Wednesday 16 May 2012

"ABSOLUTELY PLEASANT": NAMING AND SHAMING PRIYA ELAN, MATTHEW HORTON, BEN HEWITT

Sublimely spot-on close readings of contemporary music journalism by Neil Kulkarni.

In fact, I can see a lot of potential in dissections of this kind: they belie the notion that the technocrats are technically proficient.

An elitist culture is necessarily an intellectually impoverished one.

Some of those quotations have to be repeated, they're so godawful:

Coming on like a twin of ‘Live Forever’, Noel Gallagher’s no-nonsense lyrics, a typically bolshy delivery from “our kid” and a guitar riff which sweetly echoed George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’ added up to the very first Oasis classic.


Trip hop progenitor ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ is really a slick piece of hip-hop soul blessed with Shara Nelson’s broken bawl and some muted beats and cowbells from 3-D, Mushroom and Daddy G. It came out under the more politically sensitive band name of Massive during the first Gulf War and ensured the collective remained the urban sophisticate’s artist of choice for the next decade.


This last one definitely the best:

As it stood, it was an absolutely pleasant slice of indie pop dreaminess.

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