Why would anyone listen to a critic that re-adjusts their ratings...

Why would anyone listen to a critic that re-adjusts their ratings? If you can't stand up for what you think without plebs forcing you into capitulation then why even review anything?

I didn’t know the keyboardist from can reviewed music

Sometimes he's reevaluated his ratings in his Consumer Guide books, usually after several years have passed and an artist's career/legacy became more clearly defined.

examples

Black Sabbath S/T.

Original 1970 review:

"Bullshit necromancy? Bullshit necromancy! E"

Revised review from CGTT'70s:

"The worst of the counterculture on a plastic platter--drug-impaired reaction times, bullshit necromancy, lengthy solos. They claim to oppose war but if I don't believe in loving my enemies, then I don't believe in loving my allies and I've been worried that something like this was going to happen ever since I first saw a numerology column in an underground newspaper. C-"

>capitulation

good word

>lengthy solos

I don't get this part. Tony Iommi is mostly a riff guy, he doesn't even play extended-length leads.

E to an A

I think he's using the term to mean extended instrumental passages.

To be fair, NIB and Sleeping Village do have more than their fair share of solos

Someone emailed Christgau in 2002 asking why he downgraded Who's Next from A to A- in "Consumer Guide to the '70s". He replied that "I gave the album an A in the original review, but I dropped it slightly in 'Consumer Guide'. This was after seeing the band's later career unfold. I recently listened to Who's Next for the first time in a decade and although it wasn't so obvious in 1971, all the warning signs were there including the winding song structures, synth noodling, and Roger Daltrey's histrionic vocals. I still maintain that The Who Sell Out was their one truly great album."

Cripes, he sounds almost as bad as Metallica fans who complain why they didn't keep remaking RTL forever.

Except Metallica peaked with RTL-MOP and slid down the drain thereafter. The Who didn't hit their creative and compositional peak until the Tommy-Quadrophenia arc.

The Who weren't a band who were only as good as their collection of Mustaine riff tapes.

Not just a shitty writer, but half his reviews reference a band’s politics, or what he imagines those politics to be. He is such garbage.

Or he imagines what an artist's sex life is like.

>Staring at the Sea: The Singles [Elektra, 1986]
>Caught in his least lugubrious moments, Robert Smith stands revealed as a guy who gets a lot of skin because he believes he can live without it. He just won't play the "stupid game" that hooks the definitive "Let's Go to Bed," with its rotating I-don't-if-you-don't challenges--care, feel, want it, say it, and of course play it (and now let's go to bed, it's getting late). Guys who don't make passes because they wear glasses hate him for this, as do guys who don't get laid despite their muscular bods and heads. Above the fray, I think he's kind of amusing myself--a real cool type. B+

...

Why listen to a critic anyways? Make up your own opinion about something

also his wife cucked him

You know you can do both right? No idea why some people here insist that reading a critics opinion means that you blindly agree with their evaluation.

the album has been changed significantly since release, doesn't count

This. I find Xgau's writing style to be entertaining, but I never take anything he has to say seriously. I even wish he wouldve written more reviews on certain artists that he ducked out on after only 1 or 2 reviews.

>I even wish he wouldve written more reviews on certain artists that he ducked out on after only 1 or 2 reviews
What artists are we referring to here?

or talks about his own

I liked this a lot better once I heard how it was entirely about sex, which since it often buries its pulse took a while. Sex, not fucking. I'm nervous so you'd better pet me awhile sex. Lick the backs of my knees sex. OK, where my buttcheeks join my thighs sex. I'm still a little jumpy so you'd better pet me some more sex. How many different ways can we open our mouths together sex. We came 20 minutes ago and have Sunday morning ahead of us sex. Or, if fucking, tantric--the one where you don't move and let vaginal peristalsis do the work (yeah sure). The atmospherics, glitch techno, harps, glockenspiels, and shades of Hilmar Om Hilmarsson float free sometimes, and when she gets all soprano on your ass you could accuse her of spirituality. But with somebody this freaky you could get used to that. English lyrics provided, most of them dirty if you want. A-

Rush, Queen, Paul McCartney, Sparks, Cheap Trick, UFO, Dead Kennedys, etc

What more was there to say about Rush?

Or when he wrote an entire essay about wanting to fuck Janet Jackson.

Far more than there is to say about the New York Dolls.

Christgau isn't necessarily always anti-prog, he liked some of Pink Floyd as well as King Crimson after ITCOCK. I do think some prog bands such as ELP and Rush epitomized everything about the genre he didn't like.

He reviewed every solo Macca album worth bothering with. The guy has a lot of albums but plenty of them are total dreck and there's no reason to listen to them.

I love how many times he insults Judas Priest and Iron Maiden in various reviews without actually naming them (for example in his Motorhead reviews) but he was too cowardly to actually review their albums.

I don't think any critics anywhere liked Rush in the late 70s. Back then it was all like "Punk is here to save us from this faggoty poof rock with guys in jumpsuits singing about hobbits."

Holy shit this is embarrassing