Another placing in an 'End of Year round up'.

[Eldritch]

If they gave me full freedom, I would write a 5 out of 5 stars review and praise (of course) Indefinite Leave To Remain, as one of the best songs of their career. Yet the magazine doesn't agree with me at all. It's just my opinion, not that of the magazine.

But what is the magazine, if not the collective product of its writers? If you are a regular contributor to the magazine, you represent it in the same way as anybody else. I loved Melody Maker in the early nineties, when it had different writers praising grunge, britpop, house and indie, all battling it out in the same pages - often meaning that a Blur album get a glowing review and then get killed in a gig review next week. When music mags are "Soviet insect hives of opinion", as Patrick put it, they are at their worst: like NME praising The Strokes/Oasis/Arctic Monkeys in every issue without allowing any dissenting voices to pierce the hype.

You seem to think it's perfectly acceptable that a PSB hater gets full freedom to write a negative review, despite most other people at the magazine loving it.

Of course it's perfectly acceptable! Naturally assuming that this "hater" or to be more precise, a non-fan, actually takes his time to listen to the album in question properly and then be honest and eloquent about the reasons why he doesn't like PSB. The great injustice of the album getting a bad review despite most of the staff liking it will most likely be corrected in various ways: if the rest of the staff backs the band, there will be a feature on them, live reviews, a good placing on the end-of-the-year polls and so on. Mind you, I'm not defending the actual review quoted by Janet, it's a badly-written piece of tripe - but I'm defending the right of somebody giving Fundamental two stars,

If I slag off the latest Depeche Mode studio album, because I happen to think DM are terribly overrated, would you call my review 'a piece of art'? I doubt it..

You underestimate me. I don't take bad reviews of my fave bands personally. David Fricke killed SOFAD by DM in Melody Maker in 1993 and Everett True slaughtered Coming Up by Suede in 1996, and while I love both albums, I found the reviews funny, insightful and eloquent, despite disagreeing with them.

That's more accurate than a hip hop lover reviewing a PSB album by coincidence.

Well, if the hip hop lover is an open-minded music critic, I would be more interested in hearing his views on the album than another PSB fan gushing the usual lazy praise. There should be more music critics operating outside their comfort zone, because at it's best music criticism is also cultural commentary and for that you need to go much deeper than just state why you (dis)like something.

And if that passionate, controversial review is more or less withdrawn 7 months later, because the same magazine put the album high in their year-end list, what was the actual VALUE of that controversial review in the first place?

It's not withdrawn at all. Unless the reviewer has changed his mind, it still represents his opinion about the album in question. The fact that 10 or so other staff members have now voiced their disagreement about it doesn't change that.

You overestimate the importance of reviews anyway. Many bestselling albums get dire reviews and yet sell by millions whereas the bands like TV On The Radio, Arcade Fire and The Knife usually winning these ctitic's polls are usually awarded with the status of cult success, rarely nothing more than that.

[Drico One]

The PSB-friendly Word magazine has Fundamental in no less than four journalist end of year top fives.

Catalogue ranked at number 7 in the NME's best books of the year.

Drico.

[Fargo]

There are quite a few people on here that are journo's, or have reviewed albums properly. Can someone tell me how these reviewers can give an honest opinion, when listening to the album once, or a couple of times? Or do they constantly play it?

Dave

Very hard not to agree with you. Me as an ordinary listener (don't matter weahter I'm great fan of the band or not) I always try to listen to the album as long as I finnaly can make my opinion - positive or negative. Sometimes it comes from the first listening sometimes it takes weeks. It depends even on the previous band's albums, just to compare and understand is new release a progress or maybe this is a kind of experiment etc. Taking the record and playing it once is always the wrong way to review.

[Ghost within this house]

I hate it when a reviewer clearly dislikes the group in question and has nothing interesting or even funny to say about why that is.

Know what the Pet Shop Boys’ real problem is? Well, aside from the (slightly unnerving) fact that they’re a pair of balding middle aged men who we are still required to refer to as ‘boys’?

Yes, because the Artic Monkeys are really monkeys, aren't they? C*nt.

It’s that they’re of a time. Any artist who finds themselves chronicling an era, reflecting a certain time or attitude on record runs the risk of finding themselves trapped in that particular age. The best stuff the Pet Shop Boys have done – with its spotlight placed on thoughtless consumerism, avarice and egocentricity - is steeped in a distinctively eighties’ sensibility.

And Blair's Britain is so unmaterialistic, isn't it? W*nker.

And thus in 2006, Messrs Lowe and Tennant are struggling to remain relevant as a pop act. Case in point: ‘The Sodom and Gomorrah Show.’ Set to one of the spunkier tunes on an otherwise largely humdrum LP it may be, but as a comment on our prurient, permissive times, then well… it all just seems so dated. They might be talking about a time ahead of their 80s heyday sure, but really, with its bold spoken world promise of a land of ‘Sun, Sex, Sin, Divine Intervention’ the prevailing feel is too ‘Loaded’ magazine, too Club 18-30, too ‘Girls and Boys’ (‘cept awful). You half expect Keith Allen to turn up and offer a guest vocal half way through.

No, that would be on World in Motion. This sounds more like Dollar than Blur. Motherf*cker.

Lyrically there are some major clangers. ‘Minimal’ starts promisingly with a throbbing, New Order-ish bassline, but is soon regrettably compromised by some particularly inane babble pitched somewhere between one of David Brent’s nonsensical life philosophies and Ali G alter ego Borat’s spoof fashion show interviews (‘Draw a line/More is less is minimal/Form, earth, life/Decide something less decisional’ – que?) However, ‘Casanova in Hell’ manages to out-cringe even that gubbins with its final line: ‘Above all, his erection will live in history.’ Erm, thanks for that, chaps.

Ooh, he used the word 'erection'. Snigger snigger. If Alex Turner had used it, it would be to demonstrate his youthful wit and verve. Ars*hole.

Recalling the OTT bombast of ‘It’s A Sin’, meanwhile, ‘I’m With Stupid’ posits the less-than-revelatory notion that the relationship between George W Bush and Tony Blair doesn’t really do the UK many favours. Yeah, its hearts in the right place, but tellingly, the Pet Shop Boys could have been saying exactly the same things about Thatcher and Reagan twenty years ago.

Erm, when exactly did Reagan and Thatcher invade Iraq? T*sser.

For a band who once specialized in portraying a particular kind of haughty ennui, ‘Fundamental’ is in actual fact a bit of a yawn.

Oh just f*ck off.

truth hurts, eh Janet?

[Tom Angel]

I agree with most of this. A magazine always has some editorial policy (i.e. Uncut has to have a 16 page article on the Beatles every month), but writers are allowed their own opinion, and to put an album in the end of year lists can be a writers decision but is clearly 'approved' by the publication.

[Shopper]

Interesting..but how much of these reviews actually go an influence a causal listener to go to the store and buy a cd, esp these days when one can listen to the previews and make a judgement of your own.

I remember a case in Q, when they panned Kylie's Impossible Princess in 97, giving it 2* and calling it misguided. Post a few years, after she's back with her 2 innings, they review the album again and call it the 'sexiest pop record ever'