In her review of The Raconteurs' new offering, Consolers of the Lonely, Maerz starts off with an inquiry ("What separates the blues greats from the legends?"), but never actually answers it. Okay, she does answer it immediately after posing it, but is it a sufficient answer? No, it is not.
Only two paragraphs (out of a whopping six!) in and we begin to see signs of Maerz's dependency on parentheticals. Is she a one-trick pony? Maybe not (or maybe?), but it certainly is her most prominently utilized apparatus. The problem with such an over-use of the "oval brackets" (or "round brackets") is that your audience will begin to see just how much of your review is supplementary. Readers want to know that every word (every, every word) that you put to paper (or word processor) is a necessity, and with an absence of just one of those words (just one!), the whole piece will fall apart.
On the positive side, Maerz acknowledges the majesty of Bob Dylan when she turns his name into an adjective to describe the song "Carolina Drama" as "Dylanesque." It's always a good idea to name-check legendary artists and then proceed to compare a newer artist to said legend. (Bonus points would have been given had she also managed to compare The Raconteurs to either Radiohead or Pavement)Melissa Maerz obviously has talent, but it's hard to see such talent (or aptitude) when she so heavily relies on one specific punctuation mark (Spice things up! Give us an angle bracket!), and her relationship status.
Because she is Chuck Klosterman's girlfriend, I give Melissa Maerz's review of the new The Raconteurs album (Consolers of the Lonely) a rating of Norm Abram.
