And... we're done!

Rather abruptly, perhaps, but I'm laying SOTW to rest to see if maybe expanding my focus will be a good idea. I do plan on continuing to focus on music as much as I can, but you can read my writing on this and plenty of other stuff now at scottowilliams.com



See ya real soon!

The Sound of the Week Readers Survey

To the two or three of you who read this blog, I have a few questions, if you wouldn't mind spending a minute or two answering in the comments, through e-mail, or on twitter:

1. Who are you?
2. How did you find out about this site? How regularly do you read it?
3. What kind of music do you like? (Favourite artists, albums, genres, eras?)
4. Do your tastes overlap with the content of this site, or are you just being polite?
5. Have you ever bought something because it was recommended by this site? At the very least, did I nudge you toward buying something you were already thinking about?
6. Does it seem like I know what I'm talking about?
7. Where else do you get musical recommendations?
8. How much music did you buy in the last year?
9. In what format do you prefer to buy music: individual songs or full albums? Do you only download or do you buy physical CDs?
10. If you buy physical CDs, do you order them online, or do you shop in brick-and-mortar stores?
11. Where do you listen to music, and how?
12. Any further comments?

2012 in Review

I was going to quit, you know.

It was very stressful living up to certain expectations I had set for myself in the year I had done this site. I felt like if I waswn't writing 900-1000 words I wasn't doing it right. That if I truly loved an album I could probably bash out at least that much about it that fully encompassed all the greatness living within it.

I had a mini-breakdown around the time I did my write-up on Big Star's #1 Record. It exposed to me something that I've known all along, but tried to forget: That I have absolutely no business calling myself an authority. That being able to sense when music is good does not mean I have the complete mastery over it or a natural gift for explaining why, exactly, that is. That was one of the hardest write-ups I've ever had to do and I think it's probably one of the best articles I've written and I still think I failed to do that album justice. I had this drive to be somehow definitive. Which is silly, in a way, because part of what I love about music is that so much of it eludes me. I'm not a musician or a composer so as I tell my musician friends, I have an entirely different sense of what is in a song than they do. When I like something, I really just want to stand in awe of it.

So I took the summer off and I wasn't sure when or if I was going to come back, but I had all this stuff backed up that I could review if I wanted to. As you may recall I spent the summer largely thinking about Aerosmith and not trying to tell people that I was talking about Aerosmith because I didn't want to have to defend it or discuss it -- I just wanted to appreciate this band that I have liked on a primal level for a really long time. What I hoped to accomplish from that, and maybe it worked, is to get back to first principles and a more basic, in some ways more relevant mode of musical enjoyment.

Then finally in September I came back with a better attitude, a resolve to be easier on myself. Since then I've been making less of an effort to be grandiose and total in my review and am feeling comfortable honing in on one or two things I truly love about an album. And sometimes, as when I write about the Beatles, that leads to a write-up topping 1000 words, and sometimes it leads to something closer to 500 words like my write-ups of Death From Above 1979 or Pretty Girls Make Graves, both of which I absolutely love.

I'm still learning. I don't think I'll ever be happy with my writing style but somehow I'll get to a point where I think it's worth sharing and you'll get to read it. I'll always be working on it in some way or another, or else I'll finally just tap out on doing it. I keep questioning the value of what I do here, but ultimately I keep coming back because this is not the last word in objective quality criticism, this is a personal blog masking itself as criticism. It's me doing something that I feel like I still need to do after two years, which is find more awesome music for me to listen to. And if I get to be the one to tell you about it first, so much the better.

The truth, though, is this. I'm typing this at the tail end of three months of intense productivity on this site. I don't see it sustaining itself much longer. I feel very good about what I've been doing lately, and how I've learned it, and that if I could walk away for a while in the new year - if just for a while, again, that's what I choose - I could feel pretty all right with it. It's not like review writing is some act of great creativity, anyway. They don't hand out awards for making pointed observations and trying to influence consumer habits.

My own observations are often, by my own standards, mundane and pedestrian, but I think they sometimes speak more to what draws people to whatever kind of music. A little while ago I happened upon this interview with the Ramones on YouTube, where they pointedly stated that rock and roll music is supposed to be fun. And there are many great writers and essayists who can take that material and write out fascinating, significant essays about it, but as much as I enjoy and am envious of what they do, I will never be them. At least not when that's what I'm trying to be. I want this to be as fun as I find listening to and discovering (and talking about!) music, and if it's not, I don't know why I would keep doing it.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

And We're Back. (Tomorrow)

Firstly, I'll apologize to those of you who really do read my blog out of an interest in music, and a desire to find new things to listen to (or get reassured about stuff you already like.) I didn't necessarily intend to take the whole summer off, but when it became clear that was what was happening, I rolled with it.

It wasn't personal. It wasn't a dramatic summer for me. It wasn't that I didn't have time, per se. I kept up my side-project until I couldn't, and while that wasn't meant to take SOTW's place, it did end up more or less being my focus. I needed the comfort. My attitude, my personal thoughts on music, were starting to get dodgy. I couldn't quite put them down right. And while in the past I was usually able to push through, or move on, I was just stuck. I needed to write about something that was just flat-out ingrained in me. Something I knew, rather than was figuring out, while I sorted out my material for this site. I'm happier that I took the summer off, rather than posted stuff just because the site needed content. I mean hey, it's a hobby, and hobbies are meant to be fun.

The good news is, I didn't stop. One day I spent about a hundred bucks on music. Then I gradually collected more. And that was after accumulating the albums I was already listening to and meant to write about when I stalled. I didn't stall because they weren't good, I just... stalled.

I hate "I'm back" posts. They seem almost destined to be followed by a period of inactivity. I have a lot of potential material lined up and a new scheme for the site that will encourage a 4-day update schedule, Mon-Thurs. Stay tuned to see if it works.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

SOTW Presents: The Smithery

The Smithery will be going through Aerosmith's entire chronology, with posts every weekday, all Summer long.

As I've mentioned before, and occasionally taken a few jokes for it, Aerosmith is my favourite band. If you get me talking about them, it's hard to stop. But the truth is, they don't really fit into the narrative of this blog, which is mainly about the discovery of something new (or rediscovery.) For a long time I felt it simply wasn't worth it to try to force my love for this 40-year-old band on the readers of SOTW, who are hopefully interested in finding something new to hear.

With their 16th studio album due out later this Summer, they are finally "current" again, so I could be forgiven for talking about them here a bit. But "a bit" wasn't going to cut it. I finally wanted to dig in. I wanted to take everything I've learned about talking about music, and apply it to these songs I've been listening to, in some cases, for two decades of my life. I wanted to share that love, and examine it warts and all.

Everybody should love something, as much, and for as long, as I have this band.

So if you're interested, a fan, or if you just want to see what it looks like when somebody completely geeks out about something, check out The Smithery every Monday through Friday this summer.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

Who is Paul McCartney?: How The Beatles Still Matter

When all was said and done after the Grammy awards last night, there was one question looming large over the ceremony. It wasn't "What Killed Whitney Houston?" It wasn't "Why do people still pay attention to Chris Brown?" And it wasn't "What's a Bon Iver?"

The question was: "Who is Paul McCartney?"


Pictured: ???

The always-insightful Twitterverse provided a massive bank of tweets questioning exactly who this elderly British gentleman on their TVs was. And I, being the resperctable (sp?) online music journalist I am, or claim to be, was shocked -- shocked! -- that there was anyone out there who did not immediately know the founding bassist for Wings.

Admittedly, it's easy to have missed "Sir" Paul, who has flown under the radar for several decades in obscure bands. Every so often he collaborates with a more established artist, like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, or Youth, but mainly it's considered a tax dodge for those superstars. Charity. Cunningly, he's remained underground, cultivating a rabid, vocal, but decidedly minute fanbase, over the past five decades.

Okay. Most people know. If you're reading this blog, it's likely you know me directly and I don't think I would associate myself with you if you couldn't at least pick out three of the four Beatles (George is a bit easy to miss.) However, playing Devil's advocate for a minute, let's acknowledge the audience for the Grammys. For starters, as I mentioned, a disproportionate number of the audience is in favour of abuse. We're not always dealing with the smartest, most aware section of the audience here. It's easy to understand exactly how a musician whose glory days were thirty years before their birth escaped their notice. There's a lot of people, not wrongly, focused on the here-and-now, on the Rihannas and Lady Gagas and LMFAO. This is their world, and the Beatles, that's something old and irrelevant. And honestly, if you're not someone who already knows who Paul McCartney is, you'll probably be perfectly fine continuing to not know. It's not necessary for you.

But even making allowances for how it happens and why it's okay, there's something gnawing at me, sparked by this tweet:



And there's just something not quite right about that. Because although the numbers add up, that seems like a false piece of logic. That seems to preclude any 15-year-olds from caring about Sir Paul, that it's silly to consider they might. But they do. Somehow, the music has survived. I get parents in my store beaming that they're picking up a copy of Abbey Road for their 12-year-old kids, that they asked for The Beatles Rock Band when it came out, that they love Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd too. I don't think a subset modern 30-year-olds, fifteen years ago, would be caught in a new wave of Comomania.

I'm not here to talk about why Paul McCartney still matters: why his accomplishments deserve recognition, why his legacy should stand. I'm here to acknowledge that it does. That the Beatles fans of the world are constantly being replenished, at least partially, by new discovery, in a way that throwaway pop of bygone days doesn't usually.

On the Internet, nothing dies. Everything lingers, waiting to be reborn. The Beatles, conveniently, form the beginning of the narrative of pop music. Although I love earlier music, if you go back further than 1964, it becomes a bit estranged. But they were there at the time, and were largely the catalyst, popular music took a very solid form. Any fan of the Foo Fighters or Arcade Fire or Bon Iver or some band I haven't heard of yet can trace its lineage back to that time, and now that we have the Internet, we can let that continue to be a well-traveled route, for anyone interested in visiting. You don't even have to be 15 to start; I wasn't. Part of that is due to advocates constantly building the narrative of the Beatles as the greatest, myself included. But it wouldn't have taken hold if there weren't enough evidence to support it.

There may come a day, although I doubt I'll be around, when the Beatles legend finally collapses and nobody thinks about them anymore, when the history of music has moved on to where their moment can no longer be marked as the beginning of anything relevant. Where Abbey Road and A Hard Day's Night are as alien as the old-time crooners or depression-era ditties. But I doubt that their significance will dampen soon, because what they started will probably remain part of the narrative for as long as I'm talking about music. The Beatles will be in that same classification as Socrates or Galileo: Their work was before our time, and much has come since, but they will always be known to the anyone who follows them in their field.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

The End of the Year Recap 2011 Spectacular

December is a very special time for critics of all types. The end of the year means it's time to start rounding up all the best albums of the year and rank them based on arbitrary criteria, creating the narrative of what 2011 "was" in music. It's actually very exciting, so long as you don't get knee-deep in the hooplah. My colleague, professional character assassin James Leask wrote a very insightful article about the nature of year-end lists. When I was starting this site, I used some of the 2010 year-end lists as a shopping guide for what I'd cover for this blog.

I won't, obviously, be compiling a year-end list. There's a lot of great stuff I simply did not hear this year. All the albums from 2011 that I loved can be found here, and that list is sure to keep growing. And for a more expansive list of albums that I heard for the first time in 2011, you can click here. I wrote a top four countdown for 2010 because it was a very short list. The reason I started this blog was because I had indulged in so little music enjoyment that year, so it was easy to sort. Then I wrote about them because I wanted to start off with a bit of content for the site.

I can't rank the albums I've listened to this year, just like I can't ascribe them star-ratings. Every single album I talk about on this blog is a recommendation from me, so it's useless to put those on a scale. That's sort of the point. Every album is a new challenge. Sometimes what you already know helps you approach it, sometimes you need to take it as something utterly unknown. To me, they don't compete, there's no reason to try making them.

I spent 2011 listening to music. As a result, I've got about 50 new albums etched in my memory, which invoke feelings and thoughts, that take me back to a time of the year, whether it's shoveling my driveway to Tokyo Police Club, baking in the sun to Foster the People, sitting at work with the Sheepdogs or at the end of a 12-hour bus ride from New York City with the Hold Steady. I spend a lot of time in my head arguing with other critics, and the thing I hate most is when music is not treated as something you listen to: its important qualities are all there in your headphones.

I try to understand and appreciate every album I write about as completely as possible. Usually I fail. I don't want to insult too many of my old reviews, but sometimes I just feel like I didn't quite get it right;... and sometimes I revisit an album after the review is done and something new will occur to me.

I read a fair bit of criticism, as you must. A lot of the albums I've covered this year are acknowledged classics. Some are hidden gems, some true obscurities. Some have been actively dismissed or derided. I think the albums I have the most fun reviewing are the ones that didn't get great notices, because that means all the things that excite me about them haven't been explored by better writers. One of the strangest moments I had was when I realized all the negative things people were saying about White Lies (and later Viva Brother) were true... but I couldn't stop listening to either album anyway, and I needed to talk about them.

I set myself up with a set of loose guidelines at the beginning of the year, and thankfully I haven't found myself constrained by them. They act as a buzzer that goes off in my head whenever I realize I'm writing something I would not like to read, that my review is wandering into territory I'd rather not explore. I'm free to ignore them, but I'm always happier with the results when I keep with them. I never bothered to write them out, and I feel like explaining them might ruin my mojo, but if you go back and read my reviews (and maybe read other critics' takes on the same albums) you might be able to tell what some of them are.

It begins and ends with positivity. I realized, not long after starting (but later than I should have) that there's a difference between some asshole on the internet and a critic, and it isn't intelligence. Leave negativity to every other dickhead. Let them be the ones to tear things down. Let the critic's role be defined by how good we are at building things up. I realize this isn't a reality for critics who don't get to pick and choose their subject matter, but it can't be healthy to decide to go after things you won't like. In general, I'm pleased with myself for keeping the positivity, and never feeling like I have to fake it because I genuinely like everything I write about. Also, the commitment to positivity extends to a certain amount of amnesty to things I don't like: I try not to take cheap shots because I don't believe you do something you like any favours by insulting something you don't. It sounds maybe a bit sanctimonious when I write it out at length, but I want you all to know there are reasons why I do things the way I do, and hopefully you come here because you get it.

I spent the year listening to music, but more importantly, I spent the year enjoying music. I didn't take the music and wrestle with it, try to disarm it and figure out a reason it wasn't as good as my gut felt. I went with that gut feeling and tried to lay it all out on the table, to open it up, pull out the guts and dance around merrily in the blood of the music. And to write metaphors that get off track quickly. And to have fun.

I like what I do here, and I hope to get better at it in the coming year. I want to keep bringing people music they might not have found otherwise, or encouraging them on albums they weren't sure they'd like. I get a fairly decent number of hits every month (for a site that is advertised nowhere but Twitter and Google, reviewing albums that aren't generally up-to-the-minute,) so I hope that I've gotten one or two of you to listen to an album you otherwise wouldn't. And never feel bad for liking something. Anyone who tries to do that to you is being an asshole.

In 2012, I just want to keep on rockin'
-Scotto

Does It Rock? Dan Mangan, "Post War Blues"

It's been about a year since the germ of an idea started forming in my head, exactly what my "philosophy" would be when I started reviewing music. I hadn't even come up with the idea for this blog yet, but when I did, the approach I ended up taking was rooted in something that happened on the way home from a Halloween party in 2010.

I was on my way home the next morning, and I picked up one of Toronto's free hip indie newspapers. NOW, probably. In it, there was an article on Mangan, whose song "Robots," I was really digging. I hadn't had a chance to pick up the album yet. The article's thrust was that Mangan was an up and comer on the indie scene, with a growing fanbase and a couple of award notices: notably, his album Nice Nice Very Nice was a dark horse candidate for that year's Polaris prize. The article wondered whether this attention was warranted, referencing a review by Alan Cross calling the album "Bland, bland, very bland." This... this irked me.

Alan Cross is an extremely noteworthy Canadian music journalist, a self-described "professional music geek." His work with Corus stations like Edge 102 in Toronto makes him pretty much the lead tastemaker. He seems like a nice guy. But he's also got a gig with the chain of stores I work for, regular segments on the official radio station we listen to, introducing current hits with background information or trivia. He never voices his critical opinion there, or if he does, it's only vaguely, non-committally, and always supportive, even when describing generic radio pop, stuff critics don't usually fawn over, like the Black Eyed Peas or Britney Spears.

It seemed so disingenuous to me, that this titan of music journalism should make it his business to kick an up and comer back down the ladder. That he plays the critic card for someone doing his best to create his own sound and carve out his niche, while giving his tacit stamp of approval to the usual ubiquitous pop you hear everywhere anyway.

I mean, I get it: Britney, the Peas, Rihanna, Coldplay, they're all critic-proof. They're going to get radio play and they're going to sell records no matter what I think about them and no matter what Alan Cross thinks about them. That's fine, in fact it's great. I've often said Justin Bieber and Michael Buble are keeping us in business, even though I'd never buy one of their records for myself. Nothing wrong with that. But why discourage Mangan, especially when people, as the article pointed out, are responding to it? As I said with my Oasis write-up, no matter your own thoughts as a critic, if an act provokes a response from its intended audience, it works, and it's part of your job to figure out why, not merely to tell people they're wrong. Maybe to some ears, that first Mangan album was bland. But to a lot, it wasn't. And that write-up scared me away from buying the first album, since I was a lot more skittish about committing to buying music before this blog, and never came back to it since.

Aaaaaanyway, a year has passed and Mangan has a new album, and this is the single off it, which I personally have been enjoying. It begins with that pulsing verse and builds, much like "Robots," below, but with a bit more muscle, and those trilling U2 guitars. I know there are a lot of people who would like this song and probably the whole album, who wouldn't hear about it otherwise. Until I can get around to hearing the whole set, I'll let you decide for yourself whether it rocks. I think it really does, though.

Talkin' Favourites

So, I have my favourite albums of all time lined up, and I thought I would throw the topic open, since I know there are people that read this, even if we don't always converse.

So Iwas wondering, dear readers, what are your favourite albums? Doesn't have to be five, it can be ten or two or 15 if you so determine that's how many favourites you have. What do they mean to you, why did you pick them up, how did they become your favourites, what makes an album worth favouriting?

Drop me a comment, tweet at me, shoot an e-mail my way. If I like what you say (and I probably will) I'll post some responses here, and we'll start dialoguing about it. I might even end up picking stuff up just on your recommendations.

Let's do this. I wanna hear it.

All-Time Favourites: Introduction

I nearly convinced myself not to do this.

"They're safe," I said, "These are all safe picks, and nobody's going to learn anything from them." I was thinking about my five favourite albums of all time, and how they'd find right into any standard "best albums ever" compilation article, and, in and of themselves, say little about me.

I thought, at the beginning of the site, it would be useful to get out in the open my listening "background," to help contextualize my opinions by letting you know what music I already thought was great before I considered myself King Fuck of Blog Mountain. But the music I think is great is music most people already think is great, so knowing while album-X ranks third on my list isn't going to help you understand what I like so much about Lissie or Marble Index.

But I realized yesterday, it didn't matter if it helped you... it was going to help me.

Kids, I have been fried lately. While the main obstacle to review writing has been time -- I'm consumed with schoolwork and jobwork -- it's also a problem that when I do sit down to write, I agonize over my every word and usually hate the product. And while a certain amount of writer's angst is healthy, I was gradually losing sight of the ideas I had laid down as the basis of this blog back in January: to slap my filter on some music and say "I like this because..."

It can't apply to every album ever. Some of the albums I've reviewed are truly my thing. Some aren't, but I could recognize them as good and reviewed them anyway. There are some albums I've bought and then couldn't bring myself to write up because they just did nothing for me. It happens.

Yesterday I used a new pair of earbuds for the first time: Sennheisers, top-of-the-line stuff, instead of my cheapo JVCs. I was not prepared for the difference in sound when I tested them out with one of my "top 5s." It was a rare gift, to be able to hear something you've heard thousands of times since you were 15, with fresh ears. I wasn't hearing anything new, but all the familiar sounds had regained a sense of brightness and luster that had faded over time.

I don't rate my reviews, I don't pretend to make objective claims and I don't generally make ranked lists, but I'm about to write up my "Top Five Favourite Albums" of all time. (NB: Though the top two are locked in, the other three are rather changeable.) "I think it's great because ____" and "I love it because _____" are two related-but-separate statements, and as tempting as it always is to play impartial are go for the former, here is a case where the point is the latter. The central question will be, as I hope it usually is, "What does this do for me?" And when it's over, I will hopefully have trained myself to better keep an eye out for the answer to that question in albums I haven't been humming for a decade. And hopefully, if we're lucky, in the course of these five (excellent by any criteria) albums, I'll have made you think about something you hadn't before.

Hopefully, this helps me on my way developing the voice of this blog. Even if it doesn't, it's useful just to step back and think about what you know you like and try to remember why.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

"Not Really Into Radiohead" - A Story (or Something)

It's Wednesday, the 16th of February, 2011. After class, I head out for pizza with my friend Robin at a little place on Bloor. We've never really hung out that much so there's a lot to talk about, and the topic turns, as it so often seems to, to music. I mention that in January, I started up a music blog, and she beams: "You know what you should review next? Radiohead." Earlier that week, the band had announced the upcoming release of its album The King of Limbs, in a mere week's time.

It had a weird sort of synchronicity for me. I had just bought a recent Q Magazine (yeah, holy shit, print media, what?) whose feature article was "The Top 250 Albums of Q's Lifetime." This stretches back to Paul Simon's Graceland, which they had praised in their first issue, and which my aunt tried to get me to listen to, but when she lent me the CD, the case was empty, so that's on her. Anyway, out of all these amazing albums (including all the usual suspects and some real surprises, both good and bad) the top-rated album, voted by Q's readers, was Radiohead's OK Computer. So yes, good, great, more credible than, say, Tubthumper by Chumbawumba (underrated.)

This is going to shock you, coming from the guy who's taken it on himself to ramble about music on the internet, but: I'm not into Radiohead. Now, it shouldn't shock you, since I've mentioned before that I spent a long, long period of time "not really being into current music," so when In Rainbows was surprise-released in 2007, I was still kinda like "Good for them, but whatever." This isn't out of a lack of support for their music -- I'm genuinely glad they exist -- but it was more me finding my own path. As you know from my previous rants, the last thing I'm interested in is listening to an album others have said is great and echoing those sentiments. So Radiohead's greatness has been well covered, I find something else to listen to. I was content to let them exist as this unknown paragon of musical greatness that had nothing whatsoever to do with me and my tastes. It seemed impossible to get into Radiohead without having to drill through the layers of mystique their music engendered. I'm basically saying I was worried that what I heard wouldn't justify the hype for me.

Something happened in the middle of 2010 -- I'll explain later -- that changed my perspective on this, and basically made this blog possible. And though I'm not always talking about it, this is after all a blog about musical discovery, and it's probably about time I discover Radiohead for myself. Much like the Arcade Fire example I spoke about last week, I won't be hearing King of Limbs for a while yet, and whatever my opinion ends up being, you get my guarantee that it'll just be mine.

I felt the need to say that, because after all the stuff I have already lined up, I wouldn't want people to shy away from this blog thinking "Why the fuck isn't he talking about Radiohead? Everyone else is, this guy sucks."

Maybe I do suck, but at least you know why I'm not talking about Radiohead yet.

If you still hunger for more Radiohead content, I'm happy to endorse this article by my buddies over at Comics! The Blog (although it seems unfair since you never hear me jabbering about Spider-Man.) From a gen-yoo-wine Radiohead fan.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

Not a review of The Suburbs by Arcade Fire (or Arcade Fire by The Suburbs)

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people who are fans of Eminem, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, etc had/have no idea who The Arcade Fire is. I myself am not overly familiar with their music. I first heard the song "Rebellion (Lies)" in a car full of my hipstery friends in the summer of 2005, right after we'd graduated high school, when I was still very reluctant to get into any current music, underground or otherwise. I thought the song was very good, but never bothered to follow up on it. Years later, I am working in a record store, so yes, I'd better know who Arcade Fire is. A couple nights ago they won the Album of the Year Grammy, an award that apparently millions of people felt they had a stake in. Weird.

I don't have the album yet, but we've had it on in the store so I've at least been able to go through it if not sit down with it the way I like to with new music; so my opinion is a passing one, but one of approval. I'm also fairly familiar with all the other nominees through their singles. Whether I love The Suburbs or not, there's not a shred of doubt in my mind that the right album won that award. I don't think that's a controversial stance for me to take on this blog, considering what I believe my audience to be.

I mean, on the one hand, you've got Katy Perry, who I like least out of all the pop divas to emerge in the last few years, and Lady Antebellum, whose song "'Murkin Honey" should be firebombed straight to hell -- the ghosts of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams should beat the shit out of it for what's become of the Country racks. On the other hand is Lady Gaga's The Fame Monster, which would have stood a better chance if it had been more of a complete album, rather than an expansion of her previous one, which if nothing else provides much confusion to my customers. Lastly is Eminem, which is... I mean, I've said before that I haven't got a critical ear for rap, so people tell me it's good and I believe them, but at the same time it doesn't sound like a return to form as much as it does a safe bet. I could've seen it winning, but it would've been like Scorsese winning the Oscar for The Departed. Nobody seems to believe that was on its own merits.

That leaves Arcade Fire, the band the fans of these artists never heard of, who recorded a work on a level far removed from the others. I mean not in terms of quality, but in terms of effort, creativity and spirit. The very fact that they were nominated seems like an award in and of itself. Them winning is just a little mind-blowing.

But adding to this complexity is the fact that this award more often than not seems to be given to something nobody heard, even though the pop-music fans are the ones most invested. This gives the award, in a way, a measure of legitimacy, of being above popularity. You probably don't know many people who bought Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, or River: The Joni Letters by Herbie Hancock, but they won out over Radiohead, Coldplay, Lil Wayne, Kanye, Amy Winehouse and the Foo Fighters in their respective years. a glance at the history of the award reveals this is often the case, although there will never be a justification for giving it to Blood Sweat & Tears over Abbey Road. Occasionally, what's popular and what's award-worthy does line up, as in the case of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, or Fearless by Taylor Swift, which won last year by being the least of five evils (the fucking Black Eyed Peas were nominated.)

Anyway. Too often the popular and the artistic are separated in music and held to wildly different standards. I'm also worried that holding them to the same standards is even more dangerous, since considering an album like The Suburbs requires entirely different brand of critical thought from an album like The Fame Monster. There's actually no way to compare them, and the lack of winning this award doesn't invalidate anyone's feelings about their music. Consider the "Best Alternative Album" category, where Brothers by the Black Keys beat out The Suburbs. Maybe it was just more alternative.

If I do end up reviewing the album, there is one thing I want to do: not fall prey to the hype. It's so easy to listen to an album billed as awesome and go in attempting to hear what others have said is there. It's also too easy to go in trying to find what's wrong with it and try to point it out to people. Either way, a review of an album like this, especially so far after the fact, is tricky because it's not going to change anybody's mind either way. But I like to write reviews not to argue with people, but to figure out what I like for myself. So it's still on my to-do list.

And I hope, Grammy or no Grammy, you're true to your own tastes too.

Keep on rockin
-Scotto

The Syndrome

Every so often I'll be at the store and pick up a copy of Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," and wonder if I should buy it and listen to it for this website.

There are times when I spend way too much time worrying about the critical estimation of that album, which is apparently the greatest thing since sliced bread. I'll defer to others here. I have no critical ear for hip hop, although I can tell from what I've heard ("Power," "Runaway," and "Monster") that this is some major league stuff. In fact, it appears to transcend the league altogether. But that doesn't mean I have to love it.

If you want my opinion on those three songs, it's this: "Power" is a great tune that I love to listen to at the beginning but exhausts me by the end. "Runaway" grates on me, at least in censored, radio-friendly form. "Monster" has a good hook but every second of it is overshadowed by Nicki Minaj (and good for her, because I don't dig her solo single, "Right Thru Me.") So there's me being a contrarian dickhole.

And I'd presume a full review of MBDTF (or "Mabudatuff" as I will now be calling it around the store,) would either be more of that, or a complete turnaround and a realization that Kanye's album is in fact the greatest disc of the millennium. This is possible -- I would dedicate myself to listening to it with an open mind -- but the urge to be the asshole that tries (and fails) to take this juggernaut of an album down a peg would be difficult to resist. I'd be like the guy saying the Beatles weren't that great and that Nirvana was all hype. And nobody should want to be that guy. That guy's got the Syndrome.

The Syndrome is something I've noticed for years on the internet. It's an extreme form of hype backlash so severe I felt I needed to go and make up a new phrase for it (and all I could come up with, so far, was "The Syndrome.") It's that frustrated, resentful bitterness that sets in when everyone loves something you don't. Not just when you dislike something popular, or something that sells well but is acknowledged to be shit, but something everyone, everyone, everyone seems to think is good but you. It's what motivates people to write bitter-ass reviews of Inception, or explain away Nevermind's success as "right place right time." Or -- although this has probably never happened -- someone saying Arrested Development wasn't all that great. Whatever it is, the professional critics like it. Your friends, including the ones whose opinions you actually respect like it. Everyone in the world seems to be buying into it, but you stand outside it, because it didn't grab you the way it grabbed them. And it fucking burns you up inside.

So instead of fading into the background during discussions, or quietly admitting, "Ah, I don't really get it but whatever," you need to rant, you need to express yourself, you need to get pissed. Most often this involves telling these people they're idiots for thinking this thing is great. Trying to launch an attack from any available front: "You like it because it's popular," "You like it because you're dumb" "(X) is way better," "(artist) is a hack," etc, etc, and you'll fight tooth and claw with anyone who disagrees with you, which is pretty much everyone.

And there's nothing wrong with diverging from the majority, and there's nothing wrong with holding to your own opinions. It's about choosing your battles, and there comes a time when you've got to realize how obnoxious you are for wearing your hatred of this beloved work, whatever it is, so proudly. You're a hater, man.

So I don't wanna be that, I don't wanna do that. In the words of Philip J. Fry, "I'll be whatever I wanna do." You probably don't care that I won't be reviewing Kanye's album, but there's something that occurs to me every time I do listen to one of the songs off it: it's definitely special. It's not your standard issue bullshit-hits Black Eyed Peas release, or a where's-the-hook-Pitbull-guest-spot deal. This is a man who thinks very seriously about the music he puts out there, and probably nothing else.

And I have absolutely no problem living in a world where Kanye West is good at what he does. It doesn't have to be for me. He might be a cognitively-challenged manchild, but so was Raymond Babbit.

So there you have it, gang. I've spent about as much time thinking about why I won't be reviewing this album as I have spent thinking about the next one I will be reviewing, which hasn't sold nearly as much. Kanye doesn't need the extra attention, and I don't need to try to change anyone's mind about him (since I'd fail.) You might see the Syndrome crop up on this blog someday, but I'm trying my best to beat it back and let people like what they like.

It isn't important that people agree with me. Only that they think seriously about what they want to hear.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

On Albums pt 1 of a million

If you haven't yet, read this intriguing interview with one of the most happenin' voices of music criticism on the web, Discographies. His (her?) twitter feed is always insightful and very exact and always incredibly clever. I don't always necessarily agree, but I can always get what he's trying to say, and he says it so concisely.

He makes a good point about what separates "what separates this batch of material from that batch of material." Despite the free-for-all availability of music on the internet, we still take our music input in the albums-and-singles format prescribed way back in the 60's, when they'd fold in the two hit .45's with (in Phil Spector's words) "ten pieces of junk" (which aren't junk in capable hands) to make an LP. Maybe because we're used to it, or maybe because it's useful. Not everything can be a greatest hits, and commercially, it makes sense to keep this form of output up. As much sense as anything else.

But I'm not here to philosophize about why albums are, but how I take them. Specifically, what makes a good album versus a "great one."

A good album, I thought to myself earlier today, is a collection of songs you like hearing. Maybe, like anything else, it has some bad cuts, but generally, it's full of enjoyable material you'd re-listen to.

A great album -- very important in this day and age where we're far beyond spinning vinyl, in the world of CDs and iPod shuffles -- is one where you can't bear to listen to the songs apart. You probably do, but you'd much, much rather hear them together.

They belong that way. And not just because there's a crossfade.

That's my somewhat idealistic take on it anyhow.

The Statement

To begin with, criticism sucks.

I guess that's my critique of the criticism game. Either you're telling people something they already know, or you're feeding them an opinion they don't care to hear. Either you like what they like or you don't. There's a lot of crappy pop music that people buy despite what the critics are saying about it. There's a lot of great music that doesn't get heard despite (sometimes even because of) critical praise. Worst is when a nice little indie act pours their heart and soul into a record only to get brushed off as derivative or bland or uninspired or a hundred other useless stock critical phrases. A lot of critics don't seem to like any music, or seem to like it for the wrong reasons.

Personally, I find music-writing a bit of an absurd proposal. Mostly you just have to listen and make up your own mind, then get people to do the same. So I want to make it absolutely clear a the top of this blog that I am no objective voice of critical response. I am not the cut-and-dried arbiter of cool. I'm just a guy who knows what he likes.

But what keeps us talking about music is the challenge: to be able to put into words a feeling evoked by the music. To share it with another through your own filter. That's why I insist on keeping up the musical discourse, and why I keep reading the music review websites I hate, because yeah, sometimes they get it right. Most often they get up their ass in pretension (and I can't promise I won't either) and lose sight of why people are supposed to dig tunes. Just to pop your headphones on and say "Fuck, that's a good song," feels like the ultimate distillation of the experience.

So let me tell you exactly, hopefully in less words than I've already used, what I'm doing here. I'm writing about music.

I work in a CD store -- that is, a well-known (outside the States) seller of CDs, DVDs, books, video games, keychains, etc, etc, but mostly held together by a common love for music, particularly amongst the staff. I've been here for over a year and yet in 2010 I bought fewer than a dozen CDs. I'm discerning as all hell, but fuck, I ought to really dig in! I don't know how much longer I'm gonna be here!

So my plan for 2011 is to buy a shitload of music: at least one CD per week, hopefully more. And to keep true to this plan, I decided I was going to write about it. Online, for six or seven people to see. And hopefully you'll read this blog, and I'll say something great about a CD you like, or inspire you to pick up something you'd never heard of. It's not always going to be new stuff, but the key is I have to hear the CD in its entirety for the first time in preparation for writing about it.

I can't promise I will always be positive. Sometimes I'll have to be snarky and dismissive and yeah, pretentious like all music critics. Sometimes I'll be snobby, and sometimes I'll probably do something I hate, which is use a positive review to put down something I dislike. But since this is the stuff I'm choosing to hear, I'll always be starting from the position that this was something I stood a chance of liking.

They won't always be real reviews: I'll try to offer my perspective and tell you what the CD makes me think, and most often but maybe not always, it'll involve a recommendation, but sometimes it'll be helpful to think of them as little essays or blurbs or ramblings as the case may be, rather than reviews. In between my weekly posts, I might post a quick link to a song I've just discovered, or some thoughts on an old favourite, but they won't count toward my weekly post goal.

Sometimes I might get behind schedule with the writing, but as long as I stay on top with the listening, it should even out.

And the last thing, the biggest thing: requests and recommendations. I'm entering into this adventure with my own tastes in mind, but I can't know everything. If there's something you think I'd like (you'll get more of an idea later) don't be shy to ask about it. I'll probably have to check it out on the internet to be sure I would want to spend my money and time on it (my first music review gig, they only sent me stuff I would never have bought myself) but I'm very, very encouraging of suggestions.

My first post will be up soonish. Hopefully I can keep this up as long as I intend to.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto