Link to Stephen Trousse's Review of "Acolyte" by DelphicArtist: Delphic

Album: Acolyte

Reviewer: Stephen Troussé

Pitchfork, 2010

Writing Disorders: Purple Hemorrhage, Idea Fever, Scorn Disease







Most Emo Phrase: “It’s just that it feels so characterless and anonymous”

“To Be Fair” Moment: “To be fair, Acolyte is never less than stylish”




I think the new king of self-absorbed piffle has been crowned. I haven’t seen you on Pitchfork’s rolls prior to today, Stephen, but if what you wrote here is any indication of things to come, you’ll be featured on RipFork well into the future. You start off wonderfully:

“They’re wired and sequenced for the dancefloor, as opposed to plodding and strummed for the student moshpit; suited and booted rather than dowdy in denim; stylishly poised rather than scuffling and shambolic.”

Call me crazy, Stephen, but I don’t think a dude who writes “dowdy in denim” should be badmouthing anyone else’s work. But badmouth it you do:

“Delphic, let’s be clear, are a rather brazen yet undistinguished attempt to reconstruct and exploit the trappings of Factory Manchester circa 1985.”

Yes, let’s be clear, shall we? This is what you wrote in the next sentence:

“The funny thing is, the odd crackling guitar line and synthpad chord change apart, they actually don’t sound very much like New Order.”

How is it “being clear” when you label a band a brazen attempt at exploiting another when the band doesn’t sound much like the one it’s supposed to be exploiting? Furthermore, how is not sounding like New Order funny? Do you guffaw yourself into submission at the notion of Coldplay not sounding much like Johnny Cash?

Speaking of being clear, your average isn’t improved much by these whiffs:

“Less through the substance of the music than through the ostentatiously neo-classical stylings, their branding.”

Dude, that’s not a sentence. It doesn’t even have a verb. Yes, I write in sentence fragments occasionally, but it’s usually no more than three words. Like this. Next:

“Titles like “Halcyon”, “Ephemera”, and “Submission” are simply gagging to be expensively set in sepulchral type by Peter Saville”

What? Who? Dude, if you want an insult to stick, it usually helps if the audience understands the references made. (On a side note, I’ll gladly be labeled an idiot for not knowing the ins and outs of “sepulchral type”)

You make any number of left-field references sandwiched in between neat sequences of purple prose, but in the end, the vast majority of your complaining has to do with Delphic sounding (or not sounding) like 25-year-old bands:

“Though the band protest that Factory comparisons are unwanted but inevitable for any Manchester group attempting to marry rock dynamics with dance technology, that they are far too young to remember the Hacienda and are more influenced by German minimal techno, they desperately invite the comparison.”

Ah yes, because instead of just LISTENING to music like most normal people, those who scrawl 800-word spells of ruin on aspiring 2010 bands have a pathological need to compare them to bands in the early 1980’s like it’s a crime. Let me ask you this. If a smoking hot girl pulled you onto the club floor for a Delphic song, would you yank away, protesting that the band is too heavily influenced by “the trappings of Factory Manchester circa 1985?” Neither answer is good, Stephen.

Oh, but the best is yet to come:

“It’s like they’ve audaciously claimed the rights to the Factory franchise, like one of those authors who’s commissioned to write the new James Bond novel or Gone With the Wind sequel.”

This is your most revealing sentence, Stephen. You see, I’ve started to negotiate the driving mental illness behind music criticism, and I’ve noticed that much of it hinges on an irrational fear. After all, who cares if someone other than 46-year-old zombie Ian Fleming writes a James Bond novel or if a band decides to play eighth notes a certain way? Most folks don’t. But some do, and I’ll tell you why I think that’s the case.

There’s a reason I only post covers of popular songs in the “Matt’s Picks” section of RipFork. It’s because there are legions of morons out there who staunchly believe that playing music in a personalized way somehow RUINS the original song or sound. They are the species of human who write biting comments under YouTube videos, or attack a new band for sounding like “old wallpaper under a cheap lick of paint.” Rather than just holing up in their cave surrounded by LP’s, these people lash out at bands and individuals they perceive to be threatening “the precious.” They believe a new generation will miss the brilliance of that original sound by listening to what they view as cheap retreads. I see no stronger reason for this irrational fear than a feeling of ownership of the original material – that being well-versed in a musical foundation gives one claim on the direction the building takes on top. And the guiding principle of this poisoned logic seems to be the assumption that others are too stupid or misguided to know how to build that building the RIGHT way. Ahem…

“vainly trading on the modernist impulse of their 80s forebears”

“New Order’s melodies– which you’ll search for in vain on Acolyte– are indestructibly lovely.”

“a clueless generation of charmless groups”

All this is conjecture, of course, and I’ll gladly swallow my words if I’m but an inch from the mark. Maybe you can help me understand what really drives you, Stephen. You know, “to be fair.”