Stop the presses! It’s a good review of the new Belle And Sebastian album. (At what point is a given band’s album not “the new” anymore?). This comes from stopsmiling.net, a new popculture zine which has quickly demonstrated its independence from the backstabbin’ world of indie zineblogs by a) hiring Brent DiCrescenzo (whose slacker-Meltzer writing style and taste for overegged puddings remain satisfyingly consistent, but he’s still the only online rockcrit anyone can remember by name, which is saying a lot) and b) having a go at indieshite. Who themselves have posted a lengthy response, prompting another response, etc. etc. Only for the deeply incestuous, or for argument voyeurs. (I fall into both camps, so executive summary: Indieshite aren’t actually British and have links to Splendid. Indieshite rightly say “So what?” to the first charge and dance guiltily around the second, to which “So what?” surely also applies. And if anyone thinks British people aren’t morbidly interested in generic low-selling US indie rock, they’ve clearly never been to Scotland.)
All of which shouldn’t detract from stopsmiling.net: it’s mainstream, jolly, and worth a look once you get beyond the introductory attitude. At worst it’ll end up a pop-culture uber.nu, at best it’ll turn into a Pitchfork for late twentysomethings who want to stay informed.