Music As Cultural Artifact vs Music As the Thing Itself

    I had the pleasure of getting my hands on the latest (or almost the latest) copy of WIRE.  This is always a good thing.  I remember tooling around high school in Borders or B&N with some friends (where else are precocious and culturally hungry young people in South Bend s'posed to go?) and browsing through music mags trying to absorb as much news and information as possible.  I tried to get a mental snapshot of the music world at the time, who were the big names in England, up and comers in New York, cool labels, cool festivals, cool hitherto unknown albums from the past and present.  Copies of WIRE always loomed conspicuously, and I would poke my nose into for 30 seconds before lifting my head up totally confused.  There was always an interview with someone I'd heard of, but most of it covered artists and genres I'd never even tangentially heard of.  It was as if there was no clear entry point for me, a young man from the plains who just wanted to stay culturally relevant.  Fast forward three years, I'm working at Borders on the north side during my Junior year.  I work in the cafe which is gracefully located all of fifteen feet from the magazine racks.  I could take home the unsold copies, their covers ripped off but so what, and again stay as current as anyone I knew.  I ventured into reading WIRE as a conscious challenge to my laziness.  And besides, I was already wading into an interest in experimental compositions, sound art, improv and noise.  Every once in a while, I'd even read the damn thing cover to cover, reading in depth interviews with artists I'd never heard of.  It's mostly incredibly intelligent writing on intelligent and serious artists. 
    While reading the most recent copy, I felt like I could finally tell what really set the magazine apart, that WIRE considers music as a thing unto itself.  Not that each work is hermetically sealed, every piece they review was taken within the context of the history and current climate of music, and more broadly, within the context of the Art.  It's that in WIRE, music and sound art are always judged  by the appropriate standards, that is primarily against the goals of the work itself.  When praising say, Disintegration Loops by William Bansky, I can't imagine the review would pull an aside and say, "Well, it's not party music."  Because of course it's fucking not.  What an inane thing to say about a massive experimental loop based work about the impermanence of material record and in intractable nature of time.  Their reveiws don't trade heavily in irony.  I imagine that if they set out to review a dense and difficult work, that most writers there would take it as their duty to give that piece their utmost attention and thorough examination before weighing in on its merits. 
    This is not how music criticism works in my world.  For me, music criticism exists along an continuum between two schools of though: consumer reviews vs criticism as discrete artistic exercise.  Most of the magazines that I used to compile my cultural snapshots featured reviews that were poorly masked consumer guides.  This is the British school of music rags: they exist to give their readers a who's who, what's hot-or-not guide to the mercurial youth culture zeitgeist.  On the other side was criticism in the vein of early Rolling Stone, Creem, and in some ways early Pitchfork.  Long form reviews that were frequently entertaining and thought provoking reads, that may only tangentially relate to the piece of music or artist at hand.  Frequently, reviewing an album is just a springboard for broader cultural critique, if not just a technical exercise of the author's talents as a writer.  This is very obviously the school of thought that has influenced me most.  Not only has it influenced the way I talk and write about music, but also how I listen to music, find music, weigh the importance of music in my life, even at times affecting my worldview.  And so here's a review in WIRE, stoically, carefully examining a piece of music, making insights, providing useful comparisons, and never being lazy enough to confuse personal anecdote with profound insight. 
    Now, let's be clear.  WIRE is not for everyone, and it is at times, a little dry, maybe almost boring, or actually just boring.  It's an expensive and content filled missive for people who take music seriously and who are probably very type B and maybe even a little cantankerous.  That is, WIRE is written for Jim O'Rourke, and as much as I like Jimmy O, I'm not sure I'd want to grab a beer with him.  But I have to wonder, are they right?  Am I wrong?  Not wrong because I actually do love Kid A even if it is derivative, or that I do care (begrudgingly) about Brooklyn's finest poor little rich boys, [fill in your guess here].  I wonder if the way I talk about music, the shifting standards by which I try to judge everything, are just completely off target.  Under further examination, is it that all my pretensions of intellect, taste, and cultural fluency, I'm just talking up my own ass most of the time?  Aren't most of us?
    This feeling is compounded by the culture shock I've experienced while working at Thrill Jockey.  If your not familiar with the label, TJ trades in mostly serious, often unflashy, experimental artists such as Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, High Places, and Pit er Pat, music WIRE would write about.  Although I love Tortoise and The Sea and Cake, I can't say that Thrill Jockey's catalog is really up my alley.  It's growing on me for sure, but the looming lack of  CULTURAL RELEVANCE (imagine this phrase hangs in big block letters like a judgmental specter over everything I say or do) just puts a little sour note on my enjoyment.  Two examples come to mind.  First was Pitchfork's mild review of Tortoises new album, Beacons of Ancestorship, an amazing album by any metric and a huge step for the band.  The review admitted that the album was solid, exciting, made my masterful musicians.  But the album lost points for being too "hermetically sealed" which in this instance I'm almost certain means "not referencing or reacting to or hanging out with any hot new bands."  Then just the other night the Sea and Cake came on on someone's stereo, and I let out one of those auto-exhalations like "I looove this band" to a small chorus of eye rolls.  As if I'd professed a love for Garden State in a film studies program.  I know that these bands aren't for everyone, but I gotta wonder how much these two reactions have to do with those floating block letters that seem to hang over everything if you let them.
    Obvs, this is touching on a larger topic, and I'd appreciate the irony of writing a free form rumination on identity and personal taste in what started as praise for simple and direct music criticism.  Maybe later.  For now I'm happy to read a copy of WIRE, even if it's a little stodgy.  It's like reading the New Yorker after only having read the Red Eye for weeks straight.  It may not be as fun or frustrating, but it restores your faith in the world.