review that uses the phrase "return to form" and find that it really and truly is. "Collapse.." was good but a real, true return to form would be better...

Similarly, "best record since 'Some girls'" in respect of the Stones would be welcome.

Ry Cooder (new album due soon): please spare us references to nearly joining the Stones, coming up (allegedly) with their best riff, Cuba, world music, one eye etc...

Bjork: like Sigur Ros, I don't think we need to be reminded she's Icelandic nor we do need any repeat of the "elfin" word.

Oh, and when the inevitable Amy Whitehouse cash-ins get released, please don't resort to "troubled," "beehive," "self-destrutive..." We know. Tell us about the music, please.

"aim is still true"

... sounds painful, and probably quite difficult to play one's instrument.

Or any NME prediction on 'band of the year'.

I'm getting a little tired of the rather charming rustic myth that accompanies any talk of the aforementioned beardy folk-tourist. Every article about him cites his retreat to his dad's backwoods cabin to record his post-break-up americana masterpiece. Yeah, whatever. I'm sure that sounded great when his grand-a-day publicist was hawking that pile of cack around SxSW.

The picture it conjures is of some furry recluse a bit like that mad woman with chickens in "Cold Mountain", but I'm sure what really happened was that Bon or whatever-his-name-is, fresh from the failure of his latest trust-fund grunge-lite meh-rock band, just tootled over to dad's six-bedroom pile in Connecticut in the family's runaround Ferrari and tossed off a bit of fashionable falsetto softrock on Garageband in between skunk-fuelled Grand Theft Auto binges.

Fuzzfaced nobhead...

THE INEVITABLE OH-SHIT EDIT BIT:

I sped-red your blogpost and didn't see that you'd mentioned Bon Iver as your third example. Many apols.

Arf!

and the lie about a well known confectionary item.

Steve Earle, multiple wives / heroin addiction / post jail resurrection.

Rosanne Cash escaping her father's shadow.

Been going a long time, loadsa different line-ups, John Peel...blah blah blah.

Fairport/divorce/Islam/Britney/greatest-guitarist-you-have-never-heard-of.

Accounts for about 80% of most short write-ups.

..that The Velvet Underground only sold blah number of records but everyone who bought them went on to form blah blah blah blah blah.

every article ever written about Syd Barrett always told you that he was spending his life drinking tea in his mums' living room.
How much tea can a guy possibly drink ?

Quintessentially English (Caravan, Richard Thompson, Half Man Half Biscuit, Anthony Newley, Anal Cunt, etc).

"Mr Manchester"

of 'urchins' or 'Svengali'

'Straight ahead rock band' usually means dull as hell. (see Foo Fighters)

... that, out of the three of them, only "Heroes" was recorded wholly in Berlin.

usually mentions the word 'enigmatic' in relation to the frontman.

insistence that joe strummer/ian curtis/billy mackenzie/someone less famous but cooler and more dead than him "broke the mould"

Does Stuart Maconie like it? If the answer to these questions is yes, congratulations! You have recorded a "sprawling masterpiece".

...loads of back story.

It seems that often, if you get a full page devoted to an album, it's half a page of waffle and artist-history before they start actually "reviewing" anything. Essentially, cheating to fill a word-count.

this thread has shifted from specifics to generalisation, and by so doing has drifted from an opening which revelled in entertaining punchiness into an e-sea of bloated comments as devoid of bite as they are seemingly motionless in some bizare online doldrums.

I love reviews, me.

"Kooky" .Yes, we know. Tell us something about the record.

...was in a band with Billy Connolly.
...not breathing terribly much these days.

Band/Artist releases single which proceeds to roger the charts (eg: Gnarls Barkley - Crazy). All subsequent reviews of said Band/Artist are now obliged to use the phrase "*that* song."
Stop it. Stop it now.

1. 1980s nostalgia is big business, but they've never been away.
2. Vince Clarke left leaving them high and dry but they did really, really well.
3.They have sold X million records worldwide.
4. Basildon.
5. Accidental pioneers of Chicago house.
6. Dave Gahan had a drug overdose and nearly died.
7. Primal Scream couldn't handle the partying when they toured together.
8. They got their act together and carried on doing really, really well.
9. Stephen Hawking and Shakira are big fans.
10. The new album's called (insert name here) and (producer) has added his own flavour to their sound. Especially on the one that
sounds like Personal Jesus.

Small, diminutive, pint-sized, little, short, 'pocket'....

Byrdsian. Jangle.
Never knowingly missed out of a review.

"do you know the piano's on my foot?"

and I'll hum along