A few days later than most, I’ve taken a look at Mr. Weingarten’s piece from this year’s #140conf, as well as this response from the folks at The Hype Machine. What I think their response misses — and there are definitely echoes here of Steve Almond’s and Kevin Smith’s recent criticisms of critics — is the acknowledgment of a middle ground in terms of less-than-stellar reviews. From “On Music Journalism”:
They’d review an album they hated because…well, why? Did they really feel a sense of duty to let you know what not to buy, or is it just cool to make fun of some intangible rock band?
There are, absolutely, bad reviews of artistic work that come from a place of contempt. And I can understand Smith’s frustration with the critics who seem to discuss his films using nearly identical talking points from film to film. (The same thing happens to Wes Anderson, which seems to have bled over into conversation about Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom.) But there are also bad (or even mediocre) reviews that come from a more constructive place — one in which an artist has made a substantive work that is nonetheless flawed. (For rock criticism, I’d think the Lester Bangs/Lou Reed critic/artist relationship would be the definitive example.) And as this debate has continued, it’d be nice to see some recognition of that enter the debate.
I’ll just come out and say it: presentation matters. Dropping a million f-bombs and leaning over the podium is the public speaking equivalent of handing in an unstapled paper in comic sans font. No matter how good your points are, people aren’t going to take you seriously.
I also find complaints about “the click economy” interesting when critical groupthink is just as egregious. The “clique economy” is killing music writing just as much as aggregation/SEO.