ive only ever read two critics in my life Simon Reynolds and Kodwo Eshun but that was only to validate my opinions on music not the other way around. Oh and Neil Kullkarni, even though I don't give a shit about the music he writes about he is the best writer of coventry hands down. All that Tom Ewing, Clair Lobenfeld, Mark Richardson, Philip Sherburne etc are horrendous and boring. Let's not get too carried away we are sexually repressed professionals after all. Rudyard Kipling and tea, let's regurgitate the press releases we are mailed, and then call it social context even though we are never accepted as true participants in the scenes we write about.
There has to be a sense of music as the most important thing in the world and the most intense and electrifying experience. The sense that it all matters, life and death, vital signs of the health or sickness of humanity itself