Bartees Strange and the Failure of Music Criticism

Joe Trainor @notdummy3

Imagine putting out a an aggressively bad Katy Perry sounding song on 4ad

This is a review of Bartees Strange’s Farm to Table. But it is also a review of the standard of music criticism nowadays, the endgame of poptimism, the disinterest in cultivation of taste; or at the very least—a severe lack of variation in ideas. Monoculture is of course, all but dead. But the way music journalism operates, the search for the next big thing, the holding of sacred cows, has me suspect that far too many writers still want to treat music as a manufacturer of celebrity, in the same vein of the blog hype days. At the intersection of this menagerie of pandering is Bartees Strange, the summation of what this has led to.

Insofar as the actual contents of Farm to Table, it’s quite a chore to listen to. Much has been said about “genre-hopping”, but the genres seem to be “Kings of Leon”, “Maroon 5”, and “indie” as a sort of algorithimic moniker that barely conveys meaning. This is fallow music, destined to fall away from your ears as soon as it ends. And that is true of so many NPR indie-core artists, whether it be Alabama Shakes or Phoebe Bridgers or Oso Oso. No doubt people like them, but being crowdpleasers doesn’t a great act make! Bartees Strange specifically has been skirting on this veneer of coolness where he supposedly doesn’t care about genre or conventions but, to quote Joshua Minsoo Kim, his music ends up sounding like Hillsong. And no one interrogates it!

Thus, what we’re receiving in music media is constant PR pieces dressed up as journalism, without the reading public realizing it. Consider the case of Blondshell. Almost 11k Instagram followers, 165k+ Spotify streams on her debut single, and countless articles all before her first show. But if you Google her name, you realize she had a different brand under the name BAUM 3 years prior, with a piece in Billboard. Then you Google her last name. Doug Teitelbaum is the chairman of NJOY electronic cigarettes and a managing partner of a venture capital firm. What kind of publicist can that money buy? We’re supposed to buy into indie as this DIY meritocracy that’s being upended by good actors, recognizing the wrongs of the past and promoting diverse voices. At this rate, all we’re getting is more rich kids.

You get the sense that money smoothes over every wrinkle. No matter how shallow, how contrived, if you have a convoy of propagandists, it’s completely haram to even suggest that shit sucks. The forays into house by Drake and Beyonce are proof positive, with 5 million stans rapidly defending what is lame attempts at “shifting the culture”. Swear to god Beyonce can afford better presets and drums than this bro. Then to suggest it’s somehow liberating akin to the OGs? I don’t want no one who doesn’t listen to Masters at Work and Kerri Chandler making house.

Which is to say, Bartees Strange is a culmination. He is the apotheosis of no-stakes writers not interrogating what they listen to and why. Of course journalism has always been careerist, but for the sake of art, I would hope music critics reject status quo reflections in favor of actual crate-digging and searing judgments. Cause then what are we doing it for? The constant 7/8s and apprasials of stuff that is vapid, unremarkable, and forgettable leaves an ugly stain on what criticism is supposed to do. There is no Andrea Long Chu for music, no prominent figure that slays faves with brutal efficacy. Just too many writers regurgitating puff pieces about Obama adminstration press secretaries.