Talk:The Olivia Tremor Control/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 19:09, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Dibsing this review. I usually get around to finishing them within a week or so, if I let it slip just ping me. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:09, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for delay, starting the review now. I haven't reviewed for you before so a quick explanation of my review style: I go top to bottom like an FA review and leave commentary about anything that sticks out to me. I tend to be a wonk about conciseness in prose. I am open to discussion on most things, except anything that would cause the article to fail the GACR; conversely, I will never fail you on a nitpick.

Lead

• Tense confusion in the lead - the band "is" but the line-up "comprised". If it's the original lineup, we should say that instead of "main" for clarity
• The genre list feels a bit redundant for the lead - surely neo-psychedelic encompasses psychedelic pop & psychedelic rock? (It also doesn't feel right to say it's a wide range of styles and then 3/4 are basically variants of the same)
• "Among the band's..." could probably be trimmed a little, maybe it could be combined with the previous sentence?
  • How about something like "The Olivia Tremor Control's music combines indie rock and neo-psychedelia, taking influence from psychedelic pop bands of the 1960s, such as the Beach Boys and the Beatles." ?

That definetly looks better, changed. I think I was trying to hype up the band a bit with the "wide range of styles." It's sometimes difficult maintaining a neutral voice when writing about a topic you love :)

• Why "reported" aneurysm? Is it in doubt? Also, we should include the year

Included the year. I say reported because the initial articles from Pitchfork and Rolling Stone don't mention a cause of death, and the only reliable source I've found to mention a cause of death was from an Atlanta article six years after his death.

• "decided to continuing" - should be "continue"

Whoops, changed

• No update on the album since 2019? Could we maybe use the {{as of}} template to indicate the latest update?

Sadly that's the most recent update. Added the as of template. They're sure taking their sweet time with it, and since most of those guys aren't active in the music world anymore, I feel like that album is gonna go the way of Detox, constantly get teased but never actually release

Early years

• This is absolutely a style thing but the sentences feel somewhat choppy and a bit redundant. Some could be combined to increase flow.
  • For example, compare the original "The Olivia Tremor Control originated as a psychedelic band called Cranberry Lifecycle. This band was formed in Ruston, Louisiana in the late 1980s, by high school friends Will Cullen Hart and Jeff Mangum. It was one of the many home recording projects they created with their friends Bill Doss and Robert Schneider." to "The Olivia Tremor Control originated in the late 1980s as a psychedelic band called Cranberry Lifecycle, formed in Ruston, Louisiana. It was one of many home recording projects created by high school friends Will Cullen Hart and Jeff Mangum with their friends Bill Doss and Robert Schneider." It's not much shorter, but it reads a little more smoothly.
• That said, everyone has their own way of writing and I certainly don't want to impose my own style on you, so I'll try to leave it at that
• "... would eventually lead to the formation" - passive voice, and again a bit of redundancy with the exchanging of recordings and cassettes
• Who is Ross Beach and what's his involvement in the band? The ref is for someone else - I assume Cooper is quoting Beach, but it's not clear.
• "he wanted to focus on a solo project that would eventually become" I am being fussy here but this makes it sound like he knew it would become NMH before it became that. I might tweak to "he wanted to focus on a solo project, which eventually became..."

Music from the Unrealized...

• Two issues with the Stereogum Lennon-McCartney comparison.
  • Stereogum actually seems to be pushing back against the Lennon-McCartney comparison, as they add a "but" before making sure to note the work of other musicians. Our article presents it as a straight comparison, which isn't quite correct to the source.
  • Right now, the comparison is presented without context, dropped randomly into the article. It's not clear to the reader why it's placed where it is until they read the Stereogum article and see that it's specifically reflecting back on this era from 2016 - and if they don't check the source, they never get the context. You should include some context, even if it's just saying "their partnership in this era" somewhere.
• Not sure pull quotes from album reviews are necessary in the band article - too much detail on an ancillary topic, especially when the albums have their own articles. On a random skim of some other band GAs, I didn't see any others with that included, so I don't think it's standard.

Black Foliage & Breakup

• Wonderful detail with the cassette tape dreams. So bizarre, I love that.
• I think it's worth naming White Noise as the creators of Electric Storm
• It feels weird to toss in a reference to an EP released 2 years before the album, in the middle of the section about the album. Can that be moved up to the end of the previous section? (Not strictly germane to this GA, but that article is unsourced and I suspect wouldn't pass GNG. Are there any sources that discuss it?)
• Same thing about the pull quotes from reviews
• "Hart's condition with MS" feels somewhat stiff. I think you can just say "Hart's MS" or maybe "Hart's MS symptoms"
• I think unless you have some reason to doubt Atlanta's reporting, you can just outright say he died of an aneurysm

Artistry

• It's less of a problem in the body than in the lead, but I still think it's odd to say they play a "wide range of styles" when 3/4 of the genres listed are variants of the same kind of style.
• Not sure the colon is needed before the instrument list, but I won't die on the hill of removing it
• The pull quote is oddly formatted here. In the original, everything following "some unthinkable matchup" is actually a descriptor of "Olivias' all-encompassing sound". But here it's just present as a sentence fragment and it doesn't work. I would cut the first quoted clause and go with "While discussing the band's dynamic sound, Paul Thompson of Pitchfork called it 'some unthinkable matchup...[rest of quote here]'."
• "An important influence to the Olivia Tremor Control are the psychedelic pop bands" this sentence is a bit tangled up in itself. Try "The psychedelic pop bands of the 1960s, such as the Beach Boys and the Beatles were a strong influence on the Olivia Tremor Control" or "The Olivia Tremor Control was inspired by psychedelic pop bands of the 1960s, such as the Beach Boys and the Beatles."
• "They were great" in the Hart quote feels like fluff - it distracts from the substance of what he's saying about their style

Some prose issues but nothing that can't be resolved. Images are legitimately freely licensed and appropriate. This image of John Fernandes may be of interest, but I mention it only for completion's sake; if you don't like it, I won't insist on inclusion. No CV issues, no POV or other policy-related issues. Sources are reliable and aside from the two issues noted above - with the Stereogum comparison and the Thompson quote - no sourcing concerns on the ones I spot-checked that I could access. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:23, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi there! Thank you for the review. This article was sitting in the GA nomination limbo for what felt like half a year, so it's nice to finally see a review. As you can tell from my contribution history, I haven't been as active on Wikipedia as I used to be, but I'll try to address all the issues brought up in the review within a day or so. Famous Hobo (talk) 10:12, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

No rush :) I deliberately picked on old ones, so I don't expect instant responses. Cheers! ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:54, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@Famous Hobo, sorry to hassle you. Any update? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:45, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

As the nominator hasn't been active since early January, I went ahead and made the above-noted changes myself, in the interest of getting the article passed. Will seek a second reviewer to pass this as I feel I'm now involved enough that it wouldn't be totally independent for me to pass it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 17:20, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

• Per a request for fresh eyes, good to go. Well done and thanks to all who collaborated! SN54129 17:41, 22 January 2023 (UTC)