Who Killed A (Meta)Critic: Where Quant Meets Qual, And Both Are Disappointed

I’ve seen several articles over the past couple of years speculating on whether the value of criticism has disappeared with the advent of “you like this, so we recommend that” functionality on consumer sites (Amazon leading the pack). Well, not so fast. That feature can be helpful for dabblers, but if you’re reasonably up on popular music or getting anywhere off the beaten path, you’re not going to find those recommendations very revealing: if you bought one technical death metal band, they’re going to suggest you try Meshuggah and Necrophagist; if you look at anything really obscure, you’ll learn that the same people who bought it also bought Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber records. The engine runs into the main pitfalls of quantitative analysis.

Professional critics may think of themselves as defending true art from the savage tedium of the marketplace (and they may be right about that), but most people read record reviews hoping to buy something good, or avoid buying something lousy: They want an in-depth opinion from someone who’s good at forming and presenting opinions. In other words, they’re looking for qualitative analysis. And that can be extremely helpful: To name just one example, I’ll be forever grateful to Maura Johnston for hipping me to Sleigh Bells. But one limitation of qualitative analysis is that respondents (like torture victims) tell you what they think you want to hear, and in the case of music critics that results in an oddly non-conformist conformism: As Lester Bangs pointed out forty years ago, anyone looking to make a name in the field will look for stuff the masses aren't interested in, and try to get them interested in it. Over time - as the scribes push their pet acts, and their colleagues don't want to be seen as falling behind - groupthink develops, and the next thing you know there's critical consensus on boring, trivial acts like the BLAND (Beach House, LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire, The National and Deerhunter) Class of 2010.

Being aware of these pitfalls, market researchers usually seek to combine quantitative and qualitative analysis, and that’s exactly what Metacritic tries to do: filter all the blathering of critics into recommendations that a consumer can use. The trouble is, their methodology not only doesn’t cut through groupthink, but actually celebrates and elevates it: the flavor-of-the-month acts clutter up the top of their list, who also tend to be the artists you’re already familiar with because every other article is about Frank Ocean or Jack White. So it ends up being a technology-based version of the Pazz & Jop Poll: useful if you need to know who critics are hyping, not useful if you’re looking to find compelling art that might enrich your life or at least inspire you to put down that bag of chips and get off the couch.

Surprisingly enough, it’s that venerable Village Voice poll itself that suggests a way out of this mess: They’ve taken the annual vote numbers and thrown them up on a sortable page that lets you see, for example, which records were picked in the Top Ten by only one critic; which records were picked mostly by non-groupthink critics; and (interesting for a dweeb like me) which reviewers had the most similar lists to a given critic. That dataset only includes Top Ten picks and only covers five years, but it’s a big step in the right direction. We’re getting within hailing distance of the system I consider ideal: You enter in your favorite albums, and a database matches you up with a critic whose taste is similar to yours, but (we assume) listens to a lot more stuff and thinks about it a lot more, and is thereby in a position to bring lots of amazing, transcendent, mind-exploding music to your attention. Wait, did I just give Metacritic that idea for free? Dang.

PS In case anyone’s interested, just two of my 2012 Top Ten albums received votes in P&J: Regina Spektor’s What We Saw From The Cheap Seats and Angel Haze’s Reservation. I was much more groupthink-y in 2011, where seven of my Top Ten received votes, and my #1 pick won the poll.

High Ceilings and Low Floors

I'm rarely right, but it sometimes happens: In 1996 or '97 I was hired by an encyclopedia company to write a few music entries, and one of my assignments was Alanis Morrissette. Though her latest album was the best selling release from a female solo artist ever, I identified her as a flash in the pan, and I'd say history has borne that out. I called the decline of Oasis pretty early, too, but I wasn't confident: that was largely wishful thinking. (On the other side of the coin, I first heard Tracy Chapman and Living Colour on the same day in 1988, and instantly determined that they'd never catch on.) While those may sound easy - akin to predicting Psy will be a one-hit wonder -an artist's early peak is usually clear only in retrospect. Was it obvious at the time that Hootie & The Blowfish would never approach the success of Cracked Rear View rather than cluttering up the airwaves for years a la Nickelback? (Darius Rucker's subsequent country career proves rather than invalidates the point.)

Evaluation of potential doesn't square with an album-based rating system very well. For example, when I rated the Sleigh Bells debut ahead of Janelle Monáe's The ArchAndroid as the best record of 2010 I was still looking forward to Monáe's followup more than Sleigh Bells', because I had a sense that Sleigh Bells had already maximized their potential and Monáe had room to grow. To put it another way, I think she's at least one hundred times more likely to make a five-star record someday. A more recent example: in 2012 I rated Gökçe's Kaktüs Çiçeği four stars, and Angel Haze's Reservation "only" three and a half, but I'm certain Haze's best future album will be better than Gökçe's.

Where does that sense come from, and what's it based on? Well, sometimes there are obvious, easily fixed problems with an early album: The arrangements and mix on Kaktüs Çiçeği are polished and precise, while the backing tracks on Reservation sound like they were whipped up in a weekend - Haze could make a much better record without improving a whit as a rapper or writer. Similarly, it can be a positive indicator when an artist's reach exceeds her grasp: Treats shows marvelous mastery of a very limited sonic palette; The ArchAndroid reaches into a wide range of genres and approaches but not always successfully, and it's easy to imagine Monáe digging deeper in plenty of different directions. (I try not to talk about Frank Ocean, but by these criteria he's a cinch to make a better album than channel ORANGE one of these days.)

Maybe this makes me an Auteur Theory goon, but I do cherish my suspicion that low floors imply high ceilings... In other words, any Jane or Joe can cut a bad record, but it takes a true original to get far enough away from stylistic norms to make a terrible one. For example, Lumpy Gravy is worse than anything ever put out by early peak/low ceiling icon Liz Phair. So rather than pegging artists by how good they can be on their best day, you might want to hear how bad they can be on their worst.

Chuck Mangione, "Feels So Good" (1977)

Typically this hit instrumental is thought of as 70s AM pap, on a level with "Feelings" or "I Really Want To See You Tonight," and that's fair I suppose: it's catchy and overplayed, with no evident purpose apart from entertaining, plus it has that disco climbing bass bit. But I find the piece interesting for a couple of reasons: One, it's an extremely long melody, going on for about a minute before it repeats. According to some sheet music I found online, it's a 23-bar composition, so not up there with "Unchained Melody" but lengthy compared to your usual 16-bar A section, which usually repeats a four-bar phrase in there somewhere. That's not to say it's complex, because it's at a moderate tempo and can be whistled by practically anybody who was alive in 1977. But it is compelling... I find myself running through the whole melody in my head whenever I hear or think of the opening held notes.

The other odd feature is that Mangione doesn't solo: he states the theme at the beginning (twice on the album version), after the rest of the band solos he states it again, and then after a noodling coda (again, cropped from the 7") we're done. If you're thinking the leader lays out to spotlight his ace band, listen again: they each lollygag through the changes in horrendous clichéd fashion. So why doesn't he play? Because it's not a lead & chord progression to be improvised on, it's a piece to be played straight through. (Not every jazz piece lends itself to improvisation - Monk's "Crepescule With Nellie" springs to mind, and I'm sure some of the Ellington chamber work fits too - but they're the exceptions; they also develop rather than repeat.) To put it another way, the tune is excellent pop but terrible jazz, and if you care about the difference (not that you necessarily should), you can find it on this cut. (DBW)

Wilson & Alroy's UNforbidden Words 2013

Everyone has their own personal list of band names they will never use, some of mine being agitpoppers Larry Holmes and his Pearls of Wisdom, angst-daddy outfit Clairvoyant Doorman, and punk act The Runs (as in "Get The Runs!"). Along the same lines, here are words I've long desired to shoehorn into a review, but could never figure out a plausible way. So updating my 2011 pledge to avoid my worst cliches, next year I promise to use these words somewhere, appropriately or not:

Raiment
Sediment
Countermand
Samite
Paraquat
Vivacious or Vivacity
Kelp
Contumely
Satiated or preferably Satiety
Canter (I may use "cantor" too, but not figuratively)
Tendentious
Tawny (but I promise not to combine the above two into "tawndentious")

Sharon Brown, "I Specialize In Love" (1982)

I spent almost twenty years looking for this dance record before finally finding it at The Thing in Greenpoint. Written by Golden/Sher and produced by Next Plateau founder Eddie O'Loughlin, the tune was sort of a cross between early disco and Hi-NRG, mixing Latin percussion and a midtempo groove with jumpy synth, diva belting, and a winning attitude. I heard it a lot in 1982, though it seems like I never heard it on the radio, only coming out of passing cars, which is one reason I had trouble figuring out who the singer was. The other reason is, Brown never had much of a career apart from this one song: she apparently fell out with her label after they released a follow-up ("Love Don't Hurt People") she wasn't happy with, they parted company, and she ended up never releasing an LP.

The song was covered by Exposé in the mid-90s, and their version isn't half-bad, but track down the original if you can. Alternatively, you can check it out on YouTube.

Growing Up Skipper, "Teenage Boyfriend" (1991)

Growing Up Skipper was an early 90s all-female punk trio, not affiliated as far as I know with the Riot Grrrl scene but sharing some characteristics. They released one 7" with three songs; the other two are decent but "Teenage Boyfriend" is the keeper. Sung - almost spat - by lyricist/bassist Jane Guskin (formerly with San Francisco punk rappers the Yeastie Girlz), it's a cathartic, vitriolic assessment on an inconsiderate youthful swain. Apparently the song was covered by God Is My Co-Pilot in 1995; I haven't heard their version.

With its simple, memorable melody and powerhouse delivery, GUS's single is well worth searching for on eBay... There are even liner notes, with a thought-provoking deconstruction of the song's theme. (DBW)

Bobby Murcer, "Skoal Dippin' Man" (1983)

Years before Bernie Williams first picked up a guitar, and decades before Gretchen Wilson extolled the virtues of self-inflicted mouth cancer, Yankee great Bobby Murcer beat them both to the punch with this charming ditty. With the passing of Yankee Stadium, what better time to appreciate this surprisingly catchy Urban Country tune? There have been lots of better songs written about ballplayers ("Mrs. Robinson"; several songs by Chuck Brodsky; maybe even "Go Go Joe Charboneau") but has there ever been a better song sung by a ballplayer?

I couldn't find the actual song online, but here's a YouTube fan tribute using the same melody:
"I'm A Bobby Ray Murcer Fan"

Rick Dees and His Cast Of Idiots, "Barely White (That'll Get It Baby)" (1977)

I intend to use the blog mostly to discuss songs I like, but this time I wanted to call your attention to this forgotten flop single from the creator of "Disco Duck." Ostensibly a parody of a certain R&B singer, with the Caucasian-American Dees performing both the egotistical seducer and his reluctant female prey in mock "black" accents, it manages to be at once incredibly offensive and totally unfunny... a magic combination. It's definitely worth a spin just to hear how ill-conceived and clueless an attempt at humor can be: the concluding watermelon reference is jaw-dropping.

The thing that strikes me, though, is that Rick Dees, a working DJ at the time the song was released, emerged unscathed from the experience, and is working in radio to this day. (The song was banned, allegedly, though I can't believe it would have gotten significant airplay in any case.) Thirty years later, one-time Dees competitor Don Imus was tossed out on his ear for racist comments which were rather milder and unpremeditated: unlike Imus, Dees wrote, recorded, released and distributed his song with the knowledge and consent of his corporate masters. Now make no mistake, I'm glad Imus is no longer on the radio, and I hope he never comes back. But why do you think the reaction is so different today than it was thirty years ago? Because we've become overly sensitive and quick to take umbrage? Hardly: in 70s terms, the disc was offensive to anyone who wasn't a George Wallace voter. Because there are no more significant examples of racism left to confront? Guess again. Because the opportunists who've been annointed by the media as "spokesmen for the African-American community" are more interested in cheap stunts than any meaningful attempts to critique the prevailing power structures? You're getting warmer.

"That Summer Song With The Huge Guitar Hook" (1999?)

Is anyone working on a search engine that identifies a scrap of melody? Let's say with a piano-like interface where you tap in a melody, it plays back to confirm you entered it right, and then it searches a database? I would use a site like that constantly. For years I've been trying to find a song that was all over the radio in the summer of 1999 or maybe 2000. I think it was a one-hit wonder, a pop-rock band with a guy singer, and the hook went more or less like this:

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--8--10-8------------------8--10-8----------------
-----------10-7--7------------------10-7--7-------
--------------------10----------------------------
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Catchy as viral meningitis, as I recall. I might want to pick up their album, if I knew who they were...