The third level of metablogging about music reviewers
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Get this: I read Jiggy's post about an online music reviewer's response to another reviewer's criticism of other online music reviewers' failure to use objective evidence to support their views on an album, disputing that feelings aren't enough. Now breathe again...phew. All three have valid, insightful points in them and it's quite an interesting discussion (and topic) for me to contribute to.
To say that technical, compositional, objective evidence is a good judge of music would ignore the feelings and interpretation of the music that the listener has and does. Conversely, subjective feelings aren't enough to create a review. Everyone agrees that reviewers need to explain what it is in the music that makes them respond in certain ways to that music. Reviewers also need both writing skills and analytical skills to form coherent opinions. (No need to criticise my music-related posts either: I'm not a reviewer and I don't pretend to be. I'm an "impression provider" at best.)
I view online music reviews not with a grain of salt, but with a pillar of it. They have been wrong time and time again for me. On occasions I've preferred to take a chance and buy an album rather than sift through a few reviews to identify a trend. I have yet to discover a reviewer that matches my taste consistently. I've taken to downloading one song off an album and making my own judgements accordingly, downloading more if necessary. It's been far more successful and efficient for me.
In general, reviewers are obsessed with comparisons to old records and seem unable to keep the discussion relevant to other listeners. It seems like they describe their own feelings and hope that the album comes across the same way to every other listener, which I simply don't think music possibly can!
It is hard for me to justify my music preferences to anyone with facts. Conversely, how can I know a recommendation will prove valuable? The best hope I have is to compare it with similar bands I already like or find someone with similar taste. Even then it can be in the dark.
I would rather a reviewer identify the little nuances of an album (including aspects of musical composition) as justification, allowing readers to align these observations with the characteristics of music that readers already know they appreciate and look for in an album. That of course assumes that readers know what they want...but it's a start.
1 comments to this post
Obviously you can't properly review an album using an objective point of view exclusively, nor can you with a completely subjective view-point, but I think with objectiveness you have NO chance of conveying if a piece of music is good, but sometimes emotion alone IS enough to give the reader an idea of what to expect. I think subjectiveness is a good thing in reviews - if all you hear about is what time signature a song is in, how are you supposed to decide if you want to buy it or not? Surely the opinion of some random guy, whether you know/trust his judgement or not, is far more useful than black-and-white facts.
(I might take this metablogging exercise to a fifth level too - it's a subject about which I could talk for hours.)
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