Guardian X2

Two items of note in the Guardian:

1) Write your review of almost any album ever released: On the Guardian website, you can now review or star rate more than 3 million albums — or add any record to your list of favourites.

2) As guardian.co.uk launches 3 million new album pages, Alexis Petridis offers tips on how to write the perfect review.

Sample:

That said, I’m not sure how much advice I can offer about the actual writing of reviews. I’m pretty certain the more you listen to an album before you review it, the better – repeated exposure to music sharpens your opinions, whether good or bad – and the more you research an album or the artist who made it, the better: the most arcane tangential fact can sometimes illuminate your understanding of it. Beyond that, I wouldn’t for a minute suggest that anything I do as a critic should be viewed in a prescriptive way.