For those of you who don’t know (which I would imagine is nearly all of you, thank goodness for you), it annoys me when Pitchfork writers try to go all pseudo-academic on everyone, trotting out Knowledge about Henry Cowell or Harry Partsch or whoever, and using every other sentence to undercut the perfectly justifiable objections any reasonable person might have to their offensive claptrap. It’s not a good look on them (okay, very few things are good looks on them). So without further ado, here’s a self-indulgent sentence-by-sentence analysis of a review chock full of such rhetorical delights from today’s front page:
“There’s a certain breed of modern musician– he’s in his twenties, probably European– who strives to recapture the ingenuous magic of the great neoclassical composers (Satie, Ravel, Stravinsky) in a world after Glass, Reich, and Riley. Kick it off with a fatuous, misinformed generalization that creates a sense of mild dread in the reader. His songs tend to be concise, and intimately arranged for single instruments or small chamber ensembles. Make a really simple and thus hard-to-contest generalization about a musical movement (or non-movement). He favors cerebral repetitions, sentimental motifs, light electronics. Expand the generalization floridly and gleefully–use phrases that would put any musician on edge, because they betray a superficial understanding of the work. And there’s a good chance he releases music on London’s Erased Tapes imprint, home to Peter Broderick, Ólafur Arnalds, and Nils Frahm, a Berlin-based composer in his late-twenties, whose new album, The Bells, was improvised on piano in a cavernous Berlin church. Tie it all up into a neat little bow–make sure to connect your flimsy thesis to something inextricable from the work (for example, the supposed ideological connections of the record label involved, or the location where the recording took place (a.k.a. Bon Iver bad music critic syndrome, a.k.a. BIBMUCS), or–better yet–both!).
It’s no wonder that the language of 20th century art music still speaks to young composers. Feign a condescending but sincere sympathy with the basic motivation behind the work. Its blend of austerity and immediacy positions it for crossover success between classical and pop. Sneak something in that is just really, really dumbly obvious here–make it count! And it feels modern: Its hypnotic patterns resonate with electronic music, as its use of common materials to express personal verities does with indie rock. Now that you have warmed up indulging in some half-truths, it’s time to just talk gibberish for a minute; say something true but wholly uninteresting in the first half of the sentence, but use a verb that doesn’t quite fit to get your point across. Then, in the second half of the sentence, use the same method of equivalency to say something so general that it is actually meaningless. For example: “music uses instruments, and so does indie rock, which happens to be a genre of music!” Technique is a prerequisite, but style is paramount. Say something here that sounds pithy, but is really just bitchy and vague. Frahm answers Broderick’s playfulness and Arnalds’ solemnity with a rather astringent point of view. Make generalizations about the work of other members of the movement which you have created as a premise of your review, and by doing so box the reviewed artist’s work in with a single word that contains implications that you completely ignore. Whether meandering like Satie or needling like Glass, his impressive playing can’t save The Bells from feeling stuffy and vague, outside a few standout pieces. It is often pretty, but for minimal piano music, this is low-hanging fruit.” By now you have gotten all of the Pitchfork-y writing out of your system, and can go on to write the last paragraph or two (the only necessary or readable paragraphs in the review). In fact, in a magazine not known for embedding such unnecessary browbeating into most of their reviews, you could probably count on an editor cutting out these first two paragraphs and leaving the rest relatively untouched. “Strong finish,” the editor might say. “Too bad you had to mewl incomprehensibly like a hallucinating animal for the first half, making sounds with your mouth that barely approximated human speech.”
I hope that this can serve as a useful guide for those of you who want to write more like Brian Howe, whoever that is. Remember!: The last paragraphs can be perfectly palatable and reasonable as long as the first half of the review is utter rubbish. Good luck!
*An addendum: I must pay tribute to this writer here over at Overheard Music (you can follow the trail of tumblrs to get to her current site). This woman did a much more serious, reasoned, methodical critique of that icky Pains of Being Pure At Heart review from a while ago, albeit with an emphasis on the much more essential badness of the Pitchfork pseudodialectic. Rats off to you, Ms. Perkins! And a second rats off to Gabe Birnbaum (aka Boy Without God) for introducing me to this article in conversation a month or so ago. I never remembered to read it, but now that my subconscious decided to rip it off entirely without reading it, My conscious mind has finally gotten to reading it after the fact, and it is good. I like when things work out like that. Thanks Gabe.
{ 3 trackbacks }