The criticism of critical distance
Nearly all of my favourite albums are by people I have never met or spoken to
For some reason the other day I was thinking about the worth of critical distance with relation to music. Not the audio physics term, but with relation to the distance of the criticism of popular music. Music reviewing and writing by its nature is a echo chamber; it exists to give opinions about things the reviewer does or doesn't like.
It's almost never objective, and almost always contains biases. It's often immersive, and can only exist as such.
For example, its fucking hard to do a gig review without actually going to the gig you are reviewing. Likewise, when your writing a feature on a band or muso, your prose is likely to be swayed by their music at least as much as what they actually said in a given interview.
The old pearl about meeting your idols
Does having a beer after with a band after a set unreasonably affect your potential to write an unbiased review? Should someone who's a dedicated fan of a particular band really review a new release by that band?
For me, the answer to those questions are no and yes respectively. For me, music criticism is about the music and its context. Its about the passion and emotion that a writer can convey along with the music.
In my honest opinion, the best piece of music journalism of the last two or three years is Andrew Ramadge's short book The World According to Gaz.
The critical distance here is less than zero; the piece is essentially a fan of Gareth Liddiard watching his new album being recorded and chatting to him, his friends and family. Without Ramadge being embedded with Liddiard's camp, it could turn out to be just another fan article on how great Liddiard/The Drones are, or another distant review.
It's better than that. It has life, and it makes the album that Liddiard released (Strange Tourist) even better to listen to. It not only reflects the context of the production of the album, it provides some to the finished product.
Where was I?
Oh, critical distance. A noble ideal, but wasted on music.