Ferguson 1 Michael Ferguson Dr. Kevin Oberlin ENGL2089 14 July 2013 Genre Analysis: Concert Review The live concert review is an important tool in music criticism. Reviews offer a glimpse into missed shows, give a snapshot of an artist’s personality, and capture an atmosphere. The best concert reviews condense hundreds of microscopic elements of the concert experience into a few short paragraphs. The worst leave readers confused, frustrated, or bored. Too much detail is overwhelming; too little is boring. The challenge for the reviewer is to paint a carefully incomplete portrait: enough to draw readers in but with enough gaps to leave them wanting to know more. DeVotchKa At Bunbury Music Festival, Friday July 12th. The sun hung low in the sky Friday evening as Walk The Moon played the last few songs their 90-minute set of shimmery pop hits. Across the lawn, the members of DeVotchKa sat backstage, patiently waiting for the last synths to fizzle out. A quick survey of the stage made clear that coming up was very different sort of show. A brief catalogue of the instruments onstage Ferguson 2 includes a violin, a sousaphone, two guitars, a trumpet, and an accordion. As if by careful calculation, the sun slipped below the horizon just as DeVotchKa jogged onto the stage. A quick hello to the crowd. Two rapid strums on a guitar. The transformation was complete: what had been a warm summer evening just moments before was now a hot summer night. DeVotchKa bring a world sensibility to their passionate brand of folk music. Frontman Nick Urata is as likely to be wailing in Spanish as he is singing in English. The quartet switch instruments almost every song and fill out their sound with percussion from around the globe. For the next hour they play through a series of their biggest hits: Tom Hagerman’s violin prowess shows through in “The Clockwise Witness.” Drummer Shawn King, plays a near militaristic trumpet in “All The Sand In All the Sea.” Jeanie Shroeder moves rapidly between sousaphone and upright bass, dancing all the while (Loftus). But the real power behind DeVotchKa comes from Nick Urata’s voice. Used as an instrument in its own right, it swells up and down with uplifting crescendos and crashing yells. Urata speaks rather little during the set. There are introductions here, names of songs there, but the crowd banter Ferguson 3 is held to a minimum. In its place, he nurses a bottle of wine between songs. The entire setlist seems to build to one pivotal moment, a song titled “How It Ends.” (The group gained critical success when an instrumental version of the song appeared in the film Little Miss Sunshine.) Layers of piano and violin accompany soft verses about tests of faith, slowly building into a pounding orchestral moment where Urata roars the chorus: “You already know how this will end.” And we do. Two more songs and the concert is over, yet the intensity of his voice, the strain of the trumpet, the high pitched violin, and the heat of the dark summer heat hangs on for far longer. Analysis Reviews of all kinds are challenging to write. Critiquing a creative work--whether it be a book, theater production, film, or piece of music--brings difficulties to the writing process hat other genres do not. For instance, the reviewer must display a deep knowledge of previous work by the artist without appearing to be biased. An impartial tone throughout is a necessity in reviewing work. The live concert review, compared to book or film reviews, brings an added later of complexity. Not only is the music itself being reviewed; every aspect of the performance is open Ferguson 4 to critique. The performer's banter between songs, his or her attire, and the slightest behavioral tics onstage are all available to the reviewer. (No book reviewer bothers to discuss what the author was wearing when he finished the novel.) In a lesser sense, attributes of the venue and the quality of the sound are up for comment too. Only theater review approaches this level of added commentary on the noncreative aspects of a performance. These additional details, however, are essential to the reviewer’s craft. The task of he reviewer is to comment on the entire experience. Album reviews discuss songs in the context of he whole album; concert reviews discuss songs in the context of the entire sensory experience. What is seen and felt is nearly as important as what is heard. For instance, Ferguson discusses the group DeVotchKa alongside the setting sun (Ferguson). These types of details say nothing directly about the music itself but paint a broader picture of the concert atmosphere. They help to frame the story and construct for the reader an idea of what it was like to be in the audience. Framing allows the reviewer to shape how his or her thoughts on the show are received. The best reviews come not from cool, distant analysis but from involved storytelling. Readers can gain a sense that the reviewer is describing the Ferguson 5 scene to them as an informed friend, as “genres reflect habitual ways of communicating and behaving in various scenes” (Devitt et al.175). In this sense, concert reviews can be seen as a form of literary nonfiction. The performer becomes a character, the reviewer a narrator. Dialogue is taken down, inflections noted. In some lengthier reviews, recurring motifs or extended metaphors are employed to tell a more compelling story. There are multiple narrative threads to be found at any given concert. Different reviewers pick up on different elements and can write dramatically different narratives of the same performance. It is from this conception of concert review as literary nonfiction that two pieces will be examined. In the first, SPIN's Chris Martins reviews a May 2013 performance by the English folk singer Laura Marling. Martins employs the literary style effectively, breaking in tone only a handful of times and only when absolutely necessary. His prose quickly establishes the setting, a "creepy red-lit room" (Martins). While he avoids any description of Marling's appearance, he gives a sense of her demeanor through his discussion of themes in her new album and her performance: "It was heartbreaking what she did, weaving this clause into the very fabric of what made us all fall for her song after song. When she'd shred between words she'd throw her head back like she wanted it to roll off her shoulders" Ferguson 6 (Martins). Martins’ review is favorable yet impartial. He does not shy away from noting Marling’s sparse and slightly unusual stage dialogue: “’It’s been a pleasure,’ she said oddly, as if she too forgot this place in a room full of others” (Martins). The opening paragraph of his review also notes her infrequent speech. The narrative that emerges (entirely by Martins’ design) is one of a reserved woman more comfortable singing out than making conversation. In reviewing a July 2013 performance by the punk band Savages, The New York Times’ Ben Ratliff takes a different tone. While still operating in the literary nonfiction discourse, Ratliff provides a fairly negative view on the concert and the band. His review is best summed up in one sentence near the end: “This is a band whose intellectual ambitions aren’t on the same scale as the group’s sound” (Ratliff). This view is supported by an analysis of the band’s origins, inspirations, and manifestoes. He details how the group fits well into the context of punk music from several decades ago but is unable to compete today. Only after several paragraphs of context have been established does he review the music itself. His descriptions of “agitated noise” and “unsteadiness in tempo” explain his concern about the mismatch between ambition and sound. This framing is where the talent in Ratliff’s review shows through. A review Ferguson 7 about a musically unimpressive concert is not necessarily poorly written; however, such a monolithic story comes across as bland and uninteresting. Therefore, Ratliff pairs this musical shakiness with an exploration of the band’s ideology, setting up context and conflict and making for a more interesting critique. In his review of DeVotchKa at Bunbury Music Festival, Ferguson employs many of these techniques with varying success. The statements about the sun setting help to frame the concert in a context of time and temperature: “what had been a warm summer evening just moments before was now a hot summer night” (Ferguson 1). With this context in mind, the lively energetic atmosphere of the concert is more adequately captured than if the review focused on the sound alone. This talk of energy is carried through in the discussion of Urata’s voice and the other members of the ensemble. Ferguson is less successful in describing the context in which DeVotchKa fall musically. No similar artists are mentioned, nor is there a truly successful explanation of the type of songwriting they employ. While these do not immediately detract from the review, a stronger piece would include these references to paint a broader picture for the reader. Most prominently missing from the review is a single narrative thread. There are individual moments, particularly the Ferguson 8 first and last paragraphs that provide a sense of framing. However, the piece as a whole does not read as particularly unified. It is an acceptable summary of the experience, but contains plenty of room for improvement as far as storytelling is concerned. One other notable absence is an image of the group performing. Visual rhetoric of any kind adds layers of information to music reviews, but particularly important is a picture taken of the band as they play. A well-composed image appropriately paired with a piece of writing can reinforce the narrative in a powerful way. Images capture moods, facial expressions, and action in a compelling way and the have the potential to make a story far more meaningful than text alone. Were the review placed online or in a print publication, an image likely could accompany the writing. This strengthened reading dependent on media is an important part of understanding genres. “Writing morphs and changes meaning as it moves from one medium or genre or rhetorical situation to another” (Losh et al. 261). This explains why reviews in print take on a different meaning than reviews online. Concert reviews posted online get the benefit of embedding links, audio, and video into a piece where print cannot. This difference in medium dictates a difference in writing. Ferguson 9 Experience in reviewing also dictates a change in writing. Those with more experience to draw from are usually better able to describe what unfolds before them and craft a compelling narrative: “Writers who can successfully manipulate an audience are writers who can both imagine and write from a position of privilege” (Bartholomae 515). The privilege, in this instance, is familiarity with the genre. Ferguson 10 Works Cited Bartholomae, David. "Inventing The University." Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Ellen Cushman, Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 511-524. Print. Devitt, Amy J., Mary Jo. Reiff, and Anis S. Bawarshi. Scenes of Writing: Strategies for Composing with Genres. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2004. Print. Ferguson, Michael. “DeVotchKa At Bunbury Music Festival, July 12th 2013.” Unpublished essay. 2013. Loftus, Johnny. "About DeVotchKa." MTV Artists. Web. 13 July 2013. Losh, Elizabeth, Jonathan Alexander, Kevin Cannon, and Zander Cannon. "Going Public" Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide To Writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. 245266. Print. Martins, Chris. "Laura Marling Enchants L.A.'s Hollywood Forever Cemetery With Songs Of Loss And Beauty." SPIN. 22 May 2013. Web. 13 July 2013. Ratliff, Ben. "Gender Roles, Manifestoes, And Sounds Of A Certain Era." The New York Times. July 2013. 12 July 2013. Web. 13 Ferguson 11