Originally posted by metalmancpa
But my point with red/blue etc. is this - no one person is the consummate music critic.
No person is the consummate physicist either. But judgements one guy makes can be judged against another's.
In all my blabbing, my point is I just can't see arguing with someone to try to convince somebody that one album is better than the other. My angle is to say why I like or dislike an album - more of an opinion only. It's up to you to form your own opinion based on whatever it is your hear. So your claim of Orchid being the best is YOUR claim, and I can only counter with a claim of my own. Music is not something that can be debated like politics. [/B]
you raise fine points, metalmancpa. but I agree with none of them.
some guy takes a delight in watching the juggler juggle three balls. what if there were another juggler juggling 7 balls, of different colors, and furthermore making patterns with the colors of the balls and the sequence with which he were juggling them?
two jugglers, one guy. this guy isn't aware of the intelligence of the other juggler. isn't that a shame? there's nothing subjective about saying, "look, you like that juggler and think he's better than juggler two? but look, he's handling more than three balls- but you dont' see it, he's making patterns you don't see." How would a conversation look then? Isn't it possible to judge an album in the same way? The answer is yes. We can even get somewhat metrical about it. It's the difference between criticism and lay opinion. Discussing what one likes is different from dealing with the artistic merits of a work of art and attempting - because it's possible!- to objectify art as human action and judge it for its intelligence as directed action.
The bottom line is the worst thing one can say is "it's just opinion".
miscellanea:
MAYH had been a perrenial favorite of mine. BWP, i've defended this album more than I can count. I think the first thing that has be met for the critic is that he has to appreciate what the jugglers are doing; for what if juggler # one is doing more than meets the eye, and I haven't recognized it? it's my fault as a critic. and perhaps in argument you can convince of this. In anycase, I can say outright that if you haven't appreciated an album, I don't think you're qualified to judge. I'm directing this towards anyone, but it's as simple as that.
I think Orchid evinces a very wide and "brave" and I would say innovative use of tonality about it, the way it goes all over the scale of music and introduces new musicla ideas and never stagnates, the way it seems to be expressing much more than mere tones, the way it's communicating feelings and putting together a human meaning outside of the music. This is a feature of music that is wanting in Opeth albums such as Morningrise (an album which I appreciate on totally different grounds), or other albums some of whose riffs are "simply there" not doing anything except mechanicallically repeating itself in an extended loop. Think of the song Blackwater Park, the last song. Contrast it to In mist, their very first. One song's music is 'simply there' given mechanical loops, the other is full of a musical life- the "brave" musical modualations, the polyphonic harmonics, and the esthetic nuances of these. Am I missing something about BP? I don't htink so. I can appreciate it, and enjoy it, but then I also see, objectively, how the riffs iterate mechanically; I can see the music in terms of intelligence per sec of music. This is the difference between critical discussion and lay opinion making.
I'm open to intelligent debate - even where something is formless as art is concerned. But this kind of debate must exclude 1) bald assertions and one liners pretending to be omniscient; and 2) and recourse to the phrase "it's all subjective".
