Where are the stars, man?
We’ve gradually become disenchanted with the idea of using stars in our reviews. At first, we had them, but many of you seem to have noticed that they’ve disappeared over the past few months. The reason is this: we feel that anyone can go up there and throw an arbitrary number of stars at an album. As part of an effort to become a more complete and informative site, we want to focus in on the actual writing of the reviews, which are able to express a greater complexity of opinion and thought on a release rather than the unwieldy application of a 1-5 star rating. Some of us don’t like using star-based rating systems, because they’re liable to change, while text based reviews are able to illustrate more thoughtful and in depth articulation that remains valid for a longer period of time. Plus, this forces you to actually read what has been written.
