I don’t really know what I’m doing at the moment. This is a spur of the moment idea stemming from a conversation that is currently ongoing, which I’ve decided that I’m going to be an ass and go and take it off into this tangent instead of actually finishing the conversation like a normal person. So hey! What the hell, right? Fuck it, here it goes:

Because I’m an over opinionated, egotistical jackass on the internet with a music library full of shit that I never listen to but have just because other over opinionated, egotistical jackasses have told me that they are, in some way or another, worth my time, I’ve found an outlet in writing about the thing that I love the most (a good IPA is second) on this here website. I enjoy it, but at the same time I think that this very site and those like it, pick your poison — CMG, Pitchfork, Metal Reviews, Punknews etc etc — are inherently fucked because it all stems from taking the individual experience that is listening to a record and pulling it out of context; warping it into a collection of phrases and similes meant on describing something that is, at its core, indescribable. To me the power of music lies completely within the moment. Sure it can be dissected and studied, and there is a time and a place for such scholarly exercises, but that kind of approach completely misses the psychological effect that music has…

A brief look back at a band that left its mark on a generation

Many would tell you that Fall Out Boy was finished long before the release of their full-length finale, Folie A Deux, but the record certainly had something of a goodbye feel to it. There is no way of discerning whether or not it was intended to be a farewell album, but the cumulative resume-to-date of singles tidily collaged together in the background of “What A Catch, Donnie” certainly seems to imply that they knew the end was coming. And for someone who grew up with the awkward looking, off-key underdogs, that probably had more of an impact than it did on most. It’s true that the band had begun to overstay their (very brief) welcome, saturating radio stations to the point of nausea while their albums were infiltrated by guest musicians like Jay-Z – whose presence on “Thriller” was arbitrary and purely promotional. But even in the “selling out” of their sound, FOB never lost their down-to-earth touch; in fact, they could often be heard mocking their own commercialization. Popular single “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race” is a prime illustration, with lyrics comparing the music scene to an arms race and proclaiming, “as long as the room keeps singin’ / that’s just the business I’m in.” It was moments like this that, even in the midst of an enormous popularity explosion, offered a glimpse into the heart of a band that…

Even though the Internet is, in theory, a technology which opens the floodgates and makes the acquisition of information more fluid, more chaotic, and more free, the simple truth is that as a result of that (over-)abundance, we feel the need to divide lest we forget how to conquer. What hypothetically should enable us to digest music without its labels ultimately leads us to label it even more ridiculously than we did before, to compartmentalise in new, almost innovative ways just in order to construct a road-map through the hell of cyberspace and the ideas with which we’re presented.

This isn’t exactly a revelation, but what interests me is the way we handle it when an unexpected event screws with our neat ideas of what constitutes good, bad, pop, metal: how do we adjust when someone moves the goalposts artistically? This has to be a test, because no person is capable of removing the art they’re experiencing entirely from its context or from the discourses surrounding it. Would that it were possible, but it isn’t.

So when Bon Iver punched through the speakers to deliver the curveball that was “Woods” way back on his Blood Bank EP, everyone went insane. You’ll recall that this was a point, distant though it now may seem, when Justin Vernon was still in most regards a cult superstar and perceived as a lonely, bearded guy with a guitar. Nobody expected anything else from him; if they claim they did, they’re having you on.…