This is particularly telling in Spencer's disapproving nod towards Stephen Metcalf who reviewed Wilco's A Ghost Is Born in Slate. Instead of actually giving a decent review of the album he creates strawmen. It is intellectual laziness.
As Spencer says,
What do I think of Wilco? Well, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a pretty album, one that I have loaded into my playlist & one that I listened to a great deal on release.
YHF is a great album for a variety of reasons. I think that most important is that when the album was created and released it really did capture the climate of America. It's easy to take albums out of their historical relevance, but I think that album, more than any other, hit my emotions at the time concerning 9/11. From my friends who have heard the album or own it they feel a similar sentiment. Even outside of that historical relevance the albums stands on its own as a collection of songs wondering what tomorrow will bring.
Here's hoping that tomorrow might bring a change in American criticism. It is rare that I find reviews that tell me something new, are relevant, and make me think about the work differently than I already did.
