Erik Davis is an unlikely favorite music writer of mine, as although I love the language of his words I am generally irritated by the worldview that he creates in his work. I had an intense negative viseral reaction to the introduction of his Led Zeppelin book and bulked at the idea of reading the Joanna Newsom piece so recommended as one of last year's best...but of course, it was fabulous - fabulously written, thoughtful, compelling, full of language that wrapped around its subject like a glove. Davis is a loving, gentle profiler, a deep believer, a great writer. Thing is, he's not interested in convincing non-believers, but only in extending his myths into everyday life, being a gnostic journalist activist, seeking kindred thinkers among the weird beards and elf girls and inspring his readers into this otherworld of mystic relations. He walks around enchanted, lives life with craft and ritual, and I admire that greatly in some ways.

I also in general find the state of perpetual childlike denial of "the real" horror of contemporary existence the deep superstition, the ignorance of cause/effect and apolitical withdrawl to be insular, cowardly and narrowminded - a myth perpetuated by the willful disavowal of conditions of the immense privledge in which most of the art he loves is made. His Slate piece is so beautiful and seductive - the quiet, the good people living apart from economy making uncompromising art, a pastoral return to truth - but it hides the relations, hides the awkward, hides the contradiction. How did the band get there? Gasoline. How did you all get there? Gasoline. How come a band from the Pac NW can play other towns for free? Seems like a story, and the story would take "real world" explanations, and those stories might make Wolves in the Throne Room a little less godlike and more like humans, less Romantic (as Davis incites on page 1) and more everyday. This is the balance that would be real magic to me - how a band becomes a myth and then goes back to scrunging cold pizza in the van. Secular, daily, lived ritual as heromaking. Davis hides this and his stories are more lovely for it. I am generally not interested in lovely stories. I'm want more skeptical, more sociological, more messy. Which makes me different that a "general interest reader" and in some ways I think Davis is one of the best new writers for the general interest reader. Like Greil, he is interested in placing pop into the larger historical narrative, and he allows fans the pleasure of keeping their heroes high. The artists must love him too, since like a portrait painter he never reveals their flaws in unflattering ways. This is why I couldn't stand the Led Zeppelin book, because the record shows their are good reasons to treat them like less than mythic heroes, to zoom in and look at the ugly.