psychedelics replied to your link: Ty Segall / White Fence: Hair | Album Reviews | Pitchfork

pitchfork reviews are always so lengthy and uninformative

This isn’t lengthy, I think the length is fine. It’s just…so basic and surface level. You can tell it was just assigned to be assigned, or the writer picked it up because, “Hey! I think I heard a Ty Segall song once and I thought it was pretty cool so yeah.”

If you’re in the business of producing “good content” you’d better be using the best tools at your disposal. That might mean taking an otherwise decent writer off a review simply because they don’t know the medium. Everyone has an opinion, sure. But if the critical world is still concerned with reestablishing some sort of legitimacy to the art of “the review,” then editors/publications can’t get all willy-nilly with assignments or else all their content goes to shit. Surface level, basic read-through bullshit.

“I listened to some things and heard some sounds and I wasn’t immediately offended. A+”

I much prefer reading reviews where the writer obviously has some grasp on the world from whence the art being reviewed came. Might be in the minority on this, but I find that the best way to “discuss art” (be it music, film, etc.) is to know the foundations as best as you can. You want to write about garage rock? Fine. Then you better know all the lingo, you better be able to chart its history and find all those little connections between the many genres the style intersects and pulls from and you better have a track record in talking about said genre or else I’m not going to take you very seriously.

I guess that’s what it all boils down to — the writer failed to establish any sort of legitimacy/fluency with the “scene” (as it were). I think the miniscule mistake of still referring to White Fence as a San Francisco band (it’s not!) sort of proves my point.

Off the soapbox.