Finally I get round to replying to Western Homes, whose mention of us last Wednesday has sparked a monster flood of hits at precisely the point at which my social life explodes, my sleeping patterns head west and my weblogging as a result goes completely haywire.
Obviously, thanks for the complements and the hits, though given we nick all our news links and plough a weird British furrow tastewise I don’t think NYLPM can be said to be setting any kind of agenda. And I’m “independent of spirit” only until someone pays me to sell out, ha ha. (I do firmly believe that the potential readership of music weblogs is monster and that with a bit of luck and hype all the independent-content music sites could be raking in lots more hits than they are, but that’s hardly the point of things, anyway).
WH asks some interesting questions about what kind of reviews people rate. He likes ones he disagrees with – I prefer ones which say something about a record better than I could, or notice something I’d not spotted, or best of all offer me a whole new way to listen to a record. That’s why I like sites like his which don’t mind delving into collections and reviewing old stuff: it gives more of a sense that there’s a conversation going on about music. Similarly I like the way Pitchfork take their time over getting reviews out – for me that suggests self-respect, a feeling that one’s opinion is worth reading even if it’s not absolutely topical.