Black Garterbelt

Falling Into You (Part Two)

Some months ago, in questioning arbitration-type criticism, I asked, rhetorically: [W]hat's the value of the 250-word [album] review when samples of the music are available everywhere, for free?

It is now clear, if it wasn't before, that that type of criticism is officially dead, or at least hopelessly corrupt:

How is it that a magazine can review an entire album--and assign a star rating to it--without actually hearing the album?

Case in point: the “review” of Warpaint--the new album by THE BLACK CROWES--in the March issue of Maxim magazine.  The writer--who has not heard the album since advance CDs were not made available--wrote what appears to be a disparaging assessment anyway, citing “it hasn’t left Chris Robinson and the gang much room for growth.”

Incredulously [sic], the magazine gave the album a two and a half star rating--although neither the writer nor the editor could have heard more than one song (the single “Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution”).

When approached for an explanation, the magazine described the review as “an educated guess preview.”  Huh?

Black Crowes manager Pete Angelus says, “Maxim's actions seem to completely lack journalistic integrity and intentionally mislead their readership.   When confronted with the fact that they never heard the album they are claiming to 'review’ in their music section--with a star rating, no less--they attempt to explain that it was an 'educated guess.'  In an email correspondence, Maxim went on to state: ‘Of course, we always prefer to (sic) hearing music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don’t want to ignore that aren’t available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It’s either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former.’” 

It's unclear to what degree Maxim is being disingenuous here.  A likely explanation is that the rating was awarded on the basis of a leaked copy of the album, but no one's admitting that, and so we're left with the official explanation, which perhaps the most casual expression of nihilism I've heard so far today.*

Then, there's this:

RAPPER Nas was shocked when Maxim gave his new album, "N - - - - r," a 21/2-star review - because it isn't even finished yet. "I'm finishing the album now, and it will be out April 22," Nas told Page Six. Maxim has since apologized for the premature review, but Nas doesn't care. "I'd prefer [a review from] Playboy," the rapper said. "That kind of stuff doesn't reach my radar or effect anybody around me. I don't know what a music rating from Maxim is . . . I don't know what it even means really." Maxim also reviewed the Black Crowes' album, "War Paint," without listening to it in its entirety.

Again, it's entirely possible that the reviewer was privy to some leaked working Nas tracks, but this is getting ridiculous.**

Falling Into You (Part One)

Let's talk about Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste.

Author Carl Wilson's post at Powells.com probably serves as the best introduction.  Watch him go:

My book is a lab experiment in disguise, in which I was the rat, being exposed to various test conditions or stimuli that might help me understand how millions of people could be fans of Céline Dion while I and nearly everybody I'd ever met couldn't stand her. The test tubes and beakers of the experiment are, of course, tangents. It is a travelogue of sorts, as the subtitle says, "a journey to the end of taste."

It was a weird experience to spend months on end thinking about Céline Dion, but much of the time I wasn't thinking about Dion so much as about the chemical components, the relationships and accidents and outside forces, that go into liking or disliking music in the first place. The book was kind of a far-flung exercise in suspension of judgment, about putting off a thumbs-up or thumbs-down for awhile, and one of the advantages of doing that is that in the interim, you might end up somewhere else than where you bargained for.

Now, I've been looking forward to this entry in the 33 1/3 series, but I couldn't help but be a little disappointed at the finish.  And not because Wilson does a poor job--far from it.  In fact, he's charmingly earnest, intelligent, insightful, engaging--all those lovely things with which the finest jacket blurbs and pull quotes are stitched.

Yet I wanted something more than the Charmin-softness of his conclusion, which belongs to the "Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!" school of contemporary criticism (or perhaps somewhere between new historicism and reader response, if you like), and perhaps goes even a bit further in urging critics to reconsider voicing negative responses to--in this case--pieces of music.

Wilson journeys from loathing Céline Dion to, well, enjoying and appreciating her, if only on a limited basis.  With the scales now fallen from his eyes, he can see the appeal of Dion, and also why some people find critical darlings--such as, say, Pavement--annoying.

Which leads, ultimately, to this:

What would criticism be like if it were not foremost trying to persuade people to find the same things great? If it weren't about making cases for and against things? It wouldn't need to adopt the kind of "objective" (or self-consciously hip) tone that conceals the identity and social location of the author, the better to win you over. It might be more frank about the two-sidedness of the aesthetic encounter, and offer something more like a tour of an aesthetic experience, a travelogue, a memoir. More and more critics, in fact, are incorporating personal narrative into their work. Perhaps this is the benefit of the explosion of cultural judgment on the Internet, where millions of thumbs turn up and down daily: by rendering their traditional job of arbitration obsolete, it frees critics to find other ways of contemplating music.

When I say he reminds me of Heidi Julavits, I'm thinking of this in particular:

[S]nark is a reflexive disorder, whether those who employ it realize it or not; the pointlessness of fiction only comes back to suggest the pointlessness of its commentator. The real question then becomes: If you don’t believe in this, what do you believe in? What do you care about? What is the purpose of this destructive clear-cutting, if you don’t have anything to suggest in its place, save your own career advancement?

But it is rhetorical and useless to ask 'other people' what they believe. Maybe the only questions I have the right to ask is: What do I believe? What do I care about?

These thoughts are central to Wilson's argument, as well, and he goes on at length about cultural and social capital and the relationship between taste and power.  (No surprise to any of us, of course, that a teen punk's embrace of one kind of music or rejection of another is usually about little more than "career advancement"--aka cultural or social capital--or that we typically carry this poison on into adulthood, where it is found in LD-50-type levels in music critics.)

Goats Notes

Good show last night.

Apparently, we were treated to the first full-band treatment of "Young Caesar 2000."  Ever.  Crowd-pleasers "Going to Georgia," "No Children," and "Houseguest" were also trotted out to a very appreciative gang of about 250.

It must be said that the quasi-religious fervor of the hardcore Mountain Goats fan is both touching and a little bit sad.  God love 'em.

Re: Pale Fire

Nabokov (as John Shade in Pale Fire) wrote of "...making ornaments / Of accidents and possibilities."  My love of, and belief in, that passage of PF is great, indeed.

For example, by letting the iTunes run, I've learned today that My Morning Jacket's "Mahgeeta" makes the perfect companion piece to My Bloody Valentine's  "I Can See It (But I Can't Feel It)."

Untold possibilities. Small accidents. Useful ornaments. Simple pleasures.

Yes.

It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world

"For the love of God, take care never to grow careless about venial sin, however small … There is nothing small if it goes against so great a sovereign."

***

The tagline for a review of Marilyn Manson's latest album:

Nabokovian Jesus Freak in Wonderland (or Cars, Sex, and Death)

Sure, this is trivial, but if thinking people allow this to continue we might as well retire "Nabokovian" and "Lolita" from the lexicon altogether.  Aside from the oxymoronic "Nabokovian Jesus Freak," what we have here is a reference to Marilyn Manson as "Nabokovian" because he fucks a woman young enough to be his daughter and flaunts it in his songs and videos.

Let me be plain: Manson is the opposite of "Nabokovian." 

Editors of the world please try harder.