23 October 2009 — Critical Thinking
On Saturday night I saw My Disco, for the first time in years. My Disco are generally well-liked by critics, and they have a loyal fan base, but it was nice to see a band with a decidedly un-pop aesthetic fill the Forum. The two people standing in front of me at the beginning of the gig were less than impressed, though. I overheard them saying things such as "this song has only been one chord" and "they could have at least had a guitar solo", etc. Now, I would hardly expect that everyone should like this sort of band, and it's perfectly reasonable to dislike a band because they don't conform to particular standards, such as playing songs with chord progressions. But I got the impression that these people were saying that the band was in some way bad as a result of their minimalism. It got me thinking about how people hone their critical faculties, and what it means to be a critical listener.
The problem is, of course, that being critical of art is vital. Art criticism is an important cultural process in many ways. On the personal level, at some stage we have to make choices. While I try to be open-minded about new things, I also don't want to spend a lot of time listening to bad music. The fact that qualitative judgements about art are subjective doesn't mean that these judgements are meaningless to others: people develop critical frameworks for discussing art with others that allows us to engage with the art, and with other people's opinions about it. Therefore, the development of our critical faculties is an important step in allowing us to respond in new ways to the art that surrounds us. But our critical faculties can lead us down the wrong path if we use them in the wrong way. I don't think it's wrong to dislike something because it isn't something else. But when a band like My Disco deliberately makes music that doesn't conform to a traditional rock aesthetic, you are using the wrong tools if you try to evaluate them in the context of rock music.
I rarely listen to My Disco at home: I find their music more confronting than I generally feel like listening to. On the other hand, I tremendously enjoy them whenever I do listen to them, and I'm always amazed at how good they are at what they do. To criticise them in a way that makes them out to be in some way less competent than an average rock and roll band is dishonest. Dishonest, but common. Whenever I hear a band like, say, Slayer, I'm tempted to call them a bad band. But given how little I listen to Metal, I don't really posses the tools to even know whether they're good or bad: I just don't really like Metal. It would be wrongheaded of me to criticise them for not being more like Bob Dylan.