The discourse around Pitchfork and music journalism has continued for the past week or so, and was bought back to the forefront (in my world at least) by the tragic death of music journalist Neil Kulkarni. People who knew him have written far better tributes than I ever could, and people have been sharing favourite reviews of his in the days since his passing.
In Simon Price’s tribute to Neil in The Quietus he writes that Neil understood “that part of the job involved taking a machete to the bad stuff in order to clear a path for the good stuff.” and this takes me back to a point I made last week - critics are always needed, especially now it’s so easy for anyone to release music. For me this is the main difference between a critic and a playlist editor - the critic an apply that critical eye and consider the bad whereas as the playlist editor can only focus on the good.
As music listeners we can make our mind up as to what’s good or bad ourselves, but it’s always interesting to see whether people agree with you or not. I’ve defended albums considered ‘bad’ that I love (Be Here Now) but I can see why a laddish, overblown coke-opera won’t sit well with people looking for something different to the slew of similar music at the time, but to a 15 year old kid (me) the bravado and swagger of the Gallaghers speaks to them in a way that something else wouldn’t.
I shared some examples of criticism of reviews from Pitchfork in my last newsletter - not especially intelligent examples but ones I found lighthearted. I was reminded whilst writing it of another Quietus review from a year or two ago where they wrote about a new ABBA album.
ABBA have made a good ABBA album won't be found in the archives of the music press or its readers' notions of what constituted 'real music'. The new ABBA album will sell in the millions, but no one who buys it will form a band.
To me, that sums up what music criticism should be about. An album can be good, technically, it can be popular, it can be well reviewed by the broadsheet press - BUT - and here’s the kicker, it doesn’t actually mean it’s any “good” - it doesn’t mean it’s going to inspire anyone, or speak to anyone artistically, and at the end of the day isn’t that why we do this? That review doesn’t slate the album - it would have been all to easy to say “ABBA are shit” and get a load of agreement on social media (not least from me, about as far from an ABBA fan as can be), but puts across why the reviewer doesn’t like it in a clear and thoughtful manner. Neil Kulkarni did something similar in his review of Coventry faux-mods The Enemy - it starts off as an utterly scathing takedown (and doesn’t really let up much) but wins you round in the end with a description of Coventrys rich contributions to music, the real sound of the city rather than the contrived indie shite of The Enemy. It makes me want to drive round the ring road listening to “loony Nigerian church services, shitloads of drum & bass, dubstep, reggae and the odd bit of Ukrainian/Polish/Italian and Irish music”. Now that’s what criticism SHOULD do.
Of course it’s always the man in the arena who deserves most of the credit, but despite the famous quote the critic is important too - and although it’s not a popular opinion it’s one we need to consider even more so now our streaming services are filled with music that doesn’t deserve our attention.
The Winner Takes It All
On to this weeks music then - if I’m honest I haven’t had a huge amount of time to listen to new music this week - have you been watching The Traitors? Christ, it’s even better this series than last. It’s been taking up a load of my time, I’m not really a big TV watcher (and have even less time for reality TV) but the cruelty on show in the Traitors is compelling… I can’t wait to see how it ends tonight.
The week kicked off on a sad note as we lost Silent Servant, just after I shared my newsletter featuring the ‘new’ Sandwell District release. Silent Servant was one of my favourite artists, his techno stuff had that gritty, industrial vibe I love, his work as part of Sandwell of course utterly peerless, and his contributions to Tropic of Cancer were incredible. I was lucky to see him DJ a few times, and saw ToC when they played at Corsica a decade or so ago. His death is a real loss to music. We shouldn’t forget that the incident that claimed his life also took his wife and the artist Soft Moon from us, may they all rest in peace.
One of my favourite producers of recent years is Bullion. It was nice to see him sign to Ghostly for a new album, and surprising to see him release a new track featuring Carly Rae Jepsen. He’s always been a real expect the unexpected artist has Bullion, so maybe this shouldn’t have been that surprising… in many ways it makes perfect sense. Regardless, it sounds wicked and I can’t wait to hear the rest of the album.
I’ve been listening to a lot of the Blackest Ever Black catalogue again. I’ll write a bit more in depth on BEB later (I know I keep promising to), but shared a few classics here.
At the start of the month I went to Ewood Park to watch Cambridge play Blackburn in the FA Cup. I hadn’t been there before, and we ended up losing 5-2. They played a kid who was 15 years old, and I was shocked to realise there are now professional footballers who were born AFTER the release of Junior Spesh on YouTube. Jeez I feel old.
That Astid Sonne album seems to be getting a nice bit of love but I haven’t listened to it yet so I’ll share some thoughts next week on that. Another one I haven’t listened to yet is The Smile album. I didn’t think that much of the first one, and I’ve only heard the single from this one and it hasn’t done much to change my opinion. I love Radiohead, it’s gonna be hard to top what they’ve done really isn’t it?
Anyway that’s all for this week - thanks again for subscribing, sharing, reading and all that - I appreciate the feedback as always.