Album: Li(f)e

Reviewer: Daniel Levin Becker

Dusted, 2010

Writing Disorders: Infectious Punctuation, Purple Hemorrhage








Longest Sentence: 72 words

Clunkiest Phrase: “unabashedly big-scoped hodgepodge”

Most Emo Phrase: “He’s unflinching when he rises to confess”




Daniel, I did the counting, and a fat quarter of your review is made up of asides. Believe it or not, that’s low balling the tally. I wasn’t even sure where one ended and the next began in a certain 70-word sentence that had two. I don’t know if you’ve ever read anything, Daniel, but two dashed-off asides in the same sentence isn’t something you normally see. There’s reason for that.

Even though readability isn’t high on your list of priorities, it’s never too late to change. I’ve only got space for one example, so let’s take this one:

“Subtlety isn’t his thing these days — which is a shame, in that he’s more than gifted enough as a lyricist to keep on making his heady, refined Anticon-era noodle-scratchers — but it’s a decision he made a few albums ago and it’s one worth respecting, because he’s been tackling unsubtle problems and doing it well.”

If lacking subtlety is the soup of the day, the two of you’d have something to discuss over lunch at Panera. After all, you could have split that sentence into three, taken your adverb gun off the full auto setting, or picked a metaphor more easily understood than “refined Anticon-era noodle-scratchers.” Brevity’s not a vice, Daniel.

Speaking of adverbs, I just got done berating Jesse Cataldo for his ridiculous use, and now you show up and match him:

“pretty legitimately”

“more than gifted enough”

“slightly stilted”

Here’s a teachable moment, Daniel. There are a couple of lines from the movie “Outbreak” that have served me well. The first, “With all due respect, General, fuck you…sir,” doesn’t really apply here, but you might profit from the other. “It’s an adverb, Sam. It’s a lazy tool of a weak mind.”

Daniel, improving as a writer simply means asking what you can live without. I want you to read this next bit and solve that pickle on your own. Don’t worry, I picked an easy one.

“Francis isn’t really angry this time out, as on, say, A Healthy Distrust, nor is he trying to outdo himself in quotability, as on, say, Hope.”

If you answered, “That sentence is perfect the way it is,” please accept my boot in your nads and try again. However…if you realized you can do without those egregious comma constructions around the word “say,” then you’re a winner! Daniel, a music review isn’t something you can accompany with dramatic pauses and hand motions for pizzazz. If the guy was angry on an album or heavy on “quotability,” just write that.

I’d like to say your only weakness is technique, but sometimes I just don’t understand your points. Por ejemplo:

“See…the vintage Francis high-concept gross-out “I Was Zero” (“I heard God is coming, and she’s a screamer”)”

Icky…sex! Seriously dude, if you’re going to provide us with lyrics to frame a “gross-out,” you might want to pick something gross. The image of humble man meat delivering screaming pleasure to God is…hot. Hotter than hentai. If you wrote, (“God ate a gnarly pupusa and took a dump on my face”), that’s a horse of a different color.

Topping all this off is your creepy posture as a merciful authority holding naysayers at bay with your scepter of certainty:

“he’s earned both the authority and the indulgence.”

“he deserves the benefit of the doubt”

“One would be forgiven for balking at a title like Li(f)e, which is heavy-handed in both implication and rendering, but Sage Francis has come by it pretty legitimately.”

If only other musicians were so lucky. Well it’s good to know the guy granting clemency is the one who condones judging albums by their titles. Heavy-handed indeed. Work on your writing, kid.

Album: Love Comes Close

Reviewer: Jon Dale

Dusted, 2009

Writing Disorders: Jargon Palsy, Infectious Punctuation

Most Emo Phrase: “everything here lacks purpose”

TMI: “this stuff was always most exciting when it was on the cusp of getting it on”

Jon, your writing needs work. I’m tempted to suggest you stop writing altogether and take a retreat to the countryside, but I still have hope that you can be turned away from the dark side. Dude, look at your first sentence:

“The presence of Prurient’s Dominick Fernow on early Cold Cave records sent out a strong signal – Fernow’s discourse is almost Wagnerian in its swagger, and if fully integrated into a populist framework could inject some much-needed depth into the new wave of synthwave.”

Ugh, where do I even start with this thing? Let’s talk about the word “discourse.” Using that word to describe music is like using “intercourse” to describe sex or “endorphins” to describe fun.

Next, let’s tackle this bit:

“almost Wagnerian in its swagger”

When I think of Wagner, I think of two things: Hitler and Apocalypse Now. Somehow images of Mick Jagger don’t spring to mind when a 19^th century German composer is mentioned. And I don’t think I’m an exception in that regard.

And then we get this:

“if fully integrated into a populist framework could inject some much-needed depth into the new wave of synthwave”

Are you writing about music or municipal open space planning? Jon, that sentence may have been the stuffiest bit of music writing I’ve read so far, and that’s saying a lot. But it’s not as if the jargon ultimately makes sense. What the hell is a populist framework in music? You mean a “fan base?”

I feel like I need a decoder ring just to read your review, which from a distance looked like a simple 3-paragraph article. Look at how dense this next sentence is:

“there are New Order tributes (the title track and “Youth and Lust”), female Germanic Sprechstimme electro (“Cebe And Me”), stubby-fingered arpeggios (“Trees Grew Emotions”), songs that fell off the back of a cold wave cassette compilation (“Hello Rats”).”

Jon, you don’t have to pair every metaphor with a parenthetical reference to the track that it describes. Whoever decides to listen to the album will probably find out what a song sounds like at a particular moment. And when you’re gumming up the sentence with hyphenated phrases and words in foreign languages, the parentheses don’t exactly ease the reader on his quest for understanding. You could have just written this:

“There are New Order tributes, female Germanic Sprechstimme electro, stubby-fingered arpeggios, and songs that fell off the back of a cold wave cassette compilation.”

It’s still hard to read, but at least for those who want to read it, there’s slightly more potential to succeed.

Now that I think of it, do you even WANT us to be able to read this, Jon? I even wondered whether this review was your version of the Sokal affair, where a mathematics professor made fun of postmodernism by writing bullshit so well that it was convincing to authorities in the field. I mean, Jesus, read some of this:

“the bombast of Yazoo meeting the intense hermeticism of My Dad Is Dead”

“home-spun synth-pop plumbing obsessive interiors”

“the flirtation with eroticism simply an abbreviated spin on Depeche Mode”

Jon, I figure there are two motivations for writing about music. One is to be read. The other is a love of music. Now, if you’re aiming to be read, you’re not off to a good start. If you’re writing these tracts because you love music…then I suggest sticking with loving the music and writing in a diary.

It seems moot, but I’ll end on a subtle bit of irony I pulled out of this muck:

“The reality of Cold Cave, though, is that they’re dull”

I’m not a scientist or anything, Jon, but I wouldn’t exactly qualify your writing as the most exciting thing since the wheel. Keep it in mind.