I was just reading
this article at
Signal Drench. I suppose one of the major things I like about using the blogging format to talk about music is that there isn't the pressure of having to write a proper review, 'cuz it's just a blog post. I dislike the actual reviews I write (which is the reason why I haven't written for
NYLPM in a while) because the struggle to fit in everything I feel I need to say about an album, or even a song, comes at the expense of writerly concerns (or vice versa), and even then it's generally only 10% of what I think.
I now find it difficult to not have an internal discussion about the music I'm listening to when I'm playing it, so I end up with heaps of diffuse ideas that just pop out at me, and which wouldn't tie in coherently in a proper review. Hence blogging, and posts which talk about different music but with a certain argument in mind. I think in general reviewers, both in magazines and on the net, feel the need to put the music ahead of their own opinions, in a sense. The concept of "giving every album a fair chance", as Signal Drench (who are nonetheless a great bunch) say they do, seems to slightly undermine what I think is the most valuable goal in music reviewing, which is not to pass out wise, even-handed assessments of albums so much as to inspire the reader to be as passionate about music as the reviewer is.
