What’s Next for Music Criticism?

While I’m pret­ty sure some of the arti­cles pro­nounc­ing music crit­i­cism dead have reached puber­ty at this point, there remains an open ques­tion of its val­ue (and virtue). Is it pos­si­ble that the future of music crit­i­cism isn’t writ­ten? That’s not a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. Is it pos­si­ble that the future of music crit­i­cism is…vlogging?

I’ll start with Antho­ny Fan­tano of The Nee­dle Drop. Antho­ny, the self-pro­claimed Inter­net’s busiest music nerd, cranks through tons of reviews and posts them on YouTube. It’s per­fect bite-sized con­tent that uncov­ers some records that may not get as much atten­tion buried in the fourth and fifth slot in a dai­ly rota­tion. A pret­ty nov­el con­tent strat­e­gy when every­one says they’re inun­dat­ed, no?

Chris Ott is tak­ing a decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent approach. His Vimeo chan­nel, Shal­low Rewards, is music crit­i­cism the way I remem­ber it; equal parts oral his­to­ry, hagiog­ra­phy and rit­u­al sac­ri­fice. I’m still in awe of his two-part series on shoegaze. If you’re some­one who is old enough to remem­ber the free asso­cia­tive spir­it that made music crit­i­cism mag­i­cal for many of us, you’ll want to watch every week.

Why I Switched to Poster

You may have noticed some changes here recent­ly. Here’s a hint: fresh con­tent! Want to know my secret? The Poster app! Now I know we’ve all heard that the iPad is not a con­tent-cre­ation device, but I’m find­ing it pret­ty easy myself. In fact, I haven’t reopened my Mac­Book once, not even to change my blog theme!

Why do I like it so much? It does­n’t try to do any­thing more than allow you to draft, sched­ule and pub­lish con­tent. I don’t need a read­er baked into the app, or to see stats on my per­son­al blog. I just want to dive in and bang out 250–500 words about some­thing I liked enough to write about. Like Poster! If you want to start using your iPad for blog­ging, you should check it out.

Ramsayings at the Movies

I used to write about cul­ture! Let me see if I can still flex my cap­sule muscles.

  • Argo: Damon got action. Affleck got auteur. Nice to see Ben make a movie out­side his backyard.
  • The Dark Knight Ris­es: Tom Hardy’s voice was so sil­ly I bare­ly noticed Bale’s Batvoice.
  • Loop­er: A mash up of Look Who’s Talk­ing and Back to the Future! Awesome!
  • Mar­garet: Pos­si­bly more depress­ing than Synec­doche, New York!

In Praise of Richard Buckner

I first learned about Richard Buck­n­er in the late nineties. I’d joined the Pave­ment list­serv and when we weren’t argu­ing over which Pave­ment album was the worst (peo­ple hat­ed BtC) we’d talk about all sorts of artists pop­u­lar at the time among the indie crowd. Richard Buck­n­er was one of the names that got men­tioned often, so I bought a copy of Devo­tion + Doubt. I fell in love with it immediately.

I had­n’t lis­tened to it for quite some time, hav­ing checked out of alt-coun­try or what­ev­er that was all those years ago. Then I read about Buck­n­er’s strug­gles. and I revis­it­ed his work. 

Devo­tion + Doubt is still a breath­tak­ing album. Buck­n­er deserves the atten­tion that’s been lav­ished on Bon Iver. I can think of few albums that do so much with so lit­tle. The sparse arrange­ments leave ample room for Buck­n­er’s expres­sive voice. The sto­ry­telling is great and he nev­er laps­es into the singer-song­writer trea­cle that dooms so many solo artists. It’s just the right mix of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and scorn.

If you haven’t heard Buck­n­er before, check out this live video of Ed’s Song from Devo­tion + Doubt.