One of the biggest cancers in Internet-era writing is this tireless need to spread out and sprawl and opine just because you have the space. Pull people in with your lead. Did you ever notice that with most online reviews you can pretty much skip right to the second paragraph? That’s because the writer spent that entire first graf saying something completely unnecessary to understanding the record like ‘Usually when you think of Madison, Wisconsin…’ or ‘The live album is a tricky thing…’ or ‘The first time I saw Spoon…’

One thing that many writers don’t really understand is that the important thing is the band in question, not you, not your life, not why all the jocks made fun of you because you liked Pavement. If you are an aspiring rock writer, you are an invariably boring person and I could care less about the completely mundane details of your life, and the completely typical, predictable emotions you feel when listening to the Hold Steady.