Robert Christgau Is the ‘Last Critic’ Standing

Everyone over a certain age who’s obsessed with music — rock and rap, punk and funk, everything else from Afropop to Zydeco — has a favorite, go-to Robert Christgau consumer guide review. These were the tightly wound little capsules that the self-proclaimed “dean of rock criticism” started penning in a Village Voice column back in 1969, complete with letter grades; the 83-year-old writer still gins up these brief, opinionated shots across the bow every month on his Substack account. Can’t stop, won’t stop, etc.

Boots Riley, filmmaker and former member of the Coup, has a soft spot for Christgau’s review of his 2012 album Sorry to Bother You, because when he reads it, “I hear him listening.” Novelist Colson Whitehead digs the shots-fired dismissal of the Eagles’ Desperado, which calls out its “barstool-macho equation of gunslinger and guitarschlonger…”. Yasi Salek, host of the invaluable podcast Bandsplain, singles out his write-up on Hole’s classic Live Through This, notably his line about the focus on sexual exploitation, and how Courtney Love “is also [being] exploited by Courtney Love, and not only does she know it, she thinks about it.” Critic Jessica Hopper still thinks about how he managed to capture so much of Joni Mitchell’s Blue in so few sentences. For many, the first choice that comes to mind is his take on Prince’s Dirty Mind, an appraisal which ends with the immortal kicker, “Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home.”

Myself, well — having read these rants and raves and lobbed prose hand grenades in his books of collected consumer guide reviews for years, there are a lot of strong contenders for the title. But there was a favorite I’d forgotten about until The Last Critic, Matty Wishnow’s documentary on Christgau that premiered at SXSW this weekend, reminded me by scrolling it across the screen. This one was on Van Morrison’s obscure 1986 LP No Guru, No Method, No Teacher. The piece, in full: “No soap radio, no particular place to go, no man is an island. No spring chicken, No-Doz, no can do.” It earns, in the dean’s estimation, a B-. But like many of the grades that grace Christgau’s blurbs, it’s practically superfluous. The humor, the recycled clichés, the withering tone and off-the-cuff poetry of in the pacing that makes you picture a beatnik snapping his or her fingers along to it — who cares about a grade. The writing says it all.

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The Last Critic isn’t the sort of documentary that reinvents the nonfiction filmmaking wheel. It doesn’t necessarily need to, thankfully. Yes, that title comes close to inspiring an eye roll or 12, though we can thank our respective gods that Wishnow did not call it The Last Real Critic, or slap some equally Ok-boomer–ish handle that’s the rock-lit equivalent of When Movies Mattered. [Cue three dozen eye rolls] The film simply gives Christgau his due, something that’s frankly been overdue for a while. He’s written a memoir, and never been shy about discussing his life, his marriage to fellow writer Carola Dibbell, his family, and other personal information. Wishnow makes sure all of the biographical beats get hit, the legion of writers he’s mentored over his legendary, decades-long tenure at the Voice voice their gratitude, and his detractors — those countless folks he’s pissed off, including (but hardly limited to) Lou Reed and Thurston Moore — air their grievances as well.

Yet the film is also doing something besides letting us now praise a famous man, or serving up a portrait of artist as a critic (and critic as artist). It doubles as an ode to the art of criticism itself. Early on, we see an archival clip of Christgau breaking down what he believes are the two essentials to being a good critic. The first is that you have to know what you like. It’s not as easy as it sounds, of course, and usually requires putting in a lot of hours concentrating, looking, listening, engaging. Passion is required, as is deep, renewable curiosity. You don’t assess with your head or your heart, but with both operating in tandem, synced up and thrumming harmoniously with your alert senses. Surrounding yourself with a virtual labyrinth of research material and physical-media resources is more of a luxury than a necessity, though Bob clearly views his teetering stacks of books, his endless rows of albums (the ones not filling a fit-to-burst storage rental, at least), and his shelves crammed with both contemporary and outdated forms of media as a safe space to think. You’ll spend a lot of time in his rock-crit sanctuary here, and it will either cause you to drool with envy or succumb to a panic attack.
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The second is, in Christgau’s words, that “you have to be able to honestly explain why you like it, even if the reason is completely disgraceful.” Opinions and a well-earned sense of taste — they are the necessities. He undoubtedly knew that, as someone who worked at a legacy journalistic outlet, his view on, say, Sonic Youth’s Confusion Is Sex — a C+, for those keeping score at home — was not just his view, but the paper’s view as well. One person’s subjectivity becomes a whole organization’s official stance. And as Thurston Moore points out in the film, the Village Voice was considered the arbiter of downtown taste. Getting dissed by the alt-weekly of record could be a hipster’s nightmare.

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But “honestly” is one the key words in that description, as important as “why.” And Christgau knew how to be articulate and honest about his feelings, his expertise, his intellectual rigor and emotional rigor better than just about anyone in his heyday. Pitch forth all the “dancing about architecture” quotes you want. For a lot of us, Christgau and his equally, and near-equally eloquent peers talk people how to write about music, think about music, talk about music, hear music. His taste may not match yours. Yet he enabled you to develop ways to express your own tastes that went beyond knee-jerk fandom. And that, for so many of who love many of the arts, made a world of difference. Critical thinking: we could certainly use more it right about now.

We’re going to guess that the creators of The Last Critic dubbed it that as a way of honoring both Christgau and the fact that, in an age of dwindling support and metastasizing Stan armies, there seem to be precious few practicing criticism with the knowledge base and discipline he did — and still does. (Subscribe to his Substack!) They are many out there, however, still keeping the flames alive. There are still writers, some of which learned the craft directly under Bob’s tutelage, others of which gleaned lessons through his writing, and still others who took notes from similarly gifted crix covering other beats (movies, TV, art, dance). You have to truly drink gallons more rancid milk to get to the cream now, something which used to be slightly easier in the Golden-Age days of gatekeepers and tastemakers. But they’re around, and attention must be paid to those who truly form and express opinions on the arts in order to keep those arts alive and well. Christgau is not the “last” critic. The last one standing from his generation, possibly. But The Last Critic provides you with an example of how to do it right via its subject that the film ends up being inspirational beyond belief. That just one person’s opinion, mind you. But still: A-.