First of all, thank you for the kind words. It's been kind of discouraging for me because I haven't really gotten too much of a response on this since I wrote it, even though I thought it came out pretty well, so it's nice to find there's some appreciation of my work.
I've certainly been continuing my writing since I completed this, but I've shied away from music-related topics, as I've been growing increasingly disillusioned with the music journalism field. I acknowledge that it's the nature of the beast, but for me, it's too fast-paced. In my experience, it takes several weeks to really internalize an LP, to form a relationship with it. And in order to accurately and fairly form an opinion of it, this internalization must be combined with evaluating the context in which the music was conceived, the influences it draws upon, and how it compares to other music in its genre of the past and present. I find it unjust to the artist and the music to listen an album twice, come up with a half-baked opinion, and then slap some digit out of 10 on something that took months/years to be created.
For instance, my initial intent was to get it done before the Pitchfork review came out to sort of preempt that, but it ended up having to wait until finals were over and I was home for winter break just because of how much time it demanded in order to come out the way I wanted. By this point, every major outlet and every shmohawk with a blogspot had offered their two cents on MBDTF. Some 30-something days after the record was released, it's assumed that all that's going to be said about it has been said. Just put it at the top of the 2010 list and get ready for the January 2011 releases. Now, I'm simplifying and bastardizing this a bit, but you get the point.
I'm going to get off my soapbox now.
@RobHiko This wasn't for school or anything. It ended up being published in several parts in the college newspaper, but that wasn't the impetus. It just got to the point inside my head that I needed to get these ideas down on paper.
@Coldgluegun Feel free to PM me, my friend.
Thanks again for the feedback, everybody.