NOT ANOTHER “LIKE THE CURE” REVIEW
From the moment I began reading music magazines, thanks to my mum, who subscribed to them for me because I spent so much on them, I became obsessed with music and reviews. I soon realised that I disliked most of the reviews, not because comparison is inherently bad, but because of the relentless focus on placing the newest release within some canonised, idealised version of its predecessor or genre. It makes reading album reviews almost impossible for me. The first few hundred words are usually spent name-dropping until the entire review is framed around whatever comparison the writer picked as their reference point. I want albums talked about on their own terms. Give me the atmosphere and how it makes you feel, give me the emotions evoked or denied, the sense of tension or catharsis, tell me what to expect.
Comparisons let us avoid discussing content altogether, because instead of analysing the record itself, we simply name-drop records we’ve heard. Plenty of other acts could fit the bill in terms of mixing pop or rock sounds together, and again, what difference does it make? Comparative analysis says precisely fuck-all about the actual uniqueness of this record’s handling of those elements.
Music is fundamentally a matter of personal preference, and something is going to resonate with yours, or it’s not. Nothing you do objectively will affect that.
That certainly doesn’t mean all criticism is purely subjective either, however. Comparison reviews strip away any human element in advance, and the conclusion practically writes itself. Your album goes head-to-head with the established classic of the genre; that’s the bottom line.
And guess what, it happened again when Fontaines D.C. released Dopamine Chamber on Friday. There was no getting around this album being described only in terms of its influences rather than its actual content, and honestly, I knew it was coming. My sigh was primed and waiting. I deliberately wrote my review differently because I didn’t want to pigeonhole the band into Skinty Fia or their debut, Dogrel. Mentions of The Cure or Depeche Mode cropped up almost instantly and, fair enough, there’s definitely atmospheric synth-pop involved. But here come all kinds of preconceptions attached automatically: “Smith-esque vocals”, “machine gun drums, Depeche-y”, all those specific elements stripped of individuality and meaning just by virtue of using such shorthand terminology. The exact opposite of what was meant. That’s not what I wanted from any critical evaluation of the record’s melodic structures and lyrical themes, let alone its production qualities. Production, specifically, goes beyond preferences into functionality. Does the album’s production succeed at its intended goal? Can you consider it good? This has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the reviewer personally likes the aesthetics; end of story.
Take The Beatles as an obvious example. Compare Please Please Me to Magical Mystery Tour and it all quickly falls apart. They’re aiming at entirely different things, drawing on different influences, using different production techniques and working towards different artistic goals. Judging one against the other tells you very little beyond the fact that one came before the other. The musicianship hasn’t suddenly collapsed because the band changed direction, nor does the later album invalidate the earlier one. Critics should be asking what each record was trying to do, not ranking them by release order. Both records succeed on their own terms. That’s the point. When criticism becomes obsessed with measuring everything against some previous benchmark, it stops asking the more useful question: what was this album actually trying to do, and did it achieve it?
If the article wastes those opening paragraphs on comparisons to other albums, I probably won’t read past them; just tell me what the album is doing. What I care about is how the album sounds, the lyrical message beneath its polished exterior, and whether the production enhances or detracts from its effectiveness.
None of this is objective, and I’m not pretending it is. Arrangement and production choices are artistic decisions, just like lyrics, and they can’t be separated. This is a subjective account, absolutely, but these things are still art forms. The idea isn’t to dictate what the interpretation should be, but to provide enough information that someone else can draw their own conclusions from their own experience instead of relying on another band’s release.
Assessing newer albums primarily through their relation to older releases creates a problem for me, too, because it treats history as the benchmark and frames any deviation as a failure.
History is privileged as a benchmark, so deviation earns criticism, while consistency becomes complacency.
Creatively speaking, artists often do their best work when they experiment outside their comfort zone and break established conventions. This method penalises experimentation out of hand because it fails to meet previous criteria. Every album has its own purpose, and it makes more sense to ask whether it achieved its goals than to try to fit every record into a rigid chronological timeline.
Potential listeners and critics alike typically bring prior releases along in their minds, anyway. So a slightly more helpful question is how an album builds on its historical legacy rather than judging its value solely against it. Which, admittedly, doesn’t quite undo the central issue. The problem is that few articles even bother with careful critical assessment. Just drop references and move on, mission accomplished.
To be nuanced, comparisons certainly have their merits and uses. Briefly mentioning resemblance to early X provides convenient shorthand instead of having to describe tones, placements, atmospheres and so forth. Easy enough shorthand and one I use sometimes. My issue is that it implies its own set of priorities. Demonstrating a critic’s musical expertise by referring to obscure, ancient acts as benchmarks leaves little room for discussion before catching up to everyone else’s education. It’s also tricky if you’re not familiar with that specific band of comparison, especially when it dates back half a century. The point isn’t whether the album sounds like early X, but whether you actually enjoy listening to it. That’s criticism in its purest form.
If you’re someone who likes to take your listening apart linguistically, piece by piece, that kind of analysis works with comparisons. But they work as a starting point, not a destination.
The moment a comparison replaces the analysis itself, criticism stops being criticism. It becomes a list of reference points masquerading as insight.
