Talk:Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Kingsif (talk · contribs) 21:16, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi, I'm Kingsif, and I'll be doing this review. This is an automated message that helps keep the bot updating the nominated article's talkpage working and allows me to say hi. Feel free to reach out and, if you think the review has gone well, I have some open GA nominations that you could (but are under no obligation to) look at. Kingsif (talk) 21:16, 27 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Copyvio check looks scary but seems fine with content and context
 * Fair use cover in infobox and free images in article
 * Images used well, perhaps make the portrait of Christgau upright?
 * Infobox and quote box good
 * Lead is a good length or perhaps a little long, gives a suitable overview, and is well written
 * Consistently well-written, history also suggests a lot of small, consistent, tweaks and fixes - stable with cooperative gnome work.
 * Everything cited inline, with strong sources, and a good reference format
 * Good use of notes
 * No evident OR, from selection of the accessible sources (Anderson, Christgau's website)
 * Background section good
 * Needs a comma after the "2000" in the first line of 'Preparation'
 * Text from his other writings for the Voice, Rolling Stone, Spin, and Playboy during the 1990s was also incorporated into certain album entries - this doesn't flow easily, perhaps because it's quite heavy at the start. It should be fine, but an improvement suggestion (not actionable for review) would be to split into multiple sentences.
 * encompass as much concepts and ideas - presumably should be 'as many'
 * Does it really need to mention Christgau's description of musician Lou Barlow as a "retard"?
 * I think it is useful to readers, shows another element of uniqueness. High-profile critics - especially these days - are not nearly as derisive and vulgar as he has been. isento (talk) 11:17, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Despite its length, Murray refers to Christgau's review of the 1993 Counting Crows album August and Everything After – in which the critic writes that the band's frontman Adam Duritz "sings like the dutiful son of permissive parents I hope don't sit next to me at Woodstock" – and his review of Cat Power's Moon Pix (1998) – in which he says of frontwoman Chan Marshall, "She's an honest heroine of the new indie staple – not noise-tune and certainly not irony, both as passé as the guilty pop dreams they kept at bay, but sadness. Slow sadness. Slow sadness about one's inability to relate. And not to audiences. Hell is other people." is not a complete sentence. It's 'X refers to Y and Z.' Refers to them as, for, what? I also have no idea why it's included (likely because of the missing clause). If they're examples of the qualities mentioned in the sentence before, just say that: "X points to examples like Y and Z".
 * The sentence The book's section of A-lists – ranking releases from each year that are graded "A-minus" or higher – include, at the top, albums Christgau says will ultimately determine a listener's agreement with his sensibilities and, by extension, a reader's use for the book is confusing me. Is it saying that Christgau's top selection should be a reader's metric for if they like the same things as Christgau and, in turn, if they'll find the book useful? I think that's what it's saying, but it probably needs more words to not need multiple re-reads.
 * He finds panning such content on "its own terms" easy and enjoyable, particularly "as a foul-mouthed person who's still very deeply interested in sex at age fifty-eight", telling Rolling Stone in 2001 - given its position in the sentence, this should really end "as he told Rolling Stone in 2001" or "which he said in a 2001 interview with Rolling Stone", or some other non-present continuous variation.
 * In this paragraph, duplicating citations at the end of each sentence with a direct quotation would be beneficial, though the source seems clear enough because there's only one for the whole paragraph.
 * Rick Anderson gets full name introduction twice - they're far enough apart to make it okay, but the same is not afforded to other critics
 * Is the arcane ratings a quote from AV club? If not, it's non-neutral in Wikipedia's voice and so the adjective should be removed
 * Kingsif (talk) 22:24, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Overall

 * on hold The prose may slip into Christgau's style itself in one or two places, but an overall good article. Some tweaks for improvement. Kingsif (talk) 22:24, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I've addressed many of the concerns above. Let me know if there is still an issue. isento (talk) 11:07, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks good, Symbol support vote.svg Kingsif (talk) 12:33, 28 June 2020 (UTC)