Steven O'Rourke posted on May 19, 2008 10:08
There is a debate taking place on the CLUAS discussion board at the moment regarding a review published on this site recently. It's not a new discussion, indeed Key Notes has lost count of the number of times the topic has come up since he joined CLUAS. At the core of the argument is that those who don't write reviews for music websites seem to think that a reviewer should know everything there is to know about a musician from the weight of plec used by the lead guitarist while recording the last album right through to how much the drummer paid for his last haircut. This, you say, is the only way you could possibly give a fair and balanced review. 
Key Notes, as you will gather, disagrees. You see, the mistake people seem to make is to assume that music critiquing is an objective process. It's not. If you've ever sat down to write a review, it's one of the most subjective processes imaginable. There is, despite what you may have been told, no such thing as good or bad music. Like any art form, there are only musical performances that you have enjoyed or you have not enjoyed, be they live or recorded. Sometimes, there can be a very good reason for you not liking a performance. The production may have been awful or the singer may have been so off his face he'd forgotten the words to his own songs. These are perfectly valid reasons for not enjoying a gig and therefore giving it a bad review. But a gig isn't just about the music is it?
There are times, we've all had them, when the band(s) have been okay but it's been something else that's caused you to walk out thinking: 'I didn't really enjoy that.' It can be little things like the girl beside you not shutting up the whole way through or the singers annoying habit of discussing at length the meaning of each song before playing it. You might say that isn't really important but when you're actually there such events are hugely significant and can take away from your enjoyment of the performance and therefore have to be reflected in your assessment. For what it's worth, Key Notes' method is to go into a gig giving it 10/10 and taking points away for things that he finds aren't as good - as in events that take away from the enjoyment of the gig - as they should be. This, he reasons, allows every band, even ones he isn't so well versed on, the opportunity of scoring well. However, Key Notes is also well aware that each writer has a different writing style and a different way of scoring his/her reviews.
The point this blog is trying to make is that a review can never - despite the accusation being made all to often - be 'wrong.' A review is a critical assessment of an event, not a promotional exercise for a band or an excuse for a writer to show off how much he/she knows about music. Every review written on this site by our team of writers is written with honesty, integrity and in the knowledge that while grammar and spelling may be edited, their opinion never will. That is the main reason Key Notes gives up his free time for CLUAS and one of the reasons why we remain Ireland's leading independent music website.
If, however, you feel that your opinion differs so much from our review that you cannot fight the urge to put finger to keyboard, CLUAS has always provided you with the opportunity to submit your own via this page.
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