I don't believe any musician who says that they don't care about reviews." I asked if he was happy with the press he received. "Luckily, I got quite good reviews but it is hard not to take criticism very personally. The music you create is so important to you and is such a personal thing that it's not easy to read someone knocking certain elements of it.".
Does he think that music criticism is an important form of expression? "It is and it isn't. If you actually stop and think about the fact that any review is simply one person's opinion, it does make you question its worth. Saying that though, I know that people could take a reviewer's advice about an album and agree with him or her about it and this could happen a few times. In this way, you can find a few writers who you think like the same kind of stuff as yourself and you trust them from then on." I asked Gary if he"d ever been hurt by something written in the papers. "There was only one thing that really pissed me off. I played a few support gigs with Jack L around the country and there was a random paragraph in a Dublin music newspaper making fun of me. I just didn't get it. They were mocking me for playing with him and it was such crap, unnecessary journalism. I think this is the area where music journalism goes sour. Technically, it should just be about the music but it often ends up with a journalist slagging a band or the people in it simply because they have a particular problem with them.".
With this is mind I asked Ryan Brennan, editor and journalist with "The Voice" magazine about his feelings on the matter. "When I started writing about albums and gigs I definitely had weird feelings about it. I was such a huge music fan and I felt this strange kind of guilt about criticising people I respected. I specifically remember an incident with Placebo. I interviewed them shortly before their second album came out. It was one of the best interviews I"d ever done, I really liked them and I had a really good laugh with them.