Sasha Frere-Jones visits Toronto, surprisingly un-smarmy
Posted on 03. May, 2010 by Anupa in Internet, media, Pop Culture, Toronto
I’ll tell you an amateur-ish secret: when I first envisioned the visage of New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones (after the 2007, Arcade Fire-baiting piece came out with that now-infamous deck “How Indie Rock Lost Its Soul”) using surname etymology (Frere-Jones sounds kinda Creole?) and having only met girls named Sasha, I construed a black, Haitian-American woman. If you know the writer is actually a dude, and a white dude at that, this seems absurd, and I feel sheepish and quaint because of my (can’t hide it) aspirational projections.
With that piece, calling out by-then booming indie rock and discussing the influence (and co-optation) of black American music on highly profitable, infinitely more marketable white-fronted bands, Frere-Jones embarked on a pseudo-rise to fame. (Not to say he wasn’t paid-attention-to before, but the work entered a larger consciousness—bigger than just those who read the New Yorker or obsessively follow music criticism).
There are two things about rock critics today: 1) a lot of them are smarmy, self-important fuckers who style themselves on the glamorama of Lester Bangs or the wry, witticisms of Chuck Klosterman, and, 2) a lot of these “so-calleds” are everywhere, and therefore pervasively annoying. Frere-Jones is neither of these. Despite the sometimes-controversial pieces, writing for a general interest audience, he’s more a story-teller than a teller. Okay, I guess because ‘critic’ is in his title, you might say he’s at least kind of smarmy, but based on the semi-bumbling, totally unpretentious talk he gave at Hot Docs’ Critical Mass, Frere-Jones is just a guy who understands music: the kind of rock critic you want to read.
It’s very exciting for writers to see their quasi-idols celebrated but given the above, it’s important—particularly in a blogger-dominated world—to see the humble star. During his hour and a half, Frere-Jones constantly gave it up to readers and fellow critics. He relayed a poignant letter; the 101-year-old reader wrote about the first time she heard jazz in 1920 (the police came over and told her family to turn that off, it was Sunday) and ended her short piece with a simple, “My, how things have changed.” He derided the raging Internet-kills-criticism debate and recommended other critics worth checking out, including Nitsuh Abebe and Zach Baron. He also answered my question about race and music: (I’m paraphrasing) “We’ll always have that discussion because of the contributions of black American music, unless something crazy happens like we get a black president or something.” His metaphors were hilariously on-point: “Lady Gaga is everywhere, she’s like a gas, like pollen” and “Music from God’s eyeball.”
Forgive the Old World thinking, but it’s nice to see a writer with skill and nuance celebrated. Aspiring rappers have their Jay-Z’s and singers have their Mariah Carey’s, actors have their Clooney’s and professional nothing’s just have to pick up an Us Weekly or flip on Dancing With The Stars; with the demise of print journalism, the rise of blog wars, and the introduction of “blogger” as a new hyphenate, it’s even nicer when that fete-ing isn’t diminished by ego.
Simon
May 3rd, 2010
Respect to Anupa for correcting me after I once wrote an entire post about Frere-Jones referring to him as a her.