I want to believe that Two Gallants had good intentions in covering this song. But intention is fleeting; if it ever becomes known to the public, it's quickly dispatched to the mists of time. Only the artifact remains. And this artifact scans to me as deeply insensitive and offensive. Spin.com brushed it off as an account of racism; occasional Pitchfork contributor Jonathan Zwickel hailed it as "nothing short of revelatory" in New Times. But what value is there in an account of racism from people who've never stared down its barrel? What could it possibly reveal? If these myopic responses reveal anything, it's that the topic is much easier to gloss over than to actually discuss. Such an inflammatory project needs a complex intellectual purpose to make it more than a cheap provocation. This rigor doesn't come through in the cover, and when a Drowned in Sound interviewer pressed Stephens on the topic of "Long Summer Day", he equivocated. "I don't think it comes as something strategic," he said, and the interviewer demurred, because he was "in no mood" to really broach the topic.

In the same interview, Two Gallants repeatedly complain about critics not "getting them." But a persistent failure of interpretation usually signals an initial failure of expression. The critic's job isn't to explore what an artist was trying to do, but what they've actually done. And this is it: A couple of white, twentysomething San Franciscans singing, "the summer day makes a nigga feel crazy," a line destined to be belted out by carfulls of indie kids at the top of their ironic lungs. Is this healing? You decide.

WHY I'M AN ASSHOLE: I'm anti-empahty; I've forgotten that criticism is supposed to be a purely descriptive medium without any moral or intellectual dimension; I don't like listening to white emo kids singing about being black in the Antebellum south.

VERDICT: Guilty.

Metacritic forums:

So, writing/singing songs from a perspective (telling a story) should be guided by the potential audience of the song? Eef Barzelay's "The Ballad of Bitter Honey" tells the story of a girl who dances in hip-hop videos...is the fact that a white indie kid might sing a line like "that was my ass bouncing in the Ludacris video" also forbidden? The point of the Two Gallants song is that it tells a story, from the perspective of a black man, about racism. According to the Pitchfork review, the project of performing this song "requires a complex intellectual purpose" and then the reviewer claims there is no apparent intellectual purpose because of the way the song sounds to him and the responses to comments on the song in one interview. That seems like a leap to me...it's nice to know that, merely by reading an interview and listening to a song, Brian Howe can discern a songwriter's intellectual purpose (or lack of it).For my money, a song with a white guy telling the story of life as a black guy (and using the n-word) is slightly disconcerting. But maybe that's the point...to put white indie kids on their heels, and make them think about racism from the perspective of the other. This line of criticism reminds me of the Dave Chappelle argument for ending "Chappelle's Show." In one interview, Chappelle cited his discomfort with the popularity of the show amongst middle class white kids as a reason for pulling the plug. White college kids aping lines from the show made him feel dirty, to some degree, and so he quit. Maybe some of the racial humor fosters racism, but is that reason to stop your project of making people aware of racial intolerance? The fact that some meathead starts dropping n-bombs in tribute to Chappelle (without knowing the 'true meaning' of racism) shouldn't detract from the fact that other kids might actually get it.At the end of the review, Howe says: "In the same interview, Two Gallants repeatedly complain about critics not "getting them." But a persistent failure of interpretation usually signals an initial failure of expression." REALLY? So, there's not much chance that Howe is bringing HIS racial baggage to the table here? That Two Gallants were, in fact, trying to open the eyes of indie kids to racism (by covering a genre song and taking on a perspective) and that HE was the one who's got the 'initial failure' of critical apprhension? And this comes after he had just noted that several critics found the song to be at the least a fair depiction of racism and at most "revelatory"...At the end of the day, I don't think I'll be belting out the lyrics to the song in my car. But given how many indie kids listen to hip-hop, even if the Two Gallants DIDN'T record this song, wouldn't there still be indie kids driving around, dropping 'ironic' n-bombs with their favorite rap song? At least with the Two Gallants, it seems (ostensibly) that there's a message: racism is bad.

WHY I'M AN ASSHOLE: I agree with Dave Chapelle that there's something of the minstrel show about rehearsing the history of racism as entertainment; I think the fact that some racial humor actually fosters racism IS a good reason to "stop your project of making people aware of racial intolerance;" I prefer the use of the "n-bomb" in rap music to its use by white emo kids as some sort of corrective (ps - wtf?); I have racial baggage like everyone else.

VERDICT: Guilty. I could do a whole post about this, but you get the gist. Let's move on to some other reasons why I'm an asshole.


ILM:

is brian howe the new douchebag of pitchfork?
http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/f/frost_edith/its-a-game.shtml


Eek. Howe complains about how the record is one song after another of the same-old same-old, but his critique goes beyond "it gets boring after a while" into "jeez, why won't she just get over it?" And what's offensive about that is his presumption that the record is constructed as an unfortunate result of Edith's emotional inadequacies rather than as a conscious choice. Truth is, she writes songs like this because she's good at writing them, and she puts a whole bunch of them on a record because there's a nice thematic unity in doing so.

Likewise, God, has Brian Howe ever heard of the blues or just about ALL American music since the first tape record hummed to life? It's all heartbreak kid. Just cause you ain't in the mood for it doesn't mean you can wish it away with your fancy reviewlet.
I also read one of Mr.Howe's Leonard Cohen reviews in which he wrote:
"Ascribing a numerical value to Cohen feels like rating a sunrise or a religion"
Boy, if only Edith were a man maybe her sadness could get upgraded to eligiac and she really blow his socks off.
Eh, everyone knows it's a game.

WHY I'M AN ASSHOLE: I'm the new douchebag of Pitchfork; I don't like an entire album's worth of songs about how life just goes to shit without a man around; I've never heard of the blues or American music in general; I gave a good review to a man therefore I hate women.

VERDICT: Mixed. I've been at Pitchfork for a couple years now, so I hardly qualify as a "new"douchebag. I am guilty of disliking the relentlessly ham-fisted, poor-me tone of Frost's album, but I don't see what the subtle and thematically diverse Leonard Cohen has to do with it. And what the fuck are "the blues?"

ALSO FROM ILM, IN RESPONSE TO A LITTLE BARRIE REVIEW I WROTE IN PASTE:

"Howe" did Brian get a job writing?
Eh?
Eh?

Is it just me or does the review read like a winemaker's notes?

...But, yes, this presumptuous review, comparable to a fine Welsh burgundy, is like a bad wine writer, piling irrelevant simile on strained metaphor etc. Malcolm Gluck perhaps...

i wonder if he wrote some 800 word review but was told he only gets 150. seems like he just took one sentance from each paragraph and made them lumber under the weight of simile and cheap metaphor.

Your right...it's more like a bad wine writer, than just a winemaker's notes in general. I think it was his horrible similes more than anything that caught my attention.

WHY I'M AN ASSHOLE: My name lends itself well to puns; my prose is sometimes florid.

VERDICT: Guilty.

BONUS SHOCKA: At least a few ILM posters don't seem to know what a simile is - not a single comparison using "like" or "as" appears in the review.

Untouched by Work or Duty:

There's little that should be said before you read this, except that it's from a live review of Death Cab for Cutie on Pitchfork, by Brian Howe (I'm assuming that it's not Brian Howe from Bad Company, and that Brian Howe from Bad Company does not have a side career in internet music - I hate to use the word in this case - writing):

There's a very fleeting and intense mental state that I can now recognize in people several years younger than me, with their blameless arrogance and effortless charisma. It's the grace period after one has exited the strictures of parental control and the future suddenly yawns wide open, but before the directionless monotony that can be the reality of this rudderless state sinks in. After years of school, you still apprehend life as a river that rushes you along toward a crescendo, not yet aware that the current will soon abandon you to drift, and the opposing tensions of this between-ness will imbue existence with a rare gravity and magnitude. I recall it as something winged and diaphanous fluttering in the chest; at once enriched and tempered by the unconscious suspicion that, like all winged things, it will eventually fly away. It makes colors burn brighter, life seem concatenated and purposeful, moments with friends indelible. None of this is possible to describe at the time. If you're able to articulate it, it has already left you.

After reading this, all I know is that I want to stand a few feet above him and drop a sack full of winged and diaphanous thesauri with a rare gravity and magnitude - right on his supercilious little head. To quote a friend of mine, "What fucking river rushes to a crescendo? If he names the river that actually goes uphill a ways before peaking and flowing back down I will not hit him." Exactly.

WHY I'M AN ASSHOLE: My head is little and supercilious; I mix my metaphors; strangers want to punch me over the Internet.

VERDICT: Guilty, sometimes. Although in my defense, this blog is named after a Decemberists lyric.

This is not a Fugazi T-Shirt:

Fog: 10th Avenue Freakout, Brian Howe, Pitchforkmedia.comI know in my heart that I could write reviews like your average Pitchforknik, except I would die of embarassment if anybody I knew caught me writing things like "It's a shame then that 10th Avenue Freakout pulls away from this blankness, thereby muting the effects of its incandescent peaks." Full fathoms five and all that, what what?

WHY I'M AN ASSHOLE: I write reviews.

VERDICT: Guilty.

Rollingstone.de/forum:

In einem Konzertbericht hat Brian Howe von Pitchfork ein paar schöne Sätze über Tender Buttons geschrieben ...

WHY I'M AN ASSHOLE: Search me.

VERDICT: Guilty, probably.

Joey Headset:

Considering this, it should be obvious that any review which takes longer than 15 seconds to read is totally useless. However, this fact has clearly eluded the Pitchfork writing staff, particularly Mr. Brian Howe -- the man who authored the Lansing-Dreiden review linked above. Howe needs editing the way Dr. Phil needs a savage beating: REAL, REAL BAD.
If you haven't already, read (or at least gloss over) the first paragraph.
Still with me? Good. Now, read the first sentence of the second paragraph. Here, I'll quote it for you: "These questions [the ones raised in the introductory paragraph] would be worth considering if they had anything to do with [the record being reviewed]". Hey Mr. Reviewer: if you begin the second paragraph by telling us that everything you wrote in the first is irrelevant, that's a pretty good sign that you should have just deleted that first paragraph entirely. While you're at it, you can go ahead and delete the sentence that informed us of the aforementioned irrelevance.
BOOM... we've just shortened a 473 word review by 128 words without even breaking a sweat! But why stop there? Take the next sentence: "Given the group's anonymity and the album's museum-quality-- it has the air of an artifact carefully constructed and hermetically sealed under glass-- The Dividing Island seems to float in a void." Hmm... that sentence doesn't actually mean anything -- so I reckon we can cut it as well. We can also eliminate the rest of the second paragraph, since it merely serves as an excuse for for the reviewer to drop the words "hermetic", "groupthink" and "parsing" into the review.
Paragraph three doesn't even reference the album. Rather, it gushes on about some other article written by a different Pitchfork staffer. Get out the scissors, Mary, cuz that paragraph is getting CUT!
It isn't until the 4th and final paragraph of the review that Brian Howe actually bothers to address the record he was supposed to be reviewing. He lists a few of the more notable tracks on the record and offers some oblique descriptions. Badly written, but at least its on topic! However, Howe quickly derails with a conclusion that includes the following: "You can see the theme of division play out over the song titles, but the only operative division this record explores, tacitly, is between the band's theory and their praxis." Guess what, Brian? I also went to went to college, and I know what it looks like when you're just trying to fill space on a term paper. I'm calling BULLSHIT on this review, both its theory and its praxis practice.
The age of lengthy, overwrought record reviews is OVER. If you really need to know what other people think of new music, check out this site. There's little room for pretension when every review is 75 words or less!

WHY I'M AN ASSHOLE: Not sure, I stopped reading after 15 seconds.

VERDICT: Inconclusive.

Struggleville Shrimp and the Full Effect:

Brian Howe's story on Pitchfork http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/... clap-your-hands-say-yeah-06/ perfectly illustrates what's wrong with many non-mainstream music aficionados- that they're elitist, snobbish, and need a good punch in the face. Mr. Howe makes a good point-namely, that some people hate on bands based on social factors rather than the quality of the music. Yes, the show he attended was also attended by a kid who ran happily around the stage and then stage-dove. Kinda cheesy I guess, but THE KID WAS HAVING FUN. The best thing about live shows/DJs/dance parties/music in general is that it makes you happy. A sign of a great party/a great show/whatever is that people in attendance are having fun and not giving a shit.The sad thing is that this elitism is deep in every non-mainstream scene. Kids at Widespread Panic and Trey Anastasio shows brag about how many shows they've seen, how long they've been a fan, how many times they've been 'on tour,' etc. to make themselves sound cooler than the next wannabe-trust-fund hippie. Backpack rappers put down Kanye and the Roots for (gasp!) doing something different than beats and rhymes. 'Punk music' is nothing but a tired formula, but as soon as any band deviates from what Black Flag did in '82 they get ripped on by kids. Legions of Metallica fans got mad when they cut their hair. And I'm not even going to touch indie-rock scenesters...they are the worst offenders of this kinda shit.All of this 'hey, i'm an OG fan' talk stems from a lack of self-esteem. that's it.You are not cooler than anyone because you have seen some band or heard of some shit.sorry.If you hear of some new music and love it, share it with friends. Maybe they'll be as happy as you are when they hear it sometime. I love that my friends who live in different countries are rocking out to some shit right now... that they would have never known about... if I hadn't given them a CD. I love it when someone gives me new stuff (or new old stuff) to listen to. I love the feeling of really digging a new track.Mr. Howe, if you ever come to a show and i'm there, and it's a band I really like, I'll be easy to find. I'll be the one who snuck in or got free tickets, 'cause I'm broke. I'll be the motherfucker who took two trains from Orange fucking County to get there. I don't care what others do-but I'll be the one in the front with a big smile on my face. Come bother me, hell, I'll give you a quote. And yes, if the occasion permits, I will be jumping around and dancing, 'cause that's what I like. Music moves me and makes me smile.Being cool and trying to be cool are very different things.Rant over.

WHY I'M AN ASSHOLE: I'm a snob who, again, needs a good punching; I hate children, especially when they're enjoying themselves.

VERDICT: This one's tricky - there's some truth to the accusations, but they seem to stem from some bizzarro-world version of the review I wrote.

At least he was repsectful about it ("Mr. Howe").

Labels: brian