That is an example of smugness, sure. But others can do it because they're paid in recognition of their expertise and insight. That can LEAD to smugness, and often does, but doesn't have to.

Coley and Carducci are my all-time faves.

The best music writers of today, however, are busy here...

http://siltblog.blogspot.com/

http://blastitude.com/

It works the same, paid or unpaid music scribe that you might be. If someone goes all the way to recommend or express opinions on what's good about a record, well, they are being smug because i'd assume that they're also convinced that what they write is correct. But, then, why is that particularly a bad thing?

yeah, roland woodbe is superb

whether music journalism is inherently smug is immaterial, i just found the tone of keenans newer writing to be particularly smug and as a result i don't like to read it.

Nick Kent for me. I love The Dark Stuff anthology.

My favourite piece of music-writing is Lester Bang's 'Mass Liberation...' Stooges review though.

I've barely read the words of any critics and writers at all. I'll have to go with the friends of mine who write reviews.

Nick Tosches

i like byron coley, but my favorite music articles are by whoecver writes for the Perfect Sound Forever website.
they write the best music articles. Fact.

Jim DeRogatis can suck it, by the way.
Keenan deserves a place in this thread simply for coming up with the brilliant phrase "cornucopia of humiliation" in his review of DeRogatis' (awful) book on psychedelia.

Chuck Klosterman (even though i completely disagree with him 90% of the time).

Criticism is about personal taste, for god's sake.
You just get to know someone whose tastes you respect and who can give an accurate description of the music as viewed through his or her individual prism, or on the flipside of that, someone whose tastes are so opposed to your own that you can almost be guaranteed to love everything they hate.

Reading good criticism requires some active participation on the part of the reader. People get down on critics, but some of the people I mentioned earlier in the thread are directly responsible for huge contributions to my musical life by pointing my head down several fascinating and very deep rabbitholes.

How on Gods earth are you supposed to put your personal tastes aside and judge something for what it is? Impossible. And when writers try and do that you usually end up with bland prose. All the best and most readable rock writers are/were opinionated as fuck on the whole.

Beat me to it!

Whatever.
You just wrote off a bunch of museum curators, festival organizers, restaurant critics, literary writers, on and on and on.
Without these people doing their "shit jobs," all you would have is copy written by publicists (essentially extended advertising) and music exposure dictated by radio politics and payola.

Yep, turning people on to art of merit and occasionally steering them clear of questionable material sure is a "shit job."

The best music critics are also good at contexualizing the music , even when it's so hard because of the sheer amount of poor quality music that is produced. Not need to get all 'punk rock' about it. If it wasn't for some music journalists writing about certain atrocious bands, said bands wouldn't even have the start of a career.

Not bullshit!

No matter how reasonable and balanced you try to be I don't think you can really just throw off all the critical baggage you bring to the table. You can try, I just don't think you can ignore all that stuff.

I wouldn't ever have even heard of a huge chunk of the music that has been tremendously important to me if it wasn't for reading what "some dickhead" had to say about it.

You don't even have the choice to decide for yourself whether or not something is worth your time if you never know it exists.

I never said that i'm perfect, and i'm ,in fact, easily lead as much as i buy records out of my own intuition. A great number of bands i've found out through reading the press or people tipping me off.

Well, no one says you have to agree with a critic's assessment after you hear the music yourself. All I was saying is that the best ones are a valuable resource and can help steer you in the right direction more often than not, and I felt like you were being pretty dismissive of the positive role some of these people can play in the cultural landscape.

Edit:
I can't believe I used the phrase "cultural landscape." Fuckin' a.