A Critical Look at Criticism: It’s our FIFTH anniversary! That’s five seasons at fifty episodes a piece, covering nearly that many albums, topics, as well as debates over what many would consider a trifling corner of cultural discourse. Five years has taught us that music truly is a boundless medium. And so, in our album discussions—incorporating everything from literary analogies to politics, psychology, sociology, life, love, pain, sorrow, and ever more complex conditions—we strive to honor artists’ hard labor by (at the very least) participating in combined acts of analysis, brainstorming, ruthless criticism, and garrulous adulation. It’s a mixed bag, but we hope, a fruitful one.
In this episode, we will be:
• Reflecting on the project;
• Discussing the barriers between criticism and analysis;
• Championing the merits of fact-checking;
• Discussing logical fallacies, laws, and rhetorical gibberish;
• Citing examples of specific critics and critical works, from Glenn Gould, to Pitchfork, to Yahtzee, and RedLetterMedia, where language, rhetoric, and satire have all aided the work, for good and for ill;
• Coming to terms with our own fallacies, clichés, and internet nonsense.
Continue reading
