Music

Review Of Brent Dicrescenzo’s Review Of Franz Ferdinand By Franz Ferdinand

By Sam Hamilton

February 9, 2004: A day that will make March 9, 2004 live on in history. On February 9, Scottish quartet Franz Ferdinand released a self-titled debut that was to shake the music scene of the world. And on March 9, 2004, fresh off of several sluggish and boring reviews, music writer Brent DiCrescenzo of pitchforkmedia.com released his tour de force review of Franz Ferdinand's self-titled debut. It marks a fine achievement in the parasitic career of DiCrescenzo; another feather for his cap, woven from the threads of other people's blood, sweat, tears and talent. He's back, baby!

Struggling in a world of up-and-coming young writers, DiCrescenzo was best known for his earnest attempts to write anything but a review. He was never satisfied with engaging an album's soundscape, its lyricism, the musicianship of the band members or even whether the cover art had anything to do with the album's title. Instead, he pushed the boundaries of thoughtfulness to create quaint scenes where he or some imagined character were to become entangled in some implausible way with the band or the band's record company or with a group of people trying to pretend they were the band. Hell, he even spoke as Paul Bunyan in his review of Babe the Blue Ox's release The Way We Were . His efforts were great, but his reception was poor.

Perhaps it was that his reviews offered nothing in way of content or information about the album. Perhaps it was that one never knew whether to buy a DiCrescenzo-reviewed album. Perhaps it was that it was obvious that DiCrescenzo was more intent on whether people would "hear his voice" through the monitors at their work stations while they pretended to be busy compiling spreadsheet data. Whatever the reason, Brent DiCrescenzo was a red dwarf in a sky of supergiants.

Only an album like Franz Ferdinand's self-titled debut could properly defibrillate his dying reviewer's heart.

Jam-packed with unctuous lyrics about wanting both girls and boys, plodding bass lines and crisp (albeit stolen) guitar riffs and one or two single-quality songs, Franz Ferdinand was DiCrescenzo's nitroglycerin. And boy did he blow up with it.

He starts the review with a lame interlude into a fictitious trip taken by he and his fellow Pitchforkers. Within several lines however, DiCrescenzo manages not only to 1) use the word "biopic," 2) reference a "bunny ranch" and Baraboo, Wisconsin, taking a potshot at the "importance" of Xiu Moo, but he also 3) talks about his own waning career.

(If Johnny Cash is a testament to anything, it is that forlorn references to your own mortality - especially in or related to the music business - make for Virgin Megastore Gold!)

Then, after some pithy dialogue between DiCrescenzo and pitchfork's editor-in-chief, Ryan Schreiber, DiCrescenzo tells his boss, after being requested to do another of his patented concept reviews, that "the cow is dried up. It's Gordita meat. I've even done the I'm-not-going-to-do-a-concept-review-anymore concept review."

Oh, postmodernism, put that in your hookah and smoke it! Can you believe the sand of this man? A man who, for all intents and purposes, has seen the last of the glory days in a career that was created so that yet another group of people could leech off of a talented few, has the ballsiness to mock his own career while simultaneously taking his art to the next level. He's done the 'I'm-not-going-to-do-a-concept-review-anymore concept review,' but has he done the 'No-really-I'm-not-going-to-do-a-concept-review-anymore - unless-it-references-how-I-already-did-an-'I'm-not-going-to-do-a-concept-review-anymore concept review' concept review?

But this is more than a Chinese-stacking-doll style concept review. He even talks about the album that he is reviewing! Granted, it's only two of the ten paragraphs, but his discussion does use phrases like "gentle acoustic strums," "student poem prattle," "raygun guitars," "blurts," "drums," "stuttering punk," "keyboards" and "song."

To cap the review, DiCrescenzo talks of how Franz Ferdinand doesn't need a concept review surrounding it - it is powerful enough to be reviewed in the outdated and old-fashioned way. And yet, in the final lines, the reader is struck with the irony that DiCrescenzo has created (which is much like the intrigue created when one ponders the statement "This sentence is false"). If Franz Ferdinand didn't need a concept review, why would DiCrescenzo give it a concept review? Further, why would he tell those of us who have just struggled through a concept review that all of our efforts were for naught; that we could've gone to any old review site and read a straight-up old-fashioned review of Franz Ferdinand ?

One gets the idea that DiCrescenzo has been playing with us all along, that the trick to his postmodern style is to hold it at arm's length as though it were a smelly diaper. Why would I waste my time reading his counterculturalist hackery when I could just as easily read the reviews provided by the band's website?

And then it hits you square in the jaw, harder than any guitar riff or bassline could:

Brent DiCrescenzo does concept reviews because he doesn't want you to read them. He wants you to be annoyed at his pithy snarkiness, his horrid attempts at originality and his overblown scenarios. He doesn't ever want to get to the point. Because, to do so would be to give you something that he wants to keep from you: The satisfaction of reading a decent review. Brent DiCrescenzo designed himself to be a fading star. His is the career of an artist in control of every facet of his skill - a man with the ability to provoke hatred and resentment with a couple clacks of his keyboard; a man who wants you to hate him.

Well, Brent, I got the message loud and clear. You are a pretentious, pompous, ostentatious, overrated, sticky-fingered son of a jackal. And I hope you suffer.