Annie Zaleski: "Show Review: Radiohead in St. Louis at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, May 14"

Despite what you might have heard, predictability isn't always a bad thing. It can save you the trouble of guessing what's going to happen in the future. In fact, I'd say predictability is the best friend of the impatient man (just man; woman need to learn patience). For example, because I know that all music reviewers are not fans of music, I can expect to read vitriolic attacks based on arbitrary factors including, but not limited to, how much a band sounds like Pavement.

Imagine my surprise when I read a review of a recent Radiohead concert by Annie Zaleski. Annie Zaleski is not a music critic. How can I be so certain? Because she's a fan. A BIG one, if her review Show Review: Radiohead in St. Louis at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, May 14 is any indicator. There are several obvious clues:

- She attended the Radiohead concert she reviewed.
Actual music critics do not need to attend shows, or even listen to albums, in order to write their reviews. If anything, the lack of participation actually makes for a better review. How can you maintain your journalistic objectivity if you get caught up in the frenzy and atmosphere of people actually enjoying listening to music? The answer? You can't. (For the sake of disclosure, I did not actually read Ms. Zaleski's review.)

- She took her own photographs.
What's worse than Zaleski attending the concert? Attending AND taking photographs! So much wasted effort--she might as well have attended the concert twice! Standard protocol for concert reviews is to send the staff photographer to snap some pictures, and then you write your review based on what was captured with the camera. If you don't have a staff photographer, then you just do a Google Image Search and base your review on whatever non-pornographic images come up. If the search yields nothing but porn, then it must not have been that good of a concert (surprise, surprise).

- She took a photo of the back of someone's head and considered it a success.
I may not know much about "composition" or "exposure" or "a lens cap," but I do know that never ever has anyone ever thought that the back of someone's head was interesting (unless the front of their head was actually on the back of their head because their mom was drunk every day of her pregnancy).

- She posted the entire set list (including both encores).
Nobody likes a know-it-all, Annie.

- She wrote sooooo many words.
It's not unusual for a review to be lengthy. What is unusual is when the majority of that lengthy review is actually based on the subject being reviewed. Annie, I understand that the name of the blog is 'A to Z,' but was it really necessary to cover everything about the concert from A to Z? To make matters worse, it wasn't even the standard 26-letter, English alphabet, but one of those weird alphabets with about 4,786 distinctive characters.

I can appreciate your enthusiasm (sort-of), Annie, but let's leave the reviews to us professionals. How about we make a deal? You won't write any more reviews, and us critics won't wait in line for hours to buy an album, or attend a concert unless we're on the comp. list. Sound fair?

Since Ms. Zaleski's review wasn't actually a review, it's hard to decide what kind of rating to give Show Review: Radiohead in St. Louis at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, May 14. So I'll just give it a 1965 Mustang GT Convertible.

Sia Michel: Portishead, "Third"

When you hear the name "Sia Michel," two words should come to mind: "bravery" and "cowardice" (I also would have accepted "typographical error"). Bravery, because she had the stones to be editor-in-chief at Spin magazine (do you have any idea how much indie cred you need to run a rag like that?) for five years. Cowardice, because she vacated her position when the magazine was bought out by new owners. Sia, one thing the music world DOESN'T need is fair-weather editor-in-chiefs. You're either with Spin magazine, or you're against Spin magazine.

Bravery and cowardice aside, Michel's recent review of Portishead's Third will come as a shock to fans of her earlier work. Instead of expanding her voice, and growing as a writer, she has reverted to 150-word notes for Blender that end up sandwiched between Fergie's ass and anonymous tits from MTV's The Hills, and read like a writer who knows that she wants to do something, but can't figure out what that something is. Gone now are the epic tales held within her reviews; replaced by a succinctness that Sia so desperately wants to achieve, and at times her fingertips do lightly graze it, but in the end, it ultimately eludes her.

Sia Michel is a lost soul, desperately trying to find out who she is. I believe it will be exciting when it eventually happens. Until then, I award her review of Portishead's Third a matrix logarithm.