Artist: Talk Normal
Album: Sugarland
Reviewer: Will Metcalfe
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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