Positively Precious
One of the downsides of opening your mouth to express a negative opinion is that someone, somewhere is gonna get hurt. Most of the reviews that are ever published about anything are positive. Sure, there are bad reviews out there for movies or books, but for the most part, whether you are thumbing through Rolling Stone's CD reviews or reading the Book Review, most of what you read falls down on the plus side. We're hard wired to expect good reviews.
One of the upsides of the blogosphere is the freedom to write about what you want. We do a bit of that here every now and then, but a guy like Nico Muhly does it on every engaging, meandering post. His hobbyhorses are food and grammar, and he's usually a good read. Until recently though, I hadn't noticed how flat out honest he was being. He's received a lifetime of press in the past few years, and almost all of it has been glowing. When he got a bad review from Pitchfork, he blogged about how deeply it got under his skin and confessed to the fact that the review hit the mark.
Over the weekend, Nico reacted to a negative review of a Grizzly Bear concert in the Times with what, for him, counts as a blistering attack on the reviewer. I find his warts and all approach refreshing. He could be posting 50 words about going into the studio with (uber-hip band) and how he can't wait for their show at (major venue). Instead of blasé blasts of self-promotion, we get the genuine, conflicted thoughts of a young, working composer.
Regarding the Times review, Nico suggested that there was no alternative to the description of Grizzly Bear's music as 'precious'. He found it to be coded, something that was irrefutable because it only had meaning to the reviewer who invoked it (Sort of like how Dick Cheney can keep insisting that those memos that Obama won't release prove torture worked). I pointed out in a comment that 'precious' does have an alternative, however. It's 'careless'.
There is a common usage of precious which means that something is too affected, but the more damaging meaning is when something is too closely held. Think Gollum and his ring:
The relationship between Gollum and his ring is so precious that it clouds out all other things. Neither the ring, nor Gollum, have a life outside of each other. In his adoration for the ring, Gollum keeps both it and him from actualization. A surfeit of care stifles anything.
Nico came back with this comparison:
Precious? “Everything Bagel” from WD-50
Sloppy? Not Precious?
Exactly. I'd be happy to eat both of those plates. The first is richly attended to, while the second is just meat on a plate. These are two very different experiences, and neither is inherently negative.
Returning to the Times' review, it touches on the only negative thing that's being said about Veckatimest, which is that its preciousness makes it dull. The musical analogy to those dueling plates that I'd offer is Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks" versus Queen's "Love of My Life". Both come from richly detailed albums (A Night At the Opera remains the standard bearer for obsessively inventive studio wizardry). Both songs are beautiful on their surface and full of swooning, complex textures.
"Two Weeks" leaves it at that, however. That's largely due to the length of it. If it simply ended at 2'30", it would be a gem of a song, but by repeating its form and texture without major development, it frosts over. It becomes remote.
"Love of My Life" is as immediate as a dog licking your face. There's no distance between you and Freddie as he sings to his lover. In fact, it's so easy to think he's singing directly to you that the song became his in-concert lullaby to his audience for a decade.
Both songs are highly refined studio creations. The former remains self-contained, while the other sprawls in the ear. There are legitimate reasons to love and hate both songs. Calling 'Two Weeks' precious is just one way of describing it. For me, it's not a dismissal of it. It's just a helpful description of one of its flaws, which brings me back to my original thought.
Negative criticism often prompts people to throw the baby out with the bathwater. After reading my thoughts about Up, my wife assumed I hated it, even though she'd seen it with me and knew that I enjoyed it. Within minutes of saying that the wordless opening of Wall-E was overscripted, a fan of the movie wrote to cry foul, saying that I'd 'trashed' it, but I liked that movie too. Maybe in another post, I'll go on about the merits of those films. As Nico said, "This is what the internet is for."
One of the upsides of the blogosphere is the freedom to write about what you want. We do a bit of that here every now and then, but a guy like Nico Muhly does it on every engaging, meandering post. His hobbyhorses are food and grammar, and he's usually a good read. Until recently though, I hadn't noticed how flat out honest he was being. He's received a lifetime of press in the past few years, and almost all of it has been glowing. When he got a bad review from Pitchfork, he blogged about how deeply it got under his skin and confessed to the fact that the review hit the mark.
Over the weekend, Nico reacted to a negative review of a Grizzly Bear concert in the Times with what, for him, counts as a blistering attack on the reviewer. I find his warts and all approach refreshing. He could be posting 50 words about going into the studio with (uber-hip band) and how he can't wait for their show at (major venue). Instead of blasé blasts of self-promotion, we get the genuine, conflicted thoughts of a young, working composer.
Regarding the Times review, Nico suggested that there was no alternative to the description of Grizzly Bear's music as 'precious'. He found it to be coded, something that was irrefutable because it only had meaning to the reviewer who invoked it (Sort of like how Dick Cheney can keep insisting that those memos that Obama won't release prove torture worked). I pointed out in a comment that 'precious' does have an alternative, however. It's 'careless'.
There is a common usage of precious which means that something is too affected, but the more damaging meaning is when something is too closely held. Think Gollum and his ring:
The relationship between Gollum and his ring is so precious that it clouds out all other things. Neither the ring, nor Gollum, have a life outside of each other. In his adoration for the ring, Gollum keeps both it and him from actualization. A surfeit of care stifles anything.
Nico came back with this comparison:
Precious? “Everything Bagel” from WD-50
Sloppy? Not Precious?
Exactly. I'd be happy to eat both of those plates. The first is richly attended to, while the second is just meat on a plate. These are two very different experiences, and neither is inherently negative.
Returning to the Times' review, it touches on the only negative thing that's being said about Veckatimest, which is that its preciousness makes it dull. The musical analogy to those dueling plates that I'd offer is Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks" versus Queen's "Love of My Life". Both come from richly detailed albums (A Night At the Opera remains the standard bearer for obsessively inventive studio wizardry). Both songs are beautiful on their surface and full of swooning, complex textures.
"Two Weeks" leaves it at that, however. That's largely due to the length of it. If it simply ended at 2'30", it would be a gem of a song, but by repeating its form and texture without major development, it frosts over. It becomes remote.
"Love of My Life" is as immediate as a dog licking your face. There's no distance between you and Freddie as he sings to his lover. In fact, it's so easy to think he's singing directly to you that the song became his in-concert lullaby to his audience for a decade.
Both songs are highly refined studio creations. The former remains self-contained, while the other sprawls in the ear. There are legitimate reasons to love and hate both songs. Calling 'Two Weeks' precious is just one way of describing it. For me, it's not a dismissal of it. It's just a helpful description of one of its flaws, which brings me back to my original thought.
Negative criticism often prompts people to throw the baby out with the bathwater. After reading my thoughts about Up, my wife assumed I hated it, even though she'd seen it with me and knew that I enjoyed it. Within minutes of saying that the wordless opening of Wall-E was overscripted, a fan of the movie wrote to cry foul, saying that I'd 'trashed' it, but I liked that movie too. Maybe in another post, I'll go on about the merits of those films. As Nico said, "This is what the internet is for."
Labels: Grizzly Bear, jodru, Nico Muhly, Queen
posted by jodru at 00:34
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