Tom Dunne's Music & Me: The tricky business of truth and album reviews 

A few people just had the knack of properly judging a record after a couple of listens. It's a disappearing art

Adam Clayton and Bono of U2  in 1984, a few weeks after the release of The Unforgettable Fire had left some critics scratching their heads. Picture: Larry Ellis/Express Newspapers/Getty

There was always one in school. You’d name a band you liked and they’d sneer at you. Then they’d name a band no one had heard of: “The Coat Hangers of Death.” Admitting you were unfamiliar with their ‘oeuvre’ revealed you as banal, plebeian, uninformed and inferior. 

Today, in the valley of the clickbait, these people are King. A consequence of their rise is the demise of the ‘Seer’, those who could, on one listen, recognise actual talent. People like Jon Landau who, on seeing a young rock act in 1974 declared, “I have seen rock and roll’s future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

 The first person I ever knew with a gift like this was Bill Graham. It was Bill who introduced U2 to their manager Paul McGuinness. At the time he wrote for Hot Press and was ubiquitous at gigs, pint in hand, a bag of vinyl albums under his arm, eyes locked stage ward.

But when U2 released Unforgettable Fire it confused their fans. The production was lavish and textured. Subtlety had replaced bombast. The songs ebbed and flowed and built to subtle crescendos. Guitar heads wondered “what happened the guitars?”

 Luckily, Bill was on hand. He described the album, and the move to Brian Eno on production, as a brave first step on a road that would open up entire new vistas to U2. This was a path, he told us, that could take them anywhere. Their next album was the US Number 1, The Joshua Tree. Bill we may conclude, knew his onions.

Thereafter I befriended a man called George Byrne. George was an opinionated man. He was a music critic first before becoming also a film reviewer. He brought the same insightful, some might say aggressive and argumentative, views to film as he did to music.

It was only a fool who would argue with George. He had encyclopaedic knowledge and a great ear but what I admired most about him was how often his initial impression was 100% on the money. For most of us, our hopes for a new album, our expectations, can seduce us a little, blind us perhaps to its faults.

Not so George. He was particularly adept at calling out rubbish. As some critics struggled to declare an album as ‘dark,’ or ‘brave’ or ‘difficult’, implying that any shortfall was with the listener not the band, George would call it: “This is shite,” he would say, and he was invariably right.

George didn’t live long enough to see the clickbait era take hold. He died before he could be cancelled. If he had lived he’d have seen an industry where the pressure to produce ‘clicks’ has made the business of actually being ‘on the money’ with your album review a lot more difficult.

This has led to some utterly erroneous reviews and I was heartened to see one website, Pitchfork, address this in recent weeks. It published a long list of album reviews that it admits it got wrong.

PJ Harvey and Prince have both had album reviews upgraded by Pitchfork recently.

Some of these are jaw dropping. PJ Harvey’s Stories for the City, Stories for the Sea, it dismissed in 2000 as ‘bland’ and ‘middling’ with a 5.4 (out of 10) review. This is has now upgraded to an 8.4 with the song writing recognised as “some of her best.” Daft Punk’s Discovery (2001) moves from a 6.4 to a 10!

There are many more: Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky (2007) goes from a 5.2 to an 8.5, Prince’s Musicology (2004) from a 5.8 to a 7.8 and - how egregious is this? – the Liz Phair album (2003) from an actual 0, yes 0, to a 6. The zero had been doled out largely due to the fact that, at the time, Liz had the temerity to court commercial success.

The revisionism cuts both ways: Foxygen’s 2013 album goes from an 8.4 to a 6.3, the Grimes album of 2020 goes from 8.2 to a 6.9, and Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights (2002) goes from 9.5 (unforgettable) to 6.3 (unmemorable).

All of this speaks to me on an over-enthusiasm to call, and hence be associated with, the zeitgeist. And while its laudable to correct the scores, it would have been laughable and damaging to not do so.

Most sinful of all, however, was the review of Rilo Kiley’s 2001 debut, then given a 4, now upped to an 8 and described as “undeniable classic". I think George would have said “cloth ears” at this point. And as usual…