The Daily Swarm

Squarepusher’s Tom Jenkinson interviews Guardian critics Alexis Petridis, Caroline Sullivan, Dorian Lynskey, Gareth Grundy, John Harris, John Fordham, Kitty Empire and Jude Rogers

Squarepusher: Does the criteria for musical worth vary according to whose work it is that you are reviewing?

DL: Of course. There’s no point criticising the Ramones for not being virtuoso musicians, or Joanna Newsom for not being funky. That’s the same in any artform.

If a child composes a piece of music, would you apply the same criteria to that piece that you do to the work of a mature composer? I ask because I feel my career exemplifies a learning process more than it demonstrates innate skill.

AP: No. When my daughter’s bashing away on her toy keyboard and making up songs, I don’t sit there going “well, really sweetheart, what you’re doing is enormously derivative…” As regards your own stuff, I understand what you mean, but even if you look back on stuff you did years ago and regard it as juvenilia or whatever, you must have thought that stuff was worth releasing at the time, right? I mean, you don’t strike me as the kind of artist who allows themselves to be pushed into doing something they don’t want to do. I tend to think releasing something into the public domain, you’re inviting judgment on it. You want a reaction.

DL: It depends if the child is presenting his/her music to the world like an adult. If it’s a friend’s kid, I’m not going to weigh in with criticism, but if people are expected to spend £10 on a CD then the same criteria should apply. The process of learning doesn’t exempt you from criticism if you make that process public.

JH: This is a bit like one of those slightly arcane questions that get discussed in university tutorials. It’s not too problematic for me as records by kids don’t come up for review too often. But even if you’re still learning, if you want people to pay money for your records/songs, I think it’s fair that they get reviewed using fairly hardened criteria. Thinking about it, there’s another point here: the glory of rock/pop/whatever is that the idea of “learning”/proficiency is often irrelevant. For example, top 90s riot grrrls Huggy Bear were an immeasurably more interesting group than Yes, and in that context, I think your question implies a more academic approach than any decent reviewer of contemporary music would take. Stop worrying!