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I've long held the opinion that music criticism went into the crapper when Lester Bangs died; and what I've seen lately in the major music magazines, both American and British, has done nothing to change my mind. I started thinking about this subject again because of the rave reviews I've seen lately for the Hold Steady's latest album, Boys And Girls In America. If the British press-- especially Allan Jones, former editor of NME and current editor of Uncut, who gave the record five stars-- is to be believed, this is "the first great record of 2007" (never mind that it came out in October in the States) and some sort of apotheosis of literary, passionate rock. The general critical consensus is slightly less overwrought, but not by much (see http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/holdsteady/boysandgirlsinamerica to get an idea of the enthusiasm critics have for this band; and ignore how Metacritic refers to Vagrant as an "emo label" wink .

So what did I hear when I listened to the record? To me, it sounded like a third-rate bar band (albeit one with a first-rate pianist) imitating Bruce Springsteen circa his first two albums, a singer who sounds like a grotesque cross between Dave Matthews at his whiny worst and Lou Reed at his most alcoholically laconic, and lyrics that revolve around a bunch of people I could find no reason to care about getting high, buying drugs, having an occasional unsatisfying bout of casual sex (the only exception being "Chillout Room", where the boy and girl who ******** while recovering from their drug overindulgence clearly have fun; unfortunately, the boy is voiced by ex-Soul Asylum singer Dave Pirner), and then buying more drugs. Worse yet, it's a concept album that features characters from two previous Hold Steady records, neither of which I've heard. The whole thing is a turgid, self-indulgent mess, with a shitty rhythm section at that; the piano's the only interesting thing on the record.

So why the hell is it getting these raves? The British ones can be explained fairly easily-- the British press has long had a weakness for "authentic" American rockers, even (or maybe especially) ones who are imitating a style that belongs to another time and place and can't be convincingly replicated in the present day. They like the idea of a band that combines musical Springsteenisms with attempts at Bukowski-like lyrical observations, and fail to see that the actual product doesn't live up to the idea (and would've been better with Lou Reed's musical approach anyway rather than Springsteen's overblown pomp). But why do the American critics feel the same way? In part, they seem to have been fooled by the notion that there's something "punk" about the Hold Steady, maybe because one of the songs references a hardcore show. They also make constant references to the brilliant storytelling in the lyrics, which presents two problems: first, that storytelling isn't all that great (it feels like the same damn story over and over), and second, that tells us nothing about the music. Rock criticism has long been inhabited by frustrated English majors-- and yes, I am one myself, so I know I'm being hypocritical here-- who would love to be genius poets and songwriters, but can't hack it and end up writing about rock instead. So they dissect the only aspect of the records they can understand, and ignore the music, which is beyond their analytical abilities.

That's why I've always admired Lester Bangs. People have gotten the mistaken idea that his writing was all about himself rather than the records; but the autobiographical elements were only there to deepen his analysis of the music, to place it in its cultural and social context. He told you what the records actually sounded like, and he explained why he liked or hated them in those terms. He acknowledged his own biases, and he wasn't afraid to admit when he'd been wrong. Can you imagine any music critic today doing something like that? No, they're all too consumed by their unearned sense of importance and their desire to flaunt their literary skills; and the irony is, they all think they're emulating Lester when they're actually making a mockery of everything that was great about his writing. And that especially goes for Lester's contemporary and former editor Robert Christgau, the most pompous and arrogant man in the history of rock criticism. The whole lot of them are pretentious bores, so it's no wonder the records they praise so exaggeratedly are tiresome as well.