2011 was exceptionally quiet for me on the musical front. After keeping tabs loosely through the tail end of 2010, I left the music critic rat race altogether this year, barely bothering to see what even my favorite critics thought about music. Why? Well, it’s an ongoing trend that I disliked from the moment I started getting paid for writing about music: niche sensationalism. When I realized I couldn’t get worked up (or excited about) microgenres like “chillwave,” or that I didn’t feel an urgent desire to have a take on artists ranging from Gaga to Odd Future, I knew my days as a critic were numbered.
Sad to say, I don’t miss it. Yes, it was often fun to shout words of encouragement from the critical sidelines as real critics battled for primacy in online forums of all kinds, but I had no real stake in it. I didn’t feel that participation was vital to my life in any way. It just seemed silly that adults were making these impassioned, intelligent arguments about artists whose impact was felt by a dwindling number of listeners. How guys like Tom Ewing find the time and energy to write such thoughtful pieces as this recent Poptimist column while balancing work and a young family amazes me. By the way, that piece I linked sums up my feelings on this phenomenon — Tom calls it “nanoculture” — far more eloquently that I can muster. But the sense of world-weariness that I felt when commiserating via chat with Maura and Chris was more than I could bear. There was no sense in pretending that I cared at all about the subject. It was simply time to go.
What did I actually listen to this year? Old stuff and lots of it. I now unashamedly listen to music that I’ve loved for a decade or more. It’s nice to return to old favorites. I’m loving what some of my old favorites are releasing now, too, another sign that the game has passed me by. When you find yourself enraptured with a new J. Mascis album in 2011, chances are you’re too hopelessly nostalgic to be relevant to any audience outside the Magnet Magazine set and that’s someone I never want to be. Befriending Mark made it clear that I simply didn’t have the stamina or endurance to be a critic in the age of Tumblr.
But you know what? The flipside of this is that “discovery,” a term that made me retch as a critic, is something I truly can enjoy now. When you’re not being bombarded by emails offering interviews and tickets to artists you’ve never heard of, it’s much easier to filter out all that noise and just enjoy reading about artists, sampling their music and making choices about what you want to hear. When the pressure of trying to hear everything melts away it’s nice to be selective and really immerse yourself in a recording. It breathes new life into the year end lists I’ve spent the better part of a decade ignoring. I find myself wanting to read about music again in a way I haven’t since blurbs in the margins of Newsweek first caught my attention 15 years ago. It’s exciting!
So tell me what I should check out in 2011? Did I miss anything? Still haven’t listened to that Odd Future record…
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