Overland literary journal

OVERLAND 195
winter 2009
ISBN 978-0-9805346-2-7
published 21 May 2009

The Sounds of Silence

Myke Bartlett on the disappearance of the rock critic

The first job I ever took in a record store required a four-page exam, completed in some discomfort at the edge of the counter while those lucky enough to have already passed looked sneeringly on. I had already attempted the test two years earlier and had been sent packing. Since then I had been researching hard, devouring NME, Q, Rolling Stone and Juice. The ABC had been kind enough to screen the rockumentary Dancing in the Street, which was desperately spooling in my head as I attempted a question on Eric Clapton’s various projects. When the first pay cheque arrived, its paucity was excused by a boss quick to remind me that everyone wanted to work in a record store. I should count myself lucky, he told me. Years later, in my first gig as a music critic, the excuse was much the same. Never mind the bankroll, here’s a sexy industry. Everyone, I was frequently reminded, wanted to be a music critic. Looking at the current state of criticism in this country, it’s increasingly difficult to imagine why.

The past decade has been a tumultuous one for the music industry. All of the record shops I worked for have closed and those shops that remain ask potential employees only for a half-page summary of the chart situation. The ubiquity of the internet and the increasing ease with which listeners can sample – or steal, to use the parlance of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) – individual tracks or entire albums has threatened a business model that had been steadily on the rise for almost half a century.

Whether the web has or hasn’t destroyed the music industry depends on whom you ask. While it appears that physical album sales have declined over the past eight years – more or less since peer-to-peer networks such as Napster began operations – total music sales still hit an all-time high in 2008, according to the British Phonographic Institute, the British equivalent of the RIAA.

The impact of the internet on the quality of music writing and criticism, given the instantaneous flood of opinion it affords, is also the topic of some debate – most of it, fittingly, online. This debate has weighty implications for Australia, given that popular music criticism – or ‘rock criticism’ – is a small industry here, threatened both by economic rationalism and an increased tendency to look to the outside world for opinion.

The current financial crisis might pose more of a threat to the major companies than digital piracy but that hasn’t stopped the considerable downsizing taking place over the past decade. A number of smaller Australian labels have either disappeared or been assimilated by the majors, which in turn have almost halved in number. While the Australian music scene itself continues to thrive, both in terms of local acts and the amount of money punters are willing to pay to see international artists, companies are less willing to invest money promoting their product through traditional means.

Craig Mathieson edited defunct Australian music magazine Juice and continues to write for several notable publications, including the Age. He believes the mainstream press bias towards more established art forms is longstanding. ‘As far as I know,’ Mathieson says, ‘there’s no newspaper in this country that has a music critic whose job it is solely to review music. Film, books, dance, art – anything you can think of – has an official critic but not music. The arts section of newspapers has an incredible focus on high art. Music is still considered low art. A lot of outlets have music writers rather than critics. Writers will do interviews, stories and columns but there is a distinction.’

For Mathieson, that distinction lies in the critic’s ability to assess a release in its context – to judge what an album means rather than what it sounds like. Australian critics seem wary of anything approaching literary analysis. ‘It’s all about sound,’ he says, ‘what it sounds like, not what it says.’

Fellow critic Jane Rocca also believes the economic imperative is hurting the critical scene. Rocca has been working in the industry for most of the past two decades and believes it has never been in a worse state. She claims that desperation from the current financial climate discourages critics from offering unique opinions. In the fight for a pay cheque, it seems necessary to accept the established consensus. ‘The whole notion of having an opinion is gone. People want to fit in. It began with the merging of the record labels, with the downsizing of the industry itself. There just isn’t the same number of publications about now. Everything is boutique and tightly wrapped. People aren’t daring enough to go out on a limb.’

No wonder, then, that local criticism focuses on sound. In categorising artists by their influences, reviewers are on safe ground. The result is a purely comparative criticism, intended to ease purchasing decisions for consumers, rather than an assessment on individual merits.

Rocca believes that the angst involved in finding an outlet to publish a story is, understandably, preventing music writers from being as committed to their craft as they once were. The days of journalists striving to bag a particularly juicy interview are over, since there is increasingly little chance that any editor will be willing to pay for it. ‘If [it's hard] for someone to place their story, then the time and the research that goes into that article is devalued. If you know you’re going to be paid well and if you know you can sell your story, you’ll put the time in.’

Mathieson agrees that the lack of financial incentive creates a feedback mechanism in which low expectations are reinforced by poor quality. ‘You’re looking at an industry, a system, where the entry level, the street press, doesn’t pay. Those who make it through are the ambitious, the enthusiast, the fanatic and the moronic. There’s no culling process, no screening process.’

The result is a diminished circle of critics whose competitive nature has less to do with a desire to be the best, and more to do with rushing to say the right things. Australian critics are obliged to take populist positions, supporting the work of mainstream artists rather than attempting to launch the next big thing. In a sense, rather than inspiring critics to competitively sharpen their faculties, dire economic conditions have bred complacency.

Mathieson calls for a cultural shift: ‘There’s no culture in this country of competition and few other critics with whom to compare yourself. When I started there were critics I wanted to exceed or dispose of, in the childish way you can want these things when you’re in your early twenties. Now there’s no pressure, no challenge. No-one is going to pop up next week as a bright young thing and overshadow you.’

Economic concerns aside, Mathieson believes that the biggest impediment to meaningful music criticism is the refusal by major publications to recognise popular music as worthy of serious commentary. Class prejudices play a significant role here. Over half a century after its inception, rock’n'roll still has the whiff of the disposable and trite. There are, after all, no qualifications required to achieve success as a popular musician. Figures such as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and John Lydon did not emerge from a respected college of the arts. Indeed, part of the appeal of the popular musician is an earthy authenticity – these musicians are real people, with real lives and real struggles. Just as rock’n'roll evolved from the blues of the oppressed African American, popular music remains an outlet for working-class angst, from Bruce Springsteen through The Streets’ Mike Skinner to Kanye West.

A recent study by the Music Council of Australia showed that the music criticism that exists in the mainstream press tends to be heavily biased towards respectable forms, specifically classical and opera. Coverage of pop and rock releases rarely amounts to more than 20 per cent of reviews, while classical and opera account for at least twice that. In the Australian, for example, 16 per cent of reviews are dedicated to contemporary artists, compared to classical’s 52 per cent.

Television, while retaining a reputation as populist, brainless entertainment, does far better in terms of review column inches. There’s an obvious financial explanation, with television a far better source of advertising revenue than popular music, but there are also some underlying cultural differences. Television criticism – whether about American imports such as Dexter or local productions such as Underbelly – tends to examine a program’s relationship with the audience as much as any inherent quality. Televisual imports, unlike the songs playing on our stereos, are regularly examined in terms of their relevance to our local culture: a recent review of the American series 24, for example, wonders whether interest in the series will continue in a post-Bush world.

Street press writer Shaun Prescott believes that music criticism must also engage in such discussions. Echoing Mathieson’s point about context, Prescott argues that the salvation of local criticism lies not in competing with overseas publications in critiques of foreign acts but in focusing on the unique aspects of the Australian music scene. ‘Most criticism tends to revolve around music from abroad. It would be healthy if commentators put a critical eye on local music with a wider, more analytical approach. Instead, what we see is a lot of second-rate publicity [for overseas acts]. Because we don’t critique Oz acts, we don’t get cultural criticism. The reviews I like definitely give some context, not just an appraisal of the music.’

Prescott understands the commercial imperative for publications to focus on big, international names but he believes that, if they turn their critical gaze away from foreign musicians, critics might develop that most essential of characteristics – an opinion. While the internet has been a boon for music promotion, it has also sent hypesters moving at the speed of light. Before an album is even released, the opinions of key tastemakers spread virulently through cumulative assessment sites such as Metacritic.

Rocca believes this tidal wave of opinion presents a real challenge to independent thought. ‘Some journos, more experienced journos, may read reviews online but then make up their own minds. The younger set wants instant satisfaction and acceptance. They rely more on blogs and the internet for an opinion than Generation X did. It’s hard for them to be daring enough in calling the Next Big Thing. Would a modern reviewer, starting out, trust their [own] instincts? Or do they just jump on Metacritic and see what everyone else is saying? I worry they need the comfort of the internet and wonder whether modern music critics can make independent decisions. Because the industry is so small, we’re too easily swayed by what’s happening overseas.’

The solution, Prescott believes, depends on critics talking about what they know better than anyone else. ‘There’s no point having the internet if people are all saying similar things. It’s an infinite ocean to fill, with room for so much dialogue and exciting polemic. When a prominent indie band in the US releases a new album, Metacritic sets the agenda. By the time the local press review the album, there’s nothing left to write about it. Why would anyone want to read a Chinese Democracy [the Guns n' Roses album] review in the local paper, when all that opinion is already out there? It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know why you’d want to contribute to the same dialogue again and again about artists we don’t have a privileged relationship with. We’re in a privileged position to say with some authority why Australian bands are doing what they’re doing and what it means to us socially. Everything I read that I love tells me what the music means to us, instead of being superficial taste-making.’

As well as helping local artists find a place in the spotlight, a critical industry focused on the Australian music scene might be able to do what critics in other fields achieve very successfully – provide an examination of the crucial relationship between an artwork and the culture that created it. In her recent article in Overland, Susan Lever suggested that Australian writers find it difficult to believe that their audience is interested in what they have to say, and that this diminishes the relationship between artist and reader. Critics, as interpreters, are in the unique position of constructing and guiding a dialogue between musician and audience. As with any conversation, the best initial basis will be common ground, our shared cultural experiences.

Whether an informed, opinionated critic will be able to find work in the current climate remains to be seen – it is difficult to succeed in an industry that needs one quality but demands another. If, however, critics linked themselves more closely with Australian acts, they might spur a greater investment by state and federal governments in the local rock scene, one that might in turn swell the critical industry. Imagine the arts pages of the Age filled not only with opera, theatre and discussions of international talent but also featuring critiques of those local acts that the mainstream media currently only notices in the aftermath of overseas success.

Australia has a thriving music scene but much of it exists below the mainstream radar, consigning discussion of local acts to a street press populated by unpaid and occasionally nepotistic journalists. While I’m sure that every other wannabe rock journalist feels the same, I’d still hope the industry might one day pay in more real terms than second-hand sexiness and street cred.

Myke Bartlett is a freelance writer with an encyclopedic knowledge of useless music trivia. He is also the author of two podcasted novels, both of which are available at www.mykebartlett.com.
© Myke Bartlett
Overland 195-winter 2009, p. 41

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