DiScussion: In the age of the web, are negative reviews more pointless than ever?

I just had some weird PR / artist debate over the Nitin Sawhney release on here, which wouldn't have become apparent if it hadn't been for my negative review. If anything, now that there's more music, more choice and more availability - it's more important to have effective critique, user-generated or otherwise. I think that may explain part of Amazon's success too.

be treated separately from the fact that less cheerworthy ones are?

Surely the running of the Iglu & Hartly review wasn't directly responsible for those other ones not being reviewed...

I very rarely form opinions based on reviews now anyway. The last time I bought an album on the recommendation of DiS was "Return To Cookie Mountain". And that was more about the messageboarders than the reviewers - in fact I can't remember what mark it got.

Even if is really tempting to write an AA Gil style character assassination of said band (in the way he might write about a restaurant he has utter disdain for) where he talks about a load of other stuff than in the last sentence says band is shit, its not helpful. I would much rather see a good critique explaining why the band is rubbish or the record isn't up to scratch. I too use DiS as a reference tool alongside a load of other sources to sometimes work out if I want to purchase an album (even if it has been ripped to pieces on these hallowed pages).

which has certain parts taken out and certain parts changed as I thought the band were crap, while the "editor" thought they were good(despite them not actually being present), because they are friends with them I'd say negative reviews are far from pointless.

I think it is a balancing act, personally i'd rather you reviewed something that might be good, rather than one I knew was shit, but I also try to remember that an album review is only one person's opinion and in that sense, whether you slag it off, or praise it to high heavens, the most important thing is why are you slagging it off/praising it.

If it's some random pop pap like Iglu or Jesica Simpson I'm not really bothered about reading it negative or positive. I'm happy to read a review of an artists I'm interested in or like get slated.

I kinda like it that so many people's opinions get heard nowadays it gives a more well rounded insight into the music, asd you find journalists and just people in general that you trust.

I read for the opinion but a close second is for entertainment. Negative reviews can often be excellent reading if the reviewer explains there point of criticism clearly and humorously.

I personally think on one hand, Iglu & Hartly and Seasick Steve reviews have been some of the best reading of the week. For purely cynical disposition. Maybe Im a sour person, but when done well I think it makes excellent reading.

However separating quip-full rants from shitty student journos slating people to gather attention is a tricky judgement.

I'm all up for being entertained by a review

I rarely take seriously any reviewer or critic who is afraid, unwilling or not permitted to express a negative opinion.

I don't read sites like DiS just to guide what I buy. If you take music seriously as a cultural force or a mode of expression, even just a little bit, you want to see people engaging in dialogue about the merits, or lack of, of what is being released.

I know that sounds quite pretentious but it's pretty simple really. You either want to be told what record you should go and buy this week, or you want to take part in talking about and exploring music, which continues to be big and varied and exciting at the same time as it is narrow and uniform and dull.

Check out myspace for a few tracks, purchase said tracks/ album if I like it, job done.

You ignore that people generally trust reviewers, not reviews. If Roger Ebert for instance, gives a film a bad review, I listen. If Mong_478 gives the same film a bad review, I just don't care. Especially seeing as he can't spell.

When NME started to lose the plot at the end of the 90's I remember being able to judge which negatively reviewed albums I would like as it was obvious they had a strict music policy. In a way now a negative review isn't such a bad thing, but recently on DiS it has been fairly obvious what will get panned and what won't.

Cynicism is all well and good, but I think as long as there's a sense of perspective regarding music and nothing else then it's useful, unfortunately this is pretty rare.

so the bands we're liable to see on the music forum (over and over, again) should take precendence versus, say, Hawthorne Heights, Hinder (crap like that, mainstream pop...etc. And though DiS doesn't have the PF manpower to cover "everything" there is no excuse to miss a Wolf Parade, TVOTR, National, BSS type review. There should also be a healthy dose of indie buzz bands reviewed (eg PF and Stereogum have me all worked up to hear Vivian Girls, eh)...

and then the chips should fall where they may. There is simply too much music for me to hear it all: I need the filtration of intelligent reviews by people I can trust. "Why is the new Los Camps! record not quite as good...if its still pretty much the same?" and I expect the review to expound on that.

Also, if every review is positive then DiS will lose credibility, an issue it already sometimes struggles with.

In short: DiS should focus on the most "interesting" bands and then review their output as objectively as a subjective art can get.

one which you just know will be bad, because the band are shit, arent what most people on the site would like/ever consider listening to and they get slated.
then theres the one some people might like, and people are interested to hear what DiS made of it, and an opinion.

Both can be quite good to read, but i think maybe DiS should review more relevant things first, then if theres time, slag off bands like iglu and harty etc.

and, for what it's worth, I don't mind reading the occasional panning of shitehounds provided it doesn't detract from the general overall positive vibe (ie Music is good) that hangs around this place.

write from the heart

of blatant slating (I&H, Mika, Plain White Ts), they created a lot of debate with DiSers about weather the album was that bad, bad street teamers trying (and failing) to justify the album (come on, who on DiS doesn't like ganging up on Street Teamers) and were pretty much drowned in comments (in Mika's case, DiS won a fan in Brian May, which wouldn't have happened if the album wasn't reviewed)

is some kind of angle that might let me in to an album and get something out of it. That's the only worth the whole critics shebang really has to me. Any negative review can be dismissed with a 'you don't get it man!', an awareness that all the scorn might be motivated by a reviewer's prejudices and not the substance of the record. But a review that provides some kind of, not necessarily just bland praise, but an insight into the experience of listening to the album, what it can do- that's the kind of stuff that leads to me as a reader actually being affected by a review. And then when I write a review somewhere, that's why I try to give anyone reading it, a way in if I have one. If I haven't got one, I tend not to waste my time writing it in the first place. I see no point in being influenced by reviews that basically just go 'don't do it!' because I want to enjoy music.

Also, I've actually explored records because of a review that cast them in an interesting light on one hand while calling them shit with the other. Because while the final quality judgment is subjective, the qualities being identified within might mean something to me. As an obvious example, Kid A got slaughtered by the British press when it came out, here as well, but anyone who read those reviews and didn't think 'damn I have got to hear this' was bonkers. So I feel like negative reviews actually backfire on the reviewer sometimes- They're telling you not to bother, but the lengths they go to actually imply that nevertheless there's something interesting happening. The best truly discouraging reviews are written-in-5-minutes 7/10s, and not scathing, shocked 0/10s that inspire the reviewer's best prose, if you see what I mean.

It's more obvious than ever that any critic is just one person bullshitting like everyone else, and it doesn't mean the end of music journalism or anything, and it doesn't mean that anyone has to sit there pretending to like everything. But I think it's true that if you're writing a review actually hoping to change the world a little, there are a few intriguing and almost always 'positive' pieces of writing that do, and then there's a whole load of white noise.

my taste is great, if you taste isn't the same as mine, u iz wrong.

is that it gives the reviewer nowhere else to go. If you give 0/10 to something that is merely slick, empty, non-groundbreaking major label product, then what is a meaningful score for something actually offensive? The reverse also applies - whenever the Observer Music Monthly gives blanket 5/5 ratings to every album released in a month, there are cries of anguish on these boards.

I would also ponder this - the readers of DIS seem obsessed with the ratings that Pitchfork, NME and OMM give to stuff - I have never seen any of those publications worrying about Dis's opinion.

evaluation is banal. Anyone can do it, and nearly everyone does it. In fact it's almost impossible to avoid doing it.

But reviewing could be so much more. The best kind of reviewing (hey, did you notice that little bit of evaluation on my part?) is the kind that gives you a way of making sense of an album at the same time as it describes some of its specific aural features. In Z001's words, "an insight into the experience of listening to the album, what it can do" -- with the caveat that there's always more than one way of listening. So a review is -- or could be -- an attempt at expanding the range of listening experiences, a set of suggestions on HOW to listen, not on what to listen to.

You know what the worse thing is? Flicking through the shallow pages of NME to read how amazing every album,single,gig, band, monkey flinging shit is.

What is stinks of is a publication who are dependant on the record labels wanting to buy space for adverts and more often than not artist coverage.

If you only write good things about the things you like then you have no juxtaposition. You need to hear what is bad to understand and appreciate what is good.

A brilliant example of this in current media is the release of the second album by Bring Me The Horizon, a band who have seemingly amassed a cult following for being under 18, having bad hair, worse dress sense and a front'boy' who started his own clothing company with the help of his un-employed mummy before peeing on someone in a tour bus.

The album is being absolutely destroyed by all of the rock press most stating they hope that the people who buy it realise how terrible the band is, that they lack any purpose and start listening to something worth while.

If YOU don't tell these bands they're shit, they wont take stock at some point and change direction.

Take Metallica as an example. St Anger - crushed by the press disowned by the fans.

What do they do about it? think hard about what they are writing learn from their mistakes and make a much much better album with Death Magnet.

Negative journalism or 'criticism' is vital to the existence of a band, their progression as artists and the integrity of the publication that is printing it.