Clive James, in his telly column in the Obbo back in the day, would very, very occasionally award the Tin Bum of Rangoon for a programme that managed to be so breathtakingly bad that its achievement was unlikely to be surpassed for several months, if not years.

I propose we do the same with music journalism. What follows - also from the Obbo, which says it all, really - is the beginning of an impossibly long piece that's supposed (I think) to make us want to rush to pre-order the new Portishead album, to be released in April.

A friendly voice says something vaguely introductory in Brazilian-Portuguese.

Brilliant! Never heard that before, ever.

There's a bit of subdued chatter in the background, and the reassuring plink of a distant piano, as if you're arriving at a half-empty Latin nightclub.

Hey, come on, look on the bright side - call it "half-full".

Then a huge pummelling beat comes in (Geoff Barrow insists that he was 'massively unhappy' with this rhythm for many long months, but it sounds pretty unstoppable now).

For most of us many long months of massive unhappiness would be our cue to bin it and try something else, but let's be charitable and give the lad some credit for his tenacity.

Sawing strings summon up a demonic echoing cowbell,

Gulp. Be afraid.

before this in turn gives way to ominous slashes of spaghetti western guitar

Be very afraid.

- the sort of thing you'd expect to hear just before a hired gun played by Lee Van Cleef accidentally shoots an innocent child.

Ah, so that's what ominous slashes of spaghetti western guitar are. All's clear now.

Two minutes and 10 seconds in, the scene is finally set for Beth Gibbons's vocal to make its entrance.

Two minutes and 10 seconds in, "Be My Baby" was already fading out and making its exit.

But however effectively the listener has been softened up for this momentous event,

Softened up is putting it mildly, matey. We've been reassuringly plinked, hugely pummelled, stringily sawn, ominously slashed and accidentally shot, and we're still only in the intro.

no one will quite be prepared for the pitch of ecstatic anguish at which her voice announces itself.

Ecstatic anguish, eh? Sorry, but I'm more of an anguished ecstasy man myself.

'Wounded and afraid inside my head,' Beth flails poignantly, as a Tardis seems to take off in the background, 'falling through changes ... Did you know what I lost? Do you know what I wanted?'

Er, a lie down?

But, hey, perhaps the writer's being, you know, all postmodern and ironic. Perhaps he's actually slating it very cleverly.

It's stunning stuff.

Oh. He's not slating it very cleverly.

Doesn't this just prove rather painfully that music should be described to exactly the same extent that architecture should be danced?

And has anybody actually been spurred to listen to something solely on the strength (for want of a better word) of written descriptions like the above?