dubious charity

So, Voxtrot got panned by p-fork. It's the most charitable bad review I've read in a long time. The tone couldn't be more different from the infamous review of Sound Team's Movie Monster, which was downright snotty. There's an extended sort of disclaimer thing about how it must have been really hard for them being under so much pressure due to the hype surrounding their early EPs and so forth. Seems like this has more to do with Pitchfork maintaining some degree of consistency after they've spent so much time hyping up Voxtrot themselves, though who knows. Could just be a matter of one writer being more softhearted than another, or any number of things.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the purpose (well, purposes) of music criticism, including reviews specifically. There are some questions about this stuff that are really hard to answer. Some that aren't so much questions you should even try to answer, but just things everyone has to decide for themselves, like political views or personal aesthetics (and they can encompass both those things). But there are some things I'm pretty sure I know what I think about right off the bat. Things that I don't think there's a lot of room for argument about. And one of them is as follows: Speculations about what sort of reasons a band or artist might have for making a mediocre record are outside of the scope of a review. Sometimes some context makes sense. Is the record a big departure for the band in some way? Is the album centered around an important personal event that occurred in the artist's life? Even commenting that the record was a disappointment after a great deal of press attention might make sense. But if you try to explain the shortcomings of one album by detailing all the mitigating circumstances that could have caused them, in the interest of fairness you ought to extent the same grace to everyone. And if everyone got this sort of treatment, well, that would be pretty silly.

Like I said, I can see a lot of complex potential questions about how music criticism should be practiced. (I've been thinking about these sorts of questions a bit too much, actually, and it has left me with a tendency to insert these little disclaimers which I hope aren't too annoying.) But I think it's a pretty accepted truth to say that when people approach reviews they are primarily expecting to find description and evaluation. They want to know what something sounds like and whether it's any good. Why it sounds one way or another, or why the result is good or not, is not supposed to come into play in any major way. I can think of a few reasons to break this rule, a few examples of times when it might make sense. But being under pressure or having to rush to get out an album are not unique or even noteworthy circumstances to contend with.

In addition to all of that, it's important to note that if this sort of explanation on the part of the reviewer was intended to soften the blow of the bad review for the band, it probably failed. I don't think many musicians would take kindly to this sort of review, which in addition to finding fault with their work, goes on to patronize them. The only purpose I can really see it possibly serving is that it might help Pitchfork to save face given how fervently it championed this band early on. But their flagging credibility isn't really helped by this sort of wishy-washy writing.