A case study in writing reviews on the cheap:
– where possible, try and ensure that the audience is already familiar with the music.
The upshot of this is that everyone’s already made up their minds — your writing is only ever manifesting an individual’s preconceptions about that band. Whether fatuous or heartfelt (probably both), the caprice that #musicjournalism is anything other than vainglorious ballast and industry churn by-product is long since outmoded.
“He is scum egg / the horrid trendy wretch”
– Iotar of this parish once sagaciously noted that men love numbers. All sorts of numbers.
In order to appeal to men, try and include some numbers. In fact, The Fall‘s 458489‘s title is merely numbers! Clever work, Mr Smith. These numbers refer to three things:
- 45, meaning the 45 rpm vinyl record 7″ format, typically used for singles when singles were real and then whatever the fuck you’re doing with the least convenient form of the least convenient format in 2018.
- 84, referring to the year of 1984 when everything was shit because Thatcher.
- 89, referring to the year of 1989 when everything was shit because Thatcher.
– singles collections are often easiest to review — it’s probably the case that, thanks to the eldritch machinations of contractual obligations that the singles collection is GUARANTEED to be the very best of a person’s work.
Proofs of this concept can be found in the singles collections of Abba, Elvis, Carpenters, Roy Orbison, Gene, and of course The Fall of Prestwich, England.
Furthermore, even if the singles aren’t much cop, there’s minimal chance of *one-for-the-tapper b-sides, album tracks etc.
Now my problems are solved / it’s a remedy of old / I pretend I’m blind you see / bought some Armani clothes / and act like ET
– feel free to bolster your review with drastically over-reaching comments that sorely expose your complete lack of understanding of lyrics or musicology. As with numbers, men like this sort of fare a great deal.
“One of the more fascinating things about the Smith’s lyrics is the capacity to radically distend typical meters and scansion, phrases just over or under where you’re expecting bought some Armani etc”– Re-issues are rich for one-off-the-wrist comments with wispy adjectives like “warm” and “crisp”.
This re-issue, in fact, is a re-issue which certainly features a lovely crisp and warm sound, the drums sounding particularly crisp and warm, Smith’s vocals perhaps taking on a new crisply texture that’s warm in its crispness. It is perhaps of all records ever released — and I have heard at least six, so I would know — the most crisp and warmest-sounding of all records.
– Novelty factors are a total bonus. A coloured white vinyl is practically a licence, or license, to print money.
– A nice tip for newer bands is to try and be classic bands — it doesn’t matter how good your art is, given enough time and a smidge of credibility, your sleeve will become a classic.
The sleeve of the Fall’s 458489 [yes, this is a review of that record!] is absolutely shite, let’s be honest. Besides a fat geometric sans for the typeface on the back, it’s basically some half-arsed knock-off of something from a much bigger band in the ’60s or ’70s. Probably. I mean, it’s a design classic, so who am I to argue?
- Weak rhetorical questions form suitable padding if you’ve no real insight to offer.
It’s The Fall — what’s left to say about them, eh?
– Personal anecdotes, for older music, are an ideal opportunity to encourage the reader to gaze whistfully toward their preferred distance and reminisce over a smaller time with lower numbers.
I had a copy of this on CD that I lost at a party at Tim Ralph‘s house in about 1999. So having a lovely crisp, warm re-issue on white vinyl LP vinyl is greatly appreciated.
And of course The Fall deftly weave a crisp and warm parable of Luciani, AKA Pope John Paul I, notoriously the Holy See’s last in an uninterrupted line of Italian popes stretching back to Clement VII in 1523[1].
– Covers are a key moment to reminisce on also half-baked circumspect side-eyeing of Wikipedia articles as well as to suggest that this cover version is a “radical re-working” of the staid / workaday / overwrought (delete according to taste) original.
This collection includes two covers, the first of which is there’s a ghost in my house by Holland, Dozier, and Holland. The second is “Victoria” by written by Davis. The first is a radical reworking of the staid original, the second a radical re-working of the workaday Davis number, both managing to be radical re-workings of the overwrought originals.
GGGGUGHHHFHFHFHFFFUFUFUUUUGUGGGHHGHGHGHHG BIG NEW PRINZ FUFUUUUUUU BUY BUY BUY
– Additionally, there’s no harm in mentioning that the song “Big New Prinz”, should it be on the record that you happen to be reviewing, bears a striking similarity to the song “Rock n’ Roll Part Two” by renowned nonce Gary Glitter.
Of course “Rock n’ Roll Part Two” by someone whose notoreity doesn’t bear repeating (!) is very similar to “Big New Prinz”.
“Mike Clark: sez I a bastard / He is deranged I am William of Oranj / Go insane, in Holland / I can’t wait to taste anthrax turf again”.
– The aim of the game is to try and make enough money to migrate to Sweden or Poland — you’ll get looked after properly by the government there.
– Make out your head is a bellMy head is a bell.
Also The Fall are really good and this collection is really good if you like the dancing singlesy Fall which you do obviously because you’re a good person with noble and upstanding tastes.
-Kev Nickells-
*one-for-the-tapper — from The Wire‘s long-standing collections of tracks that are inscrutably bad even if the outfit concerned isn’t entirely piss-awful.
