Blogcritics Author: Jonathan Deamer

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Ten Secrets of Writing Reviews That Keep Readers Coming Back

Jonathan Deamer — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 13:56:28 EDT

As evidenced by Blogcritics itself, reviews make great blog posts. We mustn't forget though, that for bloggers, reviews aren't only a novel answer to the perpetual conundrum of “what shall I write about today?” but also a cool way to attract readers. Lots of people want to know if the new U2 record (for example) is any good, so why not write to cater for an audience that’s already there? Furthermore, if you write an interesting and comprehensive article, it's just the sort of thing that readers will bookmark for later reference, e-mail to friends or link to from their own blogs. This is especially true for high-investment purchases like technology or household electronics. A detailed review can even mean you or your blog become recognised as an authority on the subject.But how to write those great reviews? I’ve been reviewing music for ages, and apart from trying to read as much of my fellow reviewers' work, both at Blogcritics and elsewhere, I always try to stick to these 10 rules. Although they’re from a music journalism point of view, they’ll work for most subjects.1. Ask yourself “what does the reader want to know?”This is the most important thing to remember when writing a review. You can craft the wittiest prose with the cleverest metaphors, but unless the reader finds out what they want to know, you’ve not done your job as a reviewer.Think of the sort of questions they’re likely to be asking themselves – these will vary depending on what you’re writing about: “Is this book a light, enjoyable read for on the beach?”, “Why should I upgrade to Windows Vista?”, or even “Does Justin Timberlake’s new CD have anything on it as good as 'Cry Me A River'?”Find that one question, and make the sole aim of your article to answer it.2. Decide on the overall point you want to get across to the reader. If you know your subject matter well (which, as a reviewer, you should do), you’ll no doubt have a whole ream of opinions, both good and bad, that you can knock back and forth like a review-writing game of tennis. All those viewpoints can get confusing, so simplify it.Decide on an overall basic opinion of the product, such as “A hilarious, if overlong movie – just don’t expect anything groundbreaking”, and use that as a framework for your review. Hang everything else off this one idea. How does the movie’s acting influence this opinion? Why isn’t the plot that groundbreaking?You can get all your points across, but just relate them all to this central theme (in conjunction with number 1 above) and your review will seem less like the sort of conversation you have in a bar after the movie, and more like real journalism!3. Be ruthless when editing – don’t be precious about your “art”. If it doesn’t help you answer the reader’s question (point number 1, above), or isn’t directly conducive to getting your main point across (number 2), then get rid of it! You might be really proud of a line you’ve written, but unless it helps the review as a whole it’s no good.Review writing isn’t art -– save that for your novel -– so don’t get precious about it. Remember the words of science fiction author James Patrick Kelly on this subject: “murder your darlings”. Readers don’t think someone’s a great writer because of a single sharp-but-irrelevant observation; they’ll think you’re a great writer if all the cogs in the machine of your review work together.This is something I sometimes struggle with, but Copyblogger further underlines the importance of keeping your writing simple.4. Don’t write about yourself; it’s about the band, book, movie or whatever you’re reviewing. A classic novice’s mistake this one. Look at any page of Amazon customer reviews, and you’ll no doubt come across someone who tells a story all about how the guy they work with said <i>The Da Vinci Code</i> is great, but I wasn’t sure because he’s not too smart, but then he did recommend that other book to me that was pretty good, although he’s a religious nut so it probably won’t be my thing, but I suppose I should because otherwise he’ll never shut up about it… WHO CARES?As we’ve said already, reviewers want to know about the product, and that should be what you concentrate on. Of course, blogging is a personal medium, and it can be great for personal anecdotes, but within a review isn’t the place. As mentioned previously, one of the main benefits of review writing is that your posts can become a point of reference for people, and even an authority on a product depending on what it is you choose to review. But if you cloud the matter with irrelevancies, you won’t get the linkbacks and word-of-mouth publicity that these things merit.By all means stamp a bit of your personality and thoughts on the review, but stick to the subject matter; the reader shouldn’t really know the reviewer is there. A good rule of thumb is to try not to say “I” at all.5. Ask yourself “what makes my review unique?”Well-anticipated products like Hollywood movies or a new release from Apple (hurry up iPhone!) can generate thousands of reviews both across the blogosphere and the more traditional media. So why would anyone want to read yours?That’s not meant to be a criticism of your writing – I’m sure it’s great. But it’s meant to make you think about having a “unique selling point” – something that your review can offer that people won’t be able to find elsewhere. Do you manage to bring a humorous slant to it? Do you have a specific or rare expertise (eg. wouldn’t it have been an interesting take on things if a priest posted his thoughts on the aforementioned Da Vinci Code)? Is your opinion vastly different to that of everyone else? Have you managed to be the first one to review something?Whatever you decide your unique selling point is, make sure you emphasise it! There's some good advice along these lines in Matt Cutts' article on a blogging technique know as linkbait.6. You don’t always need to be a smartarse – sometimes it’s better to write as if you’re chatting to your friends. Writing like a smartarse is something I must admit to being (very!) guilty of at times. It can be very tempting to get wrapped up in metaphors and tie yourself in linguistic knots. While this may make you feel like Charles Dickens, often it can just confuse the reader. By all means write well and write interestingly, but don’t try to translate everything to purple prose – sometimes it really is better to just write exactly what you said as you walked out of the cinema, without looking up 27 different synonyms for “crappy chic-flick”.7. Compare to other similar products – but not too much!One of the advantages of being an expert in your field is that you can place a new release in context – is it better or worse than the author’s previous work, are there other better alternatives in a similar genre, and so on. This is something it’s definitely worth doing if you don’t already, as it can lend your writing an air of expertise and authority.The thing to remember though is not to do it too much, as it’s easy to end up writing more about other products than the one you’re meant to be reviewing. This is something beginners tend to do a lot – many of my early music reviews read like a who’s who of the genre (probably in an attempt to show off my knowledge!), so watch out for it.8. Strong quotable sentences are great, but let them come naturally. One of the best ways to learn to write good reviews is to read professional ones, and try to imitate them. What bits of their style do you like? What ideas can you borrow? One of the dangers of this though is that you can easily write reviews full of the sort of phrases that appear on movie posters – “a rip-roaring thrill ride for all the family!”.Needless to say, clichés like that should be avoided at all costs. And even if they’re not clichés, such sentences can often be superficial. So don’t go looking for them. If they genuinely serve a purpose and help you say what you want to say, then great. But if you’re just writing something because it sounds like a movie poster quote, then really it’s just a platitude.Having said that, if you do come up with a killer quote, you may want to consider using it as your review's headline; Freelance Switch outlines the importance of "writing headlines that kill" in order to attract readers.9. Be specific! Used in conjunction with the tips on comparison (above) and stating the obvious (below), this can be one of the things that really makes your review a resource that people are going to return to months, or even years, after you’ve written it.Much of this applies to reviews of events: touring bands, theatre shows etc. It’s easy to write a cookie-cutter review of a gig that does a good job of describing the music and the songs that were played. But be specific: what happened on the night you saw the show that will differentiate your review from that of anyone who saw the show on a different night? For example, in live music reviews, try and include a notable quote from the stage. Mention the atmosphere. What about context: has the artist been in the news recently? If you're reviewing a pop star's first show after a big court case, this could even form part of your unique selling point, as described above. Although mostly useful in a performing arts sense, these same techniques are useful for anything: just ask yourself, “what was unique about my experience?” This stops your reviews committing the cardinal sin of reading like a press-release, and as long as you don’t start telling boring personal anecdotes like our friend from the Amazon review above, you’ll be fine!10. Don’t be afraid to state the obvious. You’re an expert in your field – anything you don’t know about the works of Stephen King isn’t worth knowing! So it can be a bit frustrating as a reviewer to have to hold your reader’s hand and explain to them that he’s a quite well-known horror writer, and that they may even have heard of <i>The Shining</i> – it was made into a film, you know?Obviously, that depends on your audience. If it’s for the Stephen King fan club, by all means go straight into depth. But if it’s for a more general audience, don’t underestimate how little your reader may actually know about the subject. There’s no need to give a full life story, but a bit of background info is always good. When reviewing bands for example: where are they from, how many members are there, what’s their biggest hit, and so on. If nothing else, it means your first paragraph’s sorted!

Jonathan Deamer is a freelance music journalist, amateur writer and wannabe cultural commentator. Basically, he listens to too much music, reads too many books, has too many opinions, and likes to justify these things to himself with the use of pretentious titles.

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CD Review: TV On The Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain

Jonathan Deamer — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 14:50:22 EDT

TV On The Radio may reference Super Mario World in the title of their sophomore long-player, but that's about as frivolous as it gets. The Brooklyn quintet have much bigger issues than computer games on their minds. Though what would you expect from a band whose reaction to Hurricane Katrina was to almost immediately write, record, and release via their website a song criticizing the actions of the Bush administration in the wake of the tragedy? Return To Cookie Mountain is a political album. But not left vs. right or Democrat vs. Republican party politics. The politics of life, love and, as they put it, "good vibes."Unsurprisingly, a record that deals with such grand narratives isn't going to be the most immediate of listens. On first spin, it seems like 56 minutes of psychobabble and musically throwing everything they know at you. But when you're feeling contemplative, listen quietly. Maybe in the middle of the night. With headphones. The sort of multi-layered epics on show here take time to appreciate. And even then there's so much going on at once they sound like the sort of free-for-all jams that might be played at the local Arcade Fire Anti-War Club's social night. But eventually you'll realize that every note of Cookie Mountain's double-choc-chip-and-the-kitchen-sink instrumentation works towards a single purpose: touching your soul in a way only the rarest of records can.Not exactly faint praise, sure, but you just listen to any track here and claim differently. Go on, any of them'll do. They've each got more ideas in their 4-5 minutes than most bands have in a bloated "best of" box set. The opener, "I Was A Lover"? Stuttering CD-skip beats and looped brass stabs. Standout track "Wolf Like Me"? Droning synth bass and euphorically chanted vocals. How about fan fave "Province"? Well, guest vocal appearances from David Bowie are normally a pretty good guarantee of quality. And light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel pop songs like this are just one of the reasons why The Thin White Duke loves TV On The Radio, and why you will too.

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CD Review: Extended Seventies: The Dawning of the 12 Inch Era

Jonathan Deamer — Fri, 9 Jun 2006 13:06:45 EDT

You know when you love a tune so much that you just want another three minutes of it to dance, rock out, or brood to? Well, before the advent of the iPod and the "repeat" function, that’s what the 12-inch single was for. To keep early disco crowds moving even after the time limit imposed by a traditional seven-incher, bands started releasing extra long "12-inch mixes," and Extended Seventies: The Dawning of the 12 Inch Era, a UK-only release, gathers some of the (arguably) best examples of this art in a three-disc set.Divided into the loose categories of "disco classics," "pop," and "new wave," the compilation is perhaps at its best when showcasing the first of these styles. After all, it’s what the format was invented for, and the 14 joyous minutes of Sugarhill Gang’s full-length "Rapper’s Delight" are a lesson in how to keep a groove going beyond the 180-second mark. Closer to traditional John Travolta fare, however, is the Andrea True Connection’s "More, More, More." On the chart side of things, Diana Ross proves with "Love Hangover" that there was still life in her after the heyday of The Supremes, and Donna Summer's hit "Love To Love You Baby" could still make just as much of an impression today. With the collection’s "new wave" disc, though, things get somewhat less romantic. Almost seven minutes of Public Image Ltd. only serve to show that John Lydon should have been told to stick to three chords when he first experimented with wah ‘n’ bass. Meanwhile, Sparks’ "Beat the Clock" is just repetitive, proving that extended mixes should be disco-only territory. Contributions from Blondie and Tubeway Army are undeniably classic, but really, beyond the most High Fidelity of music obsessives, who’s going to want an album on which Chic share space with The Flying Lizards? And wouldn’t the real list-making nerds demand the original vinyl in the first place?And there’s the real problem with this set. Most of the tracks -- rarities or hits -- are great on their own, but as a coherent listening experience, the selection is too broad. Too varied. And there’s just too damn much of it. But isn’t excess the name of the game? When you’ve gone to the trouble of getting those five extra inches, you might as well use them.

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Interview - Giant Drag

Jonathan Deamer — Thu, 9 Mar 2006 09:31:03 EST

"Shut up before I come and take a dump down your throats". Not the sort of thing you'd want to hear from a girl you're hoping to introduce to your elderly relatives, but just the sort of sit-up-and-listen shocker you wish more of our play-it-safe rock stars would come out with. Such a proclamation is especially surprising when it comes from a mouth in which it looks like butter wouldn't melt - that of Giant Drag singer and guitarist Annie Hardy.Along with the other half of her band, simultaneous drummer and synth-player Micah Calabrese, she makes for a larger-than-life presence on stage. But offstage, in the dressing room of Liverpool's Carling Academy before the final night of a 12-date tour with The Cribs, she behaves in a manner much more befitting of her china-doll beauty. Softly spoken, verging on shy, and fiddling nervously with a bottle lid throughout the interview, she still isn't exactly your typical girl next door though, explaining her onstage persona and excrement-related heckler baiting as "just something that comes out. I don't want people to, like, fuck with me. You've gotta stand up for yourself onstage, especially when you're a girl. No-one's going 'show your tits!' at The Cribs".Based in LA, Giant Drag have been making waves here in the UK since the release of their Lemona EP in 2004. Their debut album Hearts and Unicorns has just received its full UK release, and they're busy taking their spacey dream-pop songs around the country's venues. And with just the two of them, they've become pretty close, finishing each other's sentences and mocking each other as only best friends can. "We get separate hotel rooms once in a while, but even then we just end up talking to each other on the phone" says Micah.Annie: "It's weird, we're together all the time. We hang out a lot together at home too. Obviously, we get along very well. Although we do have a lot of space really on tour. We can even find space from each other on the bus." Micah: "But we always end up both sitting in the two front seats anyway." Annie: "My God, we're so gay!"There's that take-her-home-to-meet-your-mother charm again. And she seems to have a bit of a penchant for that three-letter synonym of "homosexual", with a recent single being titled "Kevin is Gay". "Kevin is just a guy though," she says, " the song is nothing to do with him. But this guy, a friend of ours, hacked into our website, so it's a response to him. We posted up on there, 'Kevin, stop posting all this stupid crap on our website. Come and see us tomorrow when we'll be debuting our new song "Kevin is Gay"'. And the title just stuck."Another song of theirs whose title has nothing to do with its lyrical content is the surprisingly radio-friendly "You Fuck Like My Dad". With song names like that, you can't help but wonder whether Annie's parents feel a little uncomfortable with their daughter's chosen career path. "They love it!" she says. "They understand my demented sense of humour, although it was a bit of a shock for them at first. 'You Fuck Like My Dad' must be the gnarliest thing I've ever said, but they like the song".Micah, though, doesn't care much for such controversy and showboating: "If someone asks me about the band, I'll normally just start talking about the instrumentation like 'Oh, Annie plays guitar and sings, I play drums and keyboard'." From a musical family, he's been playing the keyboard since the age of four, and now his left hand does all the work of a bass player. He and Annie see their minimalist line-up as a good constraint though, with her commenting "Fucking bastard's already playing synthesiser and drums at the same time - imagine what would happen if there was more!"It's no surprise that Giant Drag's record label wasn't keen on titles like "My Dick Sux" and the aforementioned father-love anthem. So, keen to maximise retail opportunities and profit margins, it censored them on the record sleeve in order to stock the US version of the album in �ber-chains like Walmart. "You've gotta choose your battles when dealing with the fucking record label" though, according to Annie. She's obviously not one for self-censorship, but while many would kick up a fuss at such label intervention, she says "I'm not gonna be like 'Fuck that! I want that U in the word fuck!' I don't think it's compromising our integrity to asterisk out a word on a piece of paper". Looks like she knows how to play the industry game. She's not keen on it though, describing the band's recent night out at the NME Awards as "Just a bunch of industry jerk-offs being drunk". She later refers to the ceremony as "the Shit Awards", hastily adding "not that I think the NME is shit or anything". And this keenness not to make enemies doesn't just extend to the music press - when pushed to name a band he really hates at the moment, Micah remains stubbornly tight-lipped, pretty much summing up the band's keep-the-peace attitude in general. For all Annie's controversy-courting, Giant Drag are really just two friends who love their music, and don't want any trouble. While waiting for a soundcheck, they're content to amuse themselves with a laptop and an internet connection, and when they get home from touring Annie says she just wants to stay in and watch TV. And what's her ultimate career ambition? "I'd just like to be remembered as a kind, honest person...that had an awesome rack". You can't say fairer than that.

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Concert review: The Cribs, Giant Drag, The Jeffrey Lewis Band

Jonathan Deamer — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 16:39:23 EST

26th February 2006 @ Carling Academy, Liverpool One can easily imagine three bands getting pretty close over the course of a twelve-date tour, and consequently tonight's final gig is a bit of a love-in. But in between giving gushing thanks to everyone from the tour bus driver to headliners The Cribs, Jeffrey Lewis finds time to showcase his acoustic-led beatnik rants. A product of the same New York anti-folk scene that spawned The Moldy Peaches, he introduces standout track "The Big Mystery of Communism" as "a little documentary I've been working on for a while". A spoken word diatribe, accompanied by violins and cartoon Soviet Block projections, it's far more complex than anything tour mates Giant Drag dare attempt. But with lowbrow song titles like "My Dick Sux", you'd be a fool to expect anything overly sophisticated from the duo anyway. What the Californians lack in complexity though, they make up for in power. Infamous opener "You Fuck Like My Dad" seems to defy the fact that there are only two of them onstage, with drummer Micah Calabrese hitting notes on a synth with his left hand in between snare hits. There's off-kilter Soundgarden riffing in places, and floaty ethereal guitars in others, all held together by deceptively simple pop melodies. Despite such great tunes though, singer and guitarist Annie Hardy is the show's real centrepiece. Her song titles are a window onto her twisted psyche, and talking in a babyish tone all evening while making statements like "I haven't worn a bra all tour, just for you guys" only serves to increase your view of her as a bit of a nutjob. On the eve of her band's UK album release, she's a star in the making. Already bona fide stars though are the Kaiser Chiefs' Yorkshire mates, The Cribs, as evidenced by the screaming girls and stadium-sized light show that greet their arrival onstage. Following in the grand tradition of pub-rock power trios, their shout along Jam facsimiles aren't exactly ground breaking, but they get the front row putting their fists in the air nonetheless. While Giant Drag are justly proud of their minimalism, The Cribs cover it up by pulling cliché rock star poses: standing on the drumkit, ripping their shirts off and proudly proclaiming how rock and roll they are by "playing against doctor's orders" after singer Ryan's hospitalisation at the NME Awards. They do have a couple of aces up their sleeves though. "Hey Scenesters" is undeniably great, with added bombast from tonight's extended drum intro. Last years single "Martell", meanwhile, with its hooky refrain of "someone's got their eye on you" is probably the most infectious thing the Academy has ever heard. The band crack open a bottle of champagne before the last song to celebrate a successful tour. But really they should be celebrating the fact that an otherwise average group has been saved by a couple of great singles and a lot of posturing. More reviews and articles like this on my music blog Bloody Awful Poetry.

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CD Review: Mclusky - Mcluskyism

Jonathan Deamer — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 13:07:51 EST

For many, this album will be a first introduction to the wonderful world of Mclusky. And that's a real shame, as they'll have missed three essential albums of puns, guitar breaking and noise making. One of the most underrated bands of recent memory, the Welsh three piece have been sorely missed since their split last year, and now dot the final "i" and cross the final "t" on their all too short and sweet career with this "best of" set.Just like the band's music, Mcluskyism is totally utilitarian: stripped down and bullshit free. It charts their progress chronologically from their first single, 2000's aural brick-through-a-window, "Joy", right up to their final album's "Without MSG I'm Nothing". As you'd expect of a band whose songs rarely exceeded three minutes, lean is the name of the game here: twelve tracks, half an hour, no messing. But that's all you need to capture the essence of their scratchy Shellac roar."To Hell With Good Intentions" was always a Mclusky live favourite, and its chest-shaking bass distortion is as powerful now as it ever was. Like an anthem for all that they stood for, no other band could come out with anti-hipster couplets like "Our band is better than your band/we've got more songs than a song convention". Debut album highlight "Rice Is Nice" hurtles past almost faster than you can hear it. And despite hints of - whisper it - a melody on some of the more recent tracks, every song is an Albini-produced breezeblock. As with most "best of" collections, there's nothing here for those who are already fans. They're best off catching the very limited, very un-Mclusky 3 disc B-sides and rarities edition of Mcluskyism. But for anyone who wants to pretend that they were there first time round when Mclusky are revered as cult heroes in twenty years' time, you won't find a better education.More articles and reviews like this on my music blog, Bloody Awful Poetry.

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CD Review: Sway - This Is My Demo

Jonathan Deamer — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 08:05:44 EST

Sway's very much your typical rags-to-riches hip-hop success story. North London born and bred, MOBO award winning Derek Andrew Safo sits alongside grime contemporaries Dizzee Rascal and Kano as one of the shining lights of the section in Virgin Megastore that's horribly labelled "urban". This debut album sounds anything but typical though.Take the lyrics, for one. This Is My Demo's opener by the same name. It is a biting statement of intent, part manifesto, part Lord's Prayer for the disciples of grime. For all the talk of how "real" Mike Skinner's tales of kebab shop scuffles are, he's just a stereotype of a Reebok Classic-wearing wideboy. Sway's stories are real though. From "Pretty Ugly Husband"'s condemnation of domestic abuse to the self-deprecating skits taking aim at his African heritage, this is life as it's actually lived by many. Even the album's most light-hearted track, "Download", is an anti-MP3 argument more eloquent than anything the RIAA has been able to come up with.But he's not just a comedian-cum-philosopher. Sway's DIY production work rivals any of the American big names. The chilled harpsichord vibe of "Little Derek", for example, would perfectly suit a Snoop Dogg poolside-gin-and-juice video. Most of the album's the complete opposite of that though, with vicious 100MPH spitting and busy hi-hats. "Flo Fashion" has some of the most powerful sub-bass you'll ever hear - an especially amazing production feat given that This Is My Demo is completely self-financed and released. There's none of the needless genre cross-pollination that Kano's Home Sweet Home suffered from. For the most part this is the pure sound of London.Not completely though. The last four of the fourteen tracks here are in a similar mould to "Little Derek", but rather than being sat by the pool, they're more stuck on the bottom. Despite these elements of wishy-washy R 'n' B though, it looks like we've finally found a UK rapper who can hold his own across the pond.More reviews and articles like this on my music blog, Bloody Awful Poetry.

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I'm Oh So Pretentious

Jonathan Deamer — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 23:28:32 EST

I saw a bit of a programme called The 100 Greatest Music Videos Ever on TV yesterday. Despite being just another of those inane knocked-up-in-ten-minutes list-shows presented by the observational comedian du jour, it proved to be vaguely interesting. And the fact that it featured about three Bj�rk videos, one of which was "It's Oh So Quiet", reminded me of a conversation I had with my Bj�rk-obsessed brother the other day.He said "The only song of her's I really don't like is "It's Oh So Quiet". It's far too samey. Doesn't have any of the experimentalism or electronic bits that make her other stuff so great."To which I replied, "Nah, she's really doing something different there. It's post-modern: taking a 1940s song out of context and performing it in a current-day pop style with a semi-old/semi-modern video and her unique vocals. That's pushing the envelope when you think of the sort of identical note-for-note cover an American Idol contestant would do.""Yeah, but it's sooo annoying"."Maybe, but post-modern art can be appreciated from various angles, not just pure aesthetics, but the concepts behind the art. And I appreciate the concept of what the song tries to be more than what it actually sounds like. Like a poem: you can't truly enjoy it until you understand what it's about, the context behind it, and what went into making it"."But is it even that different to the original?""Not hugely, but it's like the idea of "ready-mades" in modern art. Taking a household object and putting it in a gallery allows you to appreciate it from a different perspective, not for its usefulness but for its beauty. Like Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain". In the same way, hearing an old big band song in a pop context allows you to appreciate it differently".Damn, I can be a pretentious bastard sometimes. More posts like this on my music blog, Bloody Awful Poetry. Edited: [GH]

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CD review: Panic! At The Disco - A Fever You Can't Sweat Out

Jonathan Deamer — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 06:51:48 EST

Just as anyone who was anyone a couple of years ago had a "The" in their band name, perhaps 2006 will be the year of the exclamation mark. �Forward Russia!, The Go! Team, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, and now Panic! At The Disco - it seems bizarre punctuation is going to be this year's equivalent of the skinny-tie-and-suit-jacket trend.P!ATD probably never cared about such trends though - they've got an eclectic range of influences that put the current crop of post-Strokes wannabes to shame. Admittedly they've got some twinges of emo, but who else can claim Fleetwood Mac and Counting Crows as their favourite bands with no trace of irony?Friends since school, the four-piece have used such influences to come up with a debut that sounds like an entire record store on one disc. Cramming 19th century accordion next to bang-up-to-date synth zaps, they've divided the album into two halves: the first futuristic, the second nostalgic. Yet all the while they stay cohesive enough to provide some three-minute gems of kitchen sink emo-pop. The wonderfully titled "The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage" is a perfect example of this: a pumping acoustic guitar-led party song, breaking down halfway through to some nigh-on euphoric dance bleeps.Unsurprisingly, that forms part of the album's "futuristic" half, but the more retrospective side of A Fever You Can't Sweat Out is no less inventive. The band's Las Vegas roots show themselves on the camp-as-Christmas show tune "There's A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven't Thought Of It Yet." Complete with brass section and Lovecats-style jazz piano, you can almost see the accompanying tap-dance routine. Let's just hope the record buying public are ready for such frivolity, because the world needs to hear Panic! At The Disco.More reviews and articles like this on my music blog Bloody Awful Poetry.

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CD Review: Prefuse 73 - Security Screenings

Jonathan Deamer — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 12:44:40 EST

Scott Herren, the producer extraordinaire behind the Prefuse 73 alias, says that Security Screenings is "based on reactions to certain things that happened to me during the past year or so". By the sound of this album, he had a much more exciting 2005 than many of us.Way before that though, since 1997, he's dabbled in electronica, as well as the more rap-based sound of last year's Surrounded By Silence. As you'd expect of a man that simultaneously releases records under at least five different pseudonyms, his latest work is anything but straightforward. An amalgam of both his previous directions, Security Screenings can only be described as "post hip-hop": mellow glitchy beats on one side of the coin, with sampled MCs chopped up beyond recognition on the other.Whether such a coin is worth much, however, is a different matter. The cut-and-paste acrobatics are sometimes too clever for their own good, with opening montage '"The Letter P" verging on unlistenable stop-startiness. When it doesn't sound like a scratched DJ Shadow CD though, there are some great moments to be had. Album highlight "Creating Cyclical Headaches", a joint composition with Four Tet, is all the better for not veering from the tried and tested "folktronica" sound popularised by the collaborator's own Rounds. It's certain proof of the old adage "less is more" that when Prefuse chooses a single idea and runs with it, he's far more successful then when he cooks up a musical bubble-and-squeak. You can't blame a guy for trying something different though, and over the course of this disc's forty minutes, Prefuse's sonic experimentation pays off. The resulting album is one of the most interesting you'll hear this year. Not one of the best, mind - just one of the ones that's most likely to make you sit up and say, "what the hell was that?" But when he can turn that wow-factor from studio doodles into full-blown songs, Scott Herren will really be onto something. More reviews and articles like this on my music blog Bloody Awful Poetry.Editor's note: This work of yours now has another venue for success - and more eyes - at the Advance.net Web sites, a site affiliated with about 12 newspapers.One such site is here.

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