savaging a band you’ve never met because they played this note this way or that chord that way, the least you can do is admit you’re the one who pulled the trigger on their reputation.

I’ll be keeping my eye out for you in the future, Becca. And I’ll be sure to stay downwind.