rawkblog:

This is a classic case of Internet blogger/commenter myopia, attacking the details instead of the point. Roderick picked two albums arbitrarily, a new one and an old one — picking Kanye was probably a bad idea give that that album’s totally great, but his point is that regular human beings don’t just put their favorite albums in the closet on January 1 every year and forget about them. I spent more time this year listening to Standard Fare’s 2010 album than anything else. But writing about the music we actually listen to — music that doesn’t bow to the Tyranny of New — doesn’t drive pageviews. Team Roderick!

I won’t be an asshole and say that there are no teams, or that we’re all on the same team, because I wouldn’t want to be myopic about internet rhetoric. I wasn’t disagreeing with Roderick’s point about anterior music critic amnesia. (I’ve listened to MBDTF more this year than any album from this year.) I was making a point that the it-was-better-back-then is a sort of essentially crusty white dude rocker point. His choice of Kanye-versus-Smith (plus the podcast episode I referred to) makes that pretty clear to me. I like Roderick’s band, and I like hearing him talk about stuff: his taste is what it is. He’s not a pop music critic, and that’s fine. I like reading pop music critics for my own reasons.