The CMG Hatebag, Vol. 3

I wrote a draft of an introduction for this feature months ago wherein I explained to our readers that the reason we aggravate them so much is because, both personally and generally, we hate every single one of them. This was all very cute but, in the end, I scuttled the draft on the grounds that it may not be in the site’s best interest to describe at length the variety of methods I would use if possible to murder our readers (“gore clumped to my teeth, my fists like ground beef,” and so on). Still, as we prepare yet again to drape our spidery hatebag across your forehead(s) I find myself once again wanting to sardonically, self-destructively elucidate why we infuriate you. To pretend, as it were, that this was all intentional; that riling certain segments with our opinions on indie rock (or, in one woeful overstep, Nas) was something we set out to do.

The strange truth, of course, being that we don’t really hate you guys. We don’t hate music, either—in fact, we kinda like it! Well, Eric doesn’t, but still: conspiracy theories about our contrarian nature greatly overestimate our organization or ambition. Really, we’re just riding this thing out until either the Coca Cola company or Focus on the Family shut us down. At which point we’ll probably buy a new domain name and start posting pictures of our body hair instead of merely threatening to do so, and Colin will use the Twitter account exclusively to talk to Shaq and Spencer Pratt.

All of which leads to one cause for this third compilation of piping hot hateshots: we are just hate-able people. This seems fair. Our opinions fecally surge from our swirling hydra-like font of assholes and, shit-like, lack purpose, just the used brownish matter of what were once delectable sonic foodstuffs. The critic then grabs the reader by the collar and forces a deep sniff, the reader’s only logical response being a dirty-nosed, “Well, did it at least taste good?” a query to which the Cokemachineglow writer scoffs mightily. As if we care about such matters as “taste”! As if we’re going to tell you what the Micachu record “sounds” like! We want to talk about Foucault!, we roar. We want to talk about our adolescences! We laugh to one another, hands on our bellies, doubled over in incredulity. The reader wants to know if this album is good! Here, is this good? we bellow, before letting forth a biblical flood of opinion-shit on the reader, drowning cities in the viscous black burning tar of our thought-shit, kernels of undigested synth lines and lyrical interludes emerging fully-formed from the diarrheic hellfire coffee-black and coffee-hot that razes at once mountains and churches. The thought-shit makes a mockery of food-music, giddily burbling that it once was your precious Jens Lekmans, your Mastodons, your Ghostfaces, and is now rendered through the force of our digestive solipsism no longer the hot shit but merely literally some hot shit spattered lovelessly across your face.

Point being, I guess, yeah, keep hating.

==

re: Okkervil River :: The Stand Ins

Let me start by quoting you:

It wasn’t without some trepidation that I agreed to review the new Okkervil River jam. The last time I ventured down this fraught path it was made clear to me through a number of impassioned and informative missives that I had utterly failed to make my point. So I guess I’ll attempt once again, futilely and belatedly, to get this across: I don’t hate The Stage Names (2007). I don’t even dislike The Stage Names. I kinda like The Stage Names.

Here are the reasons why I didn’t finish reading your review.

A) I start a review by admitting I didn’t want to review this album in the first place.
B) I had to agree to do my job as a staff writer.
C) I use useless flowery vocabulary to make myself feel better. (trepidation, fraught, missives, belatedly.) M-W ftw.

You’re a egotistical jackass.

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re: Nas :: Untitled

Solely based upon your review of Nas’ album , I would have to say that you and this silly magazine that you write for, lose whatever minor credibility that you did have. Stick to what you know and if you are going to review a rap album, next time you get somebody who actually knows what real hip hop is. Biased idiots…

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re: Jack White & Alicia Keys :: “Another Way to Die”

you was way off with your review. this is the new. jack white will have to do until the jesus comes back. don’t fuck with the jesus, meg or no. (all margaret and no mary?) what were you thinking / listening to when you put this record down? put this cd / album on a good sound system and give it another listen -maybe your gear needs upgrading. i recommend a el84 tube amp / tube (e80cc) pre buffer and altec speakers – tecnicolor sound scape. if not, your taste or ears needs recalibration. for crying out loud, you are full of shite (olde english for excrement). i love parentheses.

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re: Lil Wayne :: Tha Carter III

Your recent Lil Wayne review was incredibly pretentious and pompous. What gives? I don’t see how one can give flack to “Lollipop” (going so far as calling it “utter nothingness”) and be so lenient on the rest of the songs which aren’t that much better than “Lollipop” itself.

And the “a lot of it’s annoying, but that’s what makes it so good” shtick throughout the review is vomit-worthy.

A definite contender for the most smug review of the year.

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re: Department of Eagles :: In Ear Park

I take issue with your recent review of Department of Eagles. Overall I like the album, but the review is extremely poorly written, to the point that it is inept. I find your site’s thinly veiled dislike of TVOTR amusing, in the ‘desperate to be different’, folie a deux trap that you and that band’s recent reviewer have fallen into. However,when this means that reviews become diatribes of arch coolness, then criticism is valid. Furthermore, the writing is amateurish and unengaging.

Perhaps your editor could help you, by suggesting that effective writing involves getting the point across, not trying to crowbar abstruse references into the prose.

For example:

When Yellow House was released I wrote here about its knowing subjugation to the kinds of aesthetics that vein the subterranean levels beneath fads.

I mean come on, that is just cringe-worthy. It means nothing, it is neither lyrical or informative, a series of poorly chosen words that fails to develop any idea. It is very amusing but I doubt that was the intention.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts. I just think that it’s important to develop as a writer and please take it in the spirit intended.

...and then:

Christ,

You’re a lost cause. That is, unless you’re 16. If you are, then good luck to you. You’re not the first to equate clumsily chosen, faux erudite words equalling insight. Never mind.

Oh and the last line of my email should have read ‘please don’t reply you talentless gimp’ but social graces transmuted (thought you might like that badly chosen word) it into something more polite.

==

re: Titus Andronicus :: The Airing of Grievances

Bro – interesting review, but pretty lazy:

1) Because they are from NJ you claim they have a visible affinity for Bruce Springsteen. Where do you get that from? Oh right, everyone in NJ cops the Boss. Lazy.
2) The Conor Oberst reference, simply because of Stickles voice. Dude, they are a punk band. You couldn’t think of any other punk singers with raspy voices? Lazy.
3) Claiming (in the first paragraph no less!) that because of 1+2, that TA is somehow a Boss-Bright Eyes concoction. Lazy.
4) You do get the irony of saying Stickles approach is “undergrad English” – right? I mean, try to tell me that you are NOT sitting their pulling words out of a thesaurus (your daily lexicon does not include “wan” and “intertextually”) and forcing them into a half-ass review.

If you were trying really hard, it would be funny. But my gut reaction is that you did this review during your work break. Which is strange given you bag on the bands earnestness and, in return, show so little effort in your write-up. Keep up the good work!

==

re: Of Montreal :: Skeletal Lamping

I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t write for Cokemachineglow anymore. It’s a very good site, but has too few reviews as it is.
And yours are just wastes of space.

Thanks?
Hopefully.

==

re: TV on the Radio :: Dear Science,

Clayton, when you say, “What remains unticked off, though, composes a new portrait, one nearer to the reality of the musical experience at hand, and it’s one from which we may be wise to draw future critical observations. What we have left is a universally lauded group, with a onesheet rolling to infinity and album of the year awards growing by the, um, album, a band tapping through erotic, political and emotional vagaries into the vast contemporary mindset, a band, most importantly, noted high and low for their robust production aesthetic. What we have is an unabashed pop band—pop-rock, even. They will never accomplish what they’ve already been purported to because they’ve never asked a question to which they didn’t already have an answer. Dave Sitek’s production is the magnetic north of this musical universe, and with it the band is never lost. They would be well to sound more so; to get lost, rather than cluck with pleasure at how well they know themselves. Much of the media considers them heirs apparent to the great art-rock throne: post-Talking Heads, post-R.E.M., post-Pavement, etc., and they named their first record OK Calculator (2002); they believe in this billing. But they conceptualize the zeitgeist not as a monstrous phantom but as something physical and plainly comprehended, and pop music is made in the sky. If these guys are art, they should sound from our midst, not so cleanly above it.”

WTF Does that mean?! Are you saying that TV on the Radio is too pompous to live up to their hype? What are you talkin about man?

....

Clay: I thought we decided for you stop reading my writing.

No Clayton, we never reached that consensus.

==

re: School of Seven Bells :: Alpinisms

Regarding your “School of Seven Bells” review I would like to say, dude, shut up.

No-one cares whether music has emotional value within itself, or at least, no-one reading a review of an album. I think it’s pretty fair to say that if you’re reading the view of an album you probably have some already views on music as a whole and at this point you don’t want some pot-smoking hipster telling you about how all music is meaningless apart from the mean we attribute to it ourselves or WHATEVER.

We just kinda want to know, ‘is this an album that is worth spending money on’ and maybe that’s not a simple yes/no question, in fact it’d be awful if it was. But throw me a bone here? I mean I’ve got no idea whether you even liked the damn album or not. It’s a pretty boring album as it goes, maybe that’s why you had to fill it up with pretentious twaddle. Next time you can’t think of what to write I suggest you make confusing metaphors about the bands (‘it’s as if they went to a day-trip to the Shoegaze Zoo and Cocteau Twins were feeding C83 peanuts to Neu!’) instead of pretending you’re a real deep thinker, or WHATEVER.

or, WHATEVER

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re: Black Mountain :: In the Future

That was the most pretentious thing I’ve ever read. So you know a bit of music theory, at least enough to know what an octave is, good for you. So you’re probably an English major, well done. It’s not about how well you can write, it’s about the music you’re reviewing. You’re obviously using your position as a music journalist to showcase your excessively wordy writing style. Under the guise of writing album reviews you’re trying to get people to remark “My god this guy is smart”, or in my case “What an asshole.”

It’s not about you, buddy. It’s about the album.

==

re: Becoming a music critic, Lester Bangs

don’t become a music critic
another insight:
lester bangs is dead

==

re: Protest the Hero :: Fortress

I’d just like to take this opportunity to flame you for writing not only a horribly written, un-amusing review but also for criticizing an album almost solely for it’s lyrical content. It also might be a good idea not to review an album that resides in a genre you’re not a fan of. If I reviewed the latest Hannah Montana album I’m sure I could tear it apart the same way you did Fortress. Protest the Hero wrote a damn brilliant album in terms of the music (which is all that matters in my mind) and they’ve said countless times in interviews for Fortress (not that you might have seen them) that they think it’s hilarious that an album with D & D inspired lyrics has done a bit of chart-topping. They have fun with their incredibly high level of musicianship and you apparently can’t stand the fact that they have some over-the-top lyrics. For God sakes, tear Dragonforce a new ass hole for being such a musically as well as lyrically generic band.

Just saying.

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re: Toadies :: “No Deliverance”

Wow Scott, I figured there would be at least one bad review of No Deliverance and you delivered it. After reading it, it left me thinking, “this guy is an idiot,” so I hope that’s what you were going for with your review. Fans of the Toadies want Toadies style music and that’s what No Deliverance is all about. No back-up singers, no keyboards, just pure, hard rock. It’s a beautiful thing and it’s too bad you can’t appreciate it.

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re: Wolf Parade :: At Mount Zoomer

Did anybody bother editing the review of Wolf Parade’s “At Mt. Zoomer”? You guys have surpassed Pitchfork’s staff as the most self-important mental masturbators writing the most prolix and irritating reviews. You make me want to subscribe to Rolling Stone.

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re: Asher Roth :: I Love College

“the way we get by” ? seriously, fuck off.

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re: Hercules & Love Affair :: Hercules & Love Affair, again

A few words about your review: The side of me that wishes to maintain perspective on life also houses my generous side. Therefore, a generous criticism of your review would amount to: “Guess disco ain’t your thing,man.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the thought: “This guy never stepped out of his own preconceived notions for long enough to actually listen to this record.” I’m not charging you with simply saying something I didn’t want to hear.

I can handle dissent. I’m wondering if the review you submitted can actually count as a faithful fulfillment of your job requirements.

==

re: Weezer :: Weezer

the same week you guys rip on blender for its awful reviews i read the line “This is Rivers growing a dick. This is that dick growing a dick. This is that dick growing a Rivers.” Probably the worst sentence ever written in a review. do your reviewers even know what they are talking about. if there is anyway possible to get an explanation to what this sentence means i would greatly appreciate it. or at least be assured that the authors are made aware of this email and that they know there is some sort of personal responsibility to writing a complete asinine reviews. i didnt think a website could be more self-serving and less coherent than pitchfork but your psuedo-pitchfork website has proved me wrong. i’m sure that this message will be disregarded but i’m at least hoping someone will read it and feel ashamed to work for such an awful music review website.

Dear R—-y,

I thank you for your e-mail of July 4. May I assume that you are an asshole?

I look forward to obtain a clear answer from you (if this is convenient),

Yours very truly,
CMG