Talking Heads

Hey guys, I know this is late, but I would really appreciate any feedback you have! Thanks!

We’ve reached a cultural zenith in music. People have constant access to a huge quantity and variety of music. Yet the broadening of music was accompanied by a shallowing of musical criticism, which is less concerned with the music itself than ever before.

Instead, the focus of music criticism becomes the history of artists, their influences, and the cultural trends they signify. Of course, this is all in fierce contention between music geeks. To give a taste, the Daily Beast featured an opinion piece from critic Ted Gioia lamenting the lack of music theory in music criticism. As he sees it, “music criticism has turned into lifestyle reporting.” This might sound elitist and pedantic. It does to other critics; in response, Grantland contributor Steven Hyden quipped, “do they really want record reviews to be more pedantic and inscrutable?” but I see Gioia’s point. Music criticism today has become about so much more than the music, to the detriment of the art and its audience.

Music website Pitchfork was founded in 1996. Within a decade, it had become the foremost voice in indie rock, an ever-expanding genre that dominated rock music in the late-00s much like alternative did in the 90s. Pitchfork then and today was notorious for being an indie rock “kingmaker:” a “best new music” rating can, on its own, jump start the career of an unknown artist. Look to indie giants Arcade Fire or LCD Soundsystem for examples. Pitchfork’s clout has not gone unnoticed. In a “review” by literary magazine n+1, the mechanism of Pitchfork’s ascension is described. Pitchfork based its success on music reviews, unlike older publications like Rolling Stone that focus on articles. As one of the first online music sites, they were able to take advantage of online archiving to create a huge base of reviews over the years, and Pitchfork seems to acknowledge this role in its success: they call themselves not a magazine, but “the essential guide to independent music.” To understand the site, you really have to read a review, but I’ll give a shot. Here’s an excerpt from the review of dance-indie band Reptar’s 2012 Body Faucet:

“But want to know what band’s been most consistently holding the Classic City down for the past decade? Not R.E.M., they were coasting on cred even before they went defunct. of Montreal? Please, you’re thinking too hard. Drive-By Truckers? Definitely a contender. But the answer here would be jam-band warhorses Widespread Panic.”

The rest of the review sits somewhere between a bizarre critique of fraternities and an exercise to see how many Athens GA venues the author can name-drop (four). And don’t worry if you don’t know at least one of the bands listed here: this is intentional. This sort of needless name-dropping is characteristic of a Pitchfork review. As n+1 notes, the “signature style” of Pitchfork is to tell you the “cultural company” a band is meant to keep. In other words, they tell you whether the music is cool or not.

This strategy requires a bit of ethos, which is why Pitchfork’s MO is to give the allure of learned good taste. This explains the manufactured veneer of a “guide” to music, bolstered by thousands of reviews, rated on a 100-point scale; the band name-dropping; the venue name-dropping; the constant smugness. n+1 suggests that Pitchfork doesn’t allow comments on its website because if they did, someone would call them out on their bullshit.

Overall, it’s depressing. I see why Gioia felt compelled to say something. When the writing becomes about the author more than the subject of the writing, there’s a problem. It becomes useless; it tells us nothing novel or perspective-changing about the music or whatever the subject is. More so, it becomes boring. When the writing’s purpose is to establish the author’s credibility, the purpose of writing, communication, is lost. Such a writer wants to separate himself or herself from the reader. The purpose should be to reveal knowledge to the reader: to connect with them as directly as possible. This is why Hyden is wrong. Music criticism is inscrutable not because it is technical or advanced, but because it has become an endless chain of the posturing of critics, the reduction of bands to musical influences and trends, and the commercial realities of the music industry. This seems to be a trend in today’s media: writers are more concerned with establishing their credibility and posturing than presenting the issue in a clear and thoughtful way. Some way call doubt the characteristic essence of an essay, but it can be hard to find sometimes. Ambivalence doesn’t get you page views.

Fortunately, this style of writing is self-defeating. As indie rock has moved into the mainstream, the dull predictability of the reviews is coming to light. Pitchfork now looks less like a connoisseur’s music encyclopedia and more like a corporatized rubber-stamp apparatus.