Aural Reflections Music, Self and Objectivity in Now Sound: Melbourne’s Listening and Her Sound, Her Story

Three minutes into Now Sound: Melbourne’s Listening (Tobias Willis, 2018), I saw myself on screen. I didn’t know it was coming, but there I was: in a crowd cutaway at the Northcote Social Club, watching electro conceptualist Sui Zhen perform. I expected the documentary to be full of people I knew – friends; foes; fellow broadcasters on Melbourne’s iconic community-radio station 3RRR, where I’ve presented a program, The International Pop Underground, for (oh god) two decades. And, indeed, it was. But I didn’t know that, for the first time ever as a critic, I’d see myself in a movie, and have to critically parse what that meant.

My unofficial, ephemeral on-screen presence inevitably changed what this resulting essay is – something evident from all the ‘I’s I’ve already used. Having never wanted to participate in contemporary publishing’s first-person industrial complex,¹ I originally conceived of this piece as one critically examining Now Sound: Melbourne’s Listening and another documentary chronicling the local music community, Her Sound, Her Story (Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore, 2018); the idea certainly didn’t involve bringing me, as writer, into the analysis. But coming face-to-face with myself was some kind of La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962) moment, instantly altering the narrative that existed beforehand.

My presence suggested both my own proximity to the world being depicted and a greater theme both documentaries are grappling with: critical objectivity. True critical objectivity is a myth; personal experience, prejudice, taste and knowledge colour any opinion, reaction or reading of an artwork (iconic film critic Pauline Kael called it ‘saphead objectivity’, seeing attempts to depersonalise writing as the scourge of passionate reaction and lively discussion ). Beyond objectivity, or the lack thereof, writing about films and writing about music – which I’ve also done for (oh god) two decades – feel distinctly different. While there’s a long, respected The role of a music critic is rarely to parse some million-dollar mass-entertainment product for its time-killing validity (as opposed to contemporary film criticism and reviewing, which feel like being a stringer on the superhero-movie beat); instead, you’re expected to flag overlooked, underheard, deep-in-the-underground gems. Often, music critics – and/or radio presenters! – are feted as ‘tastemakers’, a label that puts forward the idea that one’s musical preferences and record collection are barometers of iconoclastic, individual taste. Music writer Carl Wilson’s veritable dissertation Let’s Talk About Love, itself a study in the myth of critical objectivity, tackles this head-on: in a collection of books (the 33 series) ostensibly devoted to ‘classic’, always credible albums, he instead unpacks Céline Dion’s 1997 album of the same name, which is both critically reviled and one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. A 2014 reissue of the 2007 book expanded on the idea, even supplanting its original subtitle, A Journey to the End of Taste, with an ironic one: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste.