Spin Magazine

I picked this up nearly a decade ago; it looked perfect for me – a glossy American version of the NME for the NME reader I was then. I’ve long since fallen out of love with the NME and perhaps I would have liked this better had I read it then.

Or maybe I wouldn’t. Spin clearly has some smart, knowledgeable writers but on this evidence they’re rarely allowed to express themselves at length. Most of the essays that lead these sections off cover no more than a couple of pages; if they’re any good they’re over before they’ve really warmed up. This wouldn’t be a problem but for the material which constitutes the body of these chapters; largely brief quotes culled from interviews and listicles to serve as a guide to the genre. Call me a fool but I suspect that anyone invested enough to buy this wouldn’t need headline guides to genre (and on top of this there are certain cultural blindspots – whatever Coldplay’s merits or otherwise they aren’t, never were and never will be Britpop by chronology alone). If there’s a best of to be compiled from a magazine that they resort to ‘top tens’ doesn’t say much for the quality of articles they might have published down the years.

There’s also a tendency to snigger in retrospect which isn’t entirely endearing – the covers gallery, for instance, is curated with a very particular notion of cool which tediously conforms to commercial and critical success. Maybe that’s the problem; a certain snobbery which feels necessary when you’re establishing an identity but which age and wisdom (or otherwise) tell you is just funny and denying of pleasures to yourself as you age. Or maybe I’m just done with the notion of cool, which seems deliberately exclusionary. Whatever; the older I get the more convinced I am that confining yourself to a narrow field for anything other than reasons of pleasure (or problems with the artist and their conduct) is making you a less rounded human being. Screw cool, let’s party.… (altro)