Artist: Darwin Deez

Album: Darwin Deez

Reviewer: Si Truss

Drowned in Sound, 2010

Writing Disorders: Infectious Punctuation, Idea Fever, Detachment Syndrome








Most Emo Phrase: “desperately crying out for some new ideas”

mm-mm good: “a great slice of DIY indie-pop”




Sir, I’m going to call you Si Truss because Si by itself is the chemical symbol for silicon.  I wouldn’t want to confuse people in a review of a confusing review. That’s confusing.

Let’s begin with your first two sentences:

“The amateur psychiatrist in me thinks that Darwin Deez might have a bit of a complex. His bio paints a picture of a man doing everything he can to be seen as ‘a bit different.’”

Your intro’s a bit weird and even a bit repetitious, Si Truss. If you actually edit your writing, you can avoid little hiccups like that. Speaking of editing, read this next sentence from the point of view of someone lacking the brain sitting in your head:

“Maybe it’s a case of over-compensation, as on-the-whole Deez’s full-length, full-band debut is a pretty straightforward example of modern New York-born indie-rock.”

If there are editors hired by DIS to edit, they might consider editing at least once a millennium. The seven hyphens are bad enough. I haven’t got enough free RAM to cover everything wrong with that dry hump of a sentence above. How about I just rewrite it and let you piece together the relevant picture?

“Deez’s first album with a full band is pure New York indie. Maybe it’s overcompensation, but…”

Holy jeepers, will you look at that! A sentence that doesn’t trap my mind in a hedge maze! Also notice how the rewrite didn’t mention the album length, genre of indie, or clarify it as modern, not archaic New York-born indie-rock. Tragic, I know — but oh so readable.

That’s the big problem I see here, Si Truss. If Hemingway’s the south pole, you’re the north when it comes to whittling ideas:

“The problem lies in that Darwin Deez rarely strays”

“a fairly similar, marginally more downbeat manner”

“pretty much the same fairly average song”

Like those three phrases, most of your review is just harmlessly hopped up on modifiers and word junk.  But this next bit has me declining the invitation for tea in your crawlspace:

“It’s a familiar sound and you’ll probably feel like you’ve heard it before whether you actually have or not. But that’s fine, because it’s a great slice…”

Jesus man, if I open your freezer, will I see severed hands? You used the word “you” three times in a sentence that could have been from Psycho. That’s a little creepy in a music review, wouldn’t you say? Especially creepy in a review with this level of mathematical precision:

“If, as an experiment, you were to draw a Venn diagram plotting the musical styles of, let’s say, Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer and The Strokes and then tried to fit Darwin Deez onto it he’d always end up inhabiting the heavily shaded area right in the middle.”

Kindergarten Matron: Be seated, class. I want you to get out your crayons and construction paper. You are to construct a Venn Diagram of three musical groups chosen at random by Dr. Si Truss of England. Miss Bluth has distributed sealed envelopes containing those variables written on 3×8 index cards. If anyone loses his card, obscures the pertinent information with paste, or is found cheating during the exercise, all will be punished. You have 8 minutes to plan, construct, comprehensively label, and write up a brief oral presentation for your diagrams. Your time began 3 minutes, 14 seconds ago.

Ha, but I kid. Seriously dude, you could have just written you think Deez sounds like those three bands. I think most would understand your meaning without spatial aids. If you’re interested in scientific music reduction though, you might enjoy the work of Evan Burrows. His correlation graph theory of musical structure vs. atmosphere could possibly benefit from your own case study of two-dimensional musical mathematics. Maybe the two of you could set a lunch date for scribbling on napkins. Bring your alien-shaped pipe!

I need fluids and exercise, Si Truss, so I’m going to close this on one of your phrases that caught my eye:

“something that even the most cynical among us can appreciate.”

Well, to all the most cynical –

I used Si Truss’s full name to increase SEO traffic to my site. Si is Silicon though. Seriously, check the table.