Jerk Music Critic: Taylor Swift, evermore

The companion album to this year's quarantine surprise Folklore, it improves, though not nearly enough, on the unsympathetic pontifications and the tortoise pace that made its precedessor tedious. But, to be sure, there are nevertheless improvements: leadoff "willow" is pop without being overly sweet, and while the production remains flawless, the throwback semi-country style is better developed this time (especially "champagne problems" and "cowboy like me"). I also appreciate her more mature consideration of the human existence (e.g., the nuanced "happiness" and the small-town slice "'tis the damn season") that does a better job lyrically in getting you to see the world through her eyes, though I gently argue some of us do need a little "closure." On the other hand, what didn't improve from its precedessor is the molasses feel like a tape on half speed, leaving you to wonder when the fun bits start, and too much of the track list is just too slow. Overall the album is still overly navel-gazey and there remain many irritating moments where her emotional state fails to translate musically, but while it may be a companion album in name, for my money it manages to eclipse the previous one even though that wasn't much of a bar to exceed. Despite not being enough for a third star, the iterative changes in this one do make it the relatively superior release, and you don't need to buy the prior album to appreciate the finer moments this one has. By the way, please invest in a SHIFT key. Thank you. (Content: some harsh language and adult themes. A separate clean version is available; I reviewed the original.)

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

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An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

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A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

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Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.