Andrew Dubber     

I want to make a very simple point. Almost too simple for a blog post. But it won’t fit into 140 characters, so it’s too long for Twitter, and I don’t know what proportion of my friends on Facebook would care about this – so it’s here for whoever’s interested.

Katy Bairstow wrote a thoughtful blog post about the distinction between journalists and reporters. I’d like to draw a similar distinction between critics and reviewers.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and there’s more to say than will even fit into a blog post (don’t get me started on tastemakers as critics, or literary criticism applied to popular music lyrics – we’ll be here all night) – but there’s a fairly simple general point to be made.

Reviewers are like reporters, critics are like journalists
There are a lot of reviewers out there – music writers who say what they think about records they listen to and gigs they attend. And, as one reviewer once said to me, “it may be just one person’s opinion – but it’s one informed person’s opinion.” Fair enough.

A review helps you find out if you’re likely to enjoy a record. Whether you should make a purchasing (or downloading) decision.

But critics are something different – and it’s not about being critical in the sense of putting something down for its shortcomings. That’s still reviewing. Instead, it’s about bringing a critical appraisal of how a work fits into a wider context. It’s about making sense of music.

That’s not to say it’s all about canons, and placing a work within (or outside) a pantheon of greats – but it is about connecting that work to others – and not necessarily those of that same artist – and not always necessarily that of the same art form.

What are the antecedents? The influences? The prevailing cultural and artistic concerns? What meanings connect that work to the social and political context from which it springs? Why does it sound like it does, and what was the artist communicating or expressing?

A world without word limits
Criticism is often found within that long-form music journalism that seems to be so thin on the ground right now.

And that surprises me, when I think about the fact that on the internet, there is no scarcity of space – only of attention. So I think (and my friend Gareth, who has thought more extensively and deeply about this would back me up here) that there is room for at least an attempt at long-form music writing that goes beyond giving something a mark out of ten, or a certain number of stars (usually 3) and showing off your vocabulary.

Good music criticism shines a light on a musical work, and that light illuminates not only the recording, but everything that surrounds it. It’s fascinating reading when done well – but perhaps more importantly, it contributes to the overall thread of popular music culture.

Nitpicking and nerdery
I know some people who strongly believe that dissecting music kills it.

“Why can’t you just enjoy it?”

Actually – that’s fine if music is just entertainment. But often it’s not. And nor, frankly, does music only contain the meanings that the people who made it claim to have invested in it. Artists are generally the worst critics of their own stuff.

You should read what Wordsworth wrote about his own poetry. He didn’t get it at all.

Like whisky-tasting for records
I’m tempted to make an obvious and protracted analogy with regards to whisky tasting, but that would be too easy.

However – I believe you can appreciate things and extract far more out of them if you analyse them, pay close attention to them, spend time with them and find out about their background, their context and their origins – as well as the stories that they connect to.

You can start to tease out their subtler meanings – and, especially if you can begin to understand how they are made, and what decisions informed the creation of the finished product, you can relate that work to your own personal musical canon – and to your own tastes.

It’s meaningful (at least to me) that I like both Ardbeg Uigeadail and late 60s improvisational jazz, for instance.

And it’s also significant that I like Cumbia more now that I’ve spent some time in the streets of Medellín. Context provides sense. Sense contributes to understanding. Understanding aids appreciation.

I reckon that process of appreciation is a key factor in what makes recordings of music so important to those of us that treasure them – and it’s the role of critics to help provide that context and connection.

And I reckon there are far too few good critics.

I wrote this piece as a bit of an antidote to some of the stuff I’ve been writing elsewhere recently about how recordings of music divide the world into active creators (owners of IP) and passive consumers – and how digital media start to break down those divides. There’s some thinking to be done about the remix as criticism. Another day, perhaps.

Tagged: criticism, Internet, journalism