I've just been going through my outbox and a pile of reviews written a while ago when I came across this. I'd been asked to review this single:
At the time, if I remember rightly, I was on a total noise fix: Whitehouse, Masonna, Yellow Swans, Merzbow, Throbbing Gristle - anything that just abandoned technique for brutal jolts of whipping velocity and decibels. I'd lost touch with 'the song'; its capability to hold nuance and shape and a predictability that was somehow cheery and comforting, rather than anaesthetising. Here's what I wrote.
And now for something COMPLETELY different. Tough to imagine which twisted mind saw Wild Beasts, with their idiot-savant soprano wailing coupled to some of the most pedantic hack-and-slash committed to tape, as a singles band. This is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years. As it came to a conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.
Have to admit; two and a half years on, I'm still pretty pleased with that. What have we learned? It's 'different' - markedly so. There's a high voice. It's weird, daring and 'pop music'. In case you don't 'get' the reference to 'hack-and-slash', it's just an onomatopaeic phrase I invented for 'guitar music'. There's enough there to merit a curious look-see at YouTube.
It wasn't enough. The editor wrote back.
Hi man.
Really like your single review, very much want to cover it in the paper, just had one issue.. it'd just be nice if you could jig a little more description of the music into your third sentence. Listening to them, it was very different to what I expected from your review. I really like your second and fourth sentences, maybe cut out your thid sentence "This is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years." and replace with something a little more definitive of the sound. Or maybe get rid of the first to make some space. Your current second sentence would be pretty punchy as first. Is that ok? Play around with how you like, but I would appreciate a little more feel for the song.
So you want me to drop sentence three? The key line? Just because the song was different to how you expected?
Describing sound is simply just utilising social orthodoxy to explain something that in reality is unique and only really 'explainable' on its own terms (ie. by listening to it). I'd rather read 'this is fucking amazing' and have no idea what it is than say 'this is rock music' and how no idea how good it is.
The finest piece of music writing, for my money, is Lester Bangs' John Coltrane Lives, in which John Coltrane is mentioned in passing and is an unnamed character who appears in a first-person narrative which ends in Bangs blowing a saxophone in his landlady's face.
What Bangs does, better than me - better than any writer on the topic bar perhaps Ralph Ellison - is get straight to the heart of the matter. Sonic detail is for hacks and chumps and fuckshits and dumbbells. OK, I exaggerate, but it's not something to go on about. Bangs and Ellison and even Christgau's little summaries tell you about the world it relates to, rather than the insular jargon a piece or song is formed of.
A record has to exist in a real life populated by a few heroes and a whole lot of plain old shitbags. To exist, to be noticed, it has to justify itself in moments and reactions. It's not enough to rehash the plot and structure: what does it do? Why does it do? Is what and why it does worth anything?
But as a young writer, I acquiesced and wrote three progressively worse versions.
And now for something COMPLETELY different. Romantic baroque wailings attached to vaudeville prog-pop sensibility straight outta Kendal. Not your average 'single' material, but it is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years. As it came to a conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.
Not bad. The next one was specifically as the editor requested.
Tough to imagine which twisted mind saw Wild Beasts, with their idiot-savant soprano wailing coupled to some of the most pedantic hack-and-slash committed to tape, as a singles band. Combining vaudeville prog-pop and indie ghetto approval, this is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years. As it came to a conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.
The final one is terrible. That whole 'think of a place, you think of this: well here is this' complete fucking BULLSHIT.
Think of Kendal, Cumbria, you get mint cakes and Alfred Wainwright. Not exactly a hotbed of 30s musichall stylings and angular guitarisms, but that's what we have combined here and it's gosh darn tasty. In fact, I'd go as far to say that this is some of the finest British pop alchemy at present – hooks, idiosyncratic eardrum shattering vocals and a tidy resolution inside three minutes. At the conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.
By which time I'm so racked with doubts about my own ability that I don't write anything else fit for print for a year and a half. Which probably says more about my ego, confidence and level of expectancy than it does about anything else.
Now I'm in the same position as that editor (who is a basically decent chap with whom I just happen to disagree fundamentally), I find myself being able to push my viewpoint - that it's the essence and not the facts that count - across. Often with venom and barely concealed rage, but hey, my prerogative.
With a level of provocation imbued into the fabric of every article, you run the risk of exposure to complaint and the necessity to justify oneself. Such a thing recently happened in response to the print publication of this review.
Dear Sir/Madam
Would somebody please redirect Daniel Brookes to the Opinion section? A music review is supposed to review the music on the CD in question, rather than the supposed class backgrounds of the artists involved. The only thing his review of NME: The Album 2009 told us about the actual music on the CD (y’know, what people would actually buy the CD for…) was that it was ‘identikit sewage’; while the reviewer may feel both Enter Shikari and Little Boots lack his level of musical; sophistication, only the tone-deaf could accuse them of being ‘identikit’. The author seemed much more perturbed by white people daring to be influenced by the music of other cultures, rather than locking themselves into some kind of aural apartheid, as well as musicians refusing to co-opt themselves into a wider class struggle that only exists in the wet dreams of the Socialist Workers’ Party. Most readers would expect a review in the music section to review the music of the artist(s) involved, rather than a review of the (irrelevant) political opinions of the author; if Daniel Brookes could in future remember this, then perhaps he could write an article relevant to the section he is supposed to edit.
Yours sincerely,
Name withheld
This response felt good to receive. That the writing wasn't being passively consumed, but had inflamed a contest of ideas. That said, I completely disagreed. Here is my response in return.
Just writing to say thanks for writing in to the paper re: my review of the NME album. It's totally cool that you chose to take your time to engage with our work; we wish there were more of you. Conversely, have you thought of writing for the music section, or indeed any sections of the paper?
Whilst you may feel the point of reviewing CDs for their content only is the way ahead, I feel that some issues supercede this and that indeed, talking only content in constructive terms about music is insipid hackwork at best. This record serves as an overview of the year, as a constructed entity of what 2009 was; I feel it's something of a right to challenge this.
What I felt I was trying to address here (and I won't accuse you of missing the point; you take what you like from these articles) is the banalisation of a vibrant culture. I'm not saying that there isn't good independent music, it's just that this version of 'indie' is an indie of signifiers.
It's nothing to do with 'aural apartheid' - that's the last thing I'm after. It's just that - in a year of music of the early 21st century - are we really supposed to believe that there were no significant black contributions to independent or guitar music? The one black musician on the 2 discs; Maxim Reality of The Prodigy - doesn't actually play on the included track. Doesn't this trouble you at all?
Also: music IS an opinion section. That's EXACTLY what it is. Please tell me what these objective terms I'm supposed to engage with art are, because I've never seen them before. My political opinions are entirely relevant, as are yours implicitly included in your response.
I'll finish as I began; it's great you wrote. And we'd love to have a passionate voice writing for us (though I don't know how you'd manage to express that seeing as you'd contradict yourself if you ever expressed a subjective opinion) if you can make yourself free on a Monday at 5pm (MR1, upstairs in the Union).
Dan Brookes,
Music Editor
Removed from all this, I need to ask the question: what do people want to read? Fire and brimstone and forthright idea-mapping, or passive descriptives?
Perhaps it is me that is wrong. I read press releases and reviews daily that lean toward the latter, but feel ultimately bored and cold by them - though their unceasing existence gives credence to their existence.
