Do We Still Need Album Reviews?

Earlier this week, there was an article doing the rounds entitled 'Is the Album Review Dead?' The piece was a lengthy one, and the points it made were many, but the main thrust of writer Dan Ozzi's argument can be summarised thus:

Album reviews no longer serve a purpose because anyone with an internet connection can listen to any album they like and form their own opinion instead of relying on somebody else's.

Or, to quote the article itself:

"A music critic’s greatest competitor has always been a listener’s own damned ears. Why take the word of some greasy snob hiding behind a byline when your brain can tell you whether or not a song is any good? [...] With every new album available at our fingertips completely for free at the instant of its release for our own personal judgement, you've got to wonder: Do we still need the album review?"

Ozzi makes a strong case: why should you, the listener, waste your precious time reading a review? You don't need a professional critic to tell you whether or not that hot new album is any good - you can just fire up Spotify, have a listen, and find out for yourself!

As valid as that point is, though, it does seem to assume that the only reason anyone ever read reviews was to help them to make a decision. And that just isn't true; I can only speak for myself, of course, but when I read an album review, the CD being evaluated is very often one that I already own.

The best reviews search for meaning, rather than merely assessing quality.

The question of whether or not album reviews are still relevant hinges entirely on what you think a review is for. If reviews are merely the preamble you skip past when you're looking for a star rating or a mark out of ten - if you think that a reviewer's job is simply to give a thumbs-up, a thumbs-down, or a wiggly hand gesture indicating something in between - then I'd agree that you no longer need reviews. In fact, I'd argue that those type of reviews were obsolete from the very beginning, what with music being subjective and one man's favourite album being another's unlistenable garbage. A review that ends in a rating merely tells you whether or not that particular writer liked the record in question, and given the overwhelming prevalence of straight-down-the-middle three-star reviews, many don't even tell you that much.

However, I believe that reviews can still serve a purpose if we stop trying to assess the quality of the albums we review and start using those paragraphs to search for the meaning in the music. My all-time favourite album review is Drowned in Sound's take on Last of the Country Gentlemen by Josh T. Pearson (read it here). Yes, David Edwards' writing can be a little purple in places, and yes, he does conclude by assigning the album yet another meaningless rating. But the points he makes in that review really changed my perception of the LP, and even enhanced my enjoyment of it.

For example, part of Edwards' review focuses on the long, drawn-out codas with which Pearson apparently can't help but conclude his songs. During my first couple of listens, these overlong outros really bugged me, and the subsequent ending fatigue threatened to completely blight my experience of Country Gentlemen. But then I read this:

"On first listen, it’s tempting to find issue with the prolonged codas of certain songs, as vocals and guitars re-emerge to echo lines and motifs unexpectedly from nowhere. But they seem to exist almost as metaphors for sorrow, a musical representation of how ancient memories and regrets creep upon you when you’re least expecting it, haunting you even when you’ve convinced yourself that you’ve exorcised the ghost."

And just like that, those interminable endings started to sound good. Some may roll their eyes and mock 'pretentious' reviewers like Edwards who try to find meaning in everything, but that's the sort of thing I love doing - hence The Album Wall, I suppose - and reading Edwards' interpretation of Last of the Country Gentlemen gave me a fresh angle from which to approach the album and a new appreciation for its structure and for Pearson's idiosyncratic, ultra-miserable approach to lonesome country music. Last of the Country Gentlemen, incidentally, now numbers among my 10 favourite albums of all time.

Robert Chaney the 21st Century Troubadour

Back when I still bought Uncut magazine on a semi-regular basis (that is, before I got bored of their apparently unchanging cycle of cover stars - Dylan, CSNY, The Band, repeat), I came into possession of a CD called Homeward Bound: 21st Century Troubadours. This was a compilation of songs by earnest folky types like Josh T. Pearson, The Tallest Man On Earth, et cetera, and it remains one of the best albums I've ever found gunked onto the front of a magazine. It's no Michael Stipe Presents..., but then what is?

Floridian singer-songwriter Robert Chaney may well have picked up that particular issue of Uncut too, because Cracked Picture Frames - Chaney's debut album, released earlier this year - calls that four-and-a-half year-old free-with-a-magazine CD to mind as readily as if I'd acquired it yesterday. While Chaney's album appears to feature only two voices (his own and his guitar's), he manages to cover a diverse range of different styles over the course of those ten tracks; some, like Does Your Love Pay Out in Full? are gentle and wistful, while the likes of Birds and Bees sound more playful and skirt closer to a more traditional definition of folk music. Still others, such as Black Eyed Susan and Patch it Up, are kind of harsh and grungy-sounding, like they were recorded in a rickety wooden shack inside a guitar amplifier.

Music for Migraines: 3 Soothing CDs

Today, I had a migraine. It certainly wasn't my first - I've been getting them every so often since sixth form - but this one was particularly unpleasant because it occurred in the office. My usual response to a migraine is to go and lie down in a darkened room, but this isn't really an option when you're in work and your bed is several miles away, so I just had to tough it out. Not fun!

Music has been a key ingredient in my survival of previous migraines, so I thought I'd share a trio of top headsoothers with you guys today. One's taste in music can be significantly altered by a migraine; suddenly, you crave songs without edges, the sort of songs you'd probably find boring under normal circumstances.

My Top Ten

Since this is The Album Wall's 100th post (woo milestone!), I thought I'd give you all a treat and finally explain the reasoning behind my Top Ten list on the right-hand side of the blog. These are my ten favourite albums of all time - of all time! - and today, you're going to find out why.

Fables of the Reconstruction by R.E.M.

Why I Bought It: I was just starting to dig into R.E.M.'s rich discography. I'd already bought Out of Time; this was my next purchase, mainly because it was the cheapest one in HMV that day (£3!)

Why I Love It: Its sound is intriguing and mysterious when compared to other R.E.M. releases, and the loose running theme (a lot of tracks focus on unusual characters from the South) makes it a little more cohesive than its cousins. Oh, and it's the album that houses Life and How to Live It, which may possibly be my favourite song of all time.

Last of the Country Gentlemen

It's Depressing Album Week! Let's talk about the albums that make us sad...

As far as my dad is concerned, all of the music I like is exceptionally depressing. He's heard me listening to Radiohead, Bright Eyes, and perhaps one of the less jolly Eels albums, and he's tarred my entire collection with that same bleak brush.

So he's already convinced that every artist on my wall is super-miserable. And then one day, he hears Last of the Country Gentlemen by Josh T. Pearson bleeding through the wall, and he can't help himself. "This is an extremely depressing album," he opines, poking his head around my bedroom door. "Even by your standards."

If we're talking about depressing albums (and we are, all week) I can't fail to mention LotCG: as far as dear old dad is concerned, it's the most depressing album I've got.

And you can definitely see how he arrived at this conclusion. This CD contains almost an hour of music, and the only instruments involved are an acoustic guitar, a modest string section*, and Pearson's haunted, howling voice. Each song is a wretched, drawn-out thing, lamenting the implosion of one relationship or another; it could be that they're all about the same breakup, but I prefer to think that each song details The End Times of a different relationship. Sweetheart I Ain't Your Christ, for example, finds Josh T. dumping a lady who's become a little too dependent on him, while Honeymoon's Great! Wish You Were Her is sung a few years down the line, by which point Pearson is a married man with a head full of second thoughts.

It's not a barrel of laughs, that's for sure, but depressing? I never feel depressed by the end of it. It's emotional, it's intimate, it's almost uncomfortably personal...and yet the songs, downbeat though they are, make me feel happy. It's hard to explain, but take a listen to Country Dumb (video below) and tell me whether you feel miserable or strangely uplifted by the end of it.

"We're the kind who start the books but who just do not finish,

We're the kind who have ten thousand would-be-great, ungrateful, too-long run-on songs,

We're the kind still stuck in the past but who see well into circle future,

You see I miss you woman and baby you ain't even yet gone.

You see I miss you babe and woman you ain't even yet gone."

Oh god, it's cathartic! By this point, incidentally, our narrator is completely defeated - a broken man who knows precisely how his relationships will crash and burn before they've even hit the dual carriageway. And as depressing as that sounds, I love it! Just like I love Let Down by Radiohead, Easy/Lucky/Free by Bright Eyes, and The Medication is Wearing Off by Eels. They ought to make me feel cold and empty, but instead they make me feel warm and fuzzy.

Of course, there are songs and albums that do make me feel properly depressed. Two in particular spring to mind, but you'll have to wait a little longer to find out what they are. See you on Wednesday for more Depressing Album Week action!

*Featuring Warren Ellis out of The Dirty Three and The Bad Seeds! Wikipedia never fails to teach me something new.