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March 29, 2024, 12:19:51 AM

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Neil Kulkarni’s shitty Tori Amos review and 90s music journalism in general

Started by Kankurette, January 13, 2022, 10:36:26 AM

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sevendaughters

the parenthesised stuff is probably Not On but I enjoyed the remainder of it. I don't agree with every word, but that's not the point of critique. Amos makes bourgeoise music, bad music. Feel terrible that anyone would suffer rape but I truly feel it is beside the point here and would suggest you're a little over-invested here, Kank mate.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Wasn't Swells the journalist who instigated the absolutely fucking vile body-shaming of Manda Rin? He always struck me as a nasty, posturing prick.

Kankurette

Quote from: sevendaughters on January 13, 2022, 02:57:11 PMthe parenthesised stuff is probably Not On but I enjoyed the remainder of it. I don't agree with every word, but that's not the point of critique. Amos makes bourgeoise music, bad music. Feel terrible that anyone would suffer rape but I truly feel it is beside the point here and would suggest you're a little over-invested here, Kank mate.
What is and isn't bourgeois music though? I'm middle-class and Space grew up in poverty, should I stop listening to them because we're different classes? Does buying an album with pianos on it make you a class traitor? I don't get it. And I think Joanna Newsome sucks balls but I'd feel the same if Kulkarni wrote a load of drivel about her being blonde. It's irrelevant to her music.

Ballad, yes he was, and he never shut up about it. And she was in her teens at the time. He had this big thing about Bis being Tories after he did an interview where he asked some very leading questions and tried to get them to talk politics, when they clearly weren't interested, and one of the lads made some innocuous comment about John Major and Swells blew it out of proportion and made out that they were Tories when they'd said nothing of the kind.

sevendaughters

Quote from: Kankurette on January 13, 2022, 03:01:11 PMWhat is and isn't bourgeois music though?

if you want to go full Adorno then most western pop music is an expression of bourgoise liberalism. but if we're being more generous then i would say music that is outwardly expedient to an expired paradigm, enhancing the mystique of the artiste as charismatic creator, that is primarily about an uncritical positive expression, pointedly avoiding social context or analysis, and repudiating realism and embracing mythos.

Of those listed Bush is bourgeois, sure, and modern practitioners of jazz likely are. it doesn't automatically make you bad - I like Kate Bush a lot.

sweeper

Quote from: sevendaughters on January 13, 2022, 03:07:30 PMmusic that is outwardly expedient to an expired paradigm, enhancing the mystique of the artiste as charismatic creator, that is primarily about an uncritical positive expression, pointedly avoiding social context or analysis, and repudiating realism and embracing mythos.

Glad they went with 'Smash Hits' in the end, though. Punchier, somehow.

PlanktonSideburns

Tori Amos: delightfully middle class, and what of it? Should she do a kate Nash mockney accent or something? Would probably get the same response if she was one, maybe the reviewers problem is actually elsewhere.


Quote from: sevendaughters on January 13, 2022, 03:07:30 PMenhancing the mystique of the artiste as charismatic creator,

About the mystique-
Obviously it's difficult to write about chord progressions and how to get a gated snare sound so on without losing readers, but the total absence of that kind of musicology in most journalism has always served to mystify the making of music and make artists seem more godlike than they actually are.

Kankurette

Sometimes I want to listen to RATM or Bob Vylan or Bikini Kill. Other times I want to listen to Cardi B or the Anchoress or, yes, Kate Bush. I am not intelligent enough and do not have the energy or tools to analyse all the music I like for its Marxist credentials. I certainly don't see musicians as gods - everything that happened with Space and the massive fall-out I had with one of them made sure that I would never put a musician on a pedestal again.

Tori pretending to be working-class would arguably be more problematic, didn't Blur get loads of flak over it? Lily Allen as well?

sevendaughters

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on January 13, 2022, 03:12:29 PMAbout the mystique-
Obviously it's difficult to write about chord progressions and how to get a gated snare sound so on without losing readers, but the total absence of that kind of musicology in most journalism has always served to mystify the making of music and make artists seem more godlike than they actually are.

this is where i think zine culture was brilliant in that it actively sought to make the connection between reader and artist much more tangible and relevant. i do take your point, the myth making was a two way street.

Kankurette

Are zines a thing nowadays or have they been replaced by music blogs/Tumblr? I definitely remember they were still around in the '00s.

sevendaughters

Quote from: Kankurette on January 13, 2022, 03:13:24 PMSometimes I want to listen to RATM or Bob Vylan or Bikini Kill. Other times I want to listen to Cardi B or the Anchoress or, yes, Kate Bush. I am not intelligent enough and do not have the energy or tools to analyse all the music I like for its Marxist credentials. I certainly don't see musicians as gods - everything that happened with Space made sure that I would never put a musician on a pedestal again.

same (well different bands but w/ever)! but you asked what makes her bourgeois and i provided an answer. chill out kank. this isn't a war. no one is against you.

sevendaughters

Quote from: Kankurette on January 13, 2022, 03:15:05 PMAre zines a thing nowadays or have they been replaced by music blogs/Tumblr? I definitely remember they were still around in the '00s.

they have become a bit bougie too, zine fairs are still a thing, but there's more of an emphasis in the artistic quality and the methods of production, they're nice little things for your shelf rather than a way to hear 100 Questions for Datbylgu printed on dot matrix paper staped together

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: Kankurette on January 13, 2022, 03:01:11 PMBallad, yes he was, and he never shut up about it. And she was in her teens at the time. He had this big thing about Bis being Tories after he did an interview where he asked some very leading questions and tried to get them to talk politics, when they clearly weren't interested, and one of the lads made some innocuous comment about John Major and Swells blew it out of proportion and made out that they were Tories when they'd said nothing of the kind.

Ta for clarifying. Swells was an idiot. Possibly a nice man IRL for all I know, but his writing persona (which presumably reflected part of who he was) never failed to grate. For someone who was so in thrall to the punk ethos, he had a major blind-spot whenever he was confronted with genuine 'outsiders' such as bis.

Fair enough if you don't like their music, but don't demand something of them that was never their intention in the first place (I am talking to the dead Swells here).

As for Kulkarni, Parkes and Price, they all come across as genuinely good people on the Chart Music podcast, and I daresay they regret some of the things the wrote in their igneous '90s pomp. But I do miss that passion and sincerity. Not that I agreed with everything they wrote, but that's not the point of well-written subjective criticism. It was engaging, arresting, inspiring even: all the adjectives.

And some of it was a load of old bollocks. Good. All boxes ticked.

sevendaughters

bis were a band that he wrongly identified as being part of the twee phenomenon, which he hated. indie-schmindie i guess. here's his take on Los Campesinos: https://thequietus.com/articles/00315-put-thumb-sucking-kidults-los-campesinos-in-guatanamo-bay


sevendaughters

I liked Swells without ever sharing a taste in music with him. To think of him earnestly like a critic who is there to guide you through the maze of commerce with a discerning eye, who will draw out subtle nuances about what a group are attempting or have done, is wrong-headed. He was there to test boundaries of the effete acceptability in coolness, to remind you that you're not just a passenger through a hall of commerce, that your money contributes to political programs and ideological forms of spectatorship, that music journalism is a form of entertainment rather than a useful medium. He was often wrong; pig-headedly, vaingloriously, spectacularly wrong. His writings before he died were beautiful too.

Kankurette

I think we can all agree that the NME was a shadow of its former self in the noughties.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

I really admired Belle & Sebastian's initially hands-off approach to the music press, which basically amounted to: why the fuck would we want to speak to someone like Steven Wells?

He despised them, of course.

sevendaughters

Quote from: Kankurette on January 13, 2022, 03:34:17 PMI think we can all agree that the NME was a shadow of its former self in the noughties.

Hugely. The Conor McNicholas days are sad and full of pandering. It was Ben Knowles (editor of MM at the merger, Steve Sutherland went upstairs) at the head for the Stripes/Strokes era, which was probably their last stab at relevance.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: sevendaughters on January 13, 2022, 03:33:17 PMI liked Swells without ever sharing a taste in music with him. To think of him earnestly like a critic who is there to guide you through the maze of commerce with a discerning eye, who will draw out subtle nuances about what a group are attempting or have done, is wrong-headed. He was there to test boundaries of the effete acceptability in coolness, to remind you that you're not just a passenger through a hall of commerce, that your money contributes to political programs and ideological forms of spectatorship, that music journalism is a form of entertainment rather than a useful medium. He was often wrong; pig-headedly, vaingloriously, spectacularly wrong. His writings before he died were beautiful too.

Parklife!

Apologies, that was a cheap shot. I agree with what you wrote there.

Kankurette

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on January 13, 2022, 03:37:04 PMI really admired Belle & Sebastian's initially hands-off approach to the music press, which basically amounted to: why the fuck would we want to speak to someone like Steven Wells?

He despised them, of course.
Yeah, I remember he wrote an article about them which was one long rant about how much he hated them because they were sneery and up themselves and pretentious or whatever. And Stuart Murdoch wrote in to complain.

sevendaughters

Combativity didn't hurt B&S in the long run though did it. It's almost like people can make their own minds up.

popcorn

Stuart Murdoch also wrote in to Pitchfork to complain about their hatchet job on his film (which might be the worst film I've ever seen in my life, much as I love Mr Murdoch).

edit: wait no I'm wrong, he just moaned on Twitter.

mippy

I thought this thread might be about this Tori review until I read the title properly: http://stylusmagazine.com/review_ID_2759.html

There was definitely a laddish edginess that bled through into wannabe music journos in the 00s. I remember them slagging off the Bowlie Weekender because it didn't have any dance music, which makes one wonder if they would go to Gatecrasher and demand they play The Pastels. That was the point when the NME was starting to stop covering the bands I heard on Peel or saw live - they never reviewed Hefner as far as I remember - and things seemed to get a bit more corporate as the money in the industry started to dry up.

I've been reading the Q 'Who The Hell' compilation book, in which Tom Hibbert interviewed various pop culture bete noires, and I really miss his writing - I loved Swells as a teenager because he was so OTT, even though we disagreed on a lot of things, and Hibbert is the opposite, the dry slightly detached guy who knows music is both the most important and the most ridiculous thing in the world, and would *never* have body-shamed Manda Rin, I bet.

jamiefairlie

Quote from: popcorn on January 13, 2022, 12:42:50 PMNot 90s, but... the story of Liz Phair's 2003 self-titled album is interesting. She wanted to make a mainstream pop album like Avril Lavigne (and hired the same songwriters) and was torn apart by Pitchfork for it. Now of course Pitchfork are the biggest poptimists in the world, and in 2019 the critic apologised:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Phair_(album)

They were right in 90s and wrong now.

Video Game Fan 2000

Yeah, Pfork walking that back with the hilarious shit about cultural constructs was unmitigated "cringe" as they say.

What happened to the that "good and bad things are exactly the same" tweet the blueticks used to love so much.

As ever, poptimism proves to be just "hurrah, die butter ist alle!" about the effect of austerity on the arts.

sweeper

Quote from: sevendaughters on January 13, 2022, 03:33:17 PMI liked Swells without ever sharing a taste in music with him. To think of him earnestly like a critic who is there to guide you through the maze of commerce with a discerning eye, who will draw out subtle nuances about what a group are attempting or have done, is wrong-headed. He was there to test boundaries of the effete acceptability in coolness, to remind you that you're not just a passenger through a hall of commerce, that your money contributes to political programs and ideological forms of spectatorship, that music journalism is a form of entertainment rather than a useful medium.

Music can, maybe should, be these things, but it doesn't have to. Sometimes it can be about nothing, or just the effect of itself, which is an intensification of the sense of being alive, if you like. Just a vivid, shocking reminder of this.

The thing about Steven Wells is that he always seemed to go extra hard on the artists that he knew he wouldn't get a response from, whose function wasn't to respond to the world in the way he did, so that he'd be able to hang them out accordingly. What's the point in asking Bis political questions? It's weird and a bit pretentious.

sevendaughters

Perhaps so, sweeper, but NME wasn't Swells Weekly, and he routinely used to get mocked in their pages by the likes of Beaumont and others. It was a discourse at its best rather than a didactic, and all the better for it.

sevendaughters

like I remember he ripped one of my favourite bands as 'just playing one note and turning to each other and smugly smiling for a minute', I dunno, it is funny to me, I enjoyed that fire-baptism things would get, I enjoyed the sneering at America too.

sweeper

So his job was to work in the larger context of the NME and point out which artists weren't political, and then criticise them from that (and only that) perspective?

I don't buy it. That's a waste of time, you just become a sideshow, contributing nothing except refining your own persona.

When did he ever get down to some discourse with another politically minded interviewee? That would be a worthwhile read. Or did he only engage with people he knew wouldn't be able to come back at him?

bgmnts

What are you meant to write about as a music journo if not slagging them off personally?

"The bass line on track 3 of this latest album I like. It was good."

Genuinely no idea i dont care or know anything about music writing but I assume you have to write about that kind of stuff to keep the customers engaged.