Tuesday 28 February 2017

Net Music Coverage

Is it just me or has anyone noticed how crap and just plain dull music coverage is on the internet? Has the discourse run it's course? Let's briefly look at a few examples.

All Music Guide - Oh fuck me this is one of the most frustrating music websites in existence. Sure perhaps they shot themselves in the foot right there with their name ie. they are not covering all music and will often just have a couple of reviews for a band with 20 + releases. Even then quite often the reviews are below par or written by people who seem to not like music very much. It feels like some reviewers have been given a job to sit sit through a stack of records from a genre they can't stand. The Monochrome Set's 1982 LP Eligible Bachelors is called a classic in their review yet it only gets 3 stars, that's 6 out of 10. How many classic albums are rated 6 out of 10? Baffling.

Pitchfork - Much to my annoyance I've started looking at this site again due to one Mr Reynolds now doing the occasional article. He's good, can't vouch for anybody else though. They are so embarrassing sometimes like their 50 best shoegazing LPs list and the 50 best IDM records article. You walk away after reading those and just think 'What a fucking clueless list. How are these fucking people in the music writing game?' They are not an authority on music, which begs the question 'Why am I reading this?' Sometimes I think Pitchfork just wish they were as cool as FACT but they can't pull it off because they're not. I mean they've got current stories on The Shins, Spoon and Fleet Foxes for fuck's sake. They just don't have the insight or a capacity to be thinking about music interestingly. They also don't have taste making skills.

I'm not even going to bother examining The Quietus and several others I can't even recall the names of. It's dismal out there. Anyone know of any good sites concerned mainly with music? Maybe I'll have to go back to printed media. Perhaps The Wire's improved in the last couple of years. At least Mojo used to have excellent articles despite their historical stance. NME, Melody Maker, The Wire, Mojo even Rolling Stone and probably a few others (Creem, Spin, Sounds etc.) all knew what they were talking about back in their heyday or at least had some conviction to persuade. Nobody wants to read clueless fucks writing about music and making us bored or angry.

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