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Posts Tagged Idea Fever

Jess Harvell’s Review of “Isis/Melvins” Split by Isis and The Melvins

Aug 17

Posted by Matt Wendus in Pitchfork | 21 Comments

Artist: Isis/Melvins

Album: Isis/Melvins Split

Reviewer: Jess Harvell

Pitchfork, 2010

Writing Disorders: Infectious Punctuation, Idea Fever, Scorn Disease








Use a Thesaurus: “a bit of a dull”

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: “I don’t mean that in a disparaging way at all”

HA: “climaxes are so restrained you can almost miss them,” “tight but heavy”




Jess, we both have our shortfalls. I write like a dick and you write like a bitch. Apples and oranges. Bands seem to like me though. Maybe because I don’t tee off like this:

It’s probably asking too much of two songs…Nonetheless, it’s a bit of a dull adieu.

Glad you went ahead and asked too much anyway, since the world could always use more people who ask too much.  By the way, what’s a real dull adieu?

Jess, this is the third time you’ve been heckled here, and it’s not just a lurid sexual fetish.  I haven’t muscled my way to your level of unpaid gigs, but I don’t think writing’s your strong suit.

(Admittedly with a few stylistic changeups along the way.)

What is that?  An advertising disclaimer?  Two questions are jostling to the fore here, Jess. Why the parentheses and why the period?  Am I supposed to imagine you whispering racy secrets about “stylistic changeups” in my ear? Good, because I am.

Tell you what — let’s put your last bit behind the one from the Sentence Protection Program so they can hump. I want to see why the catcher doesn’t want an independent clause in the chute:

Then Isis… kept going. (Admittedly with a few stylistic changeups along the way.)

Jess, there’s a reason no 50-foot spaghetti gun popped up in Doom.  Using something like that to kill an imp would be ridiculous, just like penning a whole new sentence in parentheses when a comma would have worked wonders.  (Readers, she did this again. She clamped the same curvy chastity belt on a 40-word sentence down the line. Read this quietly though, maybe in a Clive Owen voice. I don’t want her to hear.)

You know what I think your problem is, Harvell?  You write like you’re still in high school. Not just the emotalics and the crummy punctuation either. I’m talking English class on puberty. You know…why say a story includes something when you can say it’s PLAGUED by it?

The same problem plagues “Way Through Woven Branches” and “The Pliable Foe” here.

…

Two more Isis songs are wheeled into the ER…

Nurse: They keep coming in.  What’s wrong with these PEOPLE?

Doctor: I don’t know, Emma, I don’t KNOW.  But I suspect the music is too static to achieve any sort of real grandeur!

…

I hear the cure for the plague is recording something better. Oh, but that would take work and creativity. My bad.

I don’t want to be here all morning, Jess, so let’s take a quick look at those emotalics:

surprisingly nimble

didn’t plan

finally let loose

adieu

Am I supposed to shout that stuff in my head or are they breath markers to remind me not to pass out from boredom? Sure glad I gulped some air before I was told that I could “only hope they’ll explore it for a little longer.” Wasn’t a total loss though. Try reading “surprisingly nimble” without picturing the Melvins prancing like leprechauns. Hardee’s har har, $2.99.

Jess, let me know when senior year’s over.  I’ll clap you through graduation from times when girls pick on girls, and those girls pick on music.

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Jonathan Dean’s Review of “/\/\/\Y/\” by M.I.A.

Jul 19

Posted by Matt Wendus in Tiny Mix Tapes | No Comments

Artist: M.I.A.

Album: /\/\/\Y/\

Reviewer: Jonathan Dean

Tiny Mix Tapes, 2010

Writing Disorders: Idea Fever, Jargon Palsy, Toxic Tedium








Review Length: 1,184 words

Irony: “attempting to mask its own vacuity by trading on the readymades of authenticity”




Being an editor for Tiny Mix Tapes must be the easiest job in the world. I’d been suspicious all along, but this latest glob of gristle really drove it home. Y’all work weekends doing nothing or is it strictly 9-5? I’d be amazed if you clowns even check the band name before publishing a review. I guess it all looks the same on a résumé.

Even though a fourth grader could have edited this stinker better than “Jay” in the editing department, you’re the one who wrote it, Jon. Blame’s on your shoulders. How much longer did you spend writing this junk than listening to the album? I don’t get the impression you burned many of those hard hours editing, focusing arguments, or choosing words judiciously. When you write for a zine with D-Team quality assurance, responsibility begins with you. You really dropped the ball.

Jon, bear in mind Tiny Mix Tapes does nothing to jazz up text. No pictures, barely any links – just paragraph after boring paragraph of word junk. You were already one of the most long-winded critics I’d encountered when I first featured you, and you didn’t take your foot off the pedal this time. When the body of your review leaves sidebar elements in the dust, it’s usually a good indication you should wind things down.

So many sentences were ripe for picking, but here’s a slice off your first paragraph to start:

“Because of her willful and calculated aestheticization of the subaltern — third-world poverty, radical politics, terrorism, and guerilla warfare — her critics have consistently sought to derive a coherent politics from M.I.A.’s postmodern dance pop.”

I’ve got a lot here, Jon, so I’ll break it down piecemeal. I want you to start by thinking of the words “willful” and “calculated.”  Something calculated is willful by definition, wouldn’t you say? You could have plucked two feathers off this fat chicken by omitting the redundant one. A few hundred more and you might have had a hot meal instead of a feathery bowel movement. Next!

“derive a coherent politics”

I’m sure folks will rush to your defense on this one, but I’ve never heard a dude say he’s going to run for office because of a politics. That sounds weird. I just figured it was a typo until I caught “an ethics” en route to “a politics” once again in the last paragraph. Maybe I just don’t have a chops for pairing plural nouns with singular indefinite articles, but I still think it’s needlessly confusing. Next!

“aestheticization of the subaltern”

Jon, if that’s even a word, it shouldn’t be. Forget about belting it three times fast – try saying “aestheticization” once out loud. Just once…try it. Since you used some form of the word “aesthetic” six times in this review, you really could have left that clunker home. Instead, you dropped the same deuce in your closing paragraph with two other silly words ending in –ation.

“deterritorializations”

“valorization”

Jon, has it ever crossed your mind that maybe music (or writing) isn’t best served by such retarded shop talk? If you’re going to make up words to explain how a girl didn’t lick your balls the right way, try keeping them under 21 letters.

I know, I know. Brevity’s not your thing. I mean, how could it be? A dude who carped on this album for “lurid didacticism” and “telling rather than showing” couldn’t possibly sink to such an uncouth level of understanding. Well bravo, Jon. In the salmon run to bash this album in the most roundabout way, you definitely edged ahead of your peers. It never ceases to amaze me when I see music critics ream artists for sub-par writing…with sub-par writing. Here’s one of my favorite bits:

“The Message” emphasizes the hyper-stimulation and over-connectedness of post-smartphone reality in a particularly clumsy, ham-fisted way”

Oh, but writing four hyphenated compounds in 20 words is graceful, Jon? And aren’t we still IN the smartphone reality? No one calls the invasion of Poland a “postwar” event or Full House a “post-television” show. That’s dumb.

I could bury your essay in red ink all night long, but I think the worst part is the way you constructed it. I feel like a broken record bitching about music lice never using the word “I,” but this time it just got completely out of hand. Way I see it, the only thing worse than writing absolute statements in the 3rd person about an album is making your narrator unsure of himself:

“it cannot help but seem”

“it seems an irresistible temptation”

“seemingly formulated to frustrate”

“seems to fall apart by design”

“seems paradoxically to emerge”

Jon, dropping “seems” that much in an album review written like a definitive treatise just gives the impression you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. And isn’t that the whole point of omitting yourself from your own opinion? To sound like you know what you’re talking about? Like a journalist? Well, kudos to you for giving the media an even worse reputation. But hey, at least it’s not truffle fries.

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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 bands 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 shitty 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 bloody implication in global hegemony is just becoming apparent”

Dan, interracial booty’s hotter than that. What’s wrong with you? For whom the sex 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 Bloody Valentine reference, calm down. I know you probably see editing as shooting 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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Jakob Dorof’s Review of “Topp Stemning Pa Lokal Bar” by Casiokids

Jun 23

Posted by Matt Wendus in Tiny Mix Tapes | No Comments

Artist: Casiokids

Album: Topp Stemning På Lokal Bar

Reviewer: Jakob Dorof

Tiny Mix Tapes, 2010

Writing Disorders: Jargon Palsy, Infectious Punctuation, Idea Fever








Stuffiest Phrase: “a lovely cut of starlit nu-soul, enhanced by flashes of Wilsonian counterpoint”

Hyphen Foul: “keys-as-cicada-swarm”




Jakob, been a few months since we last brushed words. Hope you enjoyed the time. Congrats on getting your reviews under the ten century mark, but you’re still throwing the same crap on a smaller bun.

Your writing’s awful as it was in January because you don’t edit. I trudged through, but I don’t read music reviews like most folks. I paste sentences into Word docs so I can study them. That’s how I roll. Riding bareback through this junk’s enough to chill a man’s balls. Take this heap a words:

“It’s even more the case for a band to do so not as a duo-plus-volunteer beat machine (à la colleagues like Y.A.C.H.T. and jj), but to split the meager makings among five or six real, hungry musician-bodies (ones with audibly expensive keyboard habits, to boot).”

Jakob, you ever seen “Clean House?” This black woman shouts at people for holding onto too much crap. I’ll wear her pants for you again, but one of these days I want you rocking those hips and sorting your own sentences. First things first:

“to do so not as a”

Teachable moment here, Jakob. Strings of tiny words like those tell internet brains to skip ahead. And what’s ahead? Two hyphens. If Margret’s gotta stand three feet back just to read your lines, she’s not gonna give you the blue ribbon. I can’t picture most readers hopping word hurdles either just to learn about a band they can type into Grooveshark. And come on…four parentheses in one sentence? Curves are for women, Jakob.

Let’s move onto the next glob a words, eh?

“Generally speaking, the eight tracks/38 minutes of the album proper consist of groove-heavy, synth-poppin’ workouts that could have well been produced by James Murphy (though they ain’t), and make for topp stemning (a “great vibe”) in the gym, the car, and maybe even the local bar, as advertised on the tin.”

Call me nuts, but maybe a 50-word explanation jumps orbit on generally speaking. When I speak generally, I drop like, “That was cool,” or “She’s hot.” You know, general stuff. Try it sometime. At least you whittled down a character of space with “ain’t” in there. If your idea of relaxing the pace is writing like Casey Kasem every 20 words, you’re way too tense. Try Anusara.

I want to come back to Grooveshark for a second, Jakob. Maybe writing confusing nonsense about sounds is fast becoming a lost art in the internet age, but not fast enough. Case in point:

“The squiggly instro-funk of “Fot I Hose” sounds like an update of the kind of 70s jams cataloged on Cinemaphonic’s Soul Punch comp; “Verdens Største Land” ably blends Air France’s lithe synths with Vampiric afro-beat appropriations; and the opener “Grønt Lys I Alle Led” approximates the result of Jens Lekman ghostwriting a tune for Los Campesinos! post-Ritalin prescription.”

Wow. This band must be thrilled they got you to translate their music overseas. Did you get credit for “instro-funk” in the dictionary of hyphenated music BS or is the request still pending? Maybe they can add two entries for clarity. Can’t be confusing squiggly instro-funk with the regular sort these days.

Quoting all this stuff’s pushing me into your preferred length, not mine, so let’s cap things off with your discussion of the “definite missteps” on this album:

“Perhaps worst of all is the fact that this disc doubles its length in bonus tracks; they’re easy to ignore, which makes it a forgivable move, but as such it also feels like a bit of a waste”

So a bit of a waste is worst of all? Wow, better yank two stars off the board. That’s some heavy shit right there. Really kid, I don’t understand the point you’re making here. You saying it’d be UNforgivable if those bonus tracks were impossible to ignore? Do you normally pee on music that holds your attention or are you just fumbling for something to dislike?

I gotta go, but just for fun let’s see what comes after that last bit:

“…it also feels like a bit of a waste. At best it comes off a bit brazen and cocksure”

Try a bit of rereading to find a bit less repetition. Not that I need to point it out, but sometimes pussy footing leaves a stain, Jakob. Besides…a bit cocksure? A bit brazen? That’s like saying your review was a bit awful.

Let’s not mince words.

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John Calvert’s Review of “Nonstoperotik” by Black Francis

May 21

Posted by Matt Wendus in The Quietus | 7 Comments

Artist: Black Francis

Album: Nonstop

Reviewer: John Calvert

The Quietus, 2010

Writing Disorders: Jargon Palsy, Idea Fever








Stuffiest Phrase: “bears little of the abstract parenthesis and structural inventiveness exhumed”

WTF: “curiouser and curiouser until the Vagina Dentata”




Before I get to John Calvert’s review, let’s start with a selection from the comment board. It’s a John Doran featurette — three…maybe four…back to back…John Doran comments:





I’ve had words with the editor of The Quietus in my own day, so I’m not surprised to see him go apeshit on his own ridiculous site. I got John’s saucy tongue up my inbox when I made fun of his Jaga Jazzist review, but apparently it takes far less to set him off on a comment board. Man’s got a chigger up a chapped ass.

I wouldn’t want him in charge of my zine for the mentally obese, but John did get me thinking about one thing. What made readers light his butt fuse so close to the knot with this review?

Turns out there’s plenty of justification. I didn’t even know where to start laughing. It took a few rereads, but far as I can tell, the review serves two purposes. One is to complain there’s not enough Pixies in Frank Black’s 19th solo album since leaving the band. The other’s to give John Calvert a playoff berth in Metaphor Fest 2010.

“It’s like scratching with the fingers of an amputated limb”

“the cleft-lipped Svn Fingers was hacked up like a toxic fur-ball”

“the songs are pretty girls with bad breath”

Honestly, John, did you have this mountain of self-gratification mapped out before you even heard the album? Call me crazy, but I reckon an article built on clever abstractions of sounds is more “vaguely insipid” than the actual sounds. One reason I’m trying to suffocate your style of chunky brown writing is it’s by far the worst way to explain a musical release. At least you can rest assured most of the Quietus is just as bad. I only found your turd through a tip. Thanks, Chloe.

Oh, then there’s the Pixies nostalgia:

“This melodiously bullet-proof songcraft plain begs to be disfigured into inverted forms, Pixies-style.”

“They’re so missed as animators to Franks’ songs”

“It could be described as Pixies without the punk – sorry, Frank, but it’d be remiss not to compare and contrast”

So listen to a goddamn Pixies album, dude. There are five out there to choose from, but before you go thumbing the LPs, lend me an ear. This is a teachable moment, John. To me it’s a limp gripe hounding a musician for not re-recording stuff his band made famous 20 years ago. Since half a trillion bands have woven Pixies into their DNA, maybe the lead singer wants to make something different. If he didn’t yelp enough over a plunking bass line for your taste, I think it says more about you than it does about him, and half this review was a transcript of you moaning about that rod up your butt. When you finally stop for breath, you drop a quick gripe or two about Black not being punk enough:

“without a manifesto of punk-experimental malintent in hand, is nothing short of a torturous tease.”

John, the man’s 45 years old. I’m not nearly that old yet, but I can’t say I’d be clamoring to swing my gut around like 1989 if I was. As Mr. Strummer once said, “you grow up and you calm down.” If the guy wants to play country rock, that’s his business. It’s probably better for his LDL count anyway.

John…and John, you might consider rereading the comments under this review. The day a music zine can’t take criticism is a day that’s good for me, not you. Keep it in mind.

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