As I write these words freelance music writer Michelangelo Matos is working on a new book about the history of rave, "The Underground Is Massive" when not offering his somewhat controversial opinions of modern pop records. Along with Hardeep Phull, another freelancer of just about equal powers of persuasion, they have replaced Dan Aquilante for a year or so now, and to be varying degrees of pleasure.
Matos one star review of the new Nick Cave album is a perfect example of them getting it wrong.
It starts with the weirdest misjudgement of a major artist I've read from Matos: "With Nick Cave, it’s simple: If he’s rocking, it might be worth hearing. If he isn’t, it’s not.". That's not really true if only because of Cave's The Boatman's Call, his album for PJ Harvey. Men of good faith may disagree, I don't deny it, but to consider this not even worth hearing is not good writing. It isn't good rock criticism. I'm while I am certainly capable of bad rock criticism myself, I don't have the luxury of millions of potential readers or writing 5 paragraphs a month. If I did, I wouldn't write nonsense.
This isn't really a question of taste, I would give it two to two and a half stars I think, it certainly isn't as good as Dig Lazarus Dig. And I don't think Matos is just bad, they way I did Aquilante, but I think he knows what he knows and he isn't so good at everything else.
Both Matos and Phull come across as modern hipsters, essentially the Post hired the same writer twice. Neither of them have any feel at all for country and they are only OK on mainstream when it is pop like Justin Timberlake. But even then, Phull writes a terrible line "a slick R&B bounce that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Michael Jackson album." Really? Michael Jackson? You have 150 words and that's how you want to waste them?
Writing for effect is all well and good, but not with that big a readership.
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