Salient

Dear Tom,

I find that while your comparisons’ of The Tweeks’ “average” music to that of James Reid or Nickelback vaguely amusing, though a little confusing (I believe the music of The Tweeks to be completely unlike the previously mentioned artists), this article of yours is a perfect example of what I call “poor music jounalism.”

Let’s get one thing clear: I am not a student music journalist, just a student, so I therefore little idea of how hard it can be to critically listen to a whole album, write a balanced, well considered review, and still have enough time to hand in my university assignments. However I must admit this is a very lazily executed review.

The biggest problem with this article is that you pretty much admit yourself that you haven’t listened to the whole thing through once, and haven’t done any research on the band. You’ve given your readers your (very strong) thoughts on the first two or three tracks on the album, and substituted any further analysis with your “witty” lecturer/student dialogue. Yep I bet you thought you were pretty clever when you came up with that one.

I guess why I’m so annoyed at your article is that it is a such a chiched piece of poor music journalism. Yes, it’s unfortunate that you are the reviewer I’m currently picking on (I’m in a bad mood and don’t want to start a particulary boring essay), but too often have I read reviews where you actually get very little idea of what the actual music is like. Tom - it’s obvious you don’t like the sound of this band - however if your going to review an album, do a little research about the band (as it is obvious you didn’t in this occasion), and review the whole thing.

Regards,

Patrick

Dear Patrick,

Thanks for your comments concerning the review. It’s honestly great to know that people are reading my pieces critically.

You might find my review to be lazily executed, but you should know that I don’t write reviews on albums that I haven’t persisted with. In reviewing an album, I listen to it to a point of familiarity, a process which often involves making notations on each song, if not each part of the songs. On this occassion, I felt that the weaknesses of the album could be fairly succinctly conveyed to the reader in a few sentences, so instead of trying to stretch out a few comments into a more arduous review, I decided to explain my reaction to the album in a different format. My goal was to provide an interesting, honest review that made some attempt to surpass the often limiting conventions of music journalism.

Anyway man, thanks for reading. Comments are always welcome.

Tom Baragwanath

This is the most honest music review I have read in ages…

shut up your face oW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tweeks are cool.

What a prick.

im dead

It really is amazing someone can post something like that in wake of this weeks piece on music criticism. Since dear old Gords can himself go through the extreme effort of reading it himself I do not feel the need to go into a boring rant about the ethics of music journalism and so on.

What I will say is that this review contains all the information needed to write a typical, everyday, ‘why this album isn’t good’ piece. But Tom chose to be original and put imagination in his writing. If he hadn’t the review in this way it might have been largely ignored, yet it seems to be the format of the piece that is attracting attention and with it, criticism.

So, good on you Tom.

Plus he’s right. The Tweeks are fucking insipid.