Album: 10,000 Days

Reviewer: Ayo Jegede

Stylus, 2006

Writing Disorders: Idea Fever, Scorn Disease

Most emo phrase: “my excitement was palpable but reserved”

Dollar Words: aberration, raison d’être, sycophancy, credo, schadenfreude, leitmotif

Percentage of Review Dedicated to Irrelevant Personal Anecdote: 29%

Ayo, you start off with an anecdote about you, the band, and beer.

“On the way to the Indianapolis Verizon Music Center in the summer of 2001, my excitement was palpable but reserved. My buddy Sander played Ænima while we gabbed on about how I discovered Tool through A Perfect Circle and he the other way…”

Wow, man, who cares? What does your concert experience have to do with the album’s quality? Despite your assurances otherwise, most people who read your review are still going to get the impression you hated the album because a drunk guy spilled beer on your head. And probably a good percentage of them are laughing.

“It’s not true, of course. “Vicarious” is nothing more than “Stinkfist” revisited: on both cuts, Keenan essentially sings about schadenfreude and desensitization. The only difference is that “Vicarious” does so with juvenile imagination”

When they should be using grown-up imagination? Yes, it’s regrettable that Keenan didn’t use the entire text of “The Shock Doctrine” instead of plain verse, but…but…he used the word ZOMBIE! Only people who DIDN’T go to college sing about those! But aside from me thinking your criticism is pointless, I REALLY don’t get why you’re bashing the lyrics when in the next paragraph, you say this:

“Viginti Tres” (apparently just naming it “Twenty Three” doesn’t have the same ring to it) is the requisite touch of ambient wank one comes to expect from the band. it’s nothing but white noise distorted and amplified”

I don’t know what “one” you’re talking about since it doesn’t seem plausible that millions of people buy Tool albums because they expect ambient wank. But what I really don’t get is why you rip the band for being too juvenile, then go on to rip them for not being juvenile enough because they name a song in the Latin equivalent. And since when did distorted, amplified white noise become so bad? I’m willing to bet my milk money that you don’t have a similarly low opinion of the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, or even Deerhoof. But hey, they played in garages, and Tool…well, Tool sucks. NYAR!

Next, you hammer the style and the stoners.

“Being “Progressive” doesn’t justify an album cover that looks like a stoner stumbled upon a documentary on Mayan civilization.”

What’s wrong with being stoned and stumbling on a documentary on a Mayan civilization? That stoner might learn something. Not that I really have to defend Alex Grey (the artist) against someone who wrote a couple articles for a now defunct music webzine (you), but I guess I will anyway. Alex Grey is an interesting visual artist and you write about music, poorly.

And then came your closing sentence:

“I can only hope some sauced-up redneck shows up to point out the absurdity of it all.”

Absurd like writing an 800-word review of a CD you hated?

Maybe.

Album: Magic

Reviewer: Theon Weber

Stylus, 2007

Writing Disorders: Purple Hemorrhage

Most Emo Phrase: “But magic tricks are so thin and fragile-let the light touch them the wrong way and the audience won’t even understand what they were meant to be.”

Dollar Words: métier, tropes, eschews, unuttered

Theon, you don’t start well. I suppose thirty or so dudes who wear women’s jeans won’t count themselves among the snubbed, but you don’t exactly reel in the readers with your intro.

“Cliché is Bruce Springsteen’s métier.”

Ok, I understand that the common cretin can’t pierce the nuances of music like you can, but can you at least START your review with something that doesn’t require a French dictionary to decipher?

“The Boss has always understood the diners and motorcycles and dotted yellow lines that others who cram them into verse have heads stuffed too full of tarot, dharma, and Zarathustra to really touch.”

This is your second sentence. You managed to appeal to the Springsteen-wise psychic, Hindu, and Nietzsche-reading audience. Way to go. The rest of us have no clue what the hell you’re getting at.

And onward came the scorn. Here’s my favorite:

“but a second later the song’s just words and fuzz and 4/4″

Dude, most rock music is 4/4 or 3/4. Deal with it. When a band writes a song in 7/4, that doesn’t automatically make it vastly superior to a song in 4 bar blues. It’s just that some bands say “I don’t want to sound like Dream Theater.” I understand you like to tout your knowledge of time signatures. In other reviews maybe you mention modes. But it’s a dumb argument to say that anything in old fashioned blues or country is SOoooOOOoooOOO passe. You use a dumb argument.

Yet, Theon, all of this is really small in comparison to something I discovered about your writing. Here’s an example I yanked from your review to illustrate.

“Other tracks sound like piles of debris, gathered-up mounds of roadside weeds, this from Route 61 and this from the 405 and this from Bruce’s driveway, and if those have nothing in common save asphalt that’s the only thing these songs manage to describe.”

Let’s keep what you wrote and just alter the formatting, shall we?

“Other tracks

Sound like piles of debris,

Gathered up mounds of roadside weeds;

This from Route 61,

And this from the 405,

And this from Bruce’s driveway.

And if those have nothing in common -

Save asphalt -

That’s the only thing

These songs manage to describe.”

See what happened there? I turned your metaphor-heavy, long-ass sentence into verse simply by changing the formatting and punctuation. You write in verse. Whether or not you want to admit it, you’re a poet at your core. Bard. Funny that you give another dude’s verse a rating of decent (C). Really, it’s funny. Because yours is TEE HEE.

You should send the Boss your writing. Bard.

Album: WWI

Reviewer: Jayson Greene

Stylus, 2006

Writing Disorders: Jargon Palsy, Idea Fever, Scorn Disease

Longest Sentence: 70 words

Critic Stereotype Affirmed: You mention both Pavement and Radiohead in your review

Rock Critic Jargon: a la Built to Spill, late-period Death Cab for Cutie, OK Computer-era, Beatles-esque

Most Emo Phrase: “As long as the culture remains as painfully insular, this shit will eventually wilt and die, or cartwheel off into the Narnia of solipsism.”

Best WTF moment: “an imitation of Morrissey’s fitfully perturbed younger cousin.”

Well, Jayson, you start off on a pretty harsh note here. I’m not entirely convinced, but I’m going to venture a guess that you don’t really like this album.

“They have formed to remind you of everything in indie rock circa 2006 that you are trying to forget.”

Ouch! That’s a tall claim. Wait, what exactly am I personally trying to forget about 2006 indie rock? How do you have intimate knowledge of what I, a random reader, thinks of independent rock music in a particular year? Have you been stalking me? HAVE YOU? Wha — …ohhhhhhh…you meant everything YOU wanted to forget. I’m sorry man, but I just didn’t understand your writing at all. Because it’s poorly written.

Next! Your assessment of the band:

“they make self-important, self-consciously literate guitar rock past its sell-by date via a simple recipe: mix together some late-period Death Cab for Cutie, some OK Computer-era Radiohead, and add in a few Doves and some Decemberists.”

I’m pretty sure that “late-period” work from a band that’s still together is called “recent” work. What you wrote is like saying “late-period events this October.” And answer me this. How is it simple to mix four completely different bands together? Obviously you’ve never written music.

“In their defense, White Whale does have a healthy appreciation for sonic grandeur and an ear for wrapping tart chord progressions in evocative sounds-wintry synth washes, backing horns, toy-box drum programming.”

So…you’re defending the band you just called “facelessly competent” from the person who just called them “facelessly competent?” And to make it more confusing, you go on to write this about the lead singer:

“He even shows a knack for convoluted narratives”

Really. This is coming from a guy who JUST wrote a 70-word sentence right before this one.

“Some moments are egregiously derivative: the chorus to “What’s an Ocean For?” is either a direct lift from the Doves’s first album or Coldplay’s second, and “Forgive the Forgiven” steals the instantly recognizable drum sound from Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight.”

I may be alone here, but I’m not quite sure a rock band sits down and says “for our next album, we should rip off either Coldplay or Phil Collins by directly lifting one of their tracks from their first and second album, respectively.” But even if they don’t, I’m still fairly confident you wouldn’t rip Butch Vig for playing the “Train in Vain” drumline for the Garbage hit “Stupid Girl.” Or that you’d cry foul that Peter Bjorn and John “stole” Muse’s drumming from “Starlight” when the two bands were recording their albums at the same time. Sometimes music replicates itself, Jayson. And that’s not always a bad thing. Nor is it always intended. Any time you want to make something totally original, go ahead. And put it on Myspace so we can listen and critique it.

Finally — [drum roll] — there’s your baffling conclusion!

“White Whale themselves have done nothing wrong, and WWI is a decent album. But does indie rock have to sound like this?”

In the world of letter grades, “decent” means C. And if the band did nothing wrong, then wouldn’t it get an A+ instead of a D+? And I hate to state the painfully obvious, but not all indie rock does sound like White Whale.  The fact that you seem to think so leads me to believe you don’t know much about music. Take a listen sometime.