Christgau Fancy Word of the Day: Abjure

I'd never abjure Lee Remick.

One of several features I plan to include in this blog is the Christgau Word of the Day. (No, I don't plan on having a Christgau Word of the Day every day.)

The point of this feature is to find words, usually those classified by the less-literate (like myself) as "S.A.T. words" (regardless of whether they would actually appear on an S.A.T. exam), that Christgau uses and which might be one reason his reviews infuriate so many people.

Today's word, which I picked from the top of a list of the "Top 250 Most Difficult SAT Words," is abjure.

Check out that list of synonyms. All of them would probably qualify as "fancy words" in a music review. Just the idea of "solemnly renouncing" puts you in the context of a Radiohead or a Coldplay, not a Miley Cyrus.

I don't think I've ever used abjure in writing or in conversation, and I think if I started whipping it out at work or at parties, I'd probably receive blank stares or punches in the face:

• "Ted, I abjure your ideas regarding search-engine optimization of the company website."
• "Darling, I abjure the notion that 'reverse cowgirl' is the way to go, this evening." 

Because it's a solemn action, abjuring sounds like a kind way of disagreeing with someone.

• Abjuring: "After careful consideration of all the facts, it is with a heavy heart that I conclude that cookies made with butter are in fact superior to cookies made with butter."
• Not abjuring: "You. Are. Fucking. WRONG!"

Abjure appears some 19 times (including duplicates) on Robert Christgau's site. Curiously and coincidentally, abjure appears in reviews of two A- albums, both DJ Premier productions: Gang Starr's greatest-hits Full Clip: A Decade of Gang Starr, and M.O.P.'s Warriorz. Of the former, the Dean of American Rock Critics sums up the career of Gang Starr (Premier and the late MC Guru):

[...] My problem has always been the music's formalism--the way
it encouraged adepts to bask in skillful sounds and
rhymes that abjure commerce and tough-guyism. [...] A-

Try to roll "encouraged adepts to bask in skillful sounds and rhymes that abjure commerce and tough-guyism" off your tongue. That, my friend, is pure Christgau wordplay.

Of the M.O.P. album, Christgau's review is so juicily Christgau-tastic in its very-positive-grade-but-it-can-be-hard-to-tell-from-the-actual-review-ness that I have to quote the whole thing:

Ooh, Eminem, scary. You want a rap record to terrify your ass, how about one with a street anthem about robbing niggaz? Socially redeeming characteristic: will discourage young African American men from wearing jewelry. Billy Danze is the coarse-grained DMX bellower with the crazy laugh, Lil' Fame his rugged sidekick. Wielding brazen, unrelenting samples, they attack like a firing squad on a spree, with a fierce joy Guns N' Roses would abjure hard drugs for. As is no secret, I hate gangsta rap-hate its smugness, its brutality, its cool, its lies, its contempt for the ordinary, its failure to provide role models for young African American men. But this specimen convinces me that, sometimes, thugs have more fun-get large in the ways that matter by shitting on anybody they fucking feel like. I scoff at "guilty pleasures," too. Pleasure is nothing to feel guilty about. This may be. A-

Though Premier was involved with both albums, the content of the two were very different. You only had to read the review of Warriorz to understand that the M.O.P. fellas weren't about to "abjure commerce and tough-guyism."

The "discourage young African-American men from wearing jewelry" message Christgau mentions likely comes from one of their best-known hits, the rousing "Ante Up," which is made all the more amusing when it's set to Bert and Ernie clips from Sesame Street:

DJ Premier did not have anything to do with the 1983 album from the Go-Betweens, Before Hollywood, but Christgau, who gave the album a B+, says of it:

"I've got a feeling, sounds like a fact/It's been around as long as that," goes my favorite hook of the past few months, which is something of an aberration: in the great tradition of post-modern pop these folky-arty Aussies abjure melody much of the time, though the second side does begin to sing after a few plays, and after much longer the textures on the first assume a mnemonic aura as well. A little static for rock and roll, but as poetry reading goes, quite kinetic. B+

The lyrics mentioned are from "As Long as That," and you'd agree that if anything is being abjured, it's melody:

The Go-Betweens, a band I'd never heard of (which, because of my limited musical knowledge, means nothing) cranked out several albums during their on-and-off, 30 years as a group. One curio (of several, possibly) about this band is a song they recorded on their first album (not reviewed by Christagu) about, and named, "Lee Remick":

Pretty catchy — not abjuring melody at all — and it sounds like what Wesley Willis would have written, if Wesley Willis were more musically talented and less paranoid schizophrenic.

Where was I? Oh yes, abjure. Christgau also uses the word in an A+ review of Randy Newman's 12 Songs, but I'll get into that when I discuss the album as a whole. Until then, remember: If you disagree with someone, don't be rude — just politely abjure.