This article first appeared in Viceland.com
Somehow I missed this review in the NY Times of The Fall’s new album. The article is titled “Mr. Smith Shows His Staying Power,” and it came out a couple of weeks ago.
I wish I hadn’t read it. Not now, not then. And now that I have read it, I can’t focus, which is a problem for me because I’m overwhelmed with work and it’s 4 AM and I have deadlines.
How do I describe what’s wrong with this article, when literally everything is wrong with it? It shouldn’t matter, I know—it’s “just a harmless album review” I tell myself. One would expect the Times to get The Fall wrong, and that would be fine too. But I never thought they’d find a Gen-X culture critic who carried the Thomas Friedman gene. I hadn’t even heard of this guy Ben Ratliff before, and the few people who answered my desperate late-night emails had never heard of him either. (more…)
June 4th, 2010 | Comments (26)
