Points for effort?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Do artists deserve critical credit for trying ambitious stuff? Interesting debate on various tumblr blogs concerning indie dudes Of Montreal (beloved of byebyepride and piratemoggy, tho I don't think I've seen either pronounce on the new album) (pot80 luvs it tho) who have ISSUES with dismissive reviews of their latest waxing.

The original short interviews
Some back and forth about it.
My own response (well, currently it's at the top - catch it while you can!!)

I think this is an interesting little debate.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think Kid A actually succeeded in its genuine hard-to-achieve ambition (transform our image without fucking up our sales) and basically failed in its musical ambition (make a good rock-IDM fusion).

And yeah I think in practise I probably DO give points for ambition - I don't go back and listen very often to A Grand Don't Come For Free because the rhymes and songs aren't as good as the debut but I adored it at the time for doing what it set out to do, which seemed a really logical and compelling move back in whenever it was.