Moody Center
Knows What Sucks and Isn't Afraid to Share
RECEIVED Mon., Oct. 24, 2005
Dear Editor,
Would it be possible to limit record reviews to the talents of Greg Beets, Jim Caligiuri, Robert Gabriel, and Jay Trachtenberg? While I don't always agree with their opinions, I can always count on their coverage to – well, have a frame of musical reference and make some damn sense.
In last week's issue, Matt Dentler writes that Franz Ferdinand's new recording “feels like a sequel” and refers to previous hit singles as “classics” [“Phases & Stages,” Music, Oct. 21]. Well, it is a sequel. It's their second recording of wannabe Gang of Four B-sides with an MTV budget and no political teeth. And “classics”? Do two radio singles that have barked for commercials on television in the last two years fit anyone's definition of said word other than Dentler's?
Of the new My Morning Jacket, Raoul Hernandez describes it as “earthy, engaging imagery [that] ... disjoints already surrealistic modern times,” “Hawaii Five-O stomp” (yeah, your guess is as good as mine, I'm sure), “lovingly worn as a vintage clothing score,” and describes singer Jim James' voice as a “trademark cry [that] mirrors a global moan in the mounting mess of humanity.” Never mind that said absurdly hyperbolic “global moan” is just a lot of reverb on a vocal microphone. Can you deduce any information about the music from the review? If so, I ain't nothin' but ears right about now.
Then, Darcie Stevens describes the new recording of the Broken Social Scene, a Canadian collective of noisy, avant-garde popsters, as “translucent earth,” “sass and lethargy,” “sweaty dusk,” and “strum and moan roar[ing] quietly behind technology's sound.” What? Am I lost in an unpublishable Faulknerian nightmare? Where is this woman's editor? Oh, I forgot. He's busy making no sense of My Morning Jacket's latest release.
If I wanted to read careless use of language and obtuse imagery, I would have become an English professor and taught composition to college freshmen. Such musical writing has become the norm at the Chronicle. And, if you'll allow me the crudest of descriptions, that really sucks.
Would it be possible to limit record reviews to the talents of Greg Beets, Jim Caligiuri, Robert Gabriel, and Jay Trachtenberg? While I don't always agree with their opinions, I can always count on their coverage to – well, have a frame of musical reference and make some damn sense.
In last week's issue, Matt Dentler writes that Franz Ferdinand's new recording “feels like a sequel” and refers to previous hit singles as “classics” [“Phases & Stages,” Music, Oct. 21]. Well, it is a sequel. It's their second recording of wannabe Gang of Four B-sides with an MTV budget and no political teeth. And “classics”? Do two radio singles that have barked for commercials on television in the last two years fit anyone's definition of said word other than Dentler's?
Of the new My Morning Jacket, Raoul Hernandez describes it as “earthy, engaging imagery [that] ... disjoints already surrealistic modern times,” “Hawaii Five-O stomp” (yeah, your guess is as good as mine, I'm sure), “lovingly worn as a vintage clothing score,” and describes singer Jim James' voice as a “trademark cry [that] mirrors a global moan in the mounting mess of humanity.” Never mind that said absurdly hyperbolic “global moan” is just a lot of reverb on a vocal microphone. Can you deduce any information about the music from the review? If so, I ain't nothin' but ears right about now.
Then, Darcie Stevens describes the new recording of the Broken Social Scene, a Canadian collective of noisy, avant-garde popsters, as “translucent earth,” “sass and lethargy,” “sweaty dusk,” and “strum and moan roar[ing] quietly behind technology's sound.” What? Am I lost in an unpublishable Faulknerian nightmare? Where is this woman's editor? Oh, I forgot. He's busy making no sense of My Morning Jacket's latest release.
If I wanted to read careless use of language and obtuse imagery, I would have become an English professor and taught composition to college freshmen. Such musical writing has become the norm at the Chronicle. And, if you'll allow me the crudest of descriptions, that really sucks.
Sincerely,
Christopher C. Grady
Christopher C. Grady