It's true, writing about music is challenging.  All I know is that I'll be at the Doorway Dwellers show on the 19th at the Kenton Club.  It's freeeeeee, and they're FUN! 9PM!!

 Why would you choose this angle?  What happened in your life  today that would cause you to be so negative about a band that actually sounds good--Kim Gordon, early B-52's... and apparently, the press-kit wasn't even written by them.  You've really missed the mark.  Check it before you wreck it, sis.

I generally love your work.  But this was just... wrong.

"Writing about music is tricky. Just ask our beloved publisher. He hates music articles because as he says it never really means anything; the subjective descriptions written in these pieces never really let you know what a band sounds like": He's right.  Frank Zappa said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture.  Unless you dip heavily into music theory, you can't put music into words -- and nobody wants to read a review that's heavy into music theory.  (I have a degree in music theory, and I don't want to read that stuff, unless I'm having trouble sleeping.)

"...I have more of a problem with most bands’ self-descriptions of their sound then with those written by journalists. It’s a slippery slope to let these guys describe their own sound because for the most part they don’t know": Nor do the journalists, for that matter.  Pick up the Lexicon of Musical Invective by Nicolas Slonimsky to see what music journalists have thought about music we now consider masterpieces.  Look at early reviews of the Beatles/Stones/Dylan to see how far off the mark journalists can be.  It's folly to write about music.

"I am so tired of the misuse of the terms 'Folk' and 'Roots' music": Fair enough, but you only define the terms by dropping names.  And all the people you name-drop developed their own musical expressions out of music that came from elsewhere.  Muddy Waters took Delta blues (derived from African "root music") and plugged it into a Fender Twin.  Leadbelly was a songwriter, not a "folk" musician per se.  Dylan?  Maybe he had "folk roots" (to mash together the undefined terms), but "Masters of War" and "Blowin' in the Wind" are not folk songs -- they are compositions.

"I’d be more inclined to categorize rap/hip hop as the new folk music in this era than some guy wearing his girlfriend’s jeans complaining about his job as a web designer": Well, that's an opinion.  You think web design is a "white collar" job?  Well....

"...then go on to compare themselves to Otis Redding, Hank Williams and Patti Smith - who as we all know were so instrumental in Roots music, right? (I hope you can smell the sarcasm.)": From 1,300 miles away, yes.  But what isn't spelled out here is whether the band considers Otis, Hank and Patti to be "roots musicians."  Once again, we beg for a definition of terms.  If Woody is "folk" (he was a songwriter), then Hank must be, as well.  Patti Smith was "roots music" to a couple of generations of kids who soaked up her first few albums, along with Television, the Clash, the Ramones and the Sex Pistols -- at least as much as Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan was "roots music."

My "roots" aren't necessarily your "roots."

"...the DD goes on to redefine the working class, 'Once waitresses, cowboys, truck drivers and factory men - today’s working class also includes bike messengers, musicians, video game designers and artists.'  Riiiiiight…all I know is Hank Williams would put his cowboy boot in your candy ass for writing songs about being a bike messenger": Quite a presumptuous statement.  Who's working class, then?  Who gets to say?  You think 50 Cent is working class?  You think bike messengers aren't working class? vid designers? artists? musicians, for God's sake? 

Hank Williams (whom you dismissed in the previous paragraph) never saw a bike messenger.  I think he would have understood them immediately as brothers.

"The real shame here is that this band can’t see its way to an accurate description of what it is": Hold that thought....

"The DD’s sound is not bad but Otis Redding? Roots music? Nope": Did they claim they sounded like Otis or roots music?  You don't quote them verbatim, & it's an important distinction.

"Listening to the five tracks sent to the Sentinel on a homemade disc, I’d say they sound a bit more like Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth with a dash of Dusty Springfield and a sprinkling of fiddles. And particularly on the song, Bull Run, the DD sounds much more like early B-52s": Which tells us nothing about how the band sounds, unless we can conjure your particular imaginative aural image of a cross between Sonic Youth, Springfield and B-52s.  Which we can't.  Too bad you had to fall back on the same tired cliches you seemed to criticize earlier.  You can't describe what it is, either.  So you have no standing to criticize their attempt to do so.

Pop-music criticism desperately needs some objective, readable way to put its ideas across.  This isn't it.