accuse me of excessive loyalty to my old collegial cohort, but i gotta say that the ex-Melody Maker writers have been ON FIRE the last couple of weeks...

you've probably seen this sulphuric diatribe by Neil Kulkarni on music writing today

but check out also this slightly older piece of similar theme and tone

then there was David Stubbs with the most entertaining piece I've read in many a month...  taking on  the Herculean, or to be more precise, Augean, task of  reviewing for The Quietus the "A" shelf of John Peel's record collection (as now conserved for the ages in online virtual form, and howzabout that for archive-fever/retromania?). Or as Stubbs puts it,  "venturing into the giant, holy sphincter of retention that is the Peel archive". The results made me nostalgic for the weekly music paper institution of the Single's Page: invariably a grim all-night ordeal for the writer, but a wholly necessary procedure of cultural hygiene, a ritual cull that converted the lead of redundant musical production (born of misguided ambition, or the after-dregs of a DIY ethos long past its salience point) into the gold of reader-amusement.

a tough act to follow, Stubbs, but Everett True has a good stab with the letter C. (But what happened to B, eh?)

also at Quietus, there's Taylor Parkes interviewing Kevin Shields. And there's that man Neil K again, with the preface to the second series of A New Nineties, looking at the US underground rock that paralleled the UK p*** r*** he wrote about last time. Looking forward to this series unfolding even though hardly of any of these bands (Bitch Magnet? C'mon, be serious now Neil!) meant shit to me.

(Kulkarni's other Quietus multi-part epic "Eastern Spring" is set to become a Zer0 book I see)