Serious question, do you guys think that Fantano is a good music reviewer? Why or why not?
>>64813363
RATTLING
>>64813363
>good
>music review(er)
pick 1
No he isn't, because he doesn't critique the music. He describes it.
I think he's a /v/ tier piece of shit memelord and should fuck off and viral his videos over there
The only good critiques I've read are Christgau's, because he never just relies on describing the music. He's always giving his characteristic opinion on it. You can hate his opinions but at least you get opinions, and not pointless 20 minute or 20 paragraph wank offs.
>>64813363
so many knowledgeable music nerds were formed online since the year 2000, lots ending up writing for music mags , websites , blogs and shit but only fontano seems to be known, or talked about.
>>64813408
/thread
No Anthony, you suck and your job is fake as fuck.
>>64813408
this
He's just a glorified "this is me reacting to thing" guy. His judgment is clouded because of the enormous pressure around him to review hip-hop and he can't really articulate well or give a good presentation of music all of his "reviews" are pretty much "this is thing sounds like this i like or do not like" it's not surprised this caveman is worshipped by youngsters.
I would like to see a reviewer who isn't entirely based around buzzwords.
do you guys know other reviewers that specialized in different genres, like noise, techno , house, crate diggers of left field old shit etc
(1/?)
Stantanos like to defend him by saying that if what he does is easy, other people should have the same success. There's some ways to dispute this, such as citing that he was among the first to do it seriously and shill himself on /mu/, so he kind of created a niche for himself that other people are going to always be behind him in. But I'll concede this point to them - no one could do what Anthony Fantano does as well as he does. Or at least no one has so far. But to be clear, what he does is have a good delivery, a consistent release schedule, editing idiosyncrasies, and voice (in the broader sense of the term) while also having some nice mid- to high-tier equipment that can give his videos a professional feel. I applaud him for these things.
What I will never applaud him for is being a good reviewer. He is a hack, plain and simple. To start with, the genres he knows a bit about (mainly indie rock and adjacent off-shoots of different genres like hip hop that's tailored for indie audiences, metal tailored for indie audiences, etc.) don't require that much depth of analysis or critique. It's pretty throwaway stuff for the most part, and he's never managed to convince me (nor have actually good writers and reviewers like Chris Ott, Mark Richardson, Robert Christgau, etc.) that indie rock is more musical substance than lifestyle choice that can occasionally be illuminated by clever essays (or videos I suppose) discussing the historicity of a band as a whole (this is why Shallow Rewards is so good, as are the essays Christgau writes and Richardson wrote for a time where he discussed old albums on Pitchfork).
Ignoring this fundamental hurdle and bias in my thinking, let's look at a more serious charge I have against Fantano - he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about at all when things are outside of his sphere. His reviews are typically embarrassingly short on context and depth. (cont.)
>>64813874
Look up a review of any music that isnt for plebs then.
>>64813406
this tbqhfam
>>64814020
(2/2)
His James Ferraro - Skid Row review was a fucking travesty. He compared it to none of Ferraro's past material, which made no sense. He described that there were samples alluding to OJ and Rodney King, but he didn't even do the basic step of connecting those to say "he's talking about LA," let alone go past that to actually figure out what he's saying about LA. I don't care if Fantano wants to just be descriptive, but a basic function of good descriptive critics (Ebert, Anthony Lane...) is being able to create connections that as a SPECIALIST IN A FIELD OF ART (which Fantano is not, of course) you can put together while general audiences can't. Not looking for academic analysis from the guy, just some basic fucking trying.
But no, instead we get someone whose taste is interchangeable with any slighted Pitchfork fan who broke off in 2011 or 2012 because their taste differs just so much from the magazine (based largely in their resistance to the obvious reality that rock music is a calcified and dead art form) talking about music in these flashy, extended terms that have none of the poetic or Romantic flourishes that the best blowhards can produce (say in the New Yorker or something) nor any of the sharp-sighted analysis that a good, general evaluator of art can have (even folks like docperkins on RYM have a more cutting edge with their analysis, and the dude uses intentionally obscure English to deliver his points!). He's a fraud, he's a hack, and he's useless.
>>64813363
Literally offers 0 in the way of musical analysis and doesn't have enough grasp of music history or theory to critique an album in any meaningful way
>>64813363
Not really. He just tosses out some history, some description, and then throws a number out. If he had a better sense of economy this would be fine, but even the brief reviews at Allmusic are frequently more interesting despite their brevity. He doesn't have the distinct appeal of someone like Christgau either. He's pretty dull unless you happen to share his tastes.
He focuses a disproportionate amount on lyrics sometimes and isn't very good at describing what he doesn't like about music. When an album is mostly instrumental he seems really adrift.
But what I like about him is that when he's describing music you can obviously see that, whether he's saying he likes it or he doesn't like it, he's passionate about it. You can hear it in his voice. You can see it on his face. He's really, genuinely into the music, and sometimes he's able to get you excited about it, too.
>>64813408
Well that's basically what every reviewer does, except most of them call certain descriptions bad or good.
