GutterPutter

RATING PROCESS

One way I judge music is whether it compels me to listen to it.

– Robert Christgau

The rating system is inspired by both Pitchfork & user-aggregated sites like SputnikMusic with the numerical rating of 5 being given with up to one decimal point. They’re mostly used as a measurement of my personal enjoyment of the songs & although I may not be the most classically educated, I do at least have some understanding around basic music terminologies.

As I have little to no qualification over the performance of the instrumentation, expect them to be rather basic. Ideally, it will eventually become more sophisticated as I learn more on music theory. While the overall analysis might come off as being too long or pretentious, I would like to note however that as it’s my opinion, you are obliged to check out the records however you want. The blog serves mostly as a curation site for which album is worth checking out so don’t take it as a word of gospel. I would still recommend an album if you are a fan of a certain genre and I find its characteristics unique enough to be worth giving a shoutout even if I might not like it.

There are some factors that I look into that forms the core aspect of my reviews. They all revolve around my personal taste so how they work will vary between albums. Expect some to be more favoured than others depending on what the artist have done well in.

Criterias

1. The lyrical content within the songs, especially if they manage to balance both the more poetic flair with the conventional popular music tropes to captivate the music lovers and the more mainstream audience. Surely we all need to start somewhere if we were to get into alternative music? Personally, I lean a lot more towards the literary side of the lyrical content, but it’s worth noting that one might want to be careful of how deep they want to dig into the familiarity.

2. The overall synergy within the instrumentation and how they can either reinforce or deter the overall atmosphere of the song. While all musical performances tends to follow through with the vocals, some might come off as being either repetitive or just flat out dull. Some more diversification can help by deviating from the standard rock sounds, but a glissando-driven guitar riff with arpeggio and a melodic bassline is hard to ignore.

3. The execution of the composition. To go a bit more in-depth, how effective does the album go in depicting its topic matters through its production choice and how do each individual track get itself structured to represent the artist’s intent? It’s hard to explain in a more understandable term, but what I mean is that it’s likely that the artist’s intention may have been far off if the overall impression leans more in favour of being excessively dramatic. This is especially big for experimental tracks as they can backfire from their sonic exploration! It is also very important for more instrumental-driven records where the lyrics take a backseat compared to the overall sound.

4. A personality that makes the record or the artist sticks out from their peers. To put it thus, you might be aware of the phrase ‘Make it new,’ and the vastness of the internet only hammers home the importance of combining all your influences together to make yourself comparably unique. If the record comes off as being alike to others beforehand, it can weigh down the review score a lot since you can simply skip it for something that’s at least more experimental.