I know a few weeks is an eternity in blogging time, but it’s worth drawing some attention to Frank Kogan’s intervention in the Sasha Frere-Jones/Carl Wilson ‘problem with indie’ debate that was raging a fortnight or so ago. He[…]

Nick Southall on the end of Stylus and how web 2.0 has changed the criticism game.
Blogged as a marker to myself, really, though one sensible response on my part would be to stop thinking so much about music criticism and just get on with some.[…]

As a marketer it gives me shudders of appaling delight to see phrases like “moving up the Value Funnel” in a music comments box, so you can imagine I’ve found Hypebot’s posts on “the rise of the Musical Middle Class&#822[…]

6. Utah Saints – Something Good
Another mainstream chart hit for Rave ’92, one which has cemented itself into the consciousness of the Great British listening public thanks to that stuttering name-check announcement. (more…)[…]

Stylus Magazine is closing – I never read it as much as I ought but there was some good stuff in it, especially William B Swygart’s Singles Jukebox blog. This started off as WBS’ rantings about the week’s UK Top 40 – a s[…]

This album came out at a troubled time for its superstar singer. The singer had hit international fame with a provocative, ambiguously sexual image, and had then gone on to work with some of the hottest names in black music – though many critic[…]

My latest column for Pitchfork looks at tastemaking and consensus in British music. It’s an ambitious column- almost certainly too ambitious, so I’ll use this post to briefly talk about some of the stuff that didn’t get in it and a[…]

Judging by Technorati, responses to this Carl Wilson piece – “The Trouble With Indie Rock” – have mostly focused on his dismantling of Sasha Frere-Jones’ argument about the lack of ‘miscegenation’ in indie ro[…]

Idolator has been having a good deal of snarky fun about the OiNK bust, and it’s been very entertaining to read, but the fast-moving nature of that site means that the most interesting post of the last few days, Jess Harvell’s despairing […]

(There is no nu-blogosphere, sillies. These people have mostly been going for ages in one form or another, it’s just that this befuddled old veteran hadn’t paid much attention until the roundtable stuff last week prompted him to start l[…]