NME reviews

Overwhelmingly positive and surprisingly supportive. These phrases should not apply to music reviews. However this is seemingly the stance NME take, it is depressing how little criticism they offer to anyone. The lowest mark i have ever seen them give was 7\10 for Paul Mccartneys latest and they still called it a masterpiece. I want to see hate seeve throw the pages but instead its a giant group hug. Even the smashing pumkins latest EP was given a good review! Are they deaf?!

simply sickening.

I feel I would be sickened by it if I'd read an NME recently. What they've done is make their magazine pointless. You don't even have to read it to get an opinion on an album. Didn't Chris start a thread on it in ye olde forum along a similar vain?

I think what they do is let people who are known fans of the album review it, at NME towers, in one corner there's the emo guy who writes all emo reviews, in another corner, the long haired snarling guy who writes all metal reviews, in another corner the indie guy, (guess what he writes), and in the other corner, the chav, who writes obscenities on the back to the other guys heads.

By doing it this way, it makes out that the NME is a corporation of love.

But if they give reviews to people on different ends of the spectrum, all albums would be hated, yes it would be funnier to read about, but it will harm the music industry slightly, and none of us would like that.

Now I know people are going to quote me on the "harm the music industry" part, and make out that I'm implying that if NME hated then in a years time Razorlight will be busking on a street corner, so I'll reply now and say that there are a lot of NME readers, who with the stigma of a bad review won't buy an album. There's your reply so don't ask the question.

noone should be forced to buy the new smashing pumpkin EP... Personally i think that the review should be regarded as slander.

And maybe i should change my slightly overboard expectancy of a review. I want them to be impartial and i dont want them to consider what a bad review would do to the bands respective album sales. If an album is bad by all means slate it... even to Pitchfork standards and if its good then tell us. What perplexes me is that surely the magazine cant see everything as a quality buy.. at a certain point they are literally just vomiting sunshine.

Tom wrote:at a certain point they are literally just vomiting sunshine.

I feel this would be a good signature for you on the forum. Additionally you've ruined the thought of a sunny day for me by association with vomit.

Music would be terrible though if every reviewer gave every album a great review. Bad reviews are there to ensure we don't waste our money but also ensure the band themselves feel bad for inflicting their poor excuse for a musical recording on and also encouraging them to do better so they may become unreasonably rich from our simple pleasure of their music.

It is an interesting question though whether or how much the music tastes of reviewers colour the reviews they give.

It is an interesting question though whether or how much the music tastes of reviewers colour the reviews they give.

Quite a lot, I imagine. I reviewed an Armour for Sleep (sickeningly stereotypical emo) album a while back. I hate emo; I hated the album. I gave it 3/10. Now in hindsight, relative to other emo it wasn't that bad, but I was never ever going to like it, was I? But then, on the other hand, it is possible to be vaguely objective about things -- I can listen to an album I don't particularly enjoy and acknowledge its good qualities. It just so happens that the majority of emo albums have very few.

I can sort of understand how the NME situation could arise. If there assignment system is anything like PopMatters, their writers will get a huge long list of albums every week/month/whatever and from that they'll pick several they want to review, and then the editor will sort out who gets what from that. Obviously most people will imeadiately scan the list for bands they like (hence why this month I could be receiving new albums by Frightened Rabbit, Russian Circles, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and Foals ), so most of the big releases will be done by fans. Personally I quite like writing negative reviews, so if there's a band I hate, I'll often ask for that too, but the one's I like will always come first. And then there's always things you've never even heard of, but I think this problem is always gonna be worse with the NME because it generally doesn't seem to cover obscurities, so the vast majority of albums are going to be reviewed by people who like the band already. So it then has to be really bad for it to get a bad review.

Apologies if this response seems a bit "Ooooh get me, I'm a music writer", by the way, just offering me two-bobs-worth.

Tom - Pitchfork vs. DiS? I'm starting to favour Pitchfork I think, for reviews at least. I like the whole community side of DiS too much to forsake it, though. Whenever I read a review on Pitchfork I always scroll to the bottom to read the comments, and alas, there are none... It's also not possible to write a review shortly after reading Pitchfork. The quality of writing is so high you can't help but develop an inferiority complex.

I definately as a website prefer DiS. The community and the sheer bias in the news articles amuse me far too much than it should. But you are right in terms of reviews pitchfork is boss.

If only for the rating out of ten it gave British Sea Power latest album: U.2.
frankly i was glad that someone else actually saw it.

Aye, I enjoyed that too. And the fact that for 'In Rainbows' you could select your own rating...