Marc Hogan: Weezer, "Weezer (The Red Album)"

Pitchfork has standards. Really high standards. If Pitchfork reviewed mothers, yours would only score a 2.3/10, and she'd probably get punched in her uterus, possibly even causing it to prolapse. So much for that little brother you were hoping to have. Apparently your mom is too well-known and her style "tiresome."

If your own mother, the woman who sacrificed so much so you could receive the education that made you the success you are today, can't even break 3.0, then what hope does Weezer and their new self-titled album have?

Not much, according to reviewer Marc Hogan, although they do fair better than your poor moms (which means you should probably be sending that box of chocolates to Rivers Cuomo on Mother's Day instead).

It's always a bad sign when a review starts off by looking back longingly. "Remember when..." "It used to be..." "I had a girlfriend this one time..." This is what Hogan regales his readers with. Apparently he used to like Weezer, particularly their first two albums, Weezer ("The Blue Album") and Pinkerton. He even calls those two LPs "75 minutes of near-perfect power-pop." You will note that even perfection--a quality, trait, or feature of the highest degree of excellence--only receives a 9.3 in Pitchfork's domain. But after that first 75 minutes,the rest of the band's offerings went to shit, much like Hogan's review. His gaze remains fixed behind him for the rest of his review and fails to ever turn forward.

Readers are tired of reading about what was, and desperately want to read about what will be. What will Weezer's next album sound like? Will Pavement ever reunite? What will knock Pitchfork off their own self-constructed pedestal? These are the types of question that Hogan and all reviewers should be asking.

Marc Hogan's review offers no redeeming value. His review of Weezer's "The Red Album" is thusly awarded a Reiki affirmation.

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.

Melissa Maerz: The Raconteurs, 'Consolers of the Lonely'

Melissa Maerz's name has graced the pages of numerous publications, including Spin magazine and New York's "Vulture" blog; now her name can be seen at the bottom of reviews in Rolling Stone. Maerz's name still not ringing a bell? That's probably because you know her better as Chuck Klosterman's girlfriend. Is it safe to say that she's riding his coattails? As a journalist, I cannot say with any amount of certainty, but let me ask you this: does Chuck wear a coat?

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.