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Robert Christgau's review of SBS


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http://music.msn.com/music/consumerguide?GT1=10095&

 

Though it's possible Jeff Tweedy's wife told him to stop being a pretentious tweet, it's more likely she just told him to stop ignoring her. This doesn't mean he actually was ignoring her, mind you. But too late he figured he'd better make a point of paying attention, which meant no more pretentious tweet (for the time being). On the second-best track here, he does the dishes and mows the lawn even though she's not around to appreciate it. On the best, he admits consumers have the right to think his music means whatever they want it to. Everywhere he stops soundscaping and resumes songwriting.

 

Grade: B PLUS

 

I love how he calls Jeff Tweedy, arguably THE poetic lyricist of the last decade, a "pretentious tweet" (boy is he witty, "tweet" looks like "Tweedy"!) while choosing "herewith" to begin his introduction. It comes as no surprise that the moment Wilco try to go back to their "roots" critics pour out of the woodwork with backlash against their last few albums. I'm sick of people dismissing Jeff's past work in favor of his turn to more direct songwriting.

 

Does Christgau's opinion even matter anymore?

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The doyen of rock critics has become dismissive, irrelevant and prone to generalisation, just like every other rock critic. ;)

Seriously tho', how does it all become so literal that we can simply interpret Mr Tweedy's private life by reading anything we damn well like into his lyrics? Pretentious tweet? Wha'? What does it even MEAN? God, I hate critics now. Even Christgau. And by the way, how DO you pronounce his surname? Krist-gow? Christ-gow? Cris-co? Please help.

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Eh, he cool. He gave my friend a job once.

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Personally, I feel that music critics don't give the necessary amount of devoted time to the records they review. This is not necessarily their fault, seeing as how they deal with deadlines in which they must come up with something insightful about the music before a certain date, but if they happened to give each of their records more time to sink in and if, in turn, they become even more familiar with them (especially concerning the music of Wilco, which all but demands repeated listening to take in all of the wonderful effects and aspects), I think that more positive reviews would be handed out, instead of some of the misunderstood criticisms that inevitably are doled everywhere you look.

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B+ is pretty positive, even if it is with a bunch of A(-)'s. Christgau has always seemed to distrust Tweedy's capability, something I find amusing and somewhat refreshing even if I don't agree. Its much more entertaining than calling him a genius and trying to (seriously) get in his head. I much prefer reading Christgau's scenerio that SBS is the result of Jeff being nagged by his wife than all the attempts to relate it to his rehab or the stretches made to reconcile it with the whole Wilco catalog.

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Guest Speed Racer
a "pretentious tweet" (boy is he witty, "tweet" looks like "Tweedy"!)

 

See, when I read that I thought, 'Oh, THAT'S msn.com's safespace phrase for 'twat'.

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There was not a chance in hell Christgau would like that album.

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