Award-winning ballet director Marco Goecke from the Hanover State Opera has been suspended after smearing dog faeces on a critic's face, Daily Mail reports. Goecke, apparently furious about a review of one of his shows by journalist Wiebke Hüster, allegedly confronted the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung critic during the half-time break of another show and smeared a paper bag filled with dog excrement on her face. Ms Hüster described Mr Goecke's show, 'In The Dutch Mountains' opened recently at the Nederlands Dans Theatre in The Hague, like being "alternately driven mad and killed by boredom". When the director attacked her, she said she couldn't defend herself, as she was in panic, she told NDR.

"I’ve spent a lot of my career writing about the 'emo revival' and it often feels like writers who cover this stuff are constantly in defense mode, myself included. I wish it wasn’t such an uphill battle to talk about this type of music compared to the type of indie rock that gets consensus critical acclaim, especially when the music itself isn’t all that different" - Brooklyn Vegan's Andrew Sacher says in the Music Journalism Insider interview about genres being mostly ignored by the mainstream media. "In 2021 so far alone, we’ve seen some big 10th anniversary pieces go up for debut albums by Joyce Manor, Title Fight, and Balance and Composure, and what’s really clear to me, is that people are REALLY reacting positively to these pieces. These are classic albums to a generation of music fans in their early 20s right now, and these albums got basically no press when they came out, outside of punk-specific websites. In 2021, those albums seem a lot more important than a lot of the stuff that had consensus critical acclaim in 2011".

A funny and intelligent interview by Music Journalism Insider with music critic and editor Kevin Williams from several Chicago newspapers; here's a snippet: "I reviewed everything from Kid Rock to Diana Krall, Cafe Tacuba to Wu-Tang, and was a constant annoyance for the copy desk. One review of Incubus was simply, 'Incubus? No, succubus'. Rewrite. I described Wu-Tang as like being at the 95th Street Red Line stop, just a bunch of smart brothas taking turns yelling at you. Rewrite. I had so much fun".

Something Old, Something New blog presents several YouTube music critics who do their critics in a different way, closer to YouTube as a medium, and to today's audience. The two SOSN takes out WillNE, a funny British guy, and Caitlin Marie Reacts who listens and reacts to classic albums.

Classical critic Alex Ross has made a list of his ten favorite books on music. (via Twitter). It goes from "the book that affected me more perhaps than any other: Thomas Mann's monumental, bone-chilling, strangely exalting composer-novel, 'Doctor Faustus'" to an easier read - "'Out of the Vinyl Deeps', a wide-ranging collection of the incisive, impassioned, posture-free pop-music criticism of Ellen Willis".

"Those simple opinions have carved out a mini-empire and made him the most famous music critic on the planet. Whether you love him, rate him, don’t know what to rate him, the fact that his unfiltered discussions continue to capture millions proves that fans are more eager than ever to dissect the nuances and intricacies of […]