I’ve been having troubles reviewing anything lately.  I think I realize the reason why.  I think it’s because everyone is going to review styles that I don’t want to do, but I feel naturally inclined to because of their ease.  It seems like there are three main schools of reviews right now.  The most popular seems to be writing highly negative reviews.  The reviews often don’t even involve anything you would need to listen to the music to write, they make fun of the packaging or the lyrics & don’t give you any real idea of what type of music it is that you wouldn’t gather yourself from the cover.  The second most popular in style seems to be the personal narrative style possibly inspired by Lester Bangs, but more likely inspired by watching the movie Almost Famous.  This also says very little about the music, it is an autobiography of how someone found the artwork & maybe relates another personal anecdote or says how a particular lyric corresponds to the person’s life.  Another style is the quote seeker, where the reviewer’s goal is to get mentioned in a band’s presskit.  Sometimes this can actually be an accurate review, but more often than not it is a quote that could have been attributed to any of the hundred other releases out that month or even more likely is a re-wording of a presskit.  To do a review without resorting to one of these techniques is very hard for me (& given the state of things, I guess for most people).  I think the goal is to remove the reviewer from the reviewing process & actually describe the music, because the reviewer’s personal opinion is not an accurate truthful statement.  I’ve been  trying to figure out how to do this.  Maybe I’ll start doing reviews with a ten piece opening segment listing things like instrumentation, beats per minute, & such factual information.  I don’t want to write a review that is generic or inaccurate or self-absorbed or a practice at being witty.  So maybe eventually I’ll figure out how to do it....