Artist: Bear in Heaven

Album: Beast Rest Forth Mouth

Reviewer: Mike Diver

BBC Music, 2010

Writing Disorders: Infectious Punctuation, Jargon Palsy, Detachment Syndrome








Longest Sentence: 67 words

Most Hyphens in a Paragraph: 9

Stuffiest Phrase: “motifs both noticeably similar and subtly familiar to carry the listener”




Congratulations, Mike, you’ve been appointed the first BBC Music ambassador to RipFork. Up until now, my daily visit to BBC was to learn which environmental catastrophe is conspiring to screw my future on any given day. I had no idea there was such a rich selection of god-awful music reviews:

“Thanks to a few choice tips from South By Southwest-attending sorts, Beast Rest Forth Mouth found its way to the top of this writer’s own possible reviews pile – it might not (yet) have the specialist show radio support required to qualify coverage of most Bands You’ve Never Heard Of, but so trusted are the ‘tastemakers’ (ergh) in question that a proper listen was necessary.”

Mike, for a career typist, you really push the envelope on shit writing. What were the qualifications to become a BBC critic?

The ideal candidate will possess the following qualities:

-Spells out the full name of popular concerts that readers more readily identify by abbreviations

-Unnecessarily capitalizes whole phrases in sentences over 60 words to further hinder understanding

-Uses extended third-person constructions like “this writer’s own” instead of “my”

-Uses air quotes in conjunction with parenthetical asides to induce eye rolling

You could have knocked ‘em dead with that one sentence, but I’m sure you had to work harder in the dark times when you weren’t so proficient. That brings me to my next point. I’ve been fighting to understand something here, Mike, and maybe you can help me out. Here’s part of a sentence you wrote to illustrate:

“The Brooklyn-based four-piece’s on-paper purveyance of psychedelic-pop isn’t a particularly revelatory stylistic route for an as-new band to be taking…”

Mike, as I understand it, you’ve held the title of EDITOR for three different online music venues, including this one. I can’t fathom how you managed that feat besides offing the previous editors or blowing a train of higher ups in bathrooms. And believe me: this has nothing to do with jealousy on my part, just naked disbelief. What editor writes a sentence like that? In any other outlet, you’d be laughed out on your ass.  Yet for some bizarre set of reasons, that sort of jargon cocktail is lauded and embraced in indie music reviews.

But this wasn’t even a review! You only mentioned two songs on the album, despite devoting two whole paragraphs to a stupid stream of consciousness about how it found its way onto your iPod. Speaking of that gem of auto-eroticism, let’s take a peek:

“Let me break it down for you. New album arrives, from a Band You’ve Never Heard Of. You give it a second’s thought, assessing it on its artwork and a few quotes cut-and-pasted onto the one-sheet. You file away…”

Dude, why the hell are you addressing me directly? I don’t receive my music that way, nor do I “assess” the “one-sheet,” whatever that means. If you’re going to masturbate in words, at least do it without projecting your hand onto my johnson. Gimme a sec. There. Now that I’ve got my chastity belt locked on, let’s continue down the primrose path of your own excess:

“You file away as a Maybe, But Nothing More. Perhaps if time allows you’ll dig it out, recommend it to a few friends. You won’t publish a review proper because… Well, it’s a Band You’ve Never Heard Of.”

“Bear In Heaven aren’t 99% of the bands falling into the Maybe, But Nothing More category”

Wow Mike, you really tee’d this one up for me. So you only readily publish a special few reviews, but a lucky one out of every 100 runners up gets to be featured in a puddle of textcrement too? Damn, this band should really be honored to get a cursory mention in your latest journal entry. Lucky them. I’m sure the musicians are giddy with excitement, not wondering aloud “what the hell did this guy even WRITE about us?”

Despite how bad the whole thing was, I think the funniest part of this glob of Calibri was the closing sentence:

“Let me cut to the chase: expect to hear a lot more about Bear In Heaven over the coming months.”

Thanks, Mike. Usually a writer will cut to the chase before the chase has ended and been plastered over Fox News for six hours. Don’t give up, though. Keep boxing the clown and you might improve your average. In the meantime, I’ll be keeping an eye.