You know Anthony Fantano as “the Internet’s Busiest Music Nerd” thanks to his YouTube channel, The Needle Drop, on which he and his alter ego Cal Chuchesta video-review all of the latest notable releases in the world of music.
The acclaimed music critic is now set to return to Australian shores for a string of live presentations and an appearance at Face The Music, which will feature discussion and multimedia as well as a special one-off appearance by Mr Chuchesta himself.
Fantano will be covering everything from the future of the music industry, the role of album reviews in the modern consumer market, how context impacts musical taste, the commodification of indie, and classic albums.
We recently caught up with Anthony to talk about the role of the album review in the modern age, his upcoming appearance at Face The Music, and why we banned Tyler, The Creator from touring Australia whilst celebrating Nick Cave as a national treasure?
Tone Deaf: What’s the purpose of an album review in 2016?
Anthony Fantano: The purpose of an album review in 2016, at least from my perspective, with the way that I perceive myself reviewing, is becoming a part of the musical conversation. It’s not how people typically perceive reviews, where the reviewer is like really studied and they’re talking down to the reader in a way and educating them in a way.
I believe reviews are a good way to learn things about music and I certainly hope my reviews are that to an extent, but I look at my reviews as being more eye-to-eye with the reader because I consider myself a music fan too. A music fan first.
I started this thing out as kind of a DIY project. I didn’t come in as a part of any major publication. It was very much that I’m just a huge fan of music and I hope that I can attract people who are huge fans of music as well, or at least attract their anger when they happen to disagree with a review that I do too.
So in a nutshell, music reviews for me are a part of the music conversation that I think is essential to music culture. To me, music reviews are a good tool for stirring the pot and getting people to actually talk and think about what it is that they like and dislike about the music they listen to.
TD: Roger Ebert famously said criticism should be comparative, i.e. You don’t compare Hellboy to Mystic River, you compare it to Spiderman. Do you feel the same about music? We can’t imagine you view music hierarchically unless in the context of its genre.
AF: Yeah, I think that that’s true, but I think you can view music hierarchically, but then it has to be in a context as well. It can’t just be in the context of genre.
I very much view music in a hierarchical way when I’m trying to make my year-end list, you know? And I’m piling 50 albums on top of each other, many of which may not be in the same genre, but I’m like, ‘Hey, I think this one is better than the other. This one is better than the rest of these. This one is Number One.’
So I think music can be viewed hierarchically outside of the genre tag, but it would just be a different sub-category like, ‘Best Songs Written By People From This Particular Country’, ‘Best Albums Written In This Particular Time Period’. That kind of thing.
TD: You’ve admitted that your focus is often on the sonics of the music. Is a unique sounding or uniquely produced album, for lack of a better word, ‘better’ than say an album with conventional sonics but inspired lyricism?
AF: My initial reaction to that question, the way that I want to answer that question without thinking about it is ‘Oh my God, yes!’ That’s the way that I want to answer it without thinking about it.
But when I think about it, of course there are a handful of records that I can think about off the top of my head that sound unique but I think they’re utterly terrible.
However, though I think those albums are terrible in my opinion, I still think they can make for an interesting conversation piece. They still have their place in music culture as well, because the sound of the record, although it may not appeal to many people, the fact that it is unique can generate conversation and can get people to talk and think about music in ways they wouldn’t have before.
As opposed to say some band, I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I think my first couple of years of getting into music reviewing and getting a bunch of promos sent to me, I had been passed a CD from a band whose selling point was literally, as stated in the press release, that they sound exactly like Belle & Sebastian. And you go to listen to the CD and they weren’t fucking lying.
They sounded like a carbon copy of Belle & Sebastian. It was just like Belle & Sebastian had written another album. That’s literally how close in sound they were. And while you couldn’t say the album technically and musically was terrible, you also couldn’t say that it was adding in any way to the conversation around music culture.
TD: Why do people still buy records? Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk said he’s perturbed by people saying they want to buy a record to support the band. His opinion is you should buy music that moves you because you like it.
AF: I think to his point, he’s not really acknowledging the motivations behind buying records today. It’s a product of the times. You’re not really going to buy a record in 2016 for the same reasons you bought one in 1966.
I mean, of course people are buying records because they like them. But when they say they want to do it to support the band, they’re acknowledging a few harsh realities of the music business in 2016. Namely, that bands don’t really make much money off of the music that they record and they release.
I think people still buy records today because not all music fans are equal. You can’t argue that someone who really loves One Direction and someone who really loves Sonic Youth… they’re both music fans, but they’re different kinds of music fans.
Not to say that one is better than the other, but your average Sonic Youth fan is more likely to approach music in the same way that a comic book collector would approach comic books. They want to have a physical representation of the music and experience it in a more personal way.
Whereas for your average Justin Bieber fan, it’s purely entertainment or what they what to connect with is Justin, the figure of the music itself rather than the art it represents.
TD: How has music streaming impacted music discovery? Would you say that services like Apple Music and Spotify essentially have a monopoly on what users consume?
AF: I don’t think they have a monopoly because what they’re offering is what every other company is offering. It sort of makes Apple Music… we’ll take them specifically, what makes them different is they’re willing to shell out tonnes of money to get these exclusives for a limited amount of time.
But since they’re not limited to their single platform forever, you can’t really say it’s a monopoly. There’s lots of different services out there, from Apple to Spotify to Pandora to YouTube. YouTube is the biggest and the original music streaming service, it dwarfs all of the others in terms of clicks.
I think music on the internet in general has created some positive things and some negative things, and just in my opinion. One of the positive things is that people are now more open to different sounds and genres and artists. It’s not unlikely to run across people who are fans of both hardcore blackgaze, like a Deafheaven or Oathbreaker, but they also enjoy some AlunaGeorge or some Lady Gaga or Kendrick Lamar, too.
Whereas in the heydays of indie, indie kids likes indie and they didn’t really listen to a whole lot of hip-hop. And the hip-hop heads enjoyed hip-hop and didn’t venture too far into the whole underground rock things. Metalheads are still metalheads [laughs] but even they will venture further outside the genre confines than they used to.
TD: What’s a claim about music that you’ve heard recently that made you scoff and what’s your rebuttal? An example being ‘Rock is dead’ or ‘Hip hop is dead’…
AF: Oddly enough, I think the latest and weirdest claim that made me raise an eyebrow is when I went on my Twitter Moments section, for maybe two or three days there was this tab that just said ‘John Lennon Beats Women’.
And while that is true, when I went into the section and saw what people are saying and talking about, I just saw like a whole lot of, I don’t know, I guess weird virtue signalling, where all these people were saying John Lennon beats women not because they felt like they were bringing violence against women to the forefront or helping out the feminist cause, but it seemed more like an exercise in… ‘Oh, here’s this wrong thing, look how morally superior I am for acknowledging how wrong it is.’
It almost seemed like, ‘Wake up sheeple! John Lennon wasn’t this peaceful, perfect angel!’ When it’s like, if you know anything about the music business, who the fuck is? Most rock stars were scum bags, most rock stars did horrible, heinous, terrible things behind the scenes. A lot of these people died of drug overdoses and that’s why they didn’t live to a ripe old age.
TD: We’re not sure if you’re aware but Tyler, The Creator was meant to tour Australia some months back and the tour was cancelled…
AF: Yeah, I made a video about that!
TD: But around the same time we had tours from Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, the list goes on.
AF: Well, one of the things I brought up in my video talking about that is that one of the most popular artists who gets quite a bit of praise down there is Nick Cave. And his songs, I would say, dive even more vividly into the topics of rape and violence against women.
TD: He’s got an album called Murder Ballads.
AF: Absolutely. What’s odd is that in the case of Nick Cave, he gets a pass because we understand what he’s singing is hyperbole or it’s just a story and when you sing about a certain topic that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re endorsing it.
Whereas Tyler, The Creator didn’t get the same ‘benefit of the doubt’. I guess because he’s said some nasty things and wasn’t nice to the right people online, but I guess what I’m trying to say is it still doesn’t make the treatment he got any less unfair.
TD: Do you feel there’s an element of… Nick Cave is this highbrow literary figure and Tyler, The Creator is a rap star?
AF: That is absolutely a part of it. I’m not usually the kind of person to bring up these points as well, but they’re might be a race element to it as well.
Nick Cave is the white guy who is hyperbolically singing about rape as part of a plot device, whereas Tyler, The Creator is the wild, crazy, young black kid who’s singing about rape and he might actually rape.
I think there’s probably a race element to it, there’s probably an age element to it as well, because Nick Cave has been around for a long time he’s a classic legendary artist and at this point he can pretty much say or do anything in his songs and people will be like, ‘Oh, well that’s just genius. It’s just art.’
People will say whatever Nick Cave does is art, whereas they’ll try to take that artistic license away from people like Tyler, The Creator and delegitimise his attempts at making art as well.
*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
See Anthony Fantano talk memes, the music industry, and how they intersect, and embark on passionate, unhinged rants about the commodification of indie and the destruction of music discovery via music streaming services at Face The Music 2016 – check below for details.
Face The Music 2016
Thursday, 17th November & Friday, 18th November 2016
Melbourne Music Week Hub, Melbourne
Tickets: Face The Music
Anthony Fantano Australian Tour Dates
Friday, 11th November 2016
QUT Kelvin Grove Campus, Brisbane (All Ages)
Tickets: Eventbrite
Sunday, 13th November 2016
Newtown Social Club, Sydney (Under-18)
Tickets: Newtown Social Club
Sunday, 13th November 2016
Newtown Social Club, Sydney (18+)
Tickets: Newtown Social Club
Thursday, 17th November & Friday, 18th November 2016
Face The Music, Melbourne
Tickets: Face The Music
