THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

The way up to the Sixth Cornice is a steep one, with the stairs (as usual) to the right of those that lead up to it… 

The Fiery Furnaces
Widow City
(Thrill Jockey; October 6, 2007)
Rating: 8.4

As the slings and arrows fly past me from all angles, I wonder: other than to create sadistic pleasure for myself, what the crap do I want to do with the whole jo-tunes thing? Aside from the obvious goal of selfishly encouraging people to listen to music that I like, I'd also like to forge a more perfect form of artistic criticism than what is quickly turning into critical sophistry, with certain blogs dictating not only tastes, but, perhaps more importantly, descriptive style. My goals, then? Best described unsystematically: Avoid using phrases like "gritty hooks" and "ramshackle charm", for instance, while understanding that crit-bloggers that assiduously avoid all familiar phrasing end up saying stuff like this:

If splayed out in short hand, the songs became blueprints of conch shell A/C currents, and sometimes, winding in on themselves, the compositions revealed their formula and lost their mystique. “Wet and Rusting,” while a typical Bacchanalian cavort between percussionist Danny Seim and bassist Justin Harris, so calculated and restless, is finally goddamned brisk. Instead of pointing to their craft, they allude to their genius, making the climax and hardy bloating of the song—as drums, bass, piano, and vocals, meat ‘n potatoes — a matter of deftly understood logic, not a eureka over a dissected treasure map. (Dom Sinacola, Cokemachineglow review of "Wet and Rusting" (single))

Also, there's a fine line with regard to praise: you want to be honest and genuine, but you don't want to be Tim from "Tim's World" gushing about how Interpol's Our Love to Admire is the "the best album ever". (Tim and Tim World's are fictional creations.) But, then again, you don't want to be really liking an album but feel concerned about going out on a limb that you might later be leered at from above by more seasoned critics so that you end up rating every album between 7.8 and 8.2 and start saying things like: "Interpol's new album balances gracefully on the verge of transcending the boundaries that the band's own ingenuity created."

And, as I just mentioned ratings, let's sit down and talk about the whole rating thing for a moment. I've gotten some internal jo-tel shit for co-opting the ratings scale of the dreaded pitchfork media. I've thought about this a while and, while clearly derivative and definitely mired in the pathos of negative freedom, I feel like it is the best option. First, I like ratings systems as a general concept — be it stars, numbers, or pictures of a little dude in a chair.

People don't have time to read your entire article to figure out if they should shell out bones to purchase what you are reviewing. More likely they want to skim several reviews to determine which movie, book, or album seems generally well-received, and then determine for themselves whether said piece of art is worth a shit. Ratings facilitate that realistic role of reviews. Also, ratings permit greater artistic latitude within the review itself. A Pitchfork review that tags an album with a 9.0 can spend less time talking about the "transplendant melancholy of the funereal strains" and more time just talking about the "melancholy of the funereal stains." Even more adventurous, the reviewers - free from the need to explain the 9.0 - can turn the review into a platform for creative expositions, perhaps a concept review about Diapers, the glam-rock loving monkey, or your editor in chief telling you do a review. This is the future of criticism: reviews that have artistic merit in their own right, solipsistically divorced from the role of reviewing the actual subject.

Second, aside from the general goodness of the rating systems, the 100 value system is particularly optimal. In other words, as much as we like to find ways to disprove the following in our everyday music listening: Pitchfork is right. Stars are better suited for movies than music, which exhibits much greater volume and, therefore, requires more precise differentiation. The alternative is a 10 value scale, but even that seems stifling. Take my reviews so far this week (including the forthcoming last review). If I round the rating for each to the nearest whole number, they would be 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 10. See: totally boring. Precision is fun, and does not always lead to inaccuracy. Just ask scientists.

Third, I am not deluded enough to think that slightly altering the form the 100 value system somehow makes your system not a virtual facsimile of Pitchfork's. I'm looking at you cokemachineglow: 82% instead of 8.2. Or Stereogum: 82 instead of 8.2. Why bother with so feeble an attempt? So much for the topic of music criticism more generally. The Fiery Furnaces new album is great, just great.

As the two poets neared the tree
A voice from among the boughs called out:
"This is the food that you shall lack."

-Purgatory (Canto XXII, lines 139-141)

-Shark