Klosterman on GnR - genius (of course)

Of course when a person you admire on many levels shares your opinion on something, it feels good. In this case the admired person in question, Chuck Klosterman, is someone I look up to as a writer, as a cultural pundit, and also as a fellow connoiseur of hair bands (and basketball).

I can safely say I've probably read over 75% of anything Klosterman's ever written. I've read all his books, all his stories in Spin, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, etc. I used to work in PR and, once I had blown through all his more accessible material, I would use our media search tools to find everything he had written at the local papers he used to write for. I'd then print that up and read it straight through - at work, on the ferry, in the bathroom, and sometimes behind the wheel - until I was done.

Klosterman's writing gives me a huge broner, and I embrace that broner.

Anyone who has read Klosterman's work would agree with the statement at the end of his intro as a guest reviewer of Chinese Democracy in The A.V. Club - There is no one in the world more qualified to review the exhaustingly anticipated new Guns N' Roses album than he is.

If you read the review, you'll note that the comments section devolves into a sidebar discussion about people's own views on Klosterman, whether he's a hipster idiot, their take that he is the kind of guy who rents a movie based on what he imagines the guy behind the counter will think about him because of his choice rather than because it's what he wants to see, etc. These people are clowns. Their discussion is valid and kind of interesting and may or may not be true, but what they're missing is that Klosterman absolutely nailed his review, and the discussion should be about that.

The part that got me excited early was this paragraph:

Here are the simple things about Chinese Democracy: Three of the songs are astonishing. Four or five others are very good. The vocals are brilliantly recorded, and the guitar playing is (generally) more interesting than the guitar playing on the Use Your Illusion albums. Axl Rose made some curious (and absolutely unnecessary) decisions throughout the assembly of this project, but that works to his advantage as often as it detracts from the larger experience. So: Chinese Democracy is good. Under any halfway normal circumstance, I would give it an A.

Fuckin A, man. Couldn't have said it better - and actually also noted that there are 9 legitimately good songs on the album, which makes it quite the achievement against any objective measures - for which there may be none as it relates to Chinese Democracy.

Anyway, after a solid 12-15 listens at this point, I'm liking it more and more with each listen. I won't try to come with a new way to say this because Klosterman sums it up perfectly:

I find myself impressed by how close Chinese Democracy comes to fulfilling the absurdly impossible expectation it self-generated, and I not-so-secretly wish this had actually been a triple album...The final truth is this: He makes the best songs. They sound the way I want songs to sound. A few of them seem idiotic at the beginning, but I love the way they end...he did a good thing here.