photo from Perfect Sound Forever

Simon Reynolds—whose criticism in the late-’80s/early-’90s Melody Maker hugely influenced my own aesthetics and whose latest book, Rip It Up and Start Again, I’m currently reading with pleasure—waxes pessimistic about the state of music writing, circa now, here.

Crucial passage:

Ultimately, the things that ail music writing today simply mirror the music itself: entropy and drifting disparateness, the waning of an urgent sense of NOW thanks to retro inundation. If great rock criticism is a struggle to make a parallel poem that rivals the music’s glory, then the music itself must be the spur to grandeur.

So, you see, it’s musicians’ fault that music critics aren’t producing more compelling criticism. Yo, shape up, bands! Innovate! You’re holding us writers back from fulfilling our potential.