I legitimately feel bad for artists that search for the opinion of critics, because I feel like we are kind of awful barometers of preference.

Let me backtrack a bit to Friday night at the Green Bar. The Sunshine Factory, a shoegaze (read: My Bloody Valentine-like) band out of Mobile, and Callooh! Callay! were atop the bill. It’s kind of redundant to say that I was there because you already know that.

The Sunshine Factory sound exactly like a band I would like, which means it might be different from a band you would like. Again, I don’t know you. And yet the only thing I can remember is the strobe lighting.

See, this is really weird. A performance can be affected by something so ridiculous as how the band was lit, and not “hey, this music we’re hearing is pretty great.” And Sunshine Factory’s tunes are pretty rad, not perfect but certainly worthy of a bigger fanbase than the one they have. But all I remember is being a bit sick post-show, a factor that the band playing has zero effect in changing.

So I’m giving early advice here: While I’m sure you like praise, don’t take much else I say seriously. I literally could have a bad feeling because I drank too much and saw flashy things in my eyes. These are all fair reasons for disliking a show only to me.

As mentioned two weeks back, performances nowadays are often scoped for their negative effects rather than their positives. I severely doubt the staff of this paper would have even given a flying flip about some internet hyped chanteuse without the bad SNL performance to go with it. It is in seeing this ridiculous argument (one that I even contributed to) that I realize why critics are weird people.

We care in ways that are utterly ridiculous and not very helpful to the people we even talk about. Instead of running with a radio show where we could just say “here’s a lot of stuff we like, hope you like it,” we use words that are sometimes interesting and a lot of times awful to describe it. I already feel bad that I wrote reviews in the past that could have been pared down to a single sentence or two.

If I was being truly fair to local music, I would merely ask you to check Green Bar and Egan’s bills on a week to week basis and simply let you decide. While it doesn’t give you suggestions, it’s damn easy to go up to a guy who knows the band and have them explain what is happening.

That all said, the Sunshine Factory was the best band that had a performance while I dealt with sickness. I hope and plead they take that as a compliment, because I seriously meant it.

*Not actually a great big list.

• Gawker: “Old people who get mad easily.”
• Deadspin: “Sports fans able to make a joke of any horrid thing, especially balls in someone’s face and probably Erin Andrews being petrified for her life.”
• AV Club: “Occasionally helpful. Occasionally posting 5000 comments in any Community thread (60% of those comments will be about Alison Brie’s bosom).”
• Kotaku: “Sweet jesus avoid avoid avoid.”
• IGN: “Sweet christus avoid avoid avoid (also applies to writing on said site).”
• Pitchfork: “No comment board exists, which makes it more hilarious to go to other message boards and see the arguments against why a record got a certain score. They mostly revolve around one sentence answers that say nothing other than mocking the quality of writing of Pitchfork.”
• Jezebel: “Actually rather solid in most cases.”
• Other blogs: “Don’t read them. Who would? This includes my own.”