Writing About Writing Reviews

photo by mark raheja

I wrote my first music review the other day. It was of a show by the Spinto Band.
I've written a lot about music and the role of music reviews, but I had never actually written a review.
Reviews are an incredibly powerful part of the music consumption process (likely true for film, literature, performances etc...) but I am not sure how often reviewers or readers think about the role critics play in creating awareness and directing the discourse of a particular film, album, or play.

Music is a difficult thing to describe. Reviewers vocalize consumers' experiences with albums. This process, whether done successfully or poorly, ultimately affects the way consumers perceive an artist. Reviewers tend to rely on short-hand descriptions or comparisons to other bands to convey the sound or style of any given artist. The problem with this process is that most of the time these labels and comparisons do little to explain what a particular artist is trying to accomplish, musically or otherwise. More importantly, these labels tend to stick and can serve to brand the artist. One needn't look far into a review of U.K. band Keane to see comparisons to Coldplay, or read a review of Montreal's Wolf Parade to see how they have been branded by their links to Modest Mouse and the Arcade Fire.

In writing my review, the most difficult thing to avoid was comparisons to other bands. It is seems like such a natural way to describe music that a review without comparisons seems empty. But as simple as these comparisons and short hand descriptions are to make, they can result in serious expectations about an artist that may or may not be in line with how they see themselves or want themselves represented. Consider the frustration in the quote from the lead singer of Wolf Parade (from the Montreal Gazette): "Every interview is completely weird. Each story ends up being five paragraphs. The first is about how nobody knew anything about us until Isaac Brock came along, the second is about Sub Pop, the third is about the Arcade Fire and the Montreal music scene, and at the end they throw in a quote or two. Why f--king bother? Go on Pitchfork, read our bio, call and get us to say one or two funny things and you're done."

I am under no illusion that my review has solved the issue. What is needed, I think, from me or anyone writing about music is the realization that each adjective attributed to a band is much more than simply an adjective. A review isn't just a review; it's a template for expectations.