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Why academics shouldn’t write music reviews

Why academics shouldn’t write music reviews
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Got alerted to this review via Twitter, thus:

Mike Bennett@Dorianlynskey Jesus. Did Everett True die for this?

Interest piqued, I searched and found this review of Julia Holter’s Ekstasis, by Jordan Cronk & Brent Ables:

Last year’s solemn, evocative Tragedy found her stranded within this dark night of the distended soul, stretching the framework of pop outward until nearly nothing remained but skeletons of proper songs, droning, drifting, and only occasionally coalescing into definable shapes.

Ekstasis is the light emanating from within that darkness, a manifestation of this inner dynamic writ large across a canvas at once more expansive and gorgeous than Tragedy could possibly allow. Holter’s vacuous constructions are left bare to naturally solidify in the tentative advance of dawn, and with the light comes a clouds-parting revelation of latent songwriting talent and preternatural concepts concerning variances in sound and texture.

Ekstasis is therefore not passive monologue but expressive conversation, a song cycle which encourages deep immersion and rewards with vast understanding—an understanding which may, as Holter suggests, yield a contextual realignment of oneself outside the confines of experience.

And so it continues, for an astonishing – and teeth-grating – 1,200 words.

Wow. I’ve never heard of Julia Holter before this and now I have absolutely no desire to hear of her again.

Related posts:
Song of the day – 451: Julia Holter
Why Americans Shouldn’t Write Music Reviews

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