Friday, May 8, 2009
Reviews / Whatevs Best Things in the World: British Music Reviews
Posted by Ashley Spurgeon on Fri, May 8, 2009 at 11:37 AM
Reviewing music is hilarious. Critics do their best to turn into synesthetes, translating sounds into words that the casual music fan can understand. Hot licks and cool riffs are totally different things, and it can sometimes be difficult to describe an aural or audio-visual experience without falling into cliché.
The Brits have turned this wankery into an art form, spreading their purple prose across a soggy grey land apparently just clamoring for adjectives and similes. And god help them, they love a Southern band. Writing about rock from our neck of the woods helps those foreign media elitist hipster snobs believe they possess a raw understanding of human nature. The real masters can give a positive review while subtly disparaging our kind, as if Southern musicians are retard Deliverance-loving cousin-fuckers who drunkenly stumble from the outhouse and fall into stardom.* I can say with total earnestness that Brit music critics are my favorite people in the world.
Because I'm a part-time music blogger and full-time Anglophile, I thought I'd help out by offering some translations of actual reviews from actual media (magazine, newspaper, radio) from across the pond.
Kings of Leon, "Sex on Fire" (NME)
It helps that he's the personification of every myth about inarticulate, unreconstructed backwoods males having hearts the size of footballs and that his primal yawl has once again made some lyrics about motorway BJs sound like a deathbed soliloquy.
Translation: This handsome moron has a good enough voice to turn a dumbass song into an awesome dumbass song. He fucks models and I don't, and life is unfair.
Paramore, show review (Guardian)
With salon-shiny, Lucozade**-hued hair set off by her black and white vest, she is a cross between Gwen Stefani and Strawberry Shortcake, an accessible icon whose image - like Paramore's parent-friendly pop - ticks all the right emo and punk boxes.
Translation: We are reaching with the "icon" tag, but the kids and parents both seem to like it so we would very much like to take all the credit if this band becomes huge. Cute girl!
The Features, Exhibit A (BBC Radio 6)
I was making a documentary on new rock bands coming out of 'The South', Kings of Leon and My Morning Jacket mainly, and wanted to find a couple of others that were as-yet unheard of over in the UK. My best friend lives in Nashville and told me about The Features who'd been playing in and around Music City for a few years.
Translation: I am a Student who thinks that America is the most "Authentic" place in the world.
Lambchop, Damaged (Guardian)
Bar the odd plangent swoop of steel guitar, country is a virtual stranger on an album whose musical signature is, rather, a flexible ultra-sensitivity to mood and nuance. Adrift among acoustic alchemy, Wagner murmurs as if merely thinking aloud.
Translation: *furious masturbation*
Be Your Own Pet, show review (NME)
A particularly energetic 'What's Your Damage?' provokes one of Pearl's trademark vomiting moments. And therein lies Be Your Own Pet's problem: like much of their performance, it's just too... predictable. After all, she hurled at practically every gig when touring the first record. The songs are still just enough to convince, but how about some new tricks?
Translation: We will build you up, only to tear you down. Your sexy vomiting impresses us no longer.
*That only applies to Jerry Lee Lewis.
**British Gatorade, except totally gross.
Comments (8)
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Any mention of furious masturbation gets a +1 from this guy.
Loved ya post, guvenah!
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"His primal yawl has once again made some lyrics about motorway BJs sound like a deathbed soliloquy" is extra confusing, because it makes it sound like the writre thinks back in the good old day, lyrics about motorway BJs ALWAYS used to sound like deathbed soliloquies, & the only reason they DON'T anymore in these corrupt times is that people don't have the true rock & roll spirit. Like, as if "Sex on Fire"'s heartfelt treatment of motorway BJs were a revival of some vanished tradition, on par with doo-wop harmonies or protest folk songs or something.
What confounded me the most was the Be Your Own Pet reviwer who said that "The Kelly Affair" was (and I quote) "a song that takes a swipe at vacuous LA party-people."
Well, it does, if by that you mean not at all. It's about "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," the greatest movie of all fucking time. The lyrics are basically a synopsis of the film!
It was one of the most embarrassing pop culture bellyflops I've ever read.
Ashley - how'd you get to be a Cream blogger? More importantly - How can I become one?
Well, there go all my great band names and album titles... British Gatorade, Sexy Vomit, Furious Masturbation, Pop Culture Bellyflop ... back to the drawing board :)
So let me get this straight Ashley....
you say "while subtly disparaging our kind, as if Southern musicians are retard Deliverance-loving cousin-fuckers who drunkenly stumble from the outhouse and fall into stardom." Yet
don't you get that you are saying something disparaging against people with special needs by using the word retard? Isn't this like the pot calling the kettle black?
Using the word retard is just ignorant, plain and simple. You should know better and if you didn't you do now.
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