Josh doesn't like the reviews of Stephen Thomas Erlewine, who seems to be head honcho at the ever-so-convenient
All Music Guide. I pretty much completely agree. The guy (who is quite outshone by the direct evaluations of John Bush and Sean Cooper, or the vivid descriptions of Jason Ankeny and our very own Ned Raggett) seems to bear all the hallmarks of annoyingly competent reviewing: tedious intros detailing both relevant and irrelevant aspects of the band's history, despite AMG also providing comprehensive biographies; the requisite vague statements about "authenticity", "meaningfulness", "deepness" and "timelessness"; and the most amazing tendency to repeatedly flip-flop around a single idea I've ever come across. The man's crowning moment to date must be his
orgiastic equivocation over the Oasis's
Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants. To whit:
"If it were up to Noel, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants would have been a mellow, midtempo collection of mild psychedelia, spiked with hints of big beat and electronica to prove that he's with it. And that's sort of what the album is, at least in the most reductive sense. The question is whether that's a good or a bad thing."
Really, ladies and gentlemen, does any comment need to be made? Anyway, I guess it just annoys me that the potential for valuable musical criticism exists on all fronts, and yet it is repeatedly strangled by aging musicologists and past-it loudmouths who in an effort to either push the party line or prove their relevance fail to ever come to grips with the music itself.