Critical Engagement.

• Reflections on the importance of being able to critically engage with our own work and the work of others.

"Yeah, but you didn't" is a phrase I've gotten used to hearing. I hear it a lot because I begin sentences with "if I made this album I would have..." a lot. Here I want to let off a bit of steam and give three examples of easily-correctable mistakes that have inexplicably slipped through the production net. However, having done that I'd like to talk a little bit about the critical process, because I think it's unhealthy to be unduly deferential towards artists and assume they got it right simply because they happen to sit on the right side of the reasonable talent + sufficient drive + right place at the right time equation. This post is about the importance of critical engagement with art, and about why criticial engagement isn't quite the same as all-out criticism.

THE XX - INTRO

Where better to begin than with complaints about an introduction? The introduction to The xx's first album is really cool. Unfortunately, it's also entirely gratuitous. It's engaging, offering glimmering hints of the album to come. It builds up... Then fades out awkwardly before the album proper starts with VCR. It winds me up because it's glaringly obvious how the introduction could, and should, have been made to work.

The introduction is in A minor. VCR is in A minor's relative major - C. In layman's terms: you can shove them together and it'll sound good. VCR begins with the glockenspiel-sounding thing playing solo. There's something pretty about the musical space of the first few bars. What would highlight this space better than the contrast created by a minor introduction crescendo-ing to the point of bursting then catching the listener off guard by choosing, rather than to allow that tension to explode, to suddenly modulate to the major key whilst ripping out all of the instrumentation, leaving nothing but the delicate glockenspiel melody? Simple, really.

For an example of this sort of "gapless introduction" done right, see the excellent and unfortunately one-off A Call to Arms EP by Thomas Kalnoky's Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution. The introduction and Here's to Life are separate tracks on the CD, but there isn't a gap of silence between them. Rather than being purely gratuitous, the introduction is a logical extension of the opening track: separating them out on the disk simply gives the listener the option of skipping the introduction if they want to get into the song itself right away.

WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS - HARD TO REMEMBER

In my experience as a Scot living abroad I have found that our nation's international profile owes a great deal to Mel Gibson and quality indie written by bands signed to Fat Cat Records. Based on Scotland's debt owed to Frightened Rabbit, The Twilight Sad and We Were Promised Jetpacks, this complaint feels uncomfortably like treason. Nonetheless, someone involved in the creation of We Were Promised Jetpacks' second record has a lot of explaining to do. The album's fifth track, Hard to Remember, isn't the best the band has ever produced, but that's okay. For people into big, doomy, Mogwai-sounding guitar music it's probably a fairly enjoyable listen.

There's a major problem however with the song's chorus. "It's hard to remember a colder November". Each time it's sung, the middle syllable of November sounds awful. Whether the problem is that a few more vocal takes were required to get it right, or if it's just an unfortunate but unavoidable terrible melody and lyric combination for Adam Thomson's voice is hard to say, but someone in the chain of production failed in their duty to prevent that syllable from reaching public ears. I can appreciate that some might argue that the raw sound of the vocal track is healthy for modern music but there's an ocean of subtle difference separating raw from off-key.

THE JOY FORMIDABLE - WHIRRING [album version]

My third complaint is perhaps best exemplified by attempting to reconstruct a conversation that might have taken place between Ritzy Bryan, singer of The Joy Formidable and Rich Costey, the producer of the band's first album. I imagine it went something like:

• "Rich. Y'know Whirring?
  
  "The song from your EP? Yup. Love it."
  
  "Cool, well seeing as we're re-recording it for the debut album, I've got a great idea for what we can do with it."
  
  "I'm always open to new ideas - shoot."
  
  "Right, well the song is three and a half minutes long. I'm thinking seven min..."
  
  "I'm gonna stop you there. Seven minute songs are hard to pull off. You've got to do a lot to keep listeners engaged for that long. You guys especially will have to be careful - you make a lot of noise. Your noise works, but what makes it work is your immediacy and intensity. What are you thinking? Maybe a quiet section? An interesting middle 8? Something technical? Some nice guitar melodies?"
  
  "Shit no! Y'know the point where the song ends? Where a reasonable person would end the song? Where we ended the song first time round? Yeah, that bit. From then on we're just going to smash the fucking shit out of our instruments for three and a half minutes. Sound good?"

It's hard to pinpoint exactly the point between the producer's brain and his mouth that "that's really fucking dumb" became "great!" but it's a shame that it did.

While this post has been primarily an opportunity for me to vent, I hope that it inspires anyone reading to think about all those little things that could have been done differently. I think that this is especially important for anyone involved in anything creative, whether it's painting, writing high school essays, or playing in a band. William Faulkner said that writers have to be willing to kill their darlings. My favourite paraphrase of this comes from Will Sheff, who has said that artists must be willing to kill their babies. To that end, criticising the work of others is perfect practice for when the time comes to be objective and unsentimental about our own work.

On a lighter and more general note, being critical is a lot of fun. Lester Bangs got it right when he said that we have to remember that rock stars are only people. This in mind, he began his interviews by saying the most offensive thing he could think of. As I said in the introduction, a significant portion of the formula for success is simply right place/right time. If you've got an opinion on something, don't shy away from sharing it: who says your view isn't as valid as the man with recording contract? Don't be afraid to stand on any toes. If artists can't take cheap shots to the ego then they shouldn't put their work into the public domain. Now, I hope that it is obvious that this is all part of one big cycle. We have to be willing to kill our babies, take pot shots at the offspring of others, but ultimately be okay with people prodding our own kids with sharp sticks.

Of course, everything is a question of balance. I'm not advocating a musical Occupy Movement. It's important to be both critical and open minded. We have to learn what we like and what we don't like, and why. Having done that it becomes interesting to try and figure out the reasons behind the decisions of artists that we perhaps don't agree with. This is what I like to think of as critical engagement, and it can in fact lead us to discover a new love for things that we at first would have dismissed.

Anyone who I have ever engaged with on the topic of music will be aware that I am unreasonably deferential towards the artistic output of the aforementioned Will Sheff and his band, Okkervil River. However, if I wasn't prepared to reserve criticism and persist with some his work I don't think I would appreciate a lot of it to the extent that I do. The band's songs roughly divide into three groups: the big pop-rock hits, the mellow folk tunes, and the slow-burners. The slow-burners drop the tempo to a plod and often drag on beyond the five minute mark. Give them time, however, and they'll make it worth your while. When given your full attention and taken in the context of their respective albums as coherent wholes, the musical and lyrical crescendos in tracks like Blue Tulip and So Come Back, I Am Waiting can be deeply moving. Seven or eight listens in, a simple lyric like "I lie back on my pillow and ask what her husband is like" can suddenly make each part of a track like Hanging from a Hit fall into place, colouring in everything that comes before and after and making it obvious just how good a song it is. 

I admit, however, that when I first discovered the band my mental category now called "slow burners" was called "the boring self indulgent ones". Nonetheless, my love for the immediately accessible pop-rock hits led me to give time to the mellow folk tunes. Getting to know these tracks caused my interest in Sheff as an artist to grow. I discovered that the man understands that an album in its entirety is a work of art. Everything from the artwork to the lyrical themes ought to lend something to the album's overall expressive purpose. Respecting that, I gave the slow burners the attention they truly deserve.

In amongst my musings lies a lesson. Removing artists from pedestals is healthy, but it isn't a licence to be an asshole. Critically engaging with art deepens our appreciation of it, but it isn't the same as being needlessly critical. Overall, learning to critique the work of others improves our ability to critique, and accept criticism of, our own.