Most music critics are boring for exactly the reasons you'd expect. Some wit like David Lee Roth said that music journalists like Elvis Costello because music journalists look like Elvis Costello; you can follow that to its logical conclusion, which is that they all think like Elvis Costello too. Both share a conviction that a lack of spark and flash, or the transcendent and blinding fuck-me flame that bends in all directions or what have you, can be overcome with artisan stuff and tactics. Because they're demonstrably wrong, they get defensive or go into denial or some other bullshit, become arrogant and distant and keep babbling to fill the silence, and in the case of music journalists, they talk about: new this and that, the life and times of such and such/what I did once while I listened to Dylan or The Smiths or The Clash or, in another 6 years, Manic Street Preachers or Belle & Sebastian ("Why They Were Like The Velvet Underground And Also The Stooges" by Josh, hi I'm Josh, you might have read my "piece" about Belle & Sebastian, would you like to go to the pictures?).
I don't know exactly how this differs from anyone else who ever spent any time writing about pop music, but I assumed that the first thing you have to consider is that you're writing about something that's a.) "good" or "bad" for reasons that are for the most part abstract, impossible to plot and difficult to discuss without resorting to the kind of language and metaphor that would hasten your dismissal from the space program, and b.) in its purest ideal form, a distillation of revolution (emotional storms, fury, lust, outrage, idealism, subversion), rather than something that can be indexed or evaluated. Therefore, writing about music can only be pointless unless it somehow captures - not just attempts to capture - *some* of that heat and light and emotional thunder, and somehow meets pop music on its own terms: abstract, outraged, subversive, lustful etc. Or funny, or chaotic. Doing this is hard, and if you get it a bit wrong, it's a disaster and people are watching. Also, working up to it is often embarrassing and painful (a lot of my stuff was bad because I was 21, 22, and simply couldn't write well enough (and didn't know enough) to pull it off; once I learned to write, it was only ever embarrassing when it had been hacked out fast, or when some blockheaded editor had ruined it). Anyway, I suspect Stuart Maconie or someone would snigger at this line of reasoning, but 1.) Stuart Maconie sniggers at everything for a living while never having contributed one item to civilization that even measures up to the magic of fucking Soda Streams or someone's hair out of Fat Larry's Band or whatever he's fucking smirking on about this week on 24 channels, and 2.) that's why he's such a waste of time, obviously, of course.
The most boring music writers don't actually see what they do as criticism. There are (were - I don't read the music press anymore, there *is* no music press anymore) some dolts who take the high academic or theoretical route without raising a smile, much less a valid point, with no self-awareness or sense of the absurd, and they're the worst of all. But the boring ones see themselves as historians (at the Mojo end of the speculum) or reporters/on-the-page (kids') TV presenters/funsters (the snappy claptrap stuff). Personally, it was never my "only aim was to criticise and then dissect something I could never do." When I came across something I could never do, I tended to like it very much, or at least admire it: whatever, I'd "criticise" it, in the literal sense. The problem was, since like many people I can play guitar and keyboards adequately, and bash a tune together if necessary, most of the indie flop-outs whose records I was served up to review were doing something I could have done quite easily, but which would have bored me stiffer than listening to other people do it: that is, make average guitar rock. I genuinely believe that most indie fans' tolerance of Travis, Stereophonics or Ash stems from ignorance of the fact that, if they tried, and not that hard, they could probably come up with something just as accomplished themselves. I don't watch many bands these days, because I don't want to and I can't afford to, but when I do I'm always baffled by the all-pervading tolerance in the indie world. It seems that anything at all is good enough. If the level of your imagination is such that you accept so many groups, and take them pretty much as seriously as you take anything except your ca-reeeeer, it follows that listening to your thoughts on this dull music, or on anything much (phrased simply and plainly) is going to be absolutely fucking miserable.
