It was a joke. He was recently brought up in the Weezer thread for having a bad take on OK Human and I just think it's funny that he keeps popping up for being snarky and insufferable lately.
This is better than some of their last releases but much like most of their albums I find it pretty boring and won’t be revisiting.
Ha, I missed the Weezer discussion. To be fair, he's one of the only prominent music critics that consistently writes about a lot of the bands that get discussed around here, so it makes sense that he comes up a lot.
I feel like Ian Cohen has better takes than him, but I understand people here don't like him because of some awful reviews like the Frightened Rabbit one and I absolutely can't blame them.
hyden a dull stylist and thinker and imo he has always exhibited these tendencies :D it is also very popular to make fun of the foo fighters on the internet but to me this fish-in-a-barrel low-stakes takedown stuff is the laziest music criticism possible
i’m trying to pinpoint when it became so popular though. it feels pretty recent. maybe with concrete and gold.
People were calling Foo Fighters bad all the time on the AP boards. But I think it was after "Wasting Light" got big and they "came back," added with the decline of the popularity of rock in general leading more people to glom on to Dave Grohl as "a living rock legend" that led to more people throwing stones.
imagine calling them bad after one of their best albums edit: wasting light, not this one, which is fine
They did a great job producing that album all analog. It's aging very well. I just watched the mini-documentary about the making of the album in Dave's garage. I hope they do that again. edit: I just realized that sounds like I watched the mini-doc inside Dave's garage.
I really don't get music critics like this. You can not like an album/band/song and give a bad review without being a snarky asshole.
The snark/cynicism is not my thing at all. Hyden's said before that he wants music writers to be more irreverent, so I think he's doing what he's setting out to do. But I'm not a fan of the direction that increasingly makes up the meat of his writing.
the foo fighters s/t is a fucking perfect record, actually, and all those years that i thought it was underdeveloped compared to colour and there is nothing left to lose i was super fucking wrong
And that's a great point! He's doing it BECAUSE he THINKS that's what music journalists should be like. Which makes it seem all the more forced and pathetic.
I don't know if I'd call it pathetic. I just wish he would let himself be more earnest about the things he loves. I really loved his Kid A book (and I'm not even a particularly huge Kid A guy), in part because his writing seemed so much more effusive. He didn't have that sarcastic, backhanded edge to his writing there, and I think it made for a better read.
I'd rather read a review or article on a band that the writer is super stoked on than something were the writer thinks it sucks - it's also just not fun to read
Yeah maybe a bit harsh - I was simultaneously texting a friend about this too, so my tone must've carried over to my post. (LOL this guy really is living in our heads rent-free). I might still check out the Kid A book. I read the first two and mostly enjoyed them. If he uses that more effusive tone, I'm sure you're right, it's a lot more enjoyable read. AND I just saw yesterday that he is writing his next book about Pearl Jam and "90s alternative nation", which, lets just say is in my wheelhouse.
I can't imagine a more worthless, self-indulging, ego driven profession than being a "critic." You have an opinion. Whoopty fuckin doo. So does everyone else.