We at 100b read many music magazines, but don’t really have the time to read any. Thus, in this installment of How The Music Press Is Crap, we’ll be discussing a two-month old issue of Rolling Stone. (Incidentally, I have no idea why we read these magazines, they just end up forcing us to complain about them in public.)

In September (issue number 982), Rolling Stone reviewed The Cribs‘ second LP, The New Fellas. That worked out rather well for me, since it’s a perfect excuse to talk about my obsessive love of The Cribs. Their debut album (The Cribs) was by far one of the best of 2004 - and I dare you to argue with me. The New Fellas was even better. Most reviews I’ve come across agree with me. And maybe Rolling Stone did too, but I can’t tell.

First, and this makes me irrationally angry, Rolling Stone says that The New Fellas was “released to wide acclaim in England last fall.” No, it wasn’t. It was released on June 20th. And you know where I found that out? The Cribs’ bloody website. The release date is right there for everyone to see, even Rolling Stone writers. This may seem petty, but Rolling Stone is supposed to be the one of the leading music magazines, and they can’t even get this stuff right.

As for the review itself, the writer subtly calls The Cribs hypocrites: “Unlike The Strokes and The Libertines, The Cribs seem to deplore the audience most likely to embrace them. … All of this feels a little cynical and almost dishonest: The Cribs are, after all, pretty goddamn hip themselves.” Leave it to Rolling Stone to be unable to differentiate between being ‘hip’ and just being cool. Like me, The Cribs (if I may speak for them) are sick of the ’scenesters’ and ‘hipsters’. Or, as I like to call them, The Trendies and Beautiful People. These are the people who listen to a band or wear a style because of how it makes them look, not because they actually like these things. We all know them. They infuriate me because it’s so pathetically fake. As the great Holden Caulfield said, these people are Phonies.

The Cribs are definitely not ‘hip’ - has Rolling Stone ever seen them? I’m not sure they even bathe. But they are cool - if not due to their two fantastic albums, then just because they do, wear, and say what they like and don’t care how it makes them look to everyone else.

Just to add to my irritation, Rolling Stone goes on to say: “Sometimes The New Fellas sounds like it was recorded in a tin can at the bottom of the Thames, but the album’s reckless abandon and innumerable hooks ought to appeal to scenesters and squares alike.” Hmm. Is that good or bad? I can’t tell. I sometimes think that reviewers have forgotten that the point of a review is to tell us whether the record is any damn good or not. They’ve become yet another platform for some writer to show how much they know about music history, make some sort of comment on how even a hugely popular artist or band has flaws, and use a song title and/or lyrics as an ironic headline or caption.

Does Rolling Stone even know that The Cribs aren’t actually from London, or was that Thames comment just their way of showing that they’re down with British culture?