asignifying craft

… a new millennium style of pop writing / rock criticism that is cautious about reaching for significance and concentrates instead on a kind of inventory of pleasures, which in turn involves a breakdown of a track into its components and constituent sources, where the song/album/artist is positioned within the genrescape, etc. (A generational sensiblity perhaps, shaped by the internet, mixtapes and playlists, the disintegration of larger entities into the song as unit-of-pleasure). In the case of Ariel Pink’s “Round and Round" that approach fits perfectly because as Mark Richardson notes, the song is exactly the sum of its perfect parts ("an intro, a variation, a funny little break with a sound effect, a section that pauses just before the big refrain, and then that huge chorus"), assembled with an "astonishing level of craftsmanship" and succeeding "brilliantly for the same reason great Burt Bacharach songs work-- because every chord change and turnaround and melodic leap is in…