Things that irritate me about the blogosphere - Part One

1. That I can't really keep up with all the news I want to and so perpetually feel like I'm behind the curve.

2. My laughable inability to find these buzz blogs that supposedly hype unknown bands. Where are they? I can't find them. What am I supposed to google? Can someone make me a list? (That's a serious request).

3. The word blogosphere. Neologisms in general make me uncomfortable, all feels a bit too much like fourteen year-olds making up words for stuff they like because they think it's cool. But that's just me being douchey (sic?).

4. (The actual point of this post). Reviews that talk about the buzz surrounding a record more than the record itself. Drowned in Sound's review of the Neon Indian album, I'm looking at you. A lot of folk must be like me, not really up with the buzz blogs but relatively interested in new music. Most people reading a debut album review aren't going to know much about the act, if they've even heard about them at all, so not bothering to actually describe what a record sounds like in anything other than the broadest strokes before diving into five or six paragraphs of reacting to the reaction isn't a review, it's an editorial. And not a particularly interesting one at that. I want to know whether the record is good. That's why I'm reading your review. If I wanted to read a low-key flame-war-by-proxy then I'd stick to political blogs.

5. The belief that anything that re-appropriates sounds from the eighties is only of interest to people who grew up in the eighties, which we should all be more than capable of recognising as absolute horseshit. I like Neon Indian and the eighties ended when I was two years old. If it's good music then it's good music. I don't care what NES game the samples sound like, I care if the song conveys a mood that I'm interested in (and a bunch of other factors, the possible subject of another post, I guess). The aforementioned Drowned in Sound review is rather chock-full of assholery, making snarky comments about how the guy behind the record must be a douche because he like eighties synths and samples. Then the reviewer gives the record 7/10. Spends the whole review bashing the record and it's creator with stupid ad hominem attacks then gives it 7/10. How wonderfully controversial of you. To paraphrase this approach to reviewing, which shows up all over the place, 'This record is good. But people have already said that so I'm going to call everybody names for a bit and then agree with them. Don't you love my overly-embellished prose stylings, you half-wit hipsters?'.

Coming up next time...

- Those old high-concept Pitchfork reviews that only talk about the record through a filter of snarky, meta artsiness (review as phone conversation transcript, review as letter from an ex-lover who is a stand in for the record itself, review of what the record would be if it was a sandwich bar)*. Which I have forgiven them for, what with how they seem to have stopped doing them.

* Not real examples. God, I hope they aren't, anyway.