NATURAL MUSIC

Every once in a while, an album release becomes an event. The type of event you stay up until 2 in the morning for in wide-eyed anticipation. We as a music audience are so spoiled with so much new music, that the vast majority of releases are not immediately met with much reaction. Fetch the Bolt Cutters, the new Fiona Apple album, has created a level of hype that hasn’t been seen since To Pimp a Butterfly five years ago.

Hype can be a lot of fun, especially when one is living in that moment where an identity becomes shared. It’s an event that’s rare in a field as subjective as music. But, there is a point when the amount of hype starts to draw out negatives. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is an immense release. It’s a milestone for the artist, who is coming back after eight years of reclusivity, and for the artist’s fans eagerly awaiting its arrival. But people on the Internet, professionals included, can be quite combative about talking about it. A lot of hype brings a lot of opinions, which leads to a lot of silliness in the realms of the music world, such as... 
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A critical hivemind forming. I would argue that readers don’t give enough scrutiny to critics when this sort of unanimous approval appears. Frankly, we should be skeptical of critics in all genres of media, but that’s for another article to determine. The age of synthesised Metacritic scores have become the norm, but averages almost always skew towards the upper echelons, and it’s increasingly rare to find albums that miss the mark for critics.

These hyped albums almost never miss that mark, and you can almost tell how much hype an album has behind them by looking at that number, which is often in the 90/100s or above. To be fair, there are times when an album is simply good enough to warrant this kind of praise, and many would argue that works like To Pimp a Butterfly and now Fetch the Bolt Cutters really are that good. However, the critic with an audience that listens to them is a powerful voice. Get enough of them to join in on the parade, and not only has this group built a wall around themselves, but the audience is now (if they choose to) within those walls. They declare the chosen album an instant classic, a masterpiece, something that “no music sounds quite like.” It could be equated to a bit of groupthink going on. Which in that case leads to...

‍Intense scrutiny of those who disagree. Fetch the Bolt Cutters does have its naysayers at the moment, namely the infamous Anthony Fantano. Or at least, many of those on the Internet consider him to be one, despite him considering this new album to be merely decent. I’m not going to defend Fantano himself or his opinion, but one doesn’t have to scroll far in a music forum comment section to find criticism about Fantano’s criticism (or even Twitter, where Fantano himself was trending on the night of the release of his review.) All that feedback on Fantano’s style may be something to consider, but that feedback almost never comes out for an album of lower stature, at least in Fantano’s case. The bigger the album is, the bigger the arguments get. Not to mention the bigger the amount of…

‍Actual contrarianism, but on weak arguments. Granted, this usually comes about in more toxic areas but it’s still very much a part of the album’s discourse. It can be ignored, but it’s ignorant to assume that these sorts of flamey posts don’t play a role in shaping the consensus opinion, and this is especially the case on user-based sites like Albumoftheyear and Rateyourmusic. It ultimately doesn’t matter and it isn’t worth reading up on, but it’s there, and it’s making an impact.

That’s true for the other points as well. Hype may be fun but it is indeed very silly and frankly is more often a waste of a lot of people’s time. At the same time, the experience of taking in an album like this is inevitably tainted by the flurry of opinions. The sort of discovery you feel upon stumbling on a random album certainly no longer exists. It may even end up feeling like a chore on a to-do list if one lets it!

I should stress that it’s by no means bad to read an article about an album or to have a discussion about music. That’s what publications like Natural Music are all about, helping to encourage informed debate and get people involved with (and listen to) the best possible music. That said, every one of us have read a bad argument about music before, and an album release with actual hype can bring out the worst of those arguments. What I would stress is to be cautious of the bias that can creep in, as they can in any other subject.

I’ll list my ways of adjusting myself to this sort of bias, as they tend to act as rules to follow when dealing with a Fetch the Bolt Cutters or even smaller hyped albums like I Disagree or SAWAYAMA. However, I’m sure that these rules are similar to how many people deal with them, not only with albums but in everyday life. The most important factor is not listening to the toxic stuff. Websites where pools of people clash together in words of fury are frustrating to read. Avoid the comment sections, avoid Twitter. They do nothing but inject your opinion on an album with unnecessary bias. They may also make your blood boil if you read enough of it. (This of course is true for all comment sections and Twitter at any point, but within the moments of hype, I can’t help myself sometimes by reading them. I am by no means faultless, and I have to assume that you the reader are not, either.)

A listener also needs to give it time, perhaps more so than with other records. At times, I will put away an album to listen at a later date when I think the hype is too much. Personally, I can get easily annoyed by too much hype so it becomes easier to become annoyed by an album when I feel they do not really deserve it. One can’t do this if they were, say, a music reviewer, but giving things time to settle is a good strategy for a common listener. 

However, even if an album is dove into right away, coming back to the album at a later date ensures that nothing was truly missed in terms of subjective quality. I am no advocate of the “you need to listen to this album X times before you truly get it” crowd, as I believe that once is usually enough for a casual listener. (After all, if you only need one viewing with a film, or even one long gaze at art in a museum, why is listening to an album any different?) At the same time, a listener does miss things on their first time around an album. This is especially the case on an album where bias has already set in.

Lastly, experience helps in dealing with the hype. I’d liken it to the idea of when getting older, people tend to stop ‘giving a shit’, but specifically applied to album releases. The moments which create so much critical and listener fanfare are rare, but they do happen often enough to where one can ignore the hype a little better. Keep on tabs with the Pitchfork/Stereogum/r/indieheads/Rateyourmusic crowd long enough, and you eventually get used to the rushes and the big scores and the championing. It happened with Is This It. It happened with Funeral and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and even Fiona Apple’s last album, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do. 

After a while, one begins to see the mechanisms, the conditions with which a perfect 10 may be crowned. There may be outlining factors in what is trendy or what the political conditions are. Eventually, the reasoning behind those albums and how and why they get all that acclaim become just a little more clear with each new, gargantuan release. (It also helps to get to see the whole marketing process behind these albums. The amount of press and marketing an album has to go through is a real mind-blower for those not so used to it. But that is also for another article.) 

Age may very well blunt the idea of the event of an album release, as one gets more used to the whole process and the novelty wears thin. That is a bit sad to think about. But age may give way to simply not caring about the hype or fanbases or music publications or the novelty of it all. That sort of liberation may be something every music lover can look forward to.