Robert Christgau shitting on albums

Roughly 75% of the time that I read up on album I like on Wikipedia, there's a reference to this Robert Christgau guy making some snide comment about how badly it sucks.  He seems to be the universal measuring stick for bad reviews in the critical sphere.  This is a thread for compiling his distain.

I'll start with a watmm friendly one.

Aphex Twin: Richard D. James Album [Elektra, 1996]
Jungle sure has livelied up this prematurely ambient postdance snoozemeister. His latest synth tunes are infested with hypertime electrobeats that compel the tunes themselves to get a move on. And where once he settled for austere classical aura, now he cuts big whiffs of 19th-century cheese. He even sings. Hey, fella--I hear Martha Wash needs work. B+

Sounds like a really lovely man with a lot of constructive things to say.

what actual worthwhile writing has this man done for anyone to take his one-line reviews seriously?

Anthony Fantano is actually a much better critic. Not kidding. 

He's been around forever, listens to everything, is entertaining, and never gave a fuck. He's the best music critic you can completely agree with and to completely disagree with. He's great.

https://medium.com/@shallowrewards/you-ain-t-nothin-but-a-hound-dog-b718ef1df1d5

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Christgau is likewise married, and has a child, and his wife had an affair while he was going through a midlife crisis, and all of that and more is in the gooey memoir he published earlier this year, Going Into the City. Like his more formalist counterpart Greil Marcus, Christgau’s attitude toward and descriptions of women, and sex, are hugely distracting, even unsettling; a transparent attempt to overcome the sexless impotence of a Rock Writer standing next to their venerated subject.

If you’ve ever seen Bill Simmons interview an athlete, it’s the same mortifying spectacle: you’re watching an average-looking guy in a blazer try to talk his way into a nightclub. Even if they’re rich or famous enough to get past the velvet rope on status, they will never fit in there. They will never belong in the club, at the after-party, backstage, or on the tour bus, because they will never be cool. If Nick Kent couldn’t pull it off, nobody can. So to the sucking and fucking and “zaftig” masturbation in his book, I’ve got to say, Bob, pull your head in. Nobody wants to know.

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Should be pointed out that the RDJ review was an example of an album he rated favourably (B+).

he sucks

Who's that other guy that writes the hilarious reviews shitting on autechre releases? Venerates The Beatles. @KovalainenFanBoy you know who I mean

that'd be Scaruffi https://www.scaruffi.com/

  On 6/23/2019 at 11:32 AM, KovalainenFanBoy said:

that'd be Scaruffi https://www.scaruffi.com/

huh, this isn't who I was thinking of. This guy hasn't done elseq or NTS.

oh right, Scaruffi actually hates the beatles... I dunno then

Wasn’t he the guy that labeled Sonic Youth and Big Black “pig fuck”?

...

  On 6/23/2019 at 1:21 PM, rhmilo said:

Wasn’t he the guy that labeled Sonic Youth and Big Black “pig fuck”?

Probably, I think I only recognize his name from being mentioned in a relatively early Sonic Youth title or lyric?

Browsing for amusing negative reviews, I get caught up in the agreed positivity of certain amazing albums:
 

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TELEVISION: Marquee Moon (Elektra) I know why people complain about Tom Verlaine's angst-ridden voice, but fuck that, I haven't had such intense pleasure from a new release since I got into Layla three months after it came out, and this took about fifteen seconds. The lyrics, which are in a demotic-philosophical mode ("I was listening/listening to the rain/I was hearing/hearing something else"), would carry this record alone; so would the guitar playing, as lyrical and piercing as Clapton or Garcia but totally unlike either. Yes, you bet it rocks. And no, I didn't believe they'd be able to do it on record because I thought this band's excitement was all in the live raveups. Turns out that's about a third of it. A PLUS

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Pink Flag [Harvest, 1978]
The simultaneous rawness and detachment of this debut LP returns rock and roll irony to the (native) land of Mick Jagger, where it belongs. From a formal strategy almost identical to the Ramones, this band deducts most melody to arrive at music much grimmer and more frightening: Wire would sooner revamp "The Fat Lady of Limbourg" or "Some Kinda Love" than "Let's Dance" or "Surfin' Bird." Not that any of the twenty-one titles here have been heard before--that would ruin the overall effect of a punk suite comprising parts so singular that you can hardly imagine them in some other order. Inspirational Prose: "This is your correspondent, running out of tape, gunfire's increasing, looting, burning, rape." A

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Lou Reed: Berlin (RCA Victor). I read where this song cycle about two drug addicts who fall into sadie-mazie in thrillingly decadent Berlin, is a . . . what was that? artistic accomplishment, even if you don't like it much. Well, the category is real enough--it describes a lot of Ornette Coleman and even some Randy Newman, not to mention a whole lot of books--but in this case it happens to be horseshit. The story is lousy--if something similar was coughed up by some avant-garde asshole like, oh, Alfred Chester (arcane reference for all you rock folk who think you're cool cos you read half of Nova Express) everyone would be too bored to puke at it. The music is only competent--even Bob Ezrin can't manufacture a distance between the washed-up characters and their washed-out creator when the creator is actually singing. Also, what is this water-boy business? Is that a Buddhist cop? Gunga Din? Will Lou lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it? C

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Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! [Warner Bros., 1978]
If this isn't Kiss for college kids, then it's Meat Loaf for college kids who are too sophisticated to like Meat Loaf. Aside from music per se, the Kiss connection is in their cartoonishness--Devo's robot moves create distance, a margin of safety, the way Kiss's makeup does. But the Meat Loaf connection is deeper, because this is real midnight-movie stuff--the antihumanist sci-fi silliness, the reveling in decay, the thrill of being in a cult that could attract millions and still seem like a cult, since 200 million others will never even get curious. (It's no surprise to be told that a lot of their ideas come from Eraserhead, but who wants to go see Eraserhead to make sure?) What makes this group worthy of attention at all--and now we're back with Kiss, though at a more complex level--is the catchy, comical, herky-jerky rock and roll they've devised out of the same old basic materials. In small doses it's as good as novelty music ever gets, and there isn't a really bad cut on this album. But it leads nowhere. B+

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  On 6/22/2019 at 9:54 PM, paranerd said:

He's been around forever, listens to everything, is entertaining, and never gave a fuck. He's the best music critic you can completely agree with and to completely disagree with. He's great.

  On 6/22/2019 at 9:27 PM, Candiru said:

Anthony Fantano is actually a much better critic. Not kidding. 

I agree but Christgau really paved the way for consistent, straightforward music critics like Fantano  and the  iconoclast vibe of pitchfork's early years 

  On 6/23/2019 at 12:04 PM, KovalainenFanBoy said:

oh right, Scaruffi actually hates the beatles... I dunno then

he's like also really well-versed on very niche stuff like prog rock and pysch rock while blissfully ignorant of the perpetual meta bullshit of post-twitter music journalism - it makes for really dry, but solid primers that are both detached in perspective yet also refreshing to read. they remind me a lot of powerpoint lecture points I'd encounter in my music history classes in college

  On 6/24/2019 at 3:54 AM, joshuatxuk said:

 

I agree but Christgau really paved the way for consistent, straightforward music critics like Fantano  and the  iconoclast vibe of pitchfork's early years 

I thought that was Lester Bangs

  On 6/24/2019 at 4:38 AM, Candiru said:

I thought that was Lester Bangs

he paved the way for everyone and I say that as someone who isn't even that big of a fan of the guy

holy shit he died at my current age 

*pikachu surprised face used incorrectly*

Plus he was played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the movie Almost Famous so that's gotta count for something.

To be fair Christgau is not wrong about Lou Reed.

Probably not about Devo either, but I'm going to pretend I didn't read that.

Terrible writer, though.

Lou is my buddy, how dare he!