Memes aside, there are people that ACTUALLY take this guy seriously...

Memes aside, there are people that ACTUALLY take this guy seriously. There's people out there who consider his reviews "good" If you're one of those people, how? He doesn't discuss music in any meaningful manner. When he describes music he just uses adjectives and buzzwords "slavered in reverb" "crushing distortion", he never once gives any insight into how the music is actually written. You'd think as a music critique he'd actually have some knowledge in theory, you'd think if you were to be taken seriously as a music critique you'd be able to at least identify the chord progressions, the harmonies, time signatures, rhythm structures and point out why they work with the music and set the tone.

TLDR: how can you possibly critique music without talking about the actual theory behind the music?

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christgau posting is some of the most effective bait there is

>there are people that ACTUALLY take this guy seriously.
There aren’t, I’m the primary Christgau poster and he hates all my favorites. He’s a hundred times wittier than any person on Sup Forums however.

Also
>You'd think as a music critique he'd actually have some knowledge in theory, you'd think if you were to be taken seriously as a music critique you'd be able to at least identify the chord progressions, the harmonies, time signatures, rhythm structures and point out why they work with the music and set the tone.
None of this is relevant or important to music journalism.

This
Lots of squares on Sup Forums think journalists and critics are always the same people
>inb4 he called himself the dean of american rock critics

>He’s a hundred times wittier than any person on Sup Forums however.

snark is not the same as wit, brainlet

he's an awful writer

>squares

hello oldfag!

He's not for brainlets. RYM fags that need a story alongside a review that has nothing to do with the music need not apply.

Watch it, bub, or I'll bean you with my clobbering mitts

The problem with popular music journalism is that most of the time you're attacking the artist's image and/or fanbase rather than their actual music.

See I don't need a story, just something that actually describes the music

except it does.

brainlets, again, need not apply.

This man invented the nu male, stop stanning so hard it's poor form

I mean, see here. He was rocking the nu male look like 30 years before the term was invented.

He’s probably the greatest writer in (non-literary) art criticism ignoring Robert Hughes.

>metal fans still this emotionally used up by my boy bobby’s wit

Like I'm going to learn anything of significance about an album from this guy's shitty attempts at postmodern critiques.

MUSIC CRITICS:

>God tier
None you fucking retard

>Great tier
Chris Ott
Lester Bangs

>Good tier
Piero Scaruffi
Alex Ross

>Low tier
Anthony Fantano
Robert Christgau
Deep Cuts
Samuel Andreyev

SHIT TIER
Rolling Stone
Pitchfork
NME
Spectrum Pulse / all Youtube spergs

I’m a better critic than any of those art illiterates.

I don't believe you.

>Chris Ott
>Lester Bangs
You realize professional music “critics” are always art illiterates? There has never been an exception.

DAILY REMINDER THAT CHRISTGAU WAS BEATEN UP BY FOOTBALL JOCKS IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PROJECTS THE IMAGE OF HIS OLD TORMENTORS ONTO METAL FANS.

It's amusing I think for all sides. Nobody is really trolled, the guy just exemplifies the difference in viewpoint and sensibility beween old Gen X indie / punk sensibilities and that of younger millennials and Zers. (I know the guy was a Baby Boomer but his old guard critic mentality is more that of the punks which was dominant in the Gen X punk intelligensia).

Like, we're at a point now where metal has been redeemed, and the smug snarky tone of the punk years and its given opinions have been deemed old hat. And through all this, Gen Xers seem roundly incapable of recognizing and accepting the sensibilities and changes in younger attitudes, like "that's now how youthful rebellion is supposed to look!"

So it's fun laughing at old critic types, who are the living caricature and were early-adopters of an indie/punk sensibility that's now disparaged as 'cuck' / 'new male'.

Even if you're a younger art kid and lean kind of left, you consider these bespectacled indie critic types fucking pussies.

this is literally what's going on in this entire thread, just ignore the butt hurt metal fans and move on

Am I supposed to just take you at your word that you can do better than that?

>Memes aside, there are people that ACTUALLY take this guy seriously.
i think there was one musician who got a A+ from him and said that he specifically makes music for christgau

It's basic, it's rude, kids love it, parents hate it. But the closer you look, the stupider and more delusory it seems. Metal isn't basic--it cultivates a pseudo-virtuosity that negates content. The dreams it promulgates are usually foolish and often destructive. Eighty per cent of the "people" who like it are male, and 98 per cent of them are white.

No, I agree with this, and metal kiddies hate it because they know it’s true. Sorry drone.

Critics were like that in general. They're a type. A kind of smug, 'superior' (even as it considers itself socialist) type lingering around certain cities who could never make anything creative but have all these academically and politically-determined notions about how it should be. But when you look at everything ever made of value it was very rarely if ever made by guys like this or with their mentality / ideas.

Reminder Christgau is 6’5 and used to beat the fuck out of people in the New York no-wave scene, and would easily beat the shit out of your favorite metal “musician.”

Keep beating a dead drum, geezer. Nobody cares now.

How's it feel to have been irrelevant art-idea-wise for about 15 years now?

His whole 'critique' is solely based in the fact that people he presumes might have been metalheads beat him up. What an utterly useless and irrelevant basis for one's criteria.

Metal has never produced anything remotely close to art. If metal had a 15 meter pole, it wouldn’t even nick the art world. When I want a good laugh, I pull up your favorite metal musicians and read their lyric sheets.

The key to capsule reviews is to distill the overall impression of the album into one holistic statement. Does this result in some nebulous reviews? A few. Can some albums not really be described in these terms? Sure.

At his worst, Christgau could be petulant or stick himself behind insider language. On the other hand, many long-form reviews prattle on forever with technical specifications and say nothing of any real insight.

In terms of quality descriptive writing, the hierarchy goes "what it means" > "what it stands for" > "what it is."

>andreyev below scruffy
so buzzwords and homophobia is better than actual music theory discussion? good taste with alex ross though loved his work on Kingdom Come

Haha don't try to talk to me about art. And I'm well aware of metal's goofy aspects but hip-hop has those too (hell, all rave styles as well) and we can sort all that out and deem where the vitality is.

And cultural art (that's what it is after all, not 'high art') doesn't need to be based in these literalist, 'socialist realist'-determined 'serious' and 'pertinent' 'issues', when in fact it's much more authentically channeling the actual energies and passions of a real working class culture that critics have never had any understanding of.

>(I know the guy was a Baby Boomer but
It's funny because in spite of that, Christgau never really did like hippies that much or most of the effects of the counterculture era on rock (namely replacing short, uptempo singles with long, drawn-out AOR). He thought punk was returning rock to that short, uptempo singles format.

>throat screaming about satan and vikings to guitar wank
>real working class culture

>when in fact it's much more authentically channeling the actual energies and passions of a real working class culture that critics have never had any understanding of.
What critics really like are art school dropouts making snarky, self-aware songs that shit on society.

societal criticism is one of the main points of producing art, it's a hell of a lot more meaningful than singing about dragons and vikings

>actual music theory discussion

He's obviously knowledgeable when it comes to technical aspects, but his dissections kill the music. They say nothing about how a listener engages with music as an aesthetic experience.

>people who still don't know that the whole Satan thing in metal came from the blues

Ah, yes, I'm sure cosmopolitans living in NY know much better about what embodies the drives and passions of the working class than the ACTUAL WORKING CLASS do.

And again, other working class styles like hip-hop and gabber are just as cartoonish in their own way. Almost as if, hm, this imagery is just symbolic, and not to be read only in terms of some literal, one-sided Marxian discourse, which said class couldn't care less about and certainly don't ever think in terms of.

"Societal criticism" (always limited to strict academic-theoretical dictates) is the corny recourse of the uninspired and aesthetically mediocre.

Why do you keep attacking hip hop like anyone here gives a fuck about hip hop?
>cosmopolitan New York
Literally who? Again, Metal isn’t art. It isn’t “high art” it isn’t “folk art,” it’s trash.

what then is the source of inspired and aesthetically brilliant art?

Yeah IDK man, but I don't just always want to listen to the Dolls and Patti Smith all the time and Christgau and Bangs need to get off my case.

I love hip-hop, I'm saying that it's inconsistent to attack metal but then be fine with hip-hop or hardcore rave or whatever. Things don't have to be about historical materialism and 'social realities' in the most literal, straightforward, dry terms. Holy fuck that's so fucking boring.

Christgau is the OG shitposter.

What are you even talking about faggot? Something like Pere Ubu says a whole hell of a lot more than the entirety of metal has over the past four decades.

I’m going to assume you’re angry actual working class music is against capitalism, probably because you’re a middle class yuppie metal faggot who has zero understanding of the working class you seem to love.

Ok fair enough. They like music made by similar people to themselves. That doesn't mean the music is objectively better or more meaningful, just that critics relate to it better.

>Rave
>Hip hop
>metal
Yeah, into the trash it goes.

You'll never know, especially that you even ask in that way. You're the kind of outsider forever combing through other's movements looking for that EXPLANATION, that THEORY that will show you how to do it. You'll never understand it or have access to it, nor anyone like you. That's why you are you.

reminder that he has pere ubu in his top 10. you're just a bunch of poseur avant-teen plebs and chrstgau is the real og who understand pop music

...

I'm not an artist, never wanted to be. I was just curious as to what your opinion on the subject was because you seemed to have such a strong stance against mine, but it's clear now you don't have an opinion of your own, and are just disagree with others for the sake of it

Christgau is like a lot of critics from his era in that he can't escape the tired, boring 1960s idea that music is only worthwhile if it promotes some progressive political cause.

This is so incorrect it’s like saying Scaruffi thinks age limits are highly necessary.

the typical line against him is that he just likes fun poppy music, with no regard for the actual meaning or cultural significance. you have no idea what you're talking about

>It's basic, it's rude, kids love it, parents hate it. But the closer you look, the stupider and more delusory it seems. Metal isn't basic--it cultivates a pseudo-virtuosity that negates content. The dreams it promulgates are usually foolish and often destructive. Eighty per cent of the "people" who like it are male, and 98 per cent of them are white.
This perfectly describes all the punk that christgau blows his load over

Cringe

>it cultivates a pseudo-virtuosity that negates content. The dreams it promulgates are usually foolish and often destructive
these are wrong then

Yes except punk rock is just basic three chord ditties with no guitar solos so it's more "authentic" than metal to the critics.

>with no guitar solos

Nope
SeeArt illiterate

>
>Nope
>See

Why the fuck did you do that? That guy was already replying to the post you disagreed with, you added literally nothing by posting what you did.

>Art illiterate
Autism alert

You can play solos if you're in a punk band alright. You'll get denounced by the community as inauthentic poseurs, but you can do it.

Why two charts? Is there any reason for not including metal other than Scraffit not giving them high scores?

ur mom
youtu.be/xHR-rzUjCzU

>"people"

i always thought the quotes were added by whoever originally started posting this for bait but he actually fucking wrote that

Literally, unquestionably this. I thought that was literally about Punk until Metal was mentioned. That's why people are looking back at so much of it now and kind of discounting it, and it's why the modern scene is where it is, and it's why so many stupid kids took up the act now and think it means "I'm supposed to not shower for a month and hate Republicans, right?"

Shit got stupid, and it's a moldy fucking joke now.