What has to be recognised is a reviewer is generally hired to reinforce the prejudices of the majority of a magazine's readers. If a reviewer has a dislike of hairy men in tight clothing singing falsetto between virtuoso electric guitar solos, he probably wouldn't last long as a rock journalist. It's horses for courses and there's no nag with universal appeal.

The problem is a lot of contemporary recordings, especially in the folk market, are what used to be called vanity publishing before the recorded music industry rolled up its toes and necessarily made almost all records vanity products. Should such records be judged by the same standards as those made in six months at a studio somewhere sunny with an expense account? I would suggest not, homespun artefacts are what might be called narrowcast - hoping to appeal to a sufficiently large majority of a very small market indeed to make their manufacture worthwhile. This inevitably leads to a high risk of such output not matching the lofty, even catholic tastes of the reviewer and to be taken by all parties with a huge pinch of salt.