Life after death

Good news for anyone who loved Stylus, which closed its doors late last year: thanks to Dan Weiss and a whole host of ex-Stylus writers, the On Second Thought column has been semi-reincarnated in blog form as What Was It Anyway?.

It wasn't true of OST every week (take my own on Eels' Daisies Of The Galaxy, for example), but for the most part the pieces took a sharply critical perspective once the dust had settled around an album and the heat of hype had dissipated.

It's the latter strand that finds itself living on on a site named after "a Sonic Youth song I don't think anyone likes, which is the point" (and, even as a rabid fan, I can't help but agree on that). Thus far we've had Ian Mather's contention that one great and one good song do not a great album make and Scott McKeating's scathing dismissal of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. No matter that I disagree with both assessments - they both keep up the Stylus tradition of being a bloody good read.