Not too long ago, I surprised myself by telling a girl I liked
her. She was a young woman I hardly knew, but in the embarrassing
instant the words flew out of my mouth, I suddenly had never been
so sure of anything in the world.
This was great, but the problem was that the sentiment lasted,
oh, maybe a few hours. It was only the next day, after some
reconsideration, that I was able to admit to myself ““ and
more awkwardly, to her ““ that my interest was in the end not
of the romantic variety, and had instead stemmed partly from my
amusement over how much I had been enjoying her company.
Mercifully, she showed a lot of patience, but a budding friendship
had potentially been jeopardized, and my foot was so firmly
entrenched down my throat that I was all but ready to keel over and
pop off from suffocation.
Perhaps the springtime had snuck up and gotten me briefly
“twitter-pated,” a la Bambi and friends. Or maybe that
when a girl enthuses about Prince, Dan the Automator and Joni
Mitchell, it’s all I can do not to drop down on one knee and
propose on the spot, velvet gift box included. Whatever it was, I
had given voice to a knee-jerk reaction, and probably should have
kept my mouth shut until I could think things through.
This kind of thing isn’t just my problem, though.
It’s not often enough that many of us take a step back to
honestly examine how we feel. And that’s actually something
plaguing music criticism at the moment, which at times seems to
have devolved into nothing more than a series of knee-jerk
reactions.
Beck’s critical reception is an example. His newest album
has received mostly positive ink, but it’s probably his least
enthusiastic reception in a decade (with the possible exception of
“Mutations”). Initially, he does sound a little
attached to formula and detached from the proceedings; most of the
record’s fans I’ve come into contact with, including
myself, say it takes a few listens to get. Some reviews have come
after Beck for revisiting past success, as if this is entirely a
bad thing, and it really seems that some (not all) of these lazily
wrote it off as an uninspired rehash after just a spin or two
before moving on. His “Sea Change” was in a lot of ways
the opposite ““ a record that sounded both distinct and direct
before revealing larger problems lurking underneath. Critics, of
course, fawned over it.
You’d think the fact that these days, virtually every
major album is leaked online well in advance of its release would
help blunt the effect of this brand of first-impression-based,
reflexive opinion making. I’ve praised the Internet before
for the music discussion it fosters, but it can play an ugly role
too.
The following scenario happens all too often: A debut album gets
leaked online. People start going nuts about it before they even
finish listening once through. Others get on board the love train a
little later, making the record officially “hyped.” The
next group doesn’t like it, and starts bashing it as
“overrated.” Heated arguments flare up, with some
hopping from one side of the fence to the other. And all this
happens before the release date. It’s chaos. By the time the
world is officially introduced to this particular artist, the
online community is absolutely sick of the whole thing. Internet
publications run positive reviews that hedge their scores enough to
account for the backlash. Then Spin figures there must be a good
reason for the big to-do, and runs a rave review.
Such reactive thinking can get in the way of real discussion,
and the consequences can be more harmful than brief personal
embarrassment. So whether you’re a music fan, a writer or
having trouble navigating the hazards of your latest guy/girl
relationship, heed the following: Take a breath, and think things
over one more time.
E-mail Lee at alee2@media.ucla.edu.