Maxim magazine is enduring a rough ride these days for its premature review of the new Black Crowes album, Warpaint. Now, I have to tell you that I do not immediately associate Maxim with CD appreciations, and it is not the publication to which I turn when I want information on music. But the fact that it printed a lukewarm “review” of an album long before advance copies of the disc were available should be of concern to anyone who does.
I spent a long time writing music reviews, as I have said before in this space, and I have to admit that I am pretty skeptical about the whole thing. I would listen to something in a rush, try to connect my observations with the biographical material I was given, and publish a brief appreciation to deadline. Now, the last thing I want to suggest is that is impossible to write well about music. We all know that it can be done, and some people are very skilled at it. But we also know that our appreciation of music we like deepens over time. After playing a record a few dozen times, I likely think differently of it than I did after a first, hasty play. In the wake of my entertainment writing career, I did meet people who told me they enjoyed what I wrote, but what they really meant was that they shared my musical interests. And, having determined that they might like what I liked, initially, they could be enticed to try something they had not heard but I had.
This is a valuable service, but it is something that is done very well on the internet today. I have subscribed to music services that, based on a list of my favorite artists, can recommend new artists to me. This is as imprecise as you might imagine, though I have occasionally discovered something really interesting this way. I download various podcasts that play and discuss new records. And, of course, iTunes will play me 30 seconds of anything I might be interested in downloading. When you consider how long in advance print reviews of anything may have to be filed, the problems for the genre are compounded.
What, then, might be the value of the print review for music? Unlike a book review, where the opinion must be more considered – after all, it takes a longer time to read a book than to play a song – and the subject of the review seldom endures repeated exposures, the record review catalogs a fleeting impression. It does little more for me, in my reading, than establish the existence of something I might not know had been recorded. It could, however, also suggest a general trend for me: “Bob Dylan’s latest record continues his invocation of a bluesy heritage,” or “Thom Yorke’s solo work is more melodic than Radiohead’s music.” While I can say with hand on heart that I would not buy something based on any such recommendation, I might hesitate if “trending” information troubled me.
In the case of Maxim’s two-and-a-half out of five-star rating, the reviewer judged that the Crowes “sound pretty much like they always have: boozy, competent, and in slavish debt to the Stones, the Allmans, and the Faces.” After a seven-year layoff, the band might have a hard time attracting new fans based on such an observation. The magazine’s editor is now suggesting that the piece was to be an unrated “preview,” but for a publication that is not known for objectivity – consider “Ten horrendous television shows that deserved to die” and “These five men turned the White House black” – the claim seems quite ludicrous. While I do not accept that their discussions of music are of much value to the artists or to the audience, they are usually humorously opinionated: they just need to be written from genuine knowledge and not from the hackneyed generalities of the unskilled reviewer.
