Phoebephobia

"I wonder what Mark Fisher would have thought about the spread across all the end-of-year lists of what is effectively (regardless of genre or sonic specifics) a new singer-songwriter ethos... recordings approached and analysed and felt largely as literary expressions... narratives of self, social comment, political stances and statements, representations of identity, thematic links .... the criticism surrounding it somewhat more attentive to sound and rhythm than Paul Nelson's purely literary appreciation of Jackson Browne in Stranded, but fundamentally coming from the same place, the same understanding of how popular music works and what it's for. Today, listening to and reading about this kind of album ... it feels like what's going on between artist and critics is a performance of Importance and Seriousness - Masterpiece Theater you could call it - one that harks back achingly to a time when such major statements could be presumed to be of universal significance. In that sense,…