Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 37

"Mistakes and misbehaving - the Harvey mix" (87 minutes)

This mix was inspired by the likes of DJ Harvey's RA300 mix -- eclectic, unpredictable, and unafraid to break all the "conventional" rules of DJ'ing.  At least that's how I'd describe DJ Harvey's mix, mine in comparison is obviously a poor imitation.  After editing this mix a bit and filing it away for months I finally decided to ignore any lingering mistakes.  It was never meant to sound perfect anyhow.

 

Waiting for the next Spiritualized album

In this new interview for The Quietus, Jason Pierce reveals that:

-- The new Spiritualized album is taking longer than expected to record (just like all the others)
-- It could be the last Spiritualized record (another comment he's made before, it's his set reaction to being stuck in recording and mixing hell)
-- He's not nostalgic about the 20th anniversary of "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" (can't fault him here, the rash of anniversary shows and re-releases from every pre-millenial band are transparent marketing ploys)
-- Playing live gave him a different feel for the new songs so he went back in the studio to sing them all again (once more, the endless cycle of re-recording/re-arranging songs live and in the studio that has been characteristic of Pierce's post-S3 career.  He never settles on a definitive version of anything which is why live and recorded versions of many of his songs sound so different.  This is also one of the things that makes him a genius).
-- He didn't take the money for a S3 reunion because "I don't see the point of playing through the things I played when I was 19 or 20" (you couldn't possibly make this up ... he's been playing S3 songs live with Spiritualized since the earliest incarnations of the band and has never stopped.  Not to mention the rerecorded versions of S3 songs that have appeared on his albums.

All in all, it's an interview filled with fluff where Jason talks but says nothing of consequence. Don't bother looking for cryptic clues about the new album, there aren't any, we've been down this road countless times over the past 25 years.  This has been the longest time gap between Spiritualized albums, and patience is a requirement for long time fans.  This eye popping setlist from Australia last week makes that easier said than done though (AFAIK they haven't played "If I Were With Her Now" since 1992!!).

Negative reviews

There's a lot to unpack in Luke Turner's short essay about the decline of the negative review.  I see exactly where he's coming from, because I've been complaining about perfunctory 7/10 reviews in print and online media for ages.  When a veteran band with an established sound and a loyal following release a new album, I can visualize the review and the rating from many publications before even reading it.  All of "us" (= people who love music criticism) have an interest in reading genuine criticism that breaks down the strengths and weaknesses of the music in a fair, not belittling way, like Jeremy Larson just did in his review of the new Arcade Fire album for Pitchfork.  In principle, that is what "we" want. 

But who is served by these negative reviews?  In the mid '00's, when everyone and their brother started a music blog, everybody fought to establish their tiny niche in a competitive field.  The large print publications and websites dominated the coverage of the most popular, enduring bands -- at the end of the day, this is what attracted eyeballs to their product and made them money.  Small websites and blogs couldn't compete with their coverage, so they worked on becoming tastemakers.  Who could be the first to write about an up and coming band?  The first to post their mp3's?  Writing about the most newsworthy bands and keeping up with the evolving canon wasn't as important as becoming a "trusted source" for music and opinion.  However that largely meant writing about and promoting the bands you liked.  The glory was in being the first to hop on to an emerging bandwagon, not in being the one to spoil the party by burning it down. 

These days, print magazines, blogs and online music crit websites are dead or dying and the casual fans' exposure to music criticism begins and ends with auto-recommendations via Google or Facebook.  Purists might be put off the advertising money being funneled through megacorporations rather than the small, struggling publications, but it's been all about positive reinforcement for a long time anyway.  Mp3 blogs were predicated on the idea of building a brand and earning the readers' trust.  If you liked that song, then maybe you'll like this, etc.  Google has algorithms for that now.  The selection churned out by Youtube's autoplay has more overlap with my tastes than any single publication online or otherwise.

Plenty of people might be in favour of the concept of reading more negative reviews, but nobody has been interested in writing them for some time, and that was true long before the tech giants took over. This is where Turner and I disagree, and it gets me back to the question I asked earlier -- who is served by the negative reviews?  Writers don't want to write them because it's better for their careers to discover and build up bands, rather than breaking them down.  Is there a serious demand for taking popular whipping posts like U2 to the woodshed one more time?  Who is willing to pay money to read snarky comments about a band they don't even like, besides Melody Maker readers of the 80's and 90's? In the 00's and '10 we can troll and be trolled on message boards for free, and the jokes about Bono's pomposity have worn thin over the years and decades (and I'm a U2 fan).  

The democratization of music criticism via the internet means has crushed the influence of the individual writer.  Consumers don't follow writers, they follow brands.  In sports, ESPN is a brand that can (and has) easily weathered the loss of many a flagship individual writer or TV personality.  So it goes with music journalism as well.  People are trained to consume music via a particular outlet, which makes the individual writers, unfortunately, expendable.  In that sense, why would a publisher or editor side with a writer who pitches or writes a negative review?  Striking the wrong tone in a review might cost them -- a loss in ad revenue or access to artists.  Losing a writer who stands up for his or her principles costs them nearly nothing because it won't damage their brand.  So why not play along and write positive reviews all the time?  It's by far the most risk averse choice.