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Archive for category Drowned in Sound

Daniel Yates’ Review of “Disconnect from Desire” by School of Seven Bells

Jul 12

Posted by Matt Wendus in Drowned in Sound | 2 Comments

Artist: School of Seven Bells

Album: Disconnect from Desire

Reviewer: Daniel Yates

Drowned in Sound, 2010

Writing Disorders: Jargon Palsy, Idea Fever, Toxic Tedium







Critic Jargon: “fugitive alt-pop cosmopolitanism,” “theological reversal of postmodernity,” “sub-Haackish flourishes”

Most Emo Phrase: “Like someone you previously adored becoming an embarrassing pastiche of themselves”




Daniel…unless you’re traveling tonight on a plane, I’ ma just call you Dan. Let’s talk about your review, Dan. Got through the last line and saw you challenged a heckler to “do a RipFork.”  Figured I’d beat him to the punch. Bear in mind I seldom indulge folk who ask to be lampooned on my site. A dude petitioning a beating knows how he could avoid it. Sometimes it’s as easy as not writing like a complete putz.

I’ve got beef with your review, Dan — one of stuffiest nonsense shops I ever puttered. The beef goes a little like this. Anyone these days can write how he thinks Twin Peaks defines a band’s sophomore failure. And if that budding genius writes for a certain music zine, he’s got clout on aggregators regardless of how poorly he writes. Let’s say for a moment Metacritic lumps you in with only five other neurotic children. What’s the moral of that story? Since a band can’t appeal a critic’s terrible writing, they should pray to find the good side of his 3rd person anal retention? To me that’s a ty deal for a lot of hard work.

Before you prep a lecture on how people should pay attention to writing, not numbers, I agree. But writing’s not your strong suit, Dan. If you’re gonna whitewash musicians, get to the point at least. Need some help? How about mentioning the band before the 250-word mark for starters? Even if you couldn’t bear to whittle down your examples of jukeboxes in globalism, you could have at least shaved some bush off the cookie. Modifiers like “naïf-fatale” or “hauntological” just cake up the honey, dude.

You take a drunk minute to make a point, Dan — but that’s not the half of it. The cheese in your soupy load is the jargon. Jargon so wide I had to backtrack just to sort out the nouns. Here’s a taste:

“race and collide for the young rulers of the British empire for whom their y implication in global hegemony is just becoming apparent”

Dan, interracial booty’s hotter than that. What’s wrong with you? For whom the tolls…Jesus Christ. You couldn’t have come up with a better construction than an island of “for whom” in that sea of words? It’s HARD TO READ.

I’m gonna skip how you shoehorned this band into ridiculous subgroups, Darkwave Duck, since I’d rather focus on your refusal to trim your thoughts. You could have snipped the fat off most your sentences and left readers none the poorer. I’ll even do the honors in this example from your fourth paragraph:

“That reinvocation of shoegazing that seemed to add new layers of promise to the template, and which made ‘Face To Face On High Places’ as close to a new bubblegum MBV track as we might dare to hope for, has now degraded.”

If you’re blubbering about the tragic loss of the pivotal My y Valentine reference, calm down. I know you probably see editing as a beloved puppy in the head, but judging from the comments on your review, few people even made it far enough to pass judgment.

“Why do DiS writers take so effing long to make any sort of point in their reviews?”

“couldn’t get past the first paragraph of this”

“I got past the first paragraph, but couldn’t get halfway through the second.”

Dan, I’m going to give my readers a little perspective here. Sometimes I like to show the kind of louse who kicks aside clarity so he can make space for his own postmodern choad. Let’s see your game face.





Yikes. I’m sure School of Seven Bells are feeling fortunate such men exist to niggle the album they spent months writing and recording. Must feel swell knowing their labors played second fiddle to the clunky musings of a bearded weirdo stoned out of his gourd.

Your review really needs to be seen to believe, and since there’s only so much I can cover, let’s end with your brilliant closing, Dan. What sums this album up best in your mind?

“Slightly lost and, sadly, all too findable.”

HOLY COW, that’s deep. It’s like lost…but not really! Damn, how long you take pinching that twig? Hope you took a nap to recoup because that’s some gravitas right there, Dan. I don’t think I can touch the insight radiating off of that miracle of words, but I’ll try my hand. Barring the risk of getting Latin thrown at me for saying so, you look like a creepy milkman from the lip up.




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Si Truss’s Review of “Darwin Deez” by Darwin Deez

Apr 22

Posted by Matt Wendus in Drowned in Sound | No Comments

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.

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Paul Clarke’s Review of “Let This be the Last Night I Care” by Alcoholic Faith Mission

Mar 7

Posted by Matt Wendus in Drowned in Sound | No Comments

Artist: Alcoholic Faith Mission

Album: Let this be the Last Night I Care

Reviewer: Paul Clarke

Drowned in Sound, 2010

Writing Disorders: Idea Fever, Jargon Palsy







Longest Sentence: 82 words

Matronly: “occasionally mixing too much together and not knowing when to curb their excesses”




Paul, you really should move to 12th century Iceland and be a chronicler. I don’t think your compulsion to write brain-breaking sentences is suited for the digital world. But hey, you be the judge. Take your opening sentence, for example:

“Some records have a sense that the immediate physical surroundings in which they were recorded have shaped the sound itself; that the ramshackle hut to which Bon Iver retreated for For Emma, Forever Ago was almost as responsible for that album’s air of rustic fragility as Justin Vernon’s confessional lyrics say, or that the hushed atmosphere of Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Session wouldn’t have felt quite so devotional if it hadn’t been recorded in The Church Of The Holy Trinity in Toronto.”

Paul, imagine for a minute that you’re someone who reads for fun, not to compete against Finland for the gold. Now I want you to look at that quoted bit above and answer the following question: does that look like a sentence or a paragraph? Draping window dressing on writing is all well and good, Paul, but you can’t see much if the window’s covered. Believe it or not, your criminally tedious opening sentence wasn’t even the best part. Read what comes next:

“This was literally true in the case of Alcoholic Faith Mission’s last album”

WHAT was literally true, Paul? The Bon Iver bit about the cabin, the stuff about the Toronto church, or the point of your sentence I forgot because it’s 60 words back up the path? I ain’t climbin’ back up that scree, Paul. I need the energy for the long trek ahead.

I can’t imagine how anyone besides me would have made it much further, but you don’t make things any easier down the road:

“And in some senses, the tiny bedroom in Copenhagen where they made 2006’s debut Misery Loves Company also left an indelible mark; if only because the fact Jensen and Solund recorded it entirely by candlelight seemed reflected in a sound which felt like squinting through the gloom at the shadows of other bands such as Smog, Tunng and Iron and Wine.”

First things first. “In some senses?” I can’t say that I’ve ever come across that construction, Paul. You know why? Because if you use the plural of “sense,” it sounds like you’re referring to smell, taste, touch – that kind of stuff. So instead of hearing “in many respects” in my brain, I’m hearing you say this band made an indelible mark on someone’s tongue or nose by recording in candlelight. Second off, could you have maybe condensed “the fact Jensen and Solund recorded it entirely by candlelight” into a smaller noun? The poor verb “seemed” is tugging a fat load there, Paul. He’s sturdy, but he ain’t your workhorse, you animal.

Paul, I’m already tired of posting entire sentences written by you because it’s eating my word count like Reese’s Pieces. Let’s throw a jargon party instead. You text your friends while I put up a list of the stuffiest, silliest bits I could find in your glacial review. Then maybe you can explain why you can’t write about music like someone who enjoys it in the least.

“many of the Bukowskiesque themes”

“a copy of Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible rather than a neon crucifix”

“fuzz-frazzled guitars and buoyant whoops”

“lyrics remain resolutely grounded in the everyday”

“ongoing predilection for the odd tipple”

“expansion in personnel has been matched by an encompassing expansion in scope”

That last one’s my favorite, Paul. If you’ve never tried explaining power-points in front of a workforce on the verge of sleep, you might consider it. World always needs more cold descriptions of core competencies. Cheers, Paul.

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Mary Bellamy’s Review of “The Family Jewels” by Marina & the Diamonds

Feb 15

Posted by Matt Wendus in Drowned in Sound | No Comments

Artist: Marina & the Diamonds

Album: The Family Jewels

Reviewer: Mary Bellamy

Drowned in Sound, 2010

Writing Disorders: Idea Fever, Jargon Palsy, Infectious Punctuation








Longest Sentence: 70 words

Most Emo Phrase: “This is the inherent problem with an album that I really want to like”

Stuffiest Phrase: “the almost-perfect pop paean to outsiderhood”




Mary, for the most part I use RipFork to illustrate recurring themes so that readers can see just how ridiculous music writing can be. And believe me; I had no problem using your review as a teaching tool. It was a pleasure gathering up your perfectly chiseled clichés for display. But I’d be lying if I said I’m not also trying to make you and other writers look foolish. You see, I’m hoping against hope that you’ll be wounded enough to swear off music writing, and instead use the time to practice another hobby. Maybe it’s too much to hope that you’ll pick up a guitar, pluck a bass, or sing in front of people instead of writing about other people’s music like you’d scratch scabies. After all, this exercise could just as easily backfire and give you a renewed vigor to continue writing such bloated absurdity. But hey, a guy can dream.

Now that we’re down to business, I don’t even know where I should begin with your 900-word lump of dung. How about at the very beginning?

“In attempting to straddle the tricky divide between ‘credible’ and ‘pop’, Marina and the Diamonds ends up encountering similar problems to label-mate Little Boots.”

Much like the band with poor straddling form, I can only guess what this tricky divide entails or why it matters. If you’re referring to your own narrow standards, what are the odds that Marina & the Diamonds had them in mind while recording their album? By the way, what’s with the quotation marks? Are you referencing the great music historian B.S. McCrockoshit, or are you using the quotes to define credible and pop as nebulous terms that you can nonetheless use to definitively judge a band’s work? I know which one my bet’s on. To be honest, I wouldn’t have even noticed, but this wasn’t the first time you went heavy on the air quotes. Seriously, you write like Chris Farley reads the news:

“The Family Jewels is a ‘fun’ sounding record of cartoonish proportions (more on how that sits a little awkwardly with the lyrics later)”

Phew, thanks for the announcement, Mary. I broke a cold sweat thinking you weren’t going to explain later how this record sits a little awkwardly with the lyrics. I really can’t tell you how grateful I am that you used an awkward parenthetical aside to reassure me about your coming explanation of awkwardness.

Did I mention awkward? Let’s touch on your strange obsession with the word “esque.”

“the uber shiny pop of the Abba-esque ‘Shampain”

“the quite charming Amanda-Palmer-esque ‘Are You Satisfied?’”

“injecting every other line with a Britney-esque braying.”

Speaking of injecting every other line, were you somehow traumatized by the phrase “sounds like” as a child? What’s with this crippling phobia of similes that don’t rely on hyphens? I’ve examined many virulent cases of esque syndrome in the past, but none as red and irritated as yours. To help ease your recovery, I recommend reducing your intake of university liberal arts courses. You might also consider asking your friends to go up a jean size.

Medical jokes aside, you used “esque” twice in one paragraph. You wrote seven parenthetical asides, not counting the ones examining lyrics. Your AVERAGE sentence length is 30 words. Do you ever read your articles before you submit them? Some of the criticism you lob at this artist more aptly describes your own writing:

“a somewhat wearying ardment of the senses.”

“You end up needing a bit of palette cleanser in between tracks”

Oh, but referencing five songs in the space of 100 words is succinct? It might have cleansed my palette if you’d thrown in a few links or even an embedded video between your Kate Nash diatribe and Kate Bush diatribe. I could rattle on about how you wrote an opinion piece in the second person and how you never met an adverb you didn’t like, but I think instead I’ll just focus on your damp logic for the rest of this. I particularly enjoyed this bit:

“It’s a record that musically says “Y-E-S to everything” and isn’t itself sure of what it is. Does Marina want to be a British Regina, penning lovely piano tunes like ‘Numb’, or is she taking aim at being the UK’s answer to Gwen Stefani, as tracks like ‘Oh No’ and ‘Girls’ would suggest?”

Thanks for writing this glob of nonsense, Mary, because it gives me a chance to touch on a larger theme coursing through music criticism. You see it all the time: critics one day complaining about an artist’s lack of variety, and the next day bemoaning a lack of cohesion if she tries to shake things up. What are the odds you’d spare Marina the flowery onslaught if she stuck to “lovely piano tunes?” Would you have heralded it as a “coherent piece of work” instead of an “increasing cacophony of styles?” I don’t claim to be a psychic, but I’ve got a tingling in my testicles that says you’d find just as many weak reasons to rate her effort a 5.

I don’t like to write longer screeds than the people I bully on RipFork, so I’ll let you off the hook, Mary. Keep me updated on your progress with learning that instrument.

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Will Metcalfe’s Review of “Sugarland” by Talk Normal

Feb 6

Posted by Matt Wendus in Drowned in Sound | No Comments

Artist: Talk Normal

Album: Sugarland

Reviewer: Will Metcalfe

Drowned in Sound, 2010

Writing Disorders: Purple Hemorrhage, Detachment Syndrome








Most Emo Phrase: “sheer balls to the wall defiance”

Drama: “a ragged roughing up of the increasingly toothless old man of the music industry”




Will, your review is a primo example of music writing so focused on the author’s excess that insight is thrown to the dogs. It’s ironic that the band you’re writing about is named “Talk Normal” since the metaphors you use to describe the sounds, songs, and emotion sound like the ramblings of a crazy person. If someone was asked to piece together a description of Talk Normal from your review, what would they even come up with? Well, let’s see if we can find out.

Here’s how you chose to describe one of the songs:

“Almost immediately the jagged edge of ‘River’s Edge’ gives way to the sedate, sinister ‘In Every Dream Home a Heartache’ a ing, seething beast that lures you into its path, before cutting your throat and driving its seven tonne-chassis over you without regret.”

Wow, talk about a vivid imagination. I understand it’s a metaphor, but metaphors usually give some suggestion of the actual content. How does a song lure you into its path? If you’re listening to the song, you’re already in its path. No further luring is necessary. And when did the beast metaphor suddenly become a vehicle metaphor? I’d just formed an image of some voracious clawed , and now you want me to think of a monster truck? I suppose after a few minutes of deep meditation, I could concoct something in my brain that fits your profile of a make-believe mechanical animal, but what’s the point? How would it help me to sort out what the song sounds like?

Yes, it is a cover, and maybe I’m the odd man out of several million readers who hasn’t heard the original version of this song, but I still couldn’t help feeling I wasn’t the only one left in the dark. Thankfully, you help out the most musically-challenged droolers with a deeper analysis in the next huge-ass sentence:

“It’s all gentility at first – driven by a sinister, relatively sedate synth before morphing into a seething beast kicking and screaming against every pseudo-pop sensibility tacked onto it in the first place.”

Well, at least now we can add screaming and powerful leg strikes to the imaginary truck monster’s list of abilities. Let me see if I have this right, Will.  After a paragraph-long description of this song, the only thing your readers can be sure about is that it has synthesizer in it? By the way, Will, you’re not helping me like you when you combine the word “pseudo” with “pop-sensibility.” If you haven’t noticed, I have a pet peeve for stuffy bits of music nonsense. Like these:

“The trash-can cacophony”

“a record acerbic both in wit and character”

“the increasingly toothless old man of the music industry”

I’m numb to it now, though. You see, aside from your silly beast fantasy, your review doesn’t stray far from the usual scat I pick through on RipFork. But since I give everyone else a hard time for it, I would be remiss if I left you out of the fun. I feel like I’m boxing the clown here, but would it kill you to write your opinions, not mine or anyone else’s?

“Yet as the record wears on, there you begin to notice particular – almost melodic – nuances buried beneath feedback and fury.”

How do you know I’ll begin to notice those nuances? Maybe I don’t have ears as keen as yours, Will. Try this tweak on for size:

“Yet as the record wears on, there I began to notice particular – almost melodic – nuances buried beneath feedback and fury.”

Instead of assuming what the rest of us will get from this album before we’ve even heard it, maybe you could just use the first person. And if the editors of Drowned in Sound forbid that essential tool of opinion writing, you might be better off just writing your thoughts on music in a blog. It’s not like what you’ve written here hasn’t already reared its cold, flaccid head in a slightly paler hue on any other music zine.

Well, at least near the end, you TRIED to make it brighter. You even swore!

“Talk Normal are vital, vitriolic and ing righteous.”

“Well, these two ate them for breakfast – and their ing polka dot dresses.”

Will, peppering a dense, impersonal review with the word “ ing” a couple of times in the conclusion doesn’t really make it edgy. It just makes me wonder why you suddenly got so animated. Typing Tourettes?

This is getting way too long, so I’ll wind things down. I try not to hammer a guy for revision errors, but I just couldn’t resist one of yours. After that, I promise we’ll be done. One last kick in the balls, Will, then we can go out for coffee.

“The constant conflict between melody and menace drives the record towards its own, chiming end – besieged by wayward sax and a sense of inescapable sense of doom.”

I’m getting a sense of a sense of neglect in proofreading on your end, Will. But whatever, dude. We all make mistakes. Heck, I even mistook “Subterranean Homesick” for “Subterranean Homesick Alien” once! I know, huh? I nearly died of shame. Maybe we can talk about our anguish together sometime and hug. I’d like that.

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