How Minor Victories saved our blog …..
We’ve been feeling pretty disillusioned of late and found ourselves increasingly irritated by the homogeneous beige landscape of music journalism and blogging. The whole daily churn – the rush to be first, to “click, listen, write, dispose – NEXT!” seems reductive, empty and disingenuous … In many areas there is undoubtedly a genuine lack of any insightful critique or considered opinion – it’s all sharp elbows, one listen- bang- out- 140-word- album-reviews, stats and metrics. And content (any fucking content – eg/ top tens of the best things like, EVER) then there are the endless self-promoting status updates and tweets about how successful YOU are as a blogger/writer and the implication that the industry somehow owes you a favour – big fucking yawn ( word to the wise – the industry generally giveth not two shits.) This is coupled with the seeming inability to just sit back reflect, to take some time out and to slow the fuck down and let the music seep into your pores. We’ve aren’t pointing fingers, the internet is vast and there is certainly a place for a wide variety of websites and blogs. In in the past, we’ve been part of the very problem we are highlighting, and will possibly remain so to some degree, but we’ll certainly be having a rethink about the whole process … Any suggestions are always welcome.
To be quite honest we did at one point seriously consider packing the whole shebang in – for good ….. and then we heard ‘Breaking My Light’ by Minor Victories and felt an almost overwhelming rush of emotion. This is exactly the sort of music that has us tip-tapping away at our keyboard with unbridled excitement trying to somehow communicate how this music makes us feel. Surely that’s what a love of music is all about, how it affects us on an emotional (and at times near spiritual) level, how it transcends the mundane and transports us to another place. Perhaps if writers stepped away from the near endless obsession with meaningless genre tags, and the ill-judged use of the thesaurus for a while they’d actually hear the fucking music and find their own voice. Sadly many read like a third rate Paul Morley with concussion rewriting a press release.
So back to the music – if ‘Breaking My Light’ leaves you unmoved you are an emotional void possessing a heart harder than lonsdaleite. You probably think Iain Duncan Smith is ‘firm but fair’, that Donald Trump ‘tells it like it is’ that Jeremy Clarkson is the absolute pinnacle of the male heterosexuality and you’ll be voting ‘leave’ because the Daily Mail told you about all those nasty rapacious immigrants. You know, the ones you’ve never actually met from countries you’ve never actually visited.
‘Breaking My Light’ is beautiful, gorgeous, redemptive and quite simply just fucking wonderful. It’s a breathtaking, dramatic evocative and profoundly moving piece of work replete with Rachel Goswell’s soothing, soaring vocal, which quite frankly is absolute perfection. In fact, it’s everything that great music should be in that it genuinely connects with your soul. And the penny dropped – that’s why we blog .. to connect… to connect with people who feel the same way. Thank you Minor Victories, our blogging soul has been saved…
Sorry for the rant, normal service will not be resumed ASAP.
Check out the video, and no we’re pretty sure it isn’t Tom Courtney starring in a West End production of ‘The Rise and The Fall Of Mark E.Smith’ (but we kind of wish it was)
CLICK HERE for a physical pre-order of Minor Victories and HERE for digital.
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Thanks, AvP. Your blog is ace! Don’t stop, have a break or something but I’ve discovered some amazing music through the VPME and I’d hate to see it go. I buy music, I go to gigs and I’m 52 so been doing that for a long time and I can honestly say that VPME is the closest thing I’ve had to genuinely, consistently discovering something special since the glorious, pre-internet days of getting your music news from Peel, NME or your local record shop.
I’d love to see more album reviews on here but other than that, it’s pretty much perfect. I live in the colonies now, in Boston which has a pretty vibrant music scene and if there’s ever anything I can do to help, please holler. It’s the least I can do. Cheers!
To echo what Mike write, I’d would miss this blog if you stopped. I think certain blogs make a difference because they care. You can’t fake passion for music, the fake wannabes are easy to spot. Some of the bigger sites are so dull, they all form into a big mush of repetitive press releases and copy and paste news and reviews with no personality,they could have been written by an industry bot.Lots are like the bad old days of the music press when it was obvious they were cosying up to the industry for freebies,kudos & advertising space.There still is a need for Independent blogs to balance this sort of thing, so keep at it, I love your opinion pieces and reviews. A lot of writers dont communicate, you do. x
Too many people try to sound clever when writing about music and come across as pretentious a-holes. And they make it all about them. I’d stick not twist if I were you Mr Pip
Rock n roll is dead.Blogs are dead. Journalism is dead.The internet is dead.Minor Victories are not. Wonderful song.