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Originally Posted by AssBlaster
Yeah, if their challenge this time around was making a shitty sounding lazy album with lazy production and shoddy writing and then challenging me to try and like it, than they succeeded.
I haven't been able to handle their challenge...so I guess they won, and I lost.
Seriously tho, saying that they intentionally made a beautiful album to sound superficially lame is an interesting theory, even if I don't subscribe to it.
It's great that if your opinion is validated that means that people that actually like the album are more intelligent or better music critics than people who don't like the album.
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I don't think it has anything to do with intelligence, maybe more with patience. I am not and do not think I am that smart. Nor am I particularly patient, but with some things I am, I guess. But like I said, if you take their challenge and it doesn't work out, you just have to go back to listening to what you love, but at least you tried.
As far as music criticism is concerned -- yes, I do think that if you are willing to take an album on its own terms, you are a better music 'critic' in a, yes, (perhaps) more elitist sense. I don't think there's anything wrong with being able to tell the difference between a well-written and a poorly-written review. I think many of the reviews I read on very popular online music sites are just opinion pieces that aren't comfortable with the fact that they're opinion pieces; to that end, they are the literal definition of pretentious (I don't want to get into all the other connotations that word brings up and leaves out). The problem with this is, I think that the more popular you are, the more power you have, and therefore, the more responsibility you have to whatever arena you're writing in. I think Pitchfork's very naked attempts to stay on top of things by recommending very safe music does the adventurous side of multi-faceted independent music wrong. At the same time, I also don't think music is something to get really hostile about. Bonafide criticism is appropriately historical, respectful and realistic at the same time; many of the, say, Pitchfork reviews are overly historical (focusing way more on the basic facts of a band's past, or of a band's 'image' rather than what the record literally sounds like), not very respectful (check out many, although of course not all, reviews of music on Pitchfork that tries to do something 'strange' or different that was made by bands that came about after 2003) or realistic (harder to quantify this). That said, I think that it's very hard to write a really good critical music article; not many people (including me, I think) can say really meaningful things about the actual music side of things. But those people do exist.
But back to the main point: The Sonic Youth Challenge = more mind-expanding than many drugs.
And also, if I still lived on the East Coast, I would totally, totally go see Sonic Youth actually play in a pool. It'll be like those Nevermind photo shoots but without the water! And a different but related band! Nostalgia!
- John