Amy's Robot

Michelle Goldberg, one of the

Michelle Goldberg, one of the music writers at Salon, may have just redeemed herself a little bit. In January, she wrote what I think was one of the worst and most misguided music reviews of the year about the Chemical Brothers' new album, in which she said that since she had last heard the Brothers at the late '90's opulent launch parties of the now-kaput dot-com companies when the world was naive and overpaid, it was inherently wrong for them to continue to make the same bouncy, optimistic music now that her friends were out of jobs, and funky big-beat was no longer the Next Big Thing. Plus she thinks that danceable music in this post-9/11 world is tasteless. This review obviously made me crazy and drove me to street vandalism.

So now she comes out with this review of Moby's new album. And what do you know: she makes some excellent points. She compares Moby to Quentin Tarantino: not a bad producer, but for the love of God, keep that ass planted firmly in the studio. Moby's thin little wheeze of a voice is a lot like Tarantino's acting, she notes. She also comments on the way other music critics are falling all over themselves to praise this new piece of crap album that Moby has put out, attributing it to overcompensation for their failure to predict the hugeness of "Play", which turned out to be the soundtrack of the world for two years. She's more merciful in her critique of "18" than I would be, but she's won back my respect.

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posted by amy at 10:23 AM | #