Clarification of critical stances.

Clarification of critical stances.

It's no secret that I am no fan of Kill Hannah or The Redwalls, and I gleefully cut them down whenever given the chance. Consider them the Lou Reeds to my own Lester Bangs. Only I'm not as cool as Bangs, and neither band is nearly as worthy an adversary as Reed was. So yesterday, upon learning that The Redwalls got dropped from their label, I wrote about it and noted it was a long time coming.

For the most part the feedback was positive and I was actually surprised no one was coming to the band's aid, until one fan decided to write her own defense. Said fan was kind of mean about it, but that's totally fair considering I'm no always nice when I write. But it did bring two points to light that I think don't get the attention they deserve.

First, while I am no fan of either of the above named bands, I have absolutely nothing personally against their members. Every interaction I've had with The Redwalls, and most with Kill Hannah, have always been pleasant. They all seem like a bunch of decent guys. But just because someone's decent does not save them from negative criticism if said criticism is warranted.

The second is that I've noticed one of the reasons I have been writing about music for so long and haven't faded away is because, at the root of it all, my opinion is honest. And honesty often leads to negative reviews of popular bands. For instance, take Clap Your hands Say Yeah. When everyone was falling over themselves digging through their thesaurus to unearth positive adjectives, I stood mostly alone with my negative opinion of the band. For the most part, aside from easy targets like Britney Spears, most music criticism seems to have fallen into a bland "if you can't say something nice, don't say it at all" rut, and I don't think that's the best route to follow.

Come to think of it CYHSY is a great example here, because they also prove that my opinions are not static and, ultimately, I hold no artistic grudges. I give everything an honest listen, and when their sophomore album came out I gave it a good review, because I believed it deserved it. The same is true for The Redwalls, and I've actually been told by a friend of the band that their newest album makes a lot of progress and might even answer a lot of my criticism of the band. And the same is true for Kill Hannah, although I have a really hard time seeing that ever happening since the band's image is what informs it's music. Come to think of it that's also the case with the Redwalls. But people, and opinions, can always change.