Hyperbole

I recently read a review of the new Deerhunter record(s) on Pitchfork.

Now that’s a pretty intriguing review: apparently Deerhunter have absorbed Radiohead’s outlook of using ‘a stunning assortment of shrewd instrumental ideas to express contemporary anxiety and alienation, all in the form of pop songs, on albums conceived to be more than the sum of their parts.’ I got hold of the album and discovered that it sounded a little bit like Pavement.

Which is fine. I quite like Pavement. But why didn’t I feel my contemporary anxiety and alienation being expressed? Had I ceased being able to read and decipher the (apparently) infinite variations and codes of indie rock? Or am I just getting old?

Clearly, the problem isn’t with Deerhunter, or with me (I hope), it’s with the review. The media’s tendency towards hyperbole is nothing new, but it’s something which I find particularly irritating in music journalism.

This parody from the Britpop era is still relevant in today’s musical climate. Since then, guitar-based pop has gone on to become simply ‘pop’, but the artists filling NME’s pages today are no less formulaic. I’ve not heard their most recent infatuation, Crystal Castles, but I’m prepared to bet that they have a few disco beats flying around and some shrieky vocals.

Oh look, they do.

Journalistic prose has become increasingly purple since the rise of the blogosphere. This for example. Easily one of the most absurd pieces of writing on music I have ever read. I like Girls Aloud as much as the next man, but Racine? Oscar Wilde? Several thousand words of pompous eulogy? Read at your peril.

However, my favourite example of hyperbolising is Pitchfork’s review of Friend Opportunity by Deerhoof, which came out last year. I take issue with the following in particular:

Snatches of story-like lyrics – the stage-setting of ‘The Perfect Me’, the flashes of conflict, warnings that ‘It’s a trap’ – imply a narrative arc, with a detour for a new character on ‘Cast Off Crown’, drummer Greg Saunier’s sole vocal performance and a mini-epic that crams introduction, exposition, and resolution into three minutes.

Does the line ‘It’s a trap’ really ‘imply a narrative arc’ or did our journalist just want to find a way to cram the phrase ‘narrative arc’ into his review?

Of course it’s not just journalists who are prone to pretension. Read Van Morrison’s lyrics to ‘Summertime in England’.

Did you ever hear about
William Blake
T. S. Eliot
In the summer
In the countryside
They were smokin’…

Yeats and Lady Gregory corresponded
And James Joyce wrote streams of consciousness books
T.S. Eliot chose England
T.S. Eliot joined the ministry
Did you ever hear about
Wordsworth and Coleridge?
Smokin’ up in Kendal
They were smokin’ by the lakeside

Is Van engaging with any of these writers? Is he referencing their great works? Is this literary criticism in the form of popular music? No, he’s just saying the names of a few authors to sound clever.

Bad song lyrics is a whole other post in itself, so I think I’ll leave it there. But it’s good to be back; I promise to update more regularly!

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