I think the thing that’s most aggravating about Vampire Weekend’s critical epicycle is that there’s this absolute need to be ‘right’ about the album, and that it’s not simply enough to write it off as clever pop that a listener can take or leave. The comments on that blog post completely suck the fun out of music criticism. This isn’t to say that getting the details right isn’t important — it is — but why make the exercise such a total dickwave?
It’s stuff like this that gave me the thought today that, as much as the industry’s hurting itself, music criticism’s finishing the job.