It's a fundamental contradiction, one that i don't pretend to have an answer for. I merrily write away on this site, offering reviews of everything from video games to books to, of course, music. This latter subject, i find more than any other, opens up a whole can of worms about personal preference. Case in point: i went to Pitchfork Media today to see if they could help me keep up with the indie release slate. While there, i ended up on the album review page and began scrolling through the archive of recordings reviewed this year. Before long i found some that i too have offered comments on, including the Most Serene Republic and the Orange Peels. And to my horror i read reviews laden with smarmy dismissive comments and holier-than-thou judgements.

Now, to be fair i make my fair share of smarmy potshots. And holier-than-thou is an outlook i've been (rightly) accused of harboring on more than one occasion. But for some reason i just can't bring myself to give a fair read to Pitchfork's ramblings. The word "butthead" came to mind several times while attempting it. How dare someone say that TMSR's "Content Was Always My Favourite Colour" fails because it's a nonsensical jumble of tempos and melodies? That jumble works just fine for me!

Many years ago i got into a protracted debate about bias with one of my longtime nemeses on a mailing list. I had complained that a critic who hates a genre should not be reviewing it. I was lambasted for apparently denying the right of critics to deliver a negative review. Not my point at all ... what i was getting at was that if someone hates shoegazing, then they may not offer the most informative review of the latest Ride album. Likewise, a dyed-in-the-wool punk rocker probably won't have anything useful to say about indie acoustic stuff like Iron & Wine. If the point of a review is to encourage or discourage a potential listener, then such reviews aren't really giving any helpful insight to someone who doesn't share the critic's bias.

You can make the analogy to politics ... in America today, you've got half the country who thinks that Bush is our saviour and can do no wrong, and the other half who thinks he's a bumbling retard who lies and distorts to further his conservative agenda. Every time the President does something, you get comments from both sides that i find have increasingly little to do with the actual occurrence, and more with the commentators' own politics. In fact, i think the biggest failure of the Democratic party in recent years is their attempt to fight the Republicans in this sort of spin arena, but that's a topic for another post.

You'll notice that my reviews on the music page tend to dwell on my personal experiences. I make no secrets about why certain bands appeal to me largely because of sentimental or nostalgic reasons. Pitchfork takes the approach of referencing a thousand acts the reviewer knows damn well no one in his audience has ever heard of (let alone heard, making him seem all the wiser), in an attempt to appear impartial and scientific. I however think the bias is the thing ... there's no getting around it, the best you can do is admit what yours is and move on. To quote Steven Martin in My Blue Heaven, "That's my philosophy". If you think i'm full of baloney, feel free to comment.