Blimey, time flies. I just realised it's been over two months since I've written anything here. There's been a couple of reasons for that. Firstly I've been obsessively tapping away at my novel, which at last seems to be feeling more like a novel rather than just a very long story peopled by cardboard cut-outs. And secondly, I just haven't thought of anything I've felt strong enough about to put before you.
The first reason I think has a lot to do with the second. I was putting every ounce of my creative writing energy into my novel and realised that when I would spend time putting up something on the forum, I was expending a lot of that energy I needed for my book
A few weeks ago I asked the question below in another thread. There were no takers but the topic but it's continued to bubble away in the back of my mind, so I thought I'd try to get it started again:
Is it a critic's job to try to be objective, or to plough in with all guns blazing? I can sometimes feel myself being torn between these two positions, both of which could produce equally valid comments or criticisms.
So how do you like your criticism? There no longer seems to be any kind of hard-hitting criticism of music left in the media that I'm aware of, apart from the odd grumpy grumble from Paul Morley on Late Review. In fact some publications actually ask you to only write about the music you love as, I suppose, they want to keep everything upbeat and rosy. But isn't a critic's job to warn people not to buy stuff as well as to suggest what is worth buying?
I tend to choose to only review what I like because I only have a certain number of slots (between 4 & 6) a month to fill, so what's the point of wasting one of those slots slagging some hardworking group's music off. But then that can give the impression that I'm just being one of those typical world music journalists who Andy Gill recently criticised, for just disproportionately 'bigging up' every world music album because someone's got to do it. His beef at the time was that the Ali Farka Toure album was such a critical hit last year because of this predilection of world music critics.
Yes, I've given certain albums the benefit of the doubt, but that's been one of those instances of trying to hear the thing from outside my own narrow band of 'what I love' (and let's face it, every music lover and critic would admit to a similarly narrow band if they were honest about it). So one of my questions is - what kind of criticism do you want to read? Do you want to see dodgy albums laid into with precision savagery - like in the good old days at the NME - or would you rather hear about as much of the good stuff as possible?
Also, how do other writers who contribute to this forum, approach musical criticism? I feel that the most important thing the best critics have, is that they've retained that teenager's questing passion; that the next CD might be the best thing they've ever heard, and if it isn't, then they can't wait to hear the next one, just in case that is. But then again, a bit of objectivity doesn't go amiss either. Over to you lot.