I know it's a bit lazy, and I know all the arguments against, but I'd like stars too.

this august organ used to publish more "in depth" reviews of fewer items; that was back when the "At Last! Something to read!!" by-line was taken a bit more literally (fewer picture features - more essays).

have never heard of any of the beat combos you mentioned.
No, I don't buy music papers.

It's one of the reasons I stopped my subscription. 256 reviews of CDs where, in a good month, I'd heard of 20 of the bands.

I keep up with what's new or interesting by reading this blog and a few other similar websites. If I want a CD review I tend to go to amazon and find out what the fans think.

It is hard to review music in print and when reviewers drift off into self indulgent egotism and start to use "seminal", "quintessential", "sophomore set" and other wanky phrases I give up..

It's a bit like singing a song to describe a painting to someone who hasn't seen it.

Lets introduce a graph that has 10 "seminal" well known artists that we all know (to The Word Massive) e.g. ABBA, Black Sabbath and grade the music on the basis of how similar the music is to this.

So then "Definitely Maybe" might score a 6 on the Black Sabbath scale for riffage and an 8 for caatchy melodies on the ADDA scale.

I like stars too..I also would like the reviews with a bit more depth..they are almost written like afterthoughts.

as I'm quite happy to trust the opinion of a reviewer whose taste I've learned to appreciate and trust. I'd like a few more reviews though and run them at 500 words not the current sometimes rather cursory amount. And I do miss the feature with what the slebs are reading, watching and listening to.

It just encourages me to skip the review if there are stars. And how many times have you read a 'starred' review and thought the words and stars awarded were out of kilter. Two words - Lay Zee.

I guess it means Word Magazine doesn't get to feature in those ads for albums and movies that list their star ratings like badges of achievement.

Anyway, wasn't the new Costello album reviewed last month?

I'm sure other listeners will remember more clearly, as it featured the dulcet tones of Massive pin-up Kate Mossman. But I seem to recall a discussion both of the difficulty of finding things to say about albums when there was a high word count to fill, and the futility of star rating as this was ultimately something subjective masquerading as something objective.

For my taste the reviews section is perfectly proportioned.

(Whew - managed not to make the obvious 'size doesn't matter' joke...)

although it would mebbes turn the record industry upside down.

Keep up the good work.
Ed.

Elvis Costello got a full page review. The Dylan album got a page and a half feature. The Bruce Springsteen album was reviewed over three pages alongside the U2 album. Sonic Youth were reviewed. Iron & Wine was reviewed. And in the last issue Mr Hepworth provided a full page on Speech Debelle as well as covering the Procol Harum reissues.

As for the other names, we receive several hundred CDs a month, of which about 10% will get reviewed. The albums that get space will, for the most part, be those that are considered to be of most interest - and it may well be that the extremely well-received debut album from Ebony Bones is deemed more worthy of inclusion than Christy Moore's 24th... especially as we like to think that Word readers' passion for music is not purely retrospective.

There will always be records that miss out. Most of them do. Hell, I'm continually buying CDs that aren't reviewed in The Word: although you say "its almost impossible to find out whats coming out by listening to the radio", overall it's never been easier to find out what's being released and to discover new music.

I see that the Daily Telegraph book pages are now infected by the contagion of the stars system, where a thousand word of subtle analysis and criticism is reduced down to the thumping great fist of Three Stars.

Some carry off such a system well, like Robert Christgau, but most of these systems are not to be trusted. Just observe how Q magazine only ever five stars to the predictable big boys, and when a very high percentage gets four stars every single month it becomes silly.

Plus it would present the magazine to the world as more of a machine and less of a shaggy beast.

No, stick with words please, not stars.

I hate to use that acronym, but it seems appropriate here. I rely on the words to do the job of the review. Where's the nuance in a 5-level rating system?

A review's a personal interpretation or impression, even an argument, and sometimes a little artform in its own right. I'd much prefer to disagree with a stated opinion, or with a particular reviewer's terms of reference, than a numeric rating.

I dont think the Cd reviews are on a par with the rest of the mag including reviews of other media.

i madethis point in relation to the nick cave remasters to ahem, mixed reviews . I think the reviewers should have some knowledge of the artists or similar if they are to review them. If people doing this currently don't have the breadth of knowledge or interests then surely there are a lot of capable writers who can.

This is not to diss the mag

I'm a fan - that's why I'm on this site.

Admit it, none of us buy the damn thing for the reviews, it's for the off chance of unusual and quirky articles on stuff uncovered elsewhere, it's the more hit than miss "funnies". Yes, sometimes there is less than more, but, hell, it's our mag, it's our club: we buy it because.
Judging by previous posts many, if not most, buy the competition as well, as well as snapping up any and every other journal going, from Observer Music Monthly to the sadly defunct HMV "Speciality music" thingy. Read them for the reviews, I do. And the worthy but dull 17 page articles on C,S,N&Y at the Cowshed, Toledo in 1948.
But the Word is the only all rounder, lumpy bits and all. Accept and love.

but the word does trumpet its back to back music mag of the year awards.

I subscribe for the reviews as well as everything else. I love the eclectic and often obscure artists in the compilation Cds.

the Word Massive love the mag, the podcasts , the blog but it doesn't mean that subscriber/reader feedback should be confined to 100% fawning adulation.

As someone who writes reviews, I find it incredibly frustrating to have to attach scores with them. People end up focussing on the number rather than the words I've slaved over and I've had feedback along the lines of "I agree with what you've written... but this album deserves more than 5/10."

1. Here's a star. *
2. Put three of them on 90% of records (most of which actually deserve two).
3. If an artist you really like makes a very very good record give it five.
4. If an artist you don't like makes a very very good record give it four.
5. If you give something just one you probably shouldn't be reviewing it.

But I'd just suggest less reviews, and make them longer. The shorter ones often just seem to be going through the motions.

Taking Fraser's point above about only 10% of the CDs received getting a review in the magazine.

Why not have an expanded review section here on the website, covering not only the CDs reviewed in the magazine but an extra 20-30 of the new releases?

I picked up the current issue wondering what the review of the new James Grant album would be like, only to find that it's apparently fallen into the 90% that don't make it. An expanded CD review section would allow more albums to be covered and a link in the magazine might "drive traffic" to the website from casual readers.

I don't think there's any likelihood of stars being introduced but my vote's against in case the Wordistas are using this as a straw poll

when they come out on DVD ? When you told us they sh*te the first time round. An expansion of this is why reivew most recent films on DVD other to say they've been released? Does anyone forget what was said 2-3 months ago about slumdog millionaire?

I can see the point of reviewing re-releases of classics for those who don't know about them but new films DVD reviews I rarely read.

are lazy and reductive: let's be honest, there's a mutilated handful of genuine 5-star albums out there; a clutch of 4-stars and then yer actual serried ranks of three-star four-good-songs albums. I'd far rather read a witty 'n pithy description and then make up my own mind rather than be guided by a simplistic scoring system

Have five or so a month reviewed by committee... send em away to listen to it.... then write up a joint review....at least then we would be getting not just the opinion of one person...maybe even record the commitee's discussion and play the best one on the podcast.

I agree with no stars, this leads to you listening to the music and making your own mind up.
However, I think that the CD review section is probably the least important to me. I like the Word because it deals with so much more than the latest CD, and in fact many of the artists I listen to get little or no coverage therein.
The magazine, website & podcast deal with popular culture as a whole, and the inner workings of the music industry in particular, and I have bought more books, seen more TV & films and altered the way I view the world far more through reading Word than actually buying music.
As I recall from the dim & distant past this was the way the stall was set out at the start, with music taking a larger role as time went on.

The argument that non-scoring reviews are actually read is true (as I've just read all of them in this month's issue). However, I wish I hadn't bothered because they, particularly the short ones, reveal very little. Can an album be reviewed in 150 words? No. What's the point of that? Better not to review it at all.

The Word reviewers wrote about records after having lived with them for a few months, as was put forward on the podcast a few months back. I don't really care about knowing about what's newly released.

I appreciate this is not going to happen.

I rate the longer Word reviews by regular writers highly - usually interesting and entertaining regardless of whether it's music I'm likely to want to own or not, special mention to David Quantick, and Heppo in particular. It's the good writing worth reading for itself thing again. And reissues I like too - how do we feel about this lot now?

The in-brief reviews can be a bit of a slog to get through though, but then the odd one will stand out. I do feel I should give them all a go to get my money's worth as a subscriber, must read cover to cover, but it's hard to care about so many new bands you never heard of. No simple answer to this though - I wouldn't want to lose them, and don't expect more long reviews. In some ways reading reviews of what you already listened to is best. One is more engaged. And I do want to find out what the verdict is on music by acts I do know of. But at the end of the day the verdict somehow matters less to me than quality of the read.

I did feel that the review of the last Doves album didn't really happen, bit lacking. But you always feel that your favourite artists should get more space.

music easily available to audition online are endless exhaustively review sections necessary?

A listing of new releases, and then more considered reviews of LPs they have lived with for a while.

the exhortation to "download" three key tracks....? Kind of makes a nonsense out of considering the whole LP, if you ask me.....

....all those years ago, I can honestly say that I've never felt less like reducing my response to a record to a number of stars. If I put stars on my reviews of Speech Debelle's record in the last issue, what would I be achieving? I wrote 600 words describing what I felt about the record. I hope if you were the kind of person who might have a taste for something like that you might get enough of a flavour to follow it up. If you weren't that kind of person then you would probably stay away while feeling that you'd learned something. Fair enough.

There is too much music today and too many different ways of sampling it - is there anything in a review section that you couldn't whistle up on You Tube or My Space for a quick taste? - that I simply can't see the point of bellowing recommendations in unsympathetic ears.

When reading reviews, you should listen for signals not look for ratings. That's why I wasn't being satirical with my post above about star ratings. Most things to most people are three stars. Three stars means "all right if you're in the mood".

and submitted reviews of our own enthusiams for the download page he is always begging for, and I know many have given it a whack. And maybe if they were kept as an archive for reference purposes, as he says he is working on. I know that sort of defeats the object of buying a music mag, to have to do it yourself, but it soon becomes quick to see whose taste is whose. I probably buy as many from this sites bloggers ad hoc recommendations as I do from the mag proper, or it's competitors. In fact, for a "free" resource, this site is costing me a fortune.

For me, it comes down to how good the writing is - and Word leads the field hands-down.

I've always felt the Word reviews section to be an extension of the rest of the magazine - not a kind of tacked-on 'bit at the back' - and I welcome the article-style reviews that pick up and explore links between releases. I like the fact that album reviews - which every magazine does, and which recent podcasts have reminded us can be a bloody chore - are treated with that level of respect and intelligence.

There'll usually be a few reviews that don't appeal, but that can apply to some of the 'main' features, too. Overall, though, we get sheer quality throughout - and as Massive members, I think we know it.

as a consequence of this debate and I disagree that it's impossible to sum up an album in 150 words. For example, based solely on the reviews in the current issue (I've not had chance to listen to the CD yet) I've decided that

a) I'd probably like: Justin Adams and Judeh Camara; God Help the Girl; The Low Anthem
b) If I get time I'll check out: Sometimes Why;Kid British; the new Tori Amos
c) even though it got a positive review, I don't think I'll like:
Client, The Juan Maclean; Sparrow and the Workshop

Though it will take Rob Fitzpatrick a long time to live down "Not the best record ever made, then, but a very long way indeed from being the worst".

That would encourage you to spend even more time/money seeking out even more music. Haven't you got enough already? Have you ever worked out how long it would take you to listen to your existing collection in its entirety? Have you got that long? Word reviews give you just enough to keep your collection topped up. If you are directed to any more music surely your shelves/hard disk/marriage will break down? I agree with The Hep. There's already too much music out there.

I will follow this to it's inevitable logic of reading no more books, watching no more TV* or films and not looking at any more pictures. There are already a lot, too many almost certainly, of them all that have been made already. In fact I won't bother meeting anyone new either.
*OK, not difficult!

and call it *****

Are less important now as we can stream most of them from Spotify, Myspace or band sites. All I really need is a list of stuff that's worth having a listen to with some comments around what sort of music it is. Don't tell me stuff is crap, just tell me what the good stuff is.

is likley to mean an awful lot of chaff that won't be read (Uncut, Q etc). Too much old stuff or re-releases may just get a bit wearing (Mojo).
BUT, a slight increase in the breadth and quantity of reviews in Word would be welcome

I love the fact there's no stars.
It means the review is a well rounded piece of objective writing with logical conclusions/opinions, rather than finished off with a bold, inprecise star rating.

If stars/numbers were to be used, it should be marks out of 100.
This is a far more accurate way of measuring quality, but still uneccessary.

The only criticism I have is that, at times, some of the reviews can be brief. I'm not suggesting each review gets a half/full page of space, but a bit more depth would be nice.