TP reviews you particularly love/hate

This one really nails it for me - descriptive and concise.

It really is tough for me to find disagreeable points, but here's a relatively recent one:

While I somewhat appreciate the certain artistry involved in finding a lot of different positive ways to say SUCK, in the end, the music and the review does just that. (ie. paraphrasing "it's absolutely derivative but that's a GOOD thing"... huh?!) "no wonder B.Eno gets those big bucks!" indeed - hopefully Bradly was interning.

and sorry Ira, but did they really deserve that much ink? Maybe you should add your Control review to Joy Division just to even things out. =P



Post Edited (08-12-08 00:43)

First of all, the Blind Idiot God text covers only the first record, so its conciseness is a bit misleading. It is indeed a very well-written piece, though.

Second of all, considering Nirvana's cultural importance in the alternative rock music world, I'd say yes, they deserve that much ink, whether you like the music or not. They consolidated the underground sounds of the 80s into a commercially viable form, bringing a formerly semi-secret world to top 40 and AOR stations everywhere. That makes them important, even if you can't stand a note of their songs (or are simply sick of them). (Now, the Alanis Morrisette entry, on the other hand...)

Thirdly, I quite like the Coldplay entry. They're not a band I listen to, but they're one I've encountered in my day job, and I fully understand and support the ambivalent tone. Their music is derivative and unimaginative, but that doesn't mean they aren't earnest, sincere artists. Plus they do have a way with a hook. And yes, the fact that such a safe, mainstream act would choose to work with Brian Eno does say volumes, even if the results aren't as avant garde as one might hope. (Not that I can really say - I've not heard a single song from that album.)

This is exactly the kind of coverage I expect and want from Trouser Press - depth and a sense of the music's place in a broader context (if warranted), without the pretentiousness of, say, Pitchfork. If I want pithy and concise, I'll read Entertainment Weekly or Blender.

That's great, thanks for commenting exclusively on my opinions, but do you have your OWN opinions on TP reviews?

One trend in music journalism I can't stand is the resistance to pan anything at all - record reviews became an obligatory feature of the overly abundant abysmal 'culture' magazines of the 90s. Almost all of them took the editorial approach of "let's just review things we like cause it makes our sponsors happy and more tightly defines our clique" approach and your support of that Coldplay tripe is a perfect example.
"Their music is derivative and unimaginative, but that doesn't mean they aren't earnest, sincere artists" would you care to read that to yourself again out loud?



Post Edited (08-12-08 11:12)

Hmm...let's see...yep, still stand by that statement. I think with Coldplay ambivalence is the only way to go.

I don't dislike any of the TP entries (at least from the books). I may disagree with a few (like the take on Robyn Hitchcock's Queen Elvis, which is one my favorite RH records, or the comments on Primal Scream's Riot City Blues, the only PS album I've ever liked), but I don't hate any of them. I think they're all well done.

As far as what I like, I've ripped off TP (especially Ira) enough in my own writing to make it difficult to choose. I second the description of Steve Swindell's Fresh Blood album (I too have been searching for it ever since) and the "sheer Shakespeare in a Chevy" line, and add this, from Jack Rabid's entry on Squirrel Bait:

"...singer Peter Searcy's anguished delivery was like a frightened Paul Westerberg, ten years younger (and twice as animal brutish), on eighteen cups of coffee — the terrified scream of a boy being chased by an axe-murderer."

I agree with Toland. There's a displeasing trend in print music journalism to shorten the reviews drastically. Only the "big" releases get more than a paragraph's coverage. (Granted, Christgau has made a long career out of this approach, but he's determined the amount of writing to be done on "good," not "big.") The magazines don't get any thinner; they just feature more ads.

When a critic has just a paragraph's worth of space to work with, he/she will often sacrifice informative writing for clever, pithy sarcasm. Sometimes entertaining, but rarely illuminating.

I've grown to dislike my own addition to the Liz Phair entry - in retrospect I'm way too harsh on Somebody's Miracle. I still think it's a lousy album and would not encourage anyone to buy it, but dismissing it in its entirey as "banal, greeting card rubbish" is unfair. I re-listened to it recently and there are a lot of songs on it with the more complex viewpoints associated with Phair. They're not particularly GOOD songs by any stretch, but they deserve more consideration than what I gave them. There are some banal, greeting card songs there for sure, but it's not a fair description of the entire album.

As far as reviews I particularly love, I (and many others here) are on record as loving Jim Green's Hawkwind entry, especially this passage:

"The best of the solos is Swindells' Fresh Blood. It's just him (producing, too), with Lloyd-Langton, King and ex-Van der Graaf Generator bassist Nic Potter. It sounds like Thin Lizzy meets Graham Parker with a rocket up his ass. Narsty."

I still have never heard that album, but I want to someday before I die.

This one has been a longtime favorite, also:
[www.trouserpress.com]

btw Brad, nothing personal in picking yours out - it is tough to find reviews I don't like here and that was easy pickings via What's New; to make up for it this one's on the money IMO. =)

We've had a couple of similar threads on here a few years back, but those were focused mostly on Ira:

[trouserpress.com]

[trouserpress.com]

(and maybe someone can tell me again how to hotlink this stuff).

As I noted in one of those, I think the entire Marilyn Manson entry is one of the best things ever written.

Check the buttons when you respond or post:
<a> = hotlink (just enter link and label for it)
<i> = italic
<b> = bold
<u> = underline
s = strikethrough
<img> = add an image
<hr> add a horizontal line

and getting fancy - click yr name link and then "edit profile". There you can add a signiture using those tags as well.



Post Edited (08-12-08 13:06)

Aha - that's what that <a> is. I'd figured out the bold and italics and other stuff, but didn't know what the other symbols were. Thanks, guys.

And to test my newfound html prowess, another review that struck me as particularly hilarious in the 1st edition of the TP guide, but seems less so now, tho it does have a good opening line:

[trouserpress.com]

No worries at all. If I'm going to be posting opinions of other people's work, I have to be open to people having opinions about mine.

That Great Lakes Myth Society entry needs to be updated.

Rhett - very easy to hot link. Just enclose the link between < and > (no spaces between the symbols and the link, though. I put the spaces in or otherwise the word "and" would've been a link. To what, I don't know.)



Post Edited (08-12-08 12:21)

Paganizer once posted a user guide, to enable us to make the most of embedded HTML capabilities on this board.

Actually, I stopped trying to have my own opinions years ago. They were giving me headaches. Since then, I just buy whatever Brad reviews, and try to ignore it when the music store clerks snicker at me. (Kidding, Reno.)

Here's one of my favorite TP reviews of recent years. Ira obviously considered the artist a load of wank and didn't hesitate to say so.

And here's another one of my favorites, at least for the first paragraph.

I know I said this in a prior post, but my favorite line in a TP review is when Ira called a Motorhead album "Sheer Shakespere in a Chevy"

I've always loved this entry. Though, to truly appreciate the essay's multidimensionality you have to be more interested in him than is perhaps healthful.

And I know nothing of the band, but have always gotten a kick out of "the pugnacious sound of a band wearing its influences — which range from Joe Strummer to Mick Jones — on the sleeves of its torn T-shirts."

This week I read in the '90s guide the Flying Saucer Attack review and came away wondering what the heck this meant: "One side effect of the upswing in digital technology is the lack of good headphone records."

Maybe that statement is outdated 12 or so years later, or maybe I'm just missing the boat as usual. Any opinions?

Other than that one passage, I have nothing in particular against that review.



Post Edited (08-13-08 21:19)

Reading TPs put down of The Fixx was most entertaining: "Shuttered Room offers "Red Skies" and "Stand or Fall"; Reach the Beach contains "One Thing Leads to Another" and "Saved by Zero"; Phantoms has "Are We Ourselves?" Showing remarkable consistency, they are all equally unpleasant and trivial. (Not too surprisingly, the Fixx's American success has been met by nearly total UK indifference.)"

To be generous, maybe Ira can reconsider them as, I don't know, rock's first intellectual / philosophical dance band? Lyrics: "Are we, are we are we ourselves? Are we ourselves and do we really know?" My philosophy professor would've been impressed.

I also love TPs reviews of the latest Lou Reed albums; they're good for a laugh: "The fact that Reed pronounces his desolation in a voice as sympathetic, but detached, as that of a receptionist in a funeral parlor doesn't help....Reed can't possibly be so out of the loop to think anyone still imagines him waiting for the man, can he?"

What, no Raven review? In an act of supreme self-indulgence, Reed rewrote friggin' Edgar Allan Poe, fer chrissakes! That's what I call a bullseye for criticism and parody, if not pie - throwing.

And kudos for tweaking Marilyn Manson's third nipple.

I seem to recall that Jon Young always gave the Fixx pretty glowing reviews in TP magazine. In light of that and their recent wildly divergent takes on the new Fratellis album, I'm ready to see Ira and Jon take it into the boxing ring.

A friend of mine once saw the Fixx hanging out at a Stuckeys somewhere in Indiana. They must've stopped in for a Pecan milkshake or something.

And boy, what few Stuckey's that are still around are a sad reflection of what they used to be. Mostly just typical truckstops now, with one rack of sad looking Stuckey's branded pecan products. Can't even get the milkshake anymore.

It's a damn shame, I tell ya. A damn shame.

NOTE: I think I meant "widely divergent" rather than "wildly divergent" in referring to Ira & Jon Young's views of the Fratellis. It's a pretty subtle distinction, but a distinction nonetheless.

However, I was drinking one of several Coronas as I typed that last night, so what I really meant is likely lost to history at this point.



Post Edited (08-14-08 12:49)

Sometimes reading about a band is more fun than listening to them. Especially when you don't have the funds to. Thanks to TP, I'd like to check out The Residents, Crass, (ace lyrics!) and R Stevie Moore.

> "One side effect of the upswing in digital technology is the lack of good headphone records."

It depends which "upswing" the writer is talking about: in recording equipment, music-carrying format or listening technology. Because Sprague made the comment with regard to an album released in 1995, I'm guessing he was referring to the second option.

Digital recording technology itself didn't diminish the headphone-listening quality of music. Indeed, Ry Cooder's Bop Til You Drop, the first pop album recorded fully in digital, is a marvelous listen on headphones. And while a lot of albums re-issued on CD didn't have the same sound quality as their vinyl predecessors, I've also heard plenty of them that measured up just fine on headphones (Remain in Light comes to mind).

It's the third phase — the listening technology — that's really taken the fun out of the headphones experience. (Terribly ironic, since that's how this listening technology is most often used.) With downloads becoming more and more popular, and small "earbuds" being used to listen, the sound quality of new rock/pop albums has gotten more compressed.

Indeed, a lot of newer artists don't even bother to record their albums with particularly top-notch sound quality in the first place. They know that the music will be downloaded and listened to on those crappy earbuds, so it doesn't pay to invest much time, effort and budget into the recording process.

A pity, because it doesn't have to be that way. I listen to my iPod on more "old-fashioned" headphones — the kind that became popular with Walkmans in the '80s. It sounds a lot better that way. In fact, I was playing "Theme from Shaft" on my iPod through my car stereo yesterday, and it sounded terrific.

I hadn't thought about CDs themselves as being the target of that remark, but that's a pretty good guess. I also wonder if he was trying to say something about musical styles and either botched it or had to shorten his thought too much for the TP format.

I mostly agree with you about the current state of delivery quality. I use earbuds a lot at work, and they're fine in their role. I like to be able to hear nicely-recorded music played back nicely as well, but I'm sympathetic to working with Lo-Fi intent and DIY budgetary constraints.

I like downloads just fine--I'm grateful to them for helping me try new music and buy music that's been out of print for years on CD and out of my budget if I could even find a copy. I still buy as many CDs as I can.

I look askance a bit at the current vinyl trend. I was a vinyl die-hard in the 1980s until the piss-poor quality of almost all domestic pressings helped drive me to CDs. Same can't be necessarily said for import pressings--a great quality vinyl copy of the Triffids' Black Swan comes to mind.

And I'm babbling, so that's a wrap.

Quote

Indeed, a lot of newer artists don't even bother to record their albums with particularly top-notch sound quality in the first place. They know that the music will be downloaded and listened to on those crappy earbuds, so it doesn't pay to invest much time, effort and budget into the recording process.

hmmm, I think you'd be hard pressed to find any bands that support that premise. I don't know a single one that doesn't try to get the best sound when they record, no matter what financial level they're doing it and if anything, the abundance of tech possibilities and new gizmos have turned a lot of them into tweakers that would make the Floyd or Laswell seem undiscerning.
Trust me there are a lot of people today absolutely convinced they can hear outside of the human range simply because they have a tool measuring and waveforming it on a screen for them.

And I guarantee the last thing on musicians' minds when they are producing music is if someone will listen to it on MP3/earbuds or not.

---

And I have to give a thumbs up on the Fixx too - I just happened to hear a 85 King Biscuit Radio Show a few months back that I really enjoyed. They were a better band than this one, and this line still makes me laugh If not specifically better, the six-minute edit of "The One Thing" is certainly longer.

There are some current bands that have deliberately shoddy sound - Times New Viking springs to mind - but that's more of an aesthetic/artistic decision than a pragmatic "who cares what it sounds like if it's going to be downloaded anyway" decision.

I believe that some of the people who have been giving their recent albums away for free as downloads initially - Radiohead, Carbon/Silicon, Nine Inch Nails - have later made the albums available in CD form at least in part to satisfy fans who aren't satisfied with the sound quality of downloads.

Which is leading up to a thought that I can't quite get fully formed enough to express right at the moment, so I'm keeping it to myself for now.

If only I always took such a precaution...



Post Edited (08-14-08 12:57)

INXS would wipe the floor with The Fixx. Bar-band Aussies vs. pseudo intellectual, pasty Rupert Hine-orchestrated Brits? I think we all know who'd win that throwdown.

> I think you'd be hard pressed to find any bands that support that premise.

Bands? You're right. Labels? More likely, especially with CD sales shrinking. (Sorry, I did misapply that statement.)

[trouserpress.com]

[trouserpress.com]

One comment that always struck me as weird in an otherwise perfectly acceptable entry is David Sprague's on a track from Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted:

"From the initial notes of "Summer Babe" (which introduced the band's patent-worthy cotton-candy harmonies into the mix for the first time)..."


?????

Best,

Jon



Post Edited (08-16-08 22:01)

If the review of the first Roxy Music album and the introduction in The Clash review didn't totally sell me on the TP Record Guide when I first came across my Third Edition at my local Borders sometime in the early 90's, it was the review of the first Cheap Trick album that did it. The description of that album could move any Rock music fan with the faintest heartbeat to go out and immediately buy that album. However, it was something more in particular about that review that was the reason why I ultimately decided to purchase the TP Record Guide and why it remains my favorite TP review until this day. Specifically, it was the candor and sincerity with which that review was written about a band that isn't taken all that seriously by the masses. It was a no-holds-barred, matter of fact review of an album that would open the eyes and immediately wipe the smirk off the average music fan's face who'd be lucky enough to have read it and realize that Cheap Trick was much more than the group that merely sang the ubiquitous hits, I Want You To Want Me and The Flame. After reading that entry, I had confidence that every TP review would be taken with the utmost seriousness and not dismissed out of hand whether it was a review of an underground cult favorite or of a mainstream guilty pleasure.

As far as TP reviews that I don't particulary care for, I've already mentioned my dissatisfaction with the Billy Idol entry before as it unfortunately aligns itself on many levels with the same cookie-cutter, stepford-wive critical analysis of Mr. Broad's solo career that inhabits far too many much lesser, average publications. I've always been disappointed that TP wasn't able to get that entry right and rise above some of the same nonsense written in those lesser publications.

With respect to the TP Coldplay entry, I don't really care for Coldplay's music and while I don't necessarily agree with everything written in that entry, I find it to be a pretty informative review of the band that hits the mark on far many more occasions than it misses.

not TP, but IR:

If the violent debacle of the Rolling Stones' Altamont concert was the event that killed off the '60s, Grand Funk Railroad was the band that played the funeral. Unhindered by artistic ambition or strong ties to the counterculture, these minimally competent Michigan rockers were proletarian crowd-pleasers, custom-built for the crass '70s. Drawn from the dozen hit albums Grand Funk issued between 1969 and 1975, the 15 selections here should be more than enough souvenirs for all but the truly masochistic. Besides the Vietnam-era patriotism of 1973's ''We're an American Band,'' this bury-and-forget time capsule contains an entertaining cover (''The Loco-Motion''), several worthless ones (''Gimme Shelter,'' ''Inside Looking Out''), and wretched originals (all 10 minutes of ''Closer to Home/I'm Your Captain'').

--

Personally, I think "The Loco-motion" GFR style is one of the WORST songs they recorded.

I didn't realized Grand Funk sang that "Closer to my Womb" song.

I never really thought much of Jane's Addiction, but I'm listening to Nothing's Shocking this afternoon anyway. And as usual, I cannot listen to the album without thinking of Ira's review. Makes me LOL every time!

Ira wrote a cover story on Jane's Addiction (I think it was about Lollapalooza) for Pulse (Tower records house magazine) and I was shocked to see how he trashed the band. Don't think it helped sell many records.

Barenaked Ladies (love it):

"As cute as a baby and as appealing as a loaded diaper..."

Since most of this thread is celebrating the ‘beat-downs’, I’m going to mention the surprise appraisal of the Missing Persons discography. NOT what you might expect!!

All I know is that ira loves THE WHO & THE Clash, especially "GIVE 'EM ENOUGH ROPE"
and he hates the band RUSTY.

edited many times : in order to purposefully oversimplify



Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2025 04:54PM by STEVE.

For the rekkid,
ira's palpable time travel back to his radio listening days, remains the holy grail of all his writings for me.

After reading the Trouser Press for thirty five years, here's what I really think. Ira Robbins is that gritty, dirty, sweaty guy. A guy that digs his ass off every fucking day, through six foot high piles of steaming shit to tell me, "Hey, I might have found something here"
Just for me to say, "I THINK THIS IS FUCKING GOLD!

P.S> Thanks for the latest excavation. The Terry Banks' pre Julie Ocean/ pre Dot Dash unearthing. Really, wonderful, no "Glimmering" stuff.



Edited 12 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2025 07:49PM by STEVE.