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Posts Tagged Toxic Tedium

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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Andy Kellman’s Review of “We Are Proud of Our Choices” by Ewan Pearson

Apr 20

Posted by Matt Wendus in Allmusic | 3 Comments

Artist: Ewan Pearson

Album: We Are Proud of Our Choices

Reviewer: Andy Kellman

Allmusic, 2010

Writing Disorders: Idea Fever, Toxic Tedium, Purple Hemorrhage








Longest Sentence: 61 words

Adverb Foul: “very nearly assaultive”




Andy, Allmusic reviews are essentially copy, and you’re not a copy writer. Exhibit Q:

“Yet this disc does have each one of its elder siblings’ charms: a gentle buildup and easy finish, extended trance-like passages, spongy rhythms, seemingly incongruent tracks melded with ease and restraint, almost subliminally tense transitions from menace to bliss, and even some whispered vocals, though the inner-growth monologue on Yukihiro Fukutomi’s emotive piano-house track “Open Our Eyes” is a bit much.”

Andy, I forgot to pack my jerky and now I can’t get the fire hot enough to boil the parasites out of the meltwater I cupped from the stream, further hampering my progress in the metaphor I concocted about how your criminally long sentence is like a journey through Big Sky Country with no legs on a bum wheelchair.

Dude, that silly sentence was two words SHORTER than yours. I can’t even write a sentence that long without Herculean effort against the instinct to compress. Yet nearly every review I’ve ripped on RipFork has had a sentence eclipsing 50 words. Should the Human Genome Project map the code behind that disorder, or am I just missing the majesty of a sentence stretching more than 2 feet long in 11 point Calibri?

Length is only a fraction of your problems here, Andy. Read this next bit — preferably aloud:

“The set is at its busiest from the 12th through 16th (of 18) tracks, highlighted by Xenia Beliayeva’s “Analog Effekt,” released on Systematic but worthy of 240 Volts’ uniformly stark and sleek output, and the ecstatic, fully loaded John Talabot mix of Al Usher’s “Silverhum.”

Hey, do you mind giving us an inclination of what a human thought of the album? This review reads like the result of loading MP3s into a freeware java app that translates sounds into text. Are you running Version 3.1? I hear it gives a better approximation of music’s component parts and even generates tentative context based on new algorithms. It must be…the FUTURE!

Here’s what I think, Andy. Since there’s so much music now readily available, it seems like a prime time to write like a fan, not an ESL software salesman. Maybe you should ask yourself why you’re writing about music in the first place. If your motives include dazzling readers, outpacing other writers, and writing the most tedious 250 words forgotten, I say you failed at two.

Moving on…

“While Pearson would likely be flattered to be told that this disc resembles a hybrid of Michael Mayer’s Immer (stern, dramatic; Joy Division) and Triple R’s Friends (comparatively brighter and outgoing; New Order), he might also find the description a little limiting.”

Or maybe he’d be flattered if you wrote him an email and told him what you thought of his music, good or bad. Maybe I don’t understand musicians, but this guy might feel uneasy reading a music critic’s fantasy about his reaction to a flattering comparison. How many acts are compared to 30-year-old bands every week, Andy? It loses its luster after a while, I reckon.

Andy, there’s only so much I can write about something that short, so I’m going to wrap it up. I want you to try something out though. Write about this album again in a year. If you can’t connect it to your life in a way more meaningful than the bad copy you wrote here, then you’re listening to too much music.

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Evan Burrows’ Review Of “Sunna” by W-H-I-T-E

Apr 8

Posted by Matt Wendus in Tiny Mix Tapes | 6 Comments

Artist: W-H-I-T-E

Album: Sunna

Reviewer: Evan Burrows

Tiny Mix Tapes, 2010

Writing Disorders: Jargon Palsy, Infectious Punctuation, Toxic Tedium








Longest Sentence: 61 words

In Nomine Patris: “subject to all the laws and conditions its maker might design for it”




Evan, this review is so ridiculous it defies comprehension. First there’s your introduction – and I use that term loosely to describe the 300-word snooze fest where you explain all music as points on a line graph:

“Okay, start sucking on your Roswell-alien-shaped novelty water pipe: Imagine an axis where one pole is labeled ‘Structure’ and the other is labeled ‘Atmosphere,’ and every album ever made can be plotted along those axes according to the way in which the artist responsible negotiates these two categories of musical expression.”

Did you actually graph The Spice Girls and Limp Bizkit on your TI89 or is your abstract thought really limited to two dimensions of 7th grade math? I’m not even going to get into the shoddy logic of how “the construction or reconstruction of a world” could possibly be plotted on a simple X/Y axis because I’d only be encouraging this kind of sterile madness. If this is really what you do when you get baked, then you might want to stick to plotting simpler things like toilet paper or fruit. If weed’s got you playing pin the tail on the Cartesian plane with music, I just hope you do it alone.

After you ramble on like Ben Stein teaching Excel for another couple hundred words, you finally get around to mentioning the band:

“W-H-I-T-E’s starry-eyed debut full-length, Sunna, is the sort of album — in no short supply over the last three or four decades of popular music — that aims to attend to both ‘Atmosphere’ (what the accompanying one-sheet refers to as “experimental space sounds”) and ‘Structure’ (“pop melodies”) with an equal share of craft and attention.”

So all that tedious crap was leading up to the basic point that on this album, the band was trying to wed structure and atmosphere? Holy cow, that was certainly worth the lesson in charting function f(boring) = boring3 + 7boring.

That’s really what this review was: boring to the third power plus seven times boring. And make no mistake, Evan; it was entirely your fault. I can only speak for myself, but figure others might agree when I say your writing style can’t sustain interest in such a long, drawn-out form. And by drawn-out, I mean you wrote a 900-word review about how an album didn’t reach the upper right corner of a double axis graph. As far as your style’s concerned, here’s something to ponder. If one of your friends asked you what you thought of this album, what would you say to her? Would you say this?

“Standouts like “When We Were Young” and “Take Me out to Dinner” similarly benefit when Hanson exercises restraint in rationing his timbral ideas across the duration of each song, allowing them room to individually stretch their legs and really shine.”

Of course you wouldn’t. Your friend would be creeped out because nobody talks like that in conversation. I understand writing is different than speaking. There’s more freedom to deliberate, choose words, and expand ideas. But when writing becomes so divorced from communication, it’s just typing. Next time you type a review, read the entire thing out loud when you finish. It might tell you something.

Actually, let’s get a jump on things. Go ahead and read these out loud:

“a downright catchy, economical track that, through its developmental patience, reaches breathtaking heights while remaining texturally and melodically concise.”

“an ability to synthesize them in a way that compounds their respective energies through a tricky fusion”

First question: are you the least bit aware that your thoughts on art sound like an explanation of the Krebs cycle? Second: if so, why are you cool with that?

I’m going to wrap this up soon, Evan, but this next line of yours actually caught my interest – not because of any insight, but rather what I think you’re suggesting this musician should do:

“Nor do they sustain a listener’s interest when he shows his atmospheric hand too soon”

So you’re saying he should make sure he’s got a firm structure first? Oh, okay, I see what you’re getting at. Then maybe he can clasp his atmospheric hand around his structure, rhythmically moving it up and down the length of the structure. I think that would help to strengthen the structure – you know, slowly at first, then faster and faster. He shouldn’t concentrate too much on one part of the structure, though — maybe move the atmospheric hand down to the very bottom and play around there for a bit. It’s good to pay attention to the roots, you know? Yeah. Oh yeah. “Washes of towering, interstellar organ give way to bubbling” — Sorry, what happened?

You need time to find a new hobby, Evan, so let’s end with your closer.

“Although it’s certainly a well-worn, debut-record-review cliché to say so, it seems to be as apt here as it often is: What Sunna suggests for W-H-I-T-E’s future is the most exciting thing about it.”

Well, Evan, at least you can rest assured that you covered your ass in the wrong place. Toodles.

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Jonathan Dean’s Review of “Presidence” by Excepter

Mar 21

Posted by Matt Wendus in Tiny Mix Tapes | 5 Comments

Artist: Excepter

Album: Presidence

Reviewer: Jonathan Dean

Tiny Mix Tapes, 2010

Writing Disorders: Jargon Palsy, Infectious Punctuation, Toxic Tedium








Comma Foul: “It should be noted, however, that Excepter do not promise resolution, or even coherence, to their audience.”

Most Sterile Phrase: “the group seems to eschew the notion that their explorations are leading to a terminus or apotheosis”




Jonathan, I’ ma call you Jon because the full name gets me too aroused. And since I already nicknamed Jonathan Keefe with an H, you get the Jon Arbuckle spelling. So, Jon, let’s start with a snip from your review I think sums up the whole 800-word disaster:

“the word ‘tedious’ comes to mind”

Jon, this review was so skull-numbing that I forgot I had a brain for a minute or two. I’m assuming your aim as a writer is to attract readers, not generate the most groans per minute per paragraph of text. Crap like this has me wondering though:

“These improvisations are rhizomatic — not predicated on the assumption that structure is a desirable endpoint, but rather content to allow song structure to bubble up and dissolve with its own logic and duration.”

Jon, that’s not a word. Even if a reader remembered enough botany to know you meant an adjective based on the origin of a plant’s root system, he’d probably still struggle to connect it with the rest of your BS. Did you seriously use the phrase “predicated on the assumption” in a music review? It’s not a legal brief, Jon. Sometimes people dance to this stuff. Well, when in Rome, I guess. My belief that you can change your awful writing is predicated on the assumption that you have any moxie left in those balls. Here’s to hoping.

Let’s imagine for a moment that I’m a listener curious about Excepter. Maybe I’ve heard some scuttlebutt round town that their music pops boners or drove some poor girl to get jiggy with it. In my quest to know more, I stumble on your review:

“Their longform, improvised jams are not rooted in post-punk or psych-pop like those of their neighbors Black Dice and Animal Collective. Unlike Gang Gang Dance, they do not tend towards deconstructions of worldbeat, nor do they engage with the minimalist drone traditions that inform the work of Growing. And although their instrumental palette…”

Never mind. This band sounds dull to the third power. You know why, Jon? You sucked the life out of it. Look dude, most readers aren’t drafting a Pentagon report on the Brooklyn noise scene. You think you could have sexed this up a little bit by leaving out the long division? This is music, not inventory. Even if this band didn’t light your fire, you might have extended a shred of respect by not making them boring by proxy.

Take a knee, Jon – this is a teachable moment. You see, reading detailed descriptions of what a band’s music sounds like is like reading a transcript of a basketball game. In case you haven’t noticed, we no longer live in a world where experiencing new music means enduring radio DJs or taking a trip to the local record store. Back then it made some sense to translate an album into paragraphs of Helvetica so folks could ration their time and money. Things have thankfully changed. If internet users want to sample a band, they can use any number of free listening services, and they can do it immediately. If you want to put a band’s sound in context, then do it with snappy points and hyperlinks, not this:

“Excepter have been ritualistically refining their own brand of shambolic, drug-damaged, future-shock folk, balancing tense, psychedelic profundity with a lackadaisical disaffection bordering on camp.”

Or this:

“uses the basic kosmische template to create a minimal soundscape propelled by a chugging analog synth and a kraut-inspired bass rhythm, embellished with ornamental flute trills”

If you don’t want to get with the times, you might at least consider injecting some personality into your writing. If you shoved some first-person shims under this whole wobbly table bending under the weight of your jargon, you might have reached some balance. It’s not a bad idea for an opinion writer to actually express an opinion every once in a while with the words “I,” “me,” “my” or “mine.” Plus you get the added bonus of coming off as a person, not a robot programmed to link contemporary artists with made-up adjectives. If you’re really that boring in real life, then I think you’re in the wrong field here. As a writer, you’re a communicator, Jon. And a communicator without charisma is pretty useless.

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