GOOD SWILL HUNTING
Boston post-hardcore supergroup Fiddlehead share their new album with the toughest critics of all: townie bar rats.
Nothing incapacitates my neurological system, as both a writer and a musician, quite like reviewing music. Who am I to be the gold-standard arbiter of what is good and what is not? I say this with sympathy, having consumed that cocktail of fear and anxiety that many artists are forced to swallow after pouring themselves out onto a record, only to be crudely spit out by some blowhard asshole who can’t even play a fucking power chord.
Even worse is the historic and factual realization that the all-time greats sometimes get it wrong. There’s Lester Bangs savaging Black Sabbath’s eponymous debut, and Lenny Kaye, a fantastic writer and musician, totally missing the mark in his review of the Rolling Stones cocaine opus Exile on Main Street.
