<\/p>\n
In 2022, Charli XCX emblazoned \u201cthey don\u2019t build statues of critics\u201d on a custom t-shirt\u2013\u2013a little nudge and provocation rather than a knock-down to a great tradition of writing. And they do make (rightly) fawning documentaries about them, with Matty Wishnow\u2019s The Last Critic<\/em> premiering in SXSW\u2019s Documentary Feature Competition and examining the pioneering music writer Robert Christgau, now 83 and infamously known as the \u201cDean of American Rock Critics.\u201d<\/p>\n With a prestigious background in the music business and Austin tech, Wishnow makes a belated pivot to a new medium and acquits himself finely, staying comfortably within rock-doc convention while offering real insight into a rich subject. To put it succinctly: The Last Critic<\/em> moves critics from their Greek chorus-like roles of talking heads in artist- or genre-driven documentaries towards the unambiguous center. With a perch at the Village Voice<\/em> during the height of its counter-cultural influence, Christgau commanded an unusual cult of personality and authority as he doled out alternately loving and caustic takes on newly released albums of many genres from big and small labels.\u00a0<\/p>\n Speaking for myself: although I primarily write about international cinema, I couldn\u2019t imagine being attracted to criticism as a vocation if not for Christgau\u2019s towering example. And looking at the interviewees collected here\u2013\u2013from acolytes such as the New Yorker<\/em>\u2019s Amanda Petrusich and the Bandsplain<\/em> podcast\u2019s Yasi Salek to musicians he championed like Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and Randy Newman\u2013\u2013I\u2019m far from alone (though we\u2019re a small niche). These folks pop up to offer their insightful observations, fill in the backstory, and offer touches of skepticism, yet Wishnow primarily made a hangout movie and, crucially, a portrait of a marriage. Tracking through his floor-to-ceiling hallways of CD shelves, you\u2019d never imagine running shotgun with a cranky, octogenarian pop-music enthusiast could be so fun.<\/p>\n But, to quote a lighter example of the early hip-hop he loved, \u201cit takes two to make a thing go right\u201d: his spouse Carola Dibbell\u2013\u2013a talented rock critic and science-fiction novelist\u2013\u2013is where \u201cBob\u201d (as he\u2019s known, colloquially) begins and ends, and they\u2019re partners in musical and intellectual exploration as much as romance. We even get a snapshot of their meet-cute: a friendly argument on a Manhattan street about the virtues of Godard\u2019s Rolling Stones study One Plus One<\/em>, from his Dziga Vertov period. It\u2019s those kinds of conversations that signal the first of many to come.<\/p>\n Viewers familiar with the topic might be restless amidst its recounting of widely available info. It also may be too overwhelming and insular for neophytes, yet Wishnow is skilled at doling out exposition and skipping across the passage of time, so the former should happily anticipate each expected development\u2013\u2013like an infectious pop song you want to hear again, to use a clich\u00e9 he would\u2019ve hated (he was an uncompromising editor of tyro writers, we learn). Straub-Huillet films are famed for extended scenes of subjects simply reading aloud; the likes of Rob Sheffield and Nelson George mimic that here, treating capsules on Prince\u2019s 1980 breakthrough Dirty Mind<\/em> and Ohio country-drone rockers Wussy like fragments of rare wisdom.<\/p>\n Christgau was a legend, but how ironic is the film\u2019s title? He was anything but \u201cthe last critic\u201d; anyone with a sharp-elbowed take on pop culture, plus a prominent platform, is a spiritual successor. Yet he wrote with the urgency and fear that his modest pursuit was always on borrowed time, and the followers interviewed here fret their own responsibility for criticism withering away if they couldn\u2019t maintain his level. His review of DJ Shadow\u2019s 1996 masterpiece of beatwork <\/em>Entroducing\u2026.<\/em>.<\/a> is a particular favorite; it\u2019s the one I always share to exhibit his particular talent for description and narrative flow. He\u2019s a testament, and the film too, to how art finds its meaning when it leaves its creators\u2019 heads and reaches its audience, whose task is to put it in their own words.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Last Critic<\/em> premiered at SXSW.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source thefilmstage.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2022, Charli XCX emblazoned \u201cthey don\u2019t build statues of critics\u201d on a custom t-shirt\u2013\u2013a little nudge and provocation rather than a knock-down to a great tradition of writing. And they do make (rightly) fawning documentaries about them, with Matty Wishnow\u2019s The Last Critic premiering in SXSW\u2019s Documentary Feature Competition and examining the pioneering music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2333651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2333650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/The-Last-Critic-Hails-the-Great-Music-Scribe-Robert-Christgau.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2333650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2333652,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333650\/revisions\/2333652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2333651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2333650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2333650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2333650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}