Seen on the back of a bus, while I was walking Eli to school

No rant, no slant

An ad for a radio station, appealing to people who don't like talk radio, who

I had to chuckle

That could be the slogan for music writing today

But what' s good in news isn't so

Calm, collected, tempered, temperate.

Mild-mannered, unassuming

Two styles seem to dominate

There is the closely reasoned, dispassionate, second-guessing, very interested  in the "optics" of how a record is being received, very much similar to that style of political blogging parsing

As though the writer is levitating above the fray, it is every ne else is trapped within their worldview, everyone else is an interest group, everyone is

The critic though is dis-interested and post-ideological

I've done this sort of thing myself of course, it is a mode that has something to offer, I suppose ... it doesn't get the blood pulsing though does it

I think great music writing comes about through the pressure of the irrational (which is how music works, ultimately) on the intellect.

Ego-less

A kind of culinary mode

A record becomes its ingredients

The vocal is a little too this, there's a bit too much

I like the balance of X amount of this and X amount of that is just what my palate likes

Records assessed in the way a dish on Top Chef would be assessed.

This isn't ego-less writing, but the ego doesn't amount to much

Here the writer falls back upon a ego that has really nothing to substantiate it, an impoverished self, without swagger or will-to-power, without fanaticism or the desire to impose

It never reaches out for principles

It refuses to dictate or legislate

It's all a matter of taste (this pleases me, this displeases me)

It's painstakingly honest, would never exaggerate or weave a naughty fiction

But it never aspires to truth

It's a kind of post-truth writing

Writing without belief

But critical writing without truth is what then?