Artist: Ewan Pearson

Album: We Are Proud of Our Choices

Reviewer: Andy Kellman

Allmusic, 2010

Writing Disorders: Idea Fever, Toxic Tedium, Purple Hemorrhage








Longest Sentence: 61 words

Adverb Foul: “very nearly assaultive”




Andy, Allmusic reviews are essentially copy, and you’re not a copy writer. Exhibit Q:

“Yet this disc does have each one of its elder siblings’ charms: a gentle buildup and easy finish, extended trance-like passages, spongy rhythms, seemingly incongruent tracks melded with ease and restraint, almost subliminally tense transitions from menace to bliss, and even some whispered vocals, though the inner-growth monologue on Yukihiro Fukutomi’s emotive piano-house track “Open Our Eyes” is a bit much.”

Andy, I forgot to pack my jerky and now I can’t get the fire hot enough to boil the parasites out of the meltwater I cupped from the stream, further hampering my progress in the metaphor I concocted about how your criminally long sentence is like a journey through Big Sky Country with no legs on a bum wheelchair.

Dude, that silly sentence was two words SHORTER than yours. I can’t even write a sentence that long without Herculean effort against the instinct to compress. Yet nearly every review I’ve ripped on RipFork has had a sentence eclipsing 50 words. Should the Human Genome Project map the code behind that disorder, or am I just missing the majesty of a sentence stretching more than 2 feet long in 11 point Calibri?

Length is only a fraction of your problems here, Andy. Read this next bit — preferably aloud:

“The set is at its busiest from the 12th through 16th (of 18) tracks, highlighted by Xenia Beliayeva’s “Analog Effekt,” released on Systematic but worthy of 240 Volts’ uniformly stark and sleek output, and the ecstatic, fully loaded John Talabot mix of Al Usher’s “Silverhum.”

Hey, do you mind giving us an inclination of what a human thought of the album? This review reads like the result of loading MP3s into a freeware java app that translates sounds into text. Are you running Version 3.1? I hear it gives a better approximation of music’s component parts and even generates tentative context based on new algorithms. It must be…the FUTURE!

Here’s what I think, Andy. Since there’s so much music now readily available, it seems like a prime time to write like a fan, not an ESL software salesman. Maybe you should ask yourself why you’re writing about music in the first place. If your motives include dazzling readers, outpacing other writers, and writing the most tedious 250 words forgotten, I say you failed at two.

Moving on…

“While Pearson would likely be flattered to be told that this disc resembles a hybrid of Michael Mayer’s Immer (stern, dramatic; Joy Division) and Triple R’s Friends (comparatively brighter and outgoing; New Order), he might also find the description a little limiting.”

Or maybe he’d be flattered if you wrote him an email and told him what you thought of his music, good or bad. Maybe I don’t understand musicians, but this guy might feel uneasy reading a music critic’s fantasy about his reaction to a flattering comparison. How many acts are compared to 30-year-old bands every week, Andy? It loses its luster after a while, I reckon.

Andy, there’s only so much I can write about something that short, so I’m going to wrap it up. I want you to try something out though. Write about this album again in a year. If you can’t connect it to your life in a way more meaningful than the bad copy you wrote here, then you’re listening to too much music.

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