The Triffids
Wide Open Road: The Best of the Triffids
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Label: Domino
In 1999, David McComb was 10 years removed from the Triffids' final studio album, The Black Swan. By most accounts, those years had been difficult for the band's lyricist and vocalist. His recorded output was minimal, as the modest 1994 album Love of Will was released to little fanfare. He continued to struggle with drug and alcohol abuse, even after a heart transplant in 1996 that most likely was necessitated by a medical condition brought on by excessive drinking. By February of 1999, he was dead just short of his 37th birthday, the cause of death attributed to a heroin overdose and complications from the transplant. Though his passing received coverage in his homeland of Australia and in parts of Europe, it went largely unreported in the United States, ultimately resulting in one of the 1980s most inventive groups being largely overlooked for far too long.
Domino's reissue campaign of the Triffids' catalog has done wonders for the band's legacy. These began in 2006 with the band's masterpiece, the epic, sweeping hymn to distance and desolation, Born Sandy Devotional. Each of the Triffids' proper studio LPs would eventually receive similar deluxe treatment with liner notes, bonus tracks and enhanced packaging. Unarguably these re-releases have also raised the band's profile in the States; prior to 2006, it would have been difficult to imagine a "greatest hits" collection like Wide Open Road: The Best of the Triffids ever seeing the light of day on these shores.
Among critics there has long been a tendency to downplay the other band members' contributions and focus solely on McComb as some sort of doomed romantic-poet archetype and the Triffids' singular driving force. Wide Open Road proves this depiction is shortsighted. Along with McComb, the band's core lineup of Alsy MacDonald (drums/vocals), Jill Birt (keyboards/vocals), Robert McComb (guitars/violin/vocals), Martyn Casey (bass and later a Bad Seed) and "Evil" Graham Lee (pedal and lap steel/guitars/vocals) was adept enough to play in a variety of styles; the Triffids are one of the few bands who never made two albums that sounded the same. Some of the band's premier ensemble performances are included here: steel guitar, strings and keyboards mesh together perfectly on suicide song "The Seabirds" and enhance the grandeur of "Stolen Property;" the shimmering pop instrumentals of "A Trick of the Light" contrast with the song's underlying longing for the past; "Too Hot to Move" floats by with a breezy country-inflected rhythm; the keyboards on "Save What You Can" still sound majestic and urgent. The band's post-punk abilities are also well represented, as tracks like "Property Is Condemned," "Kathy Knows" and "Lonely Stretch" are built on moments of unrestrained tension, absolutely crackling with a waste-no-notes precision.
Lines like, "Alcohol, heroin/ It's all water under the bridge" and "I was frozen out in the lean winter years/ When the dollars were few and the faces were mean" and frequent references to Australian landmarks and locations are particularly telling and make it all too easy to interpret McComb's lyrics as veiled autobiography set to music. It's an overly simplistic way of viewing these songs however, as they never come remotely close to being inaccessibly personal. "Wide Open Road" fittingly opens this compilation; it's usually cited as McComb's finest song, though a case could be made for any number of others. Regardless, McComb's stamp as a brilliant writer can be found in nearly every track on this release. His flair for the dramatically poetic ("The rim of her mouth was golden/ Her eyes were just desert sands") was matched by a brutal directness ("The very next minute your bowels went slack/ Now it hurts so bad you can't even piss"), under which marched a sordid parade of cheaters, drunkards, bastards, wounded souls and occasionally someone damn close to redemption. In these narratives McComb knew how to express those tiny things to which our memories cling: a yellowed photograph, the sounds of the street and a radio on a hot day, headlights and hallucinations in the dead of night.
Wide Open Road isn't without its flaws. Though most of these songs have held up well over time, at least one track - "Goodbye Little Boy" - sounds dated. There are also some notable exclusions; only one song from In the Pines makes the cut, while favorites like "Keep Your Eyes on the Hole," "Kelly's Blues" and "Tender is the Night (The Long Fidelity)" aren't included. For the uninitiated, Wide Open Road is well worth the time and money, but it doesn't replace Born Sandy Devotional or Calenture. It may not include all the band's best songs - how could it? - but if this collection doesn't convince a listener of the Triffids' genius, nothing will.
Showing posts with label Triffids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Triffids. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Rediscover: The Triffids - Born Sandy Devotional
It starts with a suicide and ends with a man not wanting to drink alone. In the space between, the songs on the Triffids' masterpiece Born Sandy Devotional explore themes of violence, death, commitment, faithlessness and isolation set against the desolate backdrop of the band's native Australia. Drifters and drunkards, wronged by love, hurtle through the darkness of night pulsing with, and comforted by, thoughts of revenge.
First the boring technical details: At the time of the album's release in March 1986, the band consisted of Graham Lee (steel guitars), Martyn Casey (bass), Jill Birt (vocals and keyboards), Robert McComb (violin, guitar, and backing vocals), Alsy MacDonald (drums and backing vocals) and David McComb (lyrics, lead vocals, guitar, and occasional keyboards). The album was recorded in London and mixed in Liverpool. For those keeping score at home, it peaked at number 37 on the Australian charts, and, for some bizarre reason, scored even higher on the Swedish charts. Hell if I know why.
David McComb, who wrote all the album's lyrics, still remains one of music's more unheralded, fascinating, and, ultimately tragic, front men. Throughout this life he suffered from chronic back pain and addictions to a whole host of substances, including alcohol, amphetamines and heroin; his alcoholism was likely the catalyst for the heart condition he eventually developed. By all accounts, a heart transplant in 1996 still didn't cause McComb to scale back his drinking or drug use. In 1999, long after the band had split up and while McComb kept on with various musical projects, he was involved in an automobile accident and died a few days after being released from the hospital. The official cause of death was attributed to heroin and mild rejection of his transplant. McComb was only 36.
In various interviews McComb talked frequently about the autobiographical nature of Born Sandy Devotional; certainly it's tempting to see the album as McComb confronting and variously exorcising, accepting, or denying the sordid and messy details of his own life. But this also implies that the album is obtusely introspective or inaccessible, which it isn't. The various emotions expressed in these songs, most of which are ugly, bleak, and exceedingly dark, are usually addressed in narratives that do not limit themselves to a particular time, place, or person. Though both McComb and the rest of the band were clearly influenced by their homeland- the album is dotted with references to Australian locales, and the album cover depicts the west Australian city of Mandurah circa 1961 - the album's lyrics and music are not bound by that geography.
McComb once described Born Sandy Devotional as "following the idea of fidelity as a complete all-consuming faith." It's an interesting characterization, since most the album focuses on what happens when that fidelity is shattered. Nearly every song deals with relationships on the skids that are well past the point of either reconciliation or simple acceptance.
In these songs, the primary options are suicide, drinking to the point of numbness, ranting lunacy, or sweet revenge. Opening track "Seabirds," with its gorgeous melody and prominent strings, vividly chronicles the death of a man at the end of his rope, unable to find comfort in booze or the "total stranger lying next to him" in a ratty motel room bed. The man swims out to a reef and presumably jumps to his death, alone but for the impassive birds nearby: "They could pick the eye from any dying thing/ That lay within their reach/ But they would not touch the solitary figure/ Lying tossed up on the beach."
Other characters descend into batshit craziness. We never find out if the disturbed gun-toting maniac of "Chicken Killer" is even aware that the girl he's searching for "caught death as only lovers can ever catch can." Instead, he rants and rages as he searches for a girl who's clearly not going to be found north of the cold hard ground: "I ran through the crowd calling out your name/ To the blind the deaf the dumb the lame/ But they shook their heads and pointed to the sky/ Saying she's in His Hands now my boy." The driver in "Lonely Stretch" finds himself lost in a barren landscape, heavy with menacing vibes and a declining grasp of reality. Lost where "land was so flat, could well have been ocean/ no distinguishing feature in any direction," the driver is prone to hallucinations and drives aimlessly as he broods about a woman and realizes "you could die out here from a broken heart."
For McComb's characters who aren't interested in offing themselves or howling at the moon, offing someone else is a viable alternative; the possibility of retribution keeps these tormented souls going. The mostly gentle instrumentation and McComb's baritone voice in "Wide Open Road" betray the violence foreshadowed by its narrator. It's a picture of man gearing up for payback. Disconnecting himself from his personal connections ("I lost track of my friends, I lost my kin/ I cut them off as limbs") and coping with a fractured psyche ("Drums rolled off in my forehead/ And the guns went off in my chest"), he's got his eyes on a very specific prize before he keeps on down the road: "I drove out over the flatlands/ Hunting down you and him."
These various themes are most clearly woven together on "Stolen Property," perhaps the album's most startling, emotional and complex song. It's a devastating track with a funereal mix of keyboards and jagged strings, unflinching in its sense of despair, regret, anger and loss. What emerges is ostensibly a portrait of a man evaluating how little he's accomplished in life as he struggles to cope with being alone:
You just lie around waiting on a signal from heaven
Never had to heal any deep incision
Darling you are not moving any mountains
You are not seeing any visions
You are not freeing any people from prison
Just an aphorism for every occasion
The song ends without resolution; McComb doesn't let on whether the man will choose a self-inflicted ending like in "Seabirds" or pursue revenge as in "Wide Open Road." What's clear though is that he's worse off than before; the consolation that "she don't belong here anymore, learn this the hard way" is particularly sarcastic and biting. Like most of the songs, a violent ending is implied - "Pick yourself up! Hold yourself up to the light!/ Duck your head! Watch for the blade!" - though the target itself remains unclear.
The album isn't entirely dark. The country-tinged "Estuary Bed" implies a sense of devotion, and album closer "Tender Is the Night (The Long Fidelity)" is the most romantic and sentimental song on the album. Sung as a duet between McComb and Jill Birt, it's a mostly uplifting ending to the album, though the "gentle young man" described in the song has aged "years before his time" and his attraction to the woman is at least partially based on the fact that he doesn't' want to drink alone again.
Over 20 years on from its initial release, Born Sandy Devotional remains one of the music's true underappreciated albums. The lyrics are exceptional and moving, with recurring images that link the songs together. Coupled with McComb's evocative voice, the music is immediate and timeless and covers a wide spectrum of musical styles, whether it's the symphonic qualities of "Seabirds," the rolling keyboards of "Personal Things," or the sheer mad swirls of noise and howling echoes throughout "Lonely Stretch." It's an album of starkness, violence, beauty and death. Epic in scope and flawless in execution, it remains the Triffids' finest moment.
First the boring technical details: At the time of the album's release in March 1986, the band consisted of Graham Lee (steel guitars), Martyn Casey (bass), Jill Birt (vocals and keyboards), Robert McComb (violin, guitar, and backing vocals), Alsy MacDonald (drums and backing vocals) and David McComb (lyrics, lead vocals, guitar, and occasional keyboards). The album was recorded in London and mixed in Liverpool. For those keeping score at home, it peaked at number 37 on the Australian charts, and, for some bizarre reason, scored even higher on the Swedish charts. Hell if I know why.
David McComb, who wrote all the album's lyrics, still remains one of music's more unheralded, fascinating, and, ultimately tragic, front men. Throughout this life he suffered from chronic back pain and addictions to a whole host of substances, including alcohol, amphetamines and heroin; his alcoholism was likely the catalyst for the heart condition he eventually developed. By all accounts, a heart transplant in 1996 still didn't cause McComb to scale back his drinking or drug use. In 1999, long after the band had split up and while McComb kept on with various musical projects, he was involved in an automobile accident and died a few days after being released from the hospital. The official cause of death was attributed to heroin and mild rejection of his transplant. McComb was only 36.
In various interviews McComb talked frequently about the autobiographical nature of Born Sandy Devotional; certainly it's tempting to see the album as McComb confronting and variously exorcising, accepting, or denying the sordid and messy details of his own life. But this also implies that the album is obtusely introspective or inaccessible, which it isn't. The various emotions expressed in these songs, most of which are ugly, bleak, and exceedingly dark, are usually addressed in narratives that do not limit themselves to a particular time, place, or person. Though both McComb and the rest of the band were clearly influenced by their homeland- the album is dotted with references to Australian locales, and the album cover depicts the west Australian city of Mandurah circa 1961 - the album's lyrics and music are not bound by that geography.
McComb once described Born Sandy Devotional as "following the idea of fidelity as a complete all-consuming faith." It's an interesting characterization, since most the album focuses on what happens when that fidelity is shattered. Nearly every song deals with relationships on the skids that are well past the point of either reconciliation or simple acceptance.
In these songs, the primary options are suicide, drinking to the point of numbness, ranting lunacy, or sweet revenge. Opening track "Seabirds," with its gorgeous melody and prominent strings, vividly chronicles the death of a man at the end of his rope, unable to find comfort in booze or the "total stranger lying next to him" in a ratty motel room bed. The man swims out to a reef and presumably jumps to his death, alone but for the impassive birds nearby: "They could pick the eye from any dying thing/ That lay within their reach/ But they would not touch the solitary figure/ Lying tossed up on the beach."
Other characters descend into batshit craziness. We never find out if the disturbed gun-toting maniac of "Chicken Killer" is even aware that the girl he's searching for "caught death as only lovers can ever catch can." Instead, he rants and rages as he searches for a girl who's clearly not going to be found north of the cold hard ground: "I ran through the crowd calling out your name/ To the blind the deaf the dumb the lame/ But they shook their heads and pointed to the sky/ Saying she's in His Hands now my boy." The driver in "Lonely Stretch" finds himself lost in a barren landscape, heavy with menacing vibes and a declining grasp of reality. Lost where "land was so flat, could well have been ocean/ no distinguishing feature in any direction," the driver is prone to hallucinations and drives aimlessly as he broods about a woman and realizes "you could die out here from a broken heart."
For McComb's characters who aren't interested in offing themselves or howling at the moon, offing someone else is a viable alternative; the possibility of retribution keeps these tormented souls going. The mostly gentle instrumentation and McComb's baritone voice in "Wide Open Road" betray the violence foreshadowed by its narrator. It's a picture of man gearing up for payback. Disconnecting himself from his personal connections ("I lost track of my friends, I lost my kin/ I cut them off as limbs") and coping with a fractured psyche ("Drums rolled off in my forehead/ And the guns went off in my chest"), he's got his eyes on a very specific prize before he keeps on down the road: "I drove out over the flatlands/ Hunting down you and him."
These various themes are most clearly woven together on "Stolen Property," perhaps the album's most startling, emotional and complex song. It's a devastating track with a funereal mix of keyboards and jagged strings, unflinching in its sense of despair, regret, anger and loss. What emerges is ostensibly a portrait of a man evaluating how little he's accomplished in life as he struggles to cope with being alone:
You just lie around waiting on a signal from heaven
Never had to heal any deep incision
Darling you are not moving any mountains
You are not seeing any visions
You are not freeing any people from prison
Just an aphorism for every occasion
The song ends without resolution; McComb doesn't let on whether the man will choose a self-inflicted ending like in "Seabirds" or pursue revenge as in "Wide Open Road." What's clear though is that he's worse off than before; the consolation that "she don't belong here anymore, learn this the hard way" is particularly sarcastic and biting. Like most of the songs, a violent ending is implied - "Pick yourself up! Hold yourself up to the light!/ Duck your head! Watch for the blade!" - though the target itself remains unclear.
The album isn't entirely dark. The country-tinged "Estuary Bed" implies a sense of devotion, and album closer "Tender Is the Night (The Long Fidelity)" is the most romantic and sentimental song on the album. Sung as a duet between McComb and Jill Birt, it's a mostly uplifting ending to the album, though the "gentle young man" described in the song has aged "years before his time" and his attraction to the woman is at least partially based on the fact that he doesn't' want to drink alone again.
Over 20 years on from its initial release, Born Sandy Devotional remains one of the music's true underappreciated albums. The lyrics are exceptional and moving, with recurring images that link the songs together. Coupled with McComb's evocative voice, the music is immediate and timeless and covers a wide spectrum of musical styles, whether it's the symphonic qualities of "Seabirds," the rolling keyboards of "Personal Things," or the sheer mad swirls of noise and howling echoes throughout "Lonely Stretch." It's an album of starkness, violence, beauty and death. Epic in scope and flawless in execution, it remains the Triffids' finest moment.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Column: My Life Could Be Your Band
of the bravest men I ever met was a guy who wore a T-shirt declaring "Your Favorite Band Sucks." This was at Built To Spill's St. Louis show at the now-defunct and much-lamented Mississippi Nights nightclub, way back in those heady days of 2004. I don't say he was brave because the crowd was particularly rough or violent that night; it's not difficult to be the toughest person among an indie crowd, which tends to consist of frail people sporting hoodies, black-framed glasses and heavy doses of mascara. Some of the women also wear mascara.
No, I say this man was brave for the simple and seemingly unremarkable act of wearing this shirt. Why? Because, with some exceptions, we music fans tend to take any criticism of our favorite artists as deeply personal insults on par with the most biting Yo Mamma jokes or the most inflammatory political rhetoric. Such criticism can open the critic up to a host of various insults, threats and suggestions to do something to himself that is physically impossible, often via the anonymity and safety net the Internet provides. If politics and religion are the two traditional hot button topics guaranteed to result in bruised feelings and bloodied noses, music should probably be added to that list.
Anyone noble or foolish enough to voice such dissent across the Internet's truly-disturbing global reach has probably felt such wrath. A couple years ago I wrote a facetious and, what I considered, utterly silly and entirely innocuous article that questioned why the Lynyrd Skynyrd standard-for-lousy-songs tune "Free Bird" tends to be eagerly requested by the more intoxicated or tone deaf elements of a concert crowd. Meant only to bring a chuckle or two to someone's dreary day, it instead resulted in a pretty impressive barrage of hate email from those Skynyrd disciples who walk anonymously among us. In a perverse way, I've actually started looking forward to these mails, which are usually sent from a culprit with a Southern-centric handle like george_wallace_fan or robert_e_lee_luver and generally take an amazingly vulgar Confederacy vs. Yankees approach in explaining why I'm missing the point about Skynyrd's brilliance.
I don't bring this up as any type of woe-is-me lament or for blatant and unrepentantly shameless self-promotion. Even worse, I'm guilty of the same hypocrisy and must admit that I have occasionally counted myself among this parade of fools. Take a shot at Born Sandy Devotional and I'm liable to lock onto your leg like a rabid pit bull. My brother and I have almost identical musical tastes, yet our differing views about R.E.M.'s Monster have threatened to create a rift between us usually reserved for ugly squabbles involving inheritances. He likes it; I know it's the aural equivalent of rotting Spam. When I tried to get my wife sufficiently prepped for an Elvis Costello concert, I requested that she listen to This Year's Model and Get Happy!!, two indisputable classics. When she recoiled in horror and cruelly dismissed both as "circus music, minus the elephants," I reacted as if I'd been smacked in the jewels with a ball peen hammer. Only our eventual mutual agreement about Okkervil River prevented an ugly, prolonged marital spat, though I still suspect she likes the drummer more than the band's music.
Which brings me back to the central question of this rambling article: why do so many music fans get so bothered, and in many cases grossly offended, when their favorite artists are either criticized or outright dismissed by those who don't worship at that particular altar? Certainly some music fans are off the reservation; these are the ones you see listening to their favorite musicians at the gym, on the bus, or at work with an awed expression of hero worship that clearly shows that in their minds there right up there on that stage with the band. These are the people who dress up like their favorite performers, think that every song was written as a coded message to them, and drive cross-country to attend concerts, work and family commitments be damned. Wait, I've done that; scratch that last one.
Clearly such die-hards are without any possibility of redemption and should thus be handled with kid gloves, patted gently on the top of the head and perhaps even relocated to a deserted island near the coast of Borneo for everyone's safety. Yet I've seen many cases where otherwise rational people react like vultures around a carcass when confronted with particularly pointed or satiric music criticism about their musical tastes.
The reasons for this are several: first (and please excuse this brief foray into armchair psychology), whether rightly or not, as music fans we tend to define who we are by the type of music we listen to. And when self-identify jumps into bed with musical preferences for a romping tango, it's not too surprising that fans sometimes react with such strong emotions in the face of these critiques. Essentially an individual's musical tastes become an extension of that individual; thus, there's a tendency to view such comments as personal attacks.
The other main reason is that music fans tend to identify music with particular milestones or important events in their lives ("In the Aeroplane Over the Sea helped me get through my unfortunate accident/divorce/third stint in rehab, so I'll brain you if you insult it"). Think about one of your personal favorite songs or albums; there's a good chance it will remind you of a very specific time and place in your life (you know, when you were young and naïve and didn't yet know life was a cruel, unforgiving whelp of a whore who brings nothing but disappointment). Such memories make us unintentionally defensive about slights directed at the music we hold so near and dear. Music shapes how many of us remember our past; is it therefore any wonder that we bristle when the music that frames this past is belittled or questioned?
Certainly there are numerous other reasons - some music fans just like to argue and play the roll of trolls on various websites, some critiques border on cheap personal attacks and deserve to be challenged, among others - but this somewhat unhealthy self-identification seems to be a large reason fans can react emotionally to perceived attacks about their musical preferences. Of course there are plenty of musos who can brush off such comments with a shrug, without it impacting their psyche or pissing them off.
Perhaps it's not surprising that music can often serve as a lightning rod for both reasoned debate and borderline psychotic, overly emotional arguments. Music defines who we are, how we perceive both ourselves and others, and shapes the memories we keep in our various addled brains.
Or maybe it's just that, as someone recently said to me, "All you music freaks are batshit crazy."
No, I say this man was brave for the simple and seemingly unremarkable act of wearing this shirt. Why? Because, with some exceptions, we music fans tend to take any criticism of our favorite artists as deeply personal insults on par with the most biting Yo Mamma jokes or the most inflammatory political rhetoric. Such criticism can open the critic up to a host of various insults, threats and suggestions to do something to himself that is physically impossible, often via the anonymity and safety net the Internet provides. If politics and religion are the two traditional hot button topics guaranteed to result in bruised feelings and bloodied noses, music should probably be added to that list.
Anyone noble or foolish enough to voice such dissent across the Internet's truly-disturbing global reach has probably felt such wrath. A couple years ago I wrote a facetious and, what I considered, utterly silly and entirely innocuous article that questioned why the Lynyrd Skynyrd standard-for-lousy-songs tune "Free Bird" tends to be eagerly requested by the more intoxicated or tone deaf elements of a concert crowd. Meant only to bring a chuckle or two to someone's dreary day, it instead resulted in a pretty impressive barrage of hate email from those Skynyrd disciples who walk anonymously among us. In a perverse way, I've actually started looking forward to these mails, which are usually sent from a culprit with a Southern-centric handle like george_wallace_fan or robert_e_lee_luver and generally take an amazingly vulgar Confederacy vs. Yankees approach in explaining why I'm missing the point about Skynyrd's brilliance.
I don't bring this up as any type of woe-is-me lament or for blatant and unrepentantly shameless self-promotion. Even worse, I'm guilty of the same hypocrisy and must admit that I have occasionally counted myself among this parade of fools. Take a shot at Born Sandy Devotional and I'm liable to lock onto your leg like a rabid pit bull. My brother and I have almost identical musical tastes, yet our differing views about R.E.M.'s Monster have threatened to create a rift between us usually reserved for ugly squabbles involving inheritances. He likes it; I know it's the aural equivalent of rotting Spam. When I tried to get my wife sufficiently prepped for an Elvis Costello concert, I requested that she listen to This Year's Model and Get Happy!!, two indisputable classics. When she recoiled in horror and cruelly dismissed both as "circus music, minus the elephants," I reacted as if I'd been smacked in the jewels with a ball peen hammer. Only our eventual mutual agreement about Okkervil River prevented an ugly, prolonged marital spat, though I still suspect she likes the drummer more than the band's music.
Which brings me back to the central question of this rambling article: why do so many music fans get so bothered, and in many cases grossly offended, when their favorite artists are either criticized or outright dismissed by those who don't worship at that particular altar? Certainly some music fans are off the reservation; these are the ones you see listening to their favorite musicians at the gym, on the bus, or at work with an awed expression of hero worship that clearly shows that in their minds there right up there on that stage with the band. These are the people who dress up like their favorite performers, think that every song was written as a coded message to them, and drive cross-country to attend concerts, work and family commitments be damned. Wait, I've done that; scratch that last one.
Clearly such die-hards are without any possibility of redemption and should thus be handled with kid gloves, patted gently on the top of the head and perhaps even relocated to a deserted island near the coast of Borneo for everyone's safety. Yet I've seen many cases where otherwise rational people react like vultures around a carcass when confronted with particularly pointed or satiric music criticism about their musical tastes.
The reasons for this are several: first (and please excuse this brief foray into armchair psychology), whether rightly or not, as music fans we tend to define who we are by the type of music we listen to. And when self-identify jumps into bed with musical preferences for a romping tango, it's not too surprising that fans sometimes react with such strong emotions in the face of these critiques. Essentially an individual's musical tastes become an extension of that individual; thus, there's a tendency to view such comments as personal attacks.
The other main reason is that music fans tend to identify music with particular milestones or important events in their lives ("In the Aeroplane Over the Sea helped me get through my unfortunate accident/divorce/third stint in rehab, so I'll brain you if you insult it"). Think about one of your personal favorite songs or albums; there's a good chance it will remind you of a very specific time and place in your life (you know, when you were young and naïve and didn't yet know life was a cruel, unforgiving whelp of a whore who brings nothing but disappointment). Such memories make us unintentionally defensive about slights directed at the music we hold so near and dear. Music shapes how many of us remember our past; is it therefore any wonder that we bristle when the music that frames this past is belittled or questioned?
Certainly there are numerous other reasons - some music fans just like to argue and play the roll of trolls on various websites, some critiques border on cheap personal attacks and deserve to be challenged, among others - but this somewhat unhealthy self-identification seems to be a large reason fans can react emotionally to perceived attacks about their musical preferences. Of course there are plenty of musos who can brush off such comments with a shrug, without it impacting their psyche or pissing them off.
Perhaps it's not surprising that music can often serve as a lightning rod for both reasoned debate and borderline psychotic, overly emotional arguments. Music defines who we are, how we perceive both ourselves and others, and shapes the memories we keep in our various addled brains.
Or maybe it's just that, as someone recently said to me, "All you music freaks are batshit crazy."
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