screwrocknroll:

The way it causes you to better recognize music’s component parts and respond less well to novelty.

In a fit of old before my time angst*, I sometimes wonder if it’s happening to me, with my Singles Jukebox review of Cults being the most palpable manifestation of it. (But I think maybe the…

I really can’t imagine dulling to novelty. I’m constantly, delightfully surprised by little things that happen in music. More and more I’m finding it in non-“quality” TV, too (Bones and How I Met Your Mother continue to be two of the best shows on television, y’all.) Maybe this is a function of being acutely aware of most music’s production from a fairly young age — I can play just about any song I’ve heard once (melody, anyway, and the chord structure), which means that if I really wanted to I could break down exactly what’s happening in any song at any time. And the technical production stuff — reverb, instrumentation, timbre, whatever else — I’ve never felt the need to break down so specifically — I’ll settle instead for a general understanding of what’s going on.

Important also not to lose the sense of novelty in writing about music. I am also delighted by interesting turns of phrase, neologisms, aphorisms, funny combinations of words. Marion Raven does sound like Avril Lavigne being drowned in the Baltic Ocean with a piano. That confluence, between novel sounds and novel words, isn’t one I suspect everyone shares, which makes the inherent importance of written criticism dependent on the qualities of the thinker of the critique. (The thinking, on the other hand, isn’t optional.) Too many critics suggest to me people who fail to take joy in sounds or words. (If you’re not happy and you know it, why do you continue to clap your hands?)