Right to Reply - 1: Animal Collective

I've started writing a new series for the Something Awful website.

It's a basic revamp of the Defending The Indefensible series from this blog, with a little more care (hopefully) taken. (I believe the second one - on Brooklyn duo Sleigh Bells - is due up today.) The first was a remix of my rant about that perennial favourite Animal Collective: and already I've had - gulp - one reply.

Here it is, sent to me by a fellow (I assume) called WEED OWNz LOL xD.

Can't you understand Animal Collective are all about the atmosphere and the sounds man?
Have you ever listened to a piece of music because of the memories and the emotions it unlocks?
I think that's something you won't "get" if you only care about quirky personalities and music videos.
Listen to bands like Radiohead, Ariel Pink, Four Tet, Caribou e.t.c. and you'll see what I mean...
Don't think because you knew Kurt Cobain that makes you the authority on what's "cool".


Peforming and creating as a musician gives you more insight to what makes a song good than decades of calculating and criticizing, the lazy way out.
Only the kind of person who would sit there and criticize music as an easy way to get attention because he doesn't actually genuinely like music and is just an attention seeker would criticize Animal Collective yet imply that Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tenacious D were a better alternative in the same review.


Really, who's parents listen to Weezer or Blondie or Beck?
No one's, that's who.


Research these things a little before you try acting all clever, it just comes off as rambling to me.
Understand that it's a fact that stupid people listen to certain kinds of music, and bands like AC have a pretty chill fanbase so you're not going to rile up those people into writing pissed-off replies at you like system of a down's fans (see Your Band Sucks by D. Thorpe).
Listen to what Amon Tobin, (a guy who's music you cannot falter) has to say about critics: "good or bad they usually say more about the reviewer than what's being reviewed.. so it's not to be taken too seriously, zappa said it best: "journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read." "


Everyone has different tastes and people like you make crass approximations on what is "good", you try to circumnavigate something completely abstract when you feel no emotion towards it, you just hear lyrics which is why you write and don't make music, but if you know what good music is, why don't you make it?


So wrong.