Introducing the One-Month Difference

We here at AudioSuede are very conscious of the tranformation of the media and the reinvention of the editorial journalist through the internet and the digital music revolution. In just a few short years, everything we thought we knew about music criticism has changed.

If our experiences with the ever-changing dynamic of internet journalism have taught us anything, it’s that we have to be flexible; rigidity can only lead to an inevitable and deserving failure. That’s why, as of this week, AudioSuede will be taking a step in a slightly new direction.

The question of whether or not to include a rating system in our reviews was one we agonized over. On the one hand, assigning a rating is reductive, and readers will often ignore what a writer has to say in favor of a snapshot via a number or some stars. However, the decision has yielded a fresh approach to criticism: The One-Month Difference, or OMD.

Tastes change. And in today’s musical environment, when you are going to be listening to new bands and songs every single day from all over the world, a definitive opinion isn’t easy to determine or quantify immediately upon hearing a new piece of music. Sometimes, it takes development, gestation. Often, an album will blossom or wilt over time. But music reviews are about now, new, listen and forget. We at AudioSuede believe that analysis and thought doesn’t end on the first listen. So we came up with The One-Month Difference.

Every month to the day after an album is reviewed by a member of our staff, that same writer will go back and re-listen to the work in question. Then, they will assign a new rating based on the evolving tastes of time, and explain why they changed or didn’t change their opinion. Maybe they’ve been listening to it for weeks and they love it more and more. Maybe they haven’t touched it since that first review, and hearing it again surprises them. Maybe they’ve gotten completely sick of it, or they’ve noticed a flaw in their initial critique.

Think of it as an acknowledgement that what we think on day one is not always the be-all-end-all for the life of an album.

And you won’t have to go back through the archives to scour our reviews in order to keep up-to-date with this new feature. Every week in our Music News post, we’ll list which albums are due for a OMD and when.

We don’t expect this to be a revolutionary transformation of the music business. We just think that music criticism lacks the common courtesies you would get from your friends or family. If anyone has ever told you, “Yeah, I hated that album when it first came out, but now I love it,” you know exactly what we mean. Trying to get a critic to admit this is like breaking their arm, and often when a critic does change their mind, say they give a mediocre review to an album that winds up on their Best of the Year list, they open themselves up to righteous and harsh criticisms and accusations of hypocrisy. We don’t want to perpetuate that mindset. You, the reader, deserve honesty and candor, and if you stick with AudioSuede, you’re going to get it.

So keep your eyes, and your mind, open. The first post to experience the new system is Chris Polley’s review of Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast. Find out what he thinks of it today, and feel free to share your thoughts!