Alison Mosshart ca Discount by moi
"FFO: The Anniversary, Tsnuamni Bomb!, Heartsounds"
"FFO Discount, The Unlovables. Fifth Hour Hero, etc"
"FFO Lemuria, RVIVR, Caves"
"FFO Discount, Lemuria, Tilt, Cheeky, The Measure [SA], Little Lungs, P.S. Eliot etc"
"FFO Discount, The Unlovables. Fifth Hour Hero, etc"
"FFO Lemuria, RVIVR, Caves"
"FFO Discount, Lemuria, Tilt, Cheeky, The Measure [SA], Little Lungs, P.S. Eliot etc"
“FFO gritty, female fronted pop-punk”
I see this sort of shit fairly often from lazy reviewers, and while it might seem a little ridiculous and buttpanged to get on my soapbox about this, I feel it's a bit more insidious of an action that just being a shitty critic. I've seen this sort of half-assed routine pulled jillions of times, but I'm pretty sure the first time it really struck me was in the review header of a band called Dead Ringer. I can't remember what it said verbatim, but it was definitely in the ballpark of the above quotations, throwing around a bunch of irrelevant names as comparatives. Look, those are all great bands, or widely beloved ones, at least (especially Tilt and Discount), and I totally get using them as an advertising basis. Here's what sucks, though: almost none of those bands sound like each other, like, at all, let alone the bands they were referencing in the original articles. To continue with the example, Dead Ringer sound like a throwback to those bands that'd get signed to Epitaph or Fat Wreck back in the 90's. Y'know, the classic "Epifat" sound - a world of sound particularly distant from bands like Lemuria or The Measure [SA], right? So what is it that adjoins them? Not a whole hell of a lot if you overlook the fact that they're all fronted by women. Even if you somehow sidestep criticism of the punk scene's astoundingly unchecked sexism (which I will sidestep here for the sake of brevity), throwing all of these bands in the same basket is not only incredibly reductive, but also comically misleading.
I see this sort of shit fairly often from lazy reviewers, and while it might seem a little ridiculous and buttpanged to get on my soapbox about this, I feel it's a bit more insidious of an action that just being a shitty critic. I've seen this sort of half-assed routine pulled jillions of times, but I'm pretty sure the first time it really struck me was in the review header of a band called Dead Ringer. I can't remember what it said verbatim, but it was definitely in the ballpark of the above quotations, throwing around a bunch of irrelevant names as comparatives. Look, those are all great bands, or widely beloved ones, at least (especially Tilt and Discount), and I totally get using them as an advertising basis. Here's what sucks, though: almost none of those bands sound like each other, like, at all, let alone the bands they were referencing in the original articles. To continue with the example, Dead Ringer sound like a throwback to those bands that'd get signed to Epitaph or Fat Wreck back in the 90's. Y'know, the classic "Epifat" sound - a world of sound particularly distant from bands like Lemuria or The Measure [SA], right? So what is it that adjoins them? Not a whole hell of a lot if you overlook the fact that they're all fronted by women. Even if you somehow sidestep criticism of the punk scene's astoundingly unchecked sexism (which I will sidestep here for the sake of brevity), throwing all of these bands in the same basket is not only incredibly reductive, but also comically misleading.
I think Mitch Clem put it pretty succinctly:
"Punk rock, that's where you decry hip hop for it's sexism and then never talk about a female-fronted band without mentioning gender."
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