I like bombast-xxx. It’s smartly written and covers bands I’ve heard about, even if it then goes and says something dim like – on a Britney gig – “As costume after costume went on and came off and song after song switched gears into some dance interlude, I was aware that this show had nothing in common with rock ‘n’ roll.” You don’t say, eh? Anyway, it’s a good site, you should check it out.
I got it off monsyllabic, which I link to far too rarely and is on fine form currently. Nick talks a little bit there about last week’s Pitchfork/Radiohead thing: I’ll take this opportunity to say that when I use the word ‘criticism’ I’m not simply talking about the churned-out mark-out-of-10 record review side of it. In my book, any public response to an artwork is an act of criticism. That I thought Brent Sirota’s piece was flawed in its approach is pretty obvious from what I wrote. That I think any attempt, this included, to write thoughtfully about music is in the end worthwhile should certainly have been spelt out more.
On re-reading Brent’s essay, it’s an interesting and original approach to an album around which a smothering consensus is already building. I find its emphasis on Radiohead’s supposedly startling originality and its lack of reference to other music annoying, but I let that lead me down a blind alley of suggesting that all ‘literary’ rock criticism was somehow flawed. Mea culpa: it isn’t. Looking at the article and my response, my beef with it rested on the basic and unspoken point that I think Kid A is an interesting but not great record, and Brent D. thinks it’s a masterpiece. It seems to me like an album designed for overcooked critiques, and the more interesting question for me remains whether or not it deserves them. Waving it airily into the canon seems an inadequate response.