Pitchfork: Classic or Dud?

(pssst.. guys, I'm trying hard here, play along)

Back on topic: Classic or Dud? The answer is "yes".

most of the time, though, the execution is a giant dud. obviously nobody bats 1.000 (don't I fucking know it, ho ho ho), and ambitious writing is admirable, but pulling it off is hard, and too often--e.g. Brent DiCrescenzo's smug dialogue-reviews--they come off half-assed or condescending. those adjectives describe the tone of a LOT of the site's writing, and its attitude in general: they're the cool kids and you're not. ugh. and if you don't subscribe to "indie rock runs the universe" as a worldview, double ugh. that short-sightedness hovers over even the good writing like a plague, and when it's demonstrated overtly, e.g. top 100 albums of the 80s, I start wondering when they're gonna finally get it over with and just change their name from "pitchfork" to "kneejerk." is there any possible other reason to give ...Trail of Dead a 10.0? there are times when the site is like a parody of the stiff-necked, tight-assed pseudo-intellectualism that people make fun of indie rockers for, as Tom E's response to Ryan Schreiber's Andrew W.K. review said so well: http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~tewing/2002_07_07_singlesa.html#78737877

Please shoot me now.

That said, it does have some good writers, and I know for one my record collection would be much worse off without Mark Richard-San's electronica reviews.

As regards Mel's point, I suppose it is admirable they have the courage of their convictions but as I always say on Pitchfork threads I get the impression that with the Jaxx review or similar there's a queue of dorks who hate the album before even bothering with it just dying to get a chance to use their frankly unfunny jibes in a crap review. I don't think there's any excuse for wanting to tear an album apart instead of review something you like, they shouldn't bother with genres that are clearly outside their radar.

(re: Gibbard/Dntel: drool)

Best post evah.

But isn't that part of the point? It's rather like, "You may have heard this album getting hyped lately, and you might be interested in buying it, but let us warn you... If you're indie like us, you probably won't like it."

My comment abt Ryan's piece wasn't "give up indie" anyway, it was "admit you like pop". I still think that review is an extraordinary bit of writing.

Re Pitchfork: done to death topic here, but classic for the workrate alone. I think Mel W is on the money actually re. the genre stuff, which is why NYLPM doesnt huffily link to every review I don't like anymore.

*I wonder how much the open-earedness towards IDM you get among indie kids is down to places like Pitchfork championing it a lot since the start, for instance.

I think there IS a market for it, and I think there's a real window for wide-ranging, intelligently written music site that covers as wide a range of stuff as FT/ILM/NYLPM but also reviews new releases as regularly as Pitchfork. Just a shame it doesn't really seem to exist yet. Possibly Pitchfork itself, with its large reader-base, could be that site, which is why it seems partly like a wasted opportunity to me.

It is an extraordinary piece of writing, although I think you misrepresent it in your comment

Schreiber's review is one of the most honest pieces of rock criticism I've read for a while. His Protestant, rule-based urge to mistrust pleasure seems on the surface pretty anti-rock and anti-life to me, but on the other hand he admits this

Schreiber is clearly not a protestant but a jew. And it seems to me his review makes an argument -- under the self-effacing label 'indie elitist' -- for things like irony, art, detachment, difficulty, a certain morality, a certain dividedness...

The meaningful splits here are between Ewing and Schreiber, a British pop writer and an American pop writer, a post-Protestant and a Jew, pop and indie rock, and between the British idea of marginals taking over the mainstream and the American idea of little pluralist groups co-existing but not interbreeding. Because what Schrieber is saying (and this works with Mel C's point) is that he doesn't think people in his indie Pitchfork-reading group should be swayed by an artist who is obviously pitching to impress a different, less sophisticated, audience. I guess it's another version of the orthodox jewish idea that you shouldn't marry a shiksa. And in pluralist America that's fine, but in Britain, a much smaller and more unified country, the idea of non-conforming minorities scares people, and Pop Music is one of the rallying unifiers (witness the recent 'I love 19xx' series, which reconstituted communal memory as pop memory). In the UK, our experience of dissenting minorities is usually a Protestant one, so I can see why Tom would see that parallel.

Like you say, a good review, a very honest one, a very well-written one, a thoughtful one. A good reason for Pitchfork's continuing validity, I think. Because we know that the NME would be second-guessing sponsors and audience demographics before letting any writer's personal morality loom so large.

Or to switch analogies again - the net is like an ocean and sites are like ships, except you can't control where your ship is drifting to, so you end up next to all sorts of other ships some of which might not like you. That doesn't mean you can't get rid of stowaways.

before he realised that this path to 'fun' would actually lead him to beer, Gary Glitter, football jocks... ie to everything he hates in the mainstream, to everything which leads to jew-bashing and to art-dissing and to 'the moronic inferno'

This is where your gloss breaks down I think. It's assuming Ryan is weak-willed enough to not be able to consume and enjoy Andrew WK without succumbing to everything he associates with Andrew WK. The right of separation between individual and individual is a denial of an individual's ability to separate themselves from their tastes.

I think Mel W is on the money actually re. the genre stuff, which is why NYLPM doesnt huffily link to every review I don't like anymore.

I don't really understand your last line The right of separation between individual and individual is a denial of an individual's ability to separate themselves from their tastes, but I have to go out now into the wilds of Berlin Mitte, will rejoin the thread in a few hours.

The last line is suggesting that the argument "Separation is necessary to keep us from corrupting influences" is a denial of the individual's strength and ability to resist, master, subvert or otherwise comprehend those influences. i.e. instead of "Get away, horrible feeling of fun!" I'd recommend "Hmm, how can I make this feeling of fun work for me?"

I cultural objects get a lot of their appeal by their power to constitute communities. WK's record isn't just a record -- ie an organisation of sounds and words -- it's also an invitation to AWK's 'party'. Gary Glitter sings 'wanna be in my gang?' And website communities are no different. Schreiber's review is not just descriptive of, but also constitutive of a community of indie elitists. Pitchfork maintains its identity, as all groups do, by the fundamental act of dividing 'us' from 'them', 'clean' from 'dirty', and 'halal' from 'haram'. What's fascinating in Schreiber's review is how clearly and transparently he is laying this out. 'Spit' or 'swallow', he says (choosing 'spit', the act of rejecting the offered gift -- then going on to wish its memory could even be erased by Alzheimers!)

ILM is also a community which works on these lines. We get pleasure from being in the gang and therefore having the right to choose what outside (possibly noxious) cultural objects to 'swallow' or 'spit'. Freud's 'narcissism of the small difference' has to be mentioned here -- it's precisely those groups (cultural objects, constituting communities) who are most similar to us which alarm us the most. They threaten dilution and even dissolution of our very community, its 'constitution', and its divisions of the clean from the dirty. Hence the anxiety we witness when PFM considers AWK, and hence the anxiety we witness when ILM discusses PFM.

'In his first major contribution to theory, Bloom challenges the commonplace notion that literary tradition is a benign and empowering source of influence on modern poets. Instead, Bloom argues, for poets since Milton the achievements of their great precursors are barriers to their own aspirations to originality. "Influence," Bloom insists, "is Influenza - an astral disease," and against its threat, strong poets learn to protect themselves by "misreading" their predecessors. Such "creative misprision" operates through six techniques, or "revisionary ratios," which together form the foundation for Bloom's manifesto for a new "antithetical criticism."'

In this reading, Schreiber is afraid that his beloved indie bands might catch Andrew WK's 'influenza'. But Tom's point would be that they could use such an influence as 'creative misprision'.

"I think there's a real window for wide-ranging, intelligently written music site that covers as wide a range of stuff as FT/ILM/NYLPM but also reviews new releases as regularly as Pitchfork."

I've been saying this for a while. Stylus isn't it. If the regulars here got together and reviewed everything through the "ILM Perspective" (whatever that might be), I'd read it religiously.

And then I'd feel a lot more warm and cuddly about the Pitchfork/ILM relationship, because it would feel less like a webboard taking easy potshots at a website that requires a lot of sweat and blood from its staff. Not that such potshot sessions are so frequent anymore, thankfully.

- people who think that argument, chat and recommendation between equals is the best way to talk about music find their way to ILM

- people who think that regular reviews are the best way to talk about music find their way to PFM

- people who like a mix of both write for both, or contribute to ILM and write reviews elsewhere.

Most of the ILM regulars spend just as much time writing and thinking about music as PFM staffers - they don't have to worry about deadlines or deal with stuff they don't like, so it's easier; but they don't get any rewards or freebies or a huge readership either.

you pieces of shit

Notice everyone's silent about this provacative Momus statement:

Whereas rock / indie / electronica etc tends to incarnate a worldview, ie to be 'moral'. Often you like it because you approve of it, rather than because it sounds good. In fact, you can think something sounds good and still hate it, as Schreiber seems to hate Andrew W.K.

(a statement which I completely disagree with, btw.)

The age-old, mostly ILM critique of PFM as a "missed opportunity"-- and this has to be the fourth or fifth time I've seen that characterization (sorry, characterisation) here-- is a poor one. It presumes Pitchfork is run by a large, full-time staff, capable of steady, marked improvements in content, both in terms of quality and quantity.

What opportunity is PFM missing? The opportunity to risk financial security, running the site Fight Club-style from a warehouse with no heat? While budget hyper-productivity retroactively translates to credibility-- Search And Destroy, Sniffin' Glue (ugh)-- Pitchfork's endurance-to-quality ratio is something far too many people assess in these arguments. Ryan's put together a group stable and talented enough to kick things up to 5 reviews/day, and add a scope broadening singles section (something I think many ILM writers and readers will enjoy perhaps more than the long-form reviews).

Pitchfork is not a company, yet people hold it accountable for the kind of end-user satisfaction you could only expect from a trade. And perhaps they're right - we try to take it that seriously, as there's a large audience we respect and owe our existence to - but the presumption that there's a right to demand improvement on any predetermined scale irks me.

also though it wz like the "ideal nme/mm reader" of those times stepping up and answering back, a teacher-pupil argument where the pupil wz besting the teacher — an entity become aware of itself as an potential agent — so that even when perry wz throwing rocks it was something the inkie writers of the day felt enormously (i think rightly) PROUD of, that they had fashioned this live one in such a form that he wz able to rescue himself from bank-clerk hell and be as good as them

Anyway, I didn't mean to say that ILM should be eliminated, just that the real "missed opportunity" I'm seeing is for a sort-of counterpoint site, in a Pitchfork-esque format, to present the ideals of the ILM crowd. I enjoy reading both webboard and review-style discussion, but right now there's a big gap in the formal review side of things - or, at least, a diffusion, in that I can't keep track of all the places ILM regulars write their longform material. I see people 'round here constantly bemoaning the fact that internet crit is indie-centric, and yet nobody seems to be willing to get a more pop-oriented publication together.

"they don't get any rewards or freebies or a huge readership either"

haha, neither do we Forkers, really.

you pieces of shit

Are you talking about ILM or pitchfork here?

Anyway I find pitchfork more readable than any other "indie" publication -- certainly magnet, and just about anything else I've seen online tho fakejazz could sometimes be quite nice though I haven't checked it in ages.

The pitchfork goes and runs things like this:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/watw/03-01/8-mile.shtml

and makes me forget all about evenhandedness. I don't even know where to start with how absurd and ill-thought-out the piece is.

'You can declare a work that shows the correct political tendency need show no other quality. You can also declare: a work that exhibits the correct tendency must of necessity have every other quality.' WB

(On the question of whether it's enough that a music should be 'moral', that is, a confirmation of our pre-existing tastes. Actually, in the terms of this debate, I prefer the term 'kosher' to the term 'moral'.)

'You can declare that if a food is kosher, it need not taste good. You can also declare that food which is kosher had better taste really fucking excellent.'

Might not have the singing voice for that, alas.

'To be the "indie rock" of the naught decade-- as many feel that hip-hop is-- the gangsta branch is going to have to do something more revolutionary than play into the hands of the image-and-acquisition culture marketed to the mainstream'.

It's a brave and wise call for non-brutalist values. The paradox of hip hop is that it's the nihilist rebel music which couldn't be denounced as socially noxious and brutal by the mainstream because the mainstream happened to get just as noxious and brutal as anything its delinquent subcultures could imagine. So hip hop gets to stay violent, and yet stay mainstream, no Pat Boones required. Eminem is not a Pat Boone, even if he is white. He cannot be attacked from the right, because the right is already on his brutalist tip. He can be attacked from the left, though, if there are any principled humanists left in this world. And there are. Some write for Pitchfork. Hurrah!

And my BOC piece, which I totally forgot about til now!

(haha and i guess me reviewing a book on indie rock and mark p writing about boc doesnt do much for the "pro pop alternative" argument.)

oh.

I'm not sure what the breakdown is between that Pitchfork audience and the post-informed would-read-something-like-Freakytrigger audience, proportionally: the former probably seems a lot larger than it is based on being a lot more vocal. But for them and also for a surprising number of people I run into who don't spend that much time thinking about music, Pitchfork really is the sorting mechanism of choice for getting a line on the indie-type releases that are worth it for a person who's not buying everything. I mean, on the issue of what it covers and how it rates it right now, it accomplishes that goal effectively -- as everyone's said it gets to be reasonably authoritative on indie, and it seems like the bulk of the people buying in that genre can pretty much trust its assessments and budget their time/dollars accordingly in safety. From what I can tell the other-genre writers currently function is valves, really, bubbling underneath as updates and pointers for other things, with enough of an ex-indie understanding to have a good concept of their audience, and occasionally pushing one of their enthusiasms into the great indie whole as the genre examples everyone will get into.

Which is a fair enough division in most cases.

Anyway in these discussions I think there's a tendency to forget the way Pitchfork's editorial position winds up straddling those lines: its big interesting promise is that it really could shape the worlds of a number of teenagers or college students who are still moving around working out their particular sets of likes and dislikes, but it stands to lose that ability if it's constantly selling them on things they're not likely to enjoy.

Of course maybe this is a deliberate absurdity and a satire on Em's persona, but if so it's such a breathtakingly stupid and poorly done one (even for pitchfork) that any such reading is a real stretch.

I'm not actually sure what my point is with that whole argument: something about editorial agendas necessarily having to match up with readership, either form following function or the other way around. (I think in Pitchfork's case it's been function following form, which is a good thing in this case: i.e., the editorial agenda has shaped the readership and not the other way around.) But I do sometimes find it a little odd to make level comparisons between the content of something like Pitchfork and that of something like Freakytrigger, because the actual functions to the audience are massively divergent in ways that just might have a lot to do with those conceptual differences.

We have a band name.

...figures.

http://www.panx.net/ep/0599.jpg

let me begin:

kulturkampf
schadenfreude
weltschmerz
dasein
schwarzwaldtorte

poison uber alles u r all gay

another nice one: patt. in english i think it is stalemate or something.

go is better than me

here's a good one though (not chess): "flucht nach vorn"

it is the basis of my anti-influence thesis

That's like...so deep dude. Far out.

http://www.demon.co.uk/momus/littleberlin.jpeg

gesamtkunstwerke

Momus called Melissa W "Mel C"!!!!!!

Twice!!!!!

plenty of little ones but hey, its a message board.

btw, I'm totally gonna try and stop swearing for like, a week, on here. Can it be done?

Ned, I KNEW somebody would say that...

Sorry it took so long. Anchors aweigh.

Gamma's virile chorus of, "Yo, Rude Boy/ Huh/ Killer Apps/ We got what you need right now," is a wonderfully boastful pop lyric, and worth a thousand "propas" from a certain Izod-sporting two-step artist.

Even when pitchfork goes popist it gets it terribly wrong!

Worst Pitchfork review ever?

I think he's enormously talented, here's just one of my favorites. Also, this isn't even close to the worst 'Fork review; I still regret we never published the "Pitchfork's Worst 50 Reviews Feature" that we were talking about earlier this year.

"I think the new Ween album is very good. And, to be perfectly honest with you, that's pretty much all I can say about it because I'm actually not a very good writer. So I'm just gonna spend the entire review making fun of Ween's fans for no apparent reason and not even mention the music at all like the disgusting rotten piece of human shitscum that I am. Because it's a "new" and "different" reviewing style, and that's what matters, even though it's nowhere near as funny as I think it is."

Is Pitchfork from the UK? Something tells me Pitchfork isn't from the UK.

"The album's single, the creepily Janet-esque "Romeo," commences the program on a bitter note. Featured diva Kele Le Roc's mindless lyrics spill over the predictable, shallow melodies, bland beats and clichéd basslines."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...Oh my god I never thought Brent could be that bad. The only thing worse than reading all those unreconstructed cliches is reading them strung into a story.

You might be right.

Anyone who complains that 4/4 beats are cliched really shouldn't be reviewing dance music in the first place AKA "oh this rock band is so boring they use GUITARS!!!!!!"

it's reviewed again today (???)

although for "its attitude in general: they're the cool kids and you're not. ugh." they aren't even close to as offensive as Everett True/early '90's Melody Maker. I can mostly get along with PFM's tone by taking it as being humourous & sarcastic.

That said, ever since someone pointed out just how much the reviews read like livejournal entries(!) I've been having increasing difficulty just parsing them. Or maybe I finally realised how much filtering of the inane I had been doing all this time.

It's one thing knowing your market, but aping that angsty, pseudo-intellectual, thinking-aloud, writing style ALL the time (desperate to connect with the kids?) makes it fucking difficult to read, let alone take seriously, all too often.

(ie i can't tell if he's saying isolee's got bangers that go from point a-->b, or if he's saying despite the fact that they're almost club bangers they still progress like songs - it's a good point because a-->b progression is what maligned styles like commercial trance or tech-house have - styles that specialize in "club bangers" - and it's also what IDM doesn't have, "songs" or no ... but i can't tell if that's what he's saying, or if he's asserting the reverse)

Either way, it's probably still better than I could manage given the chance. I kind of feel bad calling him specifically out on it so I didn't mention it before (cowardice?). Not until somebody else bumped that thread on the topic anyway.

i am happy with pitchfork's new dance & pop friendly direction - i wonder how or if their readership is changing? is their old readership more dance & pop friendly now? is the readership the same as it was before? are huffy indie rockers fleeing in droves?

This has changed a lot since 2003, don't you think?

Pitchfork: It's dangerous in a way. And I think it's inadvertently caused, like, emo. And Coldplay. A return to earnestness. Kind of."

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/3976/pitchforkad8lt.jpg

Well done, Pongo old boy! Hottest advertisement of the year. This gets a 9.7/10, Pitchforkmedia! Totally makes up for introducing me to the suicide girls.

There are also some changes to the content management /information design of the Pitchfork website:

Pitchfork: News - each news item now gets a unique permalink. This will be useful for bloggers and users of social bookmarking systems.

Pirchfork: Reviews - a new information design for the reviews page. This is a big improvement on the old system.

Update: bad move ! previous pitchfork review URLs are not working ! This message comes up "This page does not exist" - surely they could auto redirect old URLs to the new URLs.

Question for pitchfork's scott plagenhoef, are there tech plans to redirect old urls to the new content management system?

as this would be ace for bloggers / social bookmark users and other websites such metacritic

e.g a review of Sonic Youth's new album was at this URL

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/s/sonic-youth/rather-ripped.shtml

now comes up as:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/4

"This page does not exist."

another Q:

will there just be 1 Pitchfork RSS Feed: i.e
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/rss/today

this blogger, made an assumption of rss feeds for each pitchfork section:
http://www.arcuradio.com/blog/2006/06/fork_1.php

NewsNow: Music Reviews
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/newsfeed/?name=Music+Reviews

martian - yes, each landing page has its own rss

(there are a few bugs we're working in, incl. server load, so apologies)

will this come back? i liked it

romantic and for girls only.

ANORAK CHRISTMAS:
http://downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/%7Efiles/Sally%20Shapiro%20-%20Anorak%20Christmas.mp3

I'LL BE BY YOUR SIDE:
http://downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Sally%20Shapiro%20-%20Ill%20Be%20By%20Your%20Side.mp3

I KNOW:
http://this.bigstereo.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/I%20Know.mp3

THE CHRISTMAS songs for 2006 called "anorak christmas" etc....cheesy eurovision 1983 style!
i can sent the mp3links out now to lots of addresses because its hosted by PITCHFORKMEDIA and BIGSTEREO so my server doesnt go down:-)

also the link of "by your side" which just got voted number 2 of the BEST SINGLES of the last 3 month by New York's VILLAGE VOICE is online!
ps:its by diskokaine's "sally shapiro"

hate or love it.
Wolfram

marfloW
_______________________________
TELETEXT homepage!
www.diskokaine.com
www.myspace.com/diskokaine

marfloW aka DISKOKAINE @ VICE MAGAZINE(UK):
http://www.viceland.com/int/v13n6/htdocs/ei.php?country=uk

DISKOKAINE'S "Sally Shapiro" @ PITCHFORKMEDIA(USA)
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/track_reviews/37355/Sally_Shapiro_Ill_Be_By_Your_Side/page_1

and voted in New York's "VILLAGE VOICE" number 2 of the best new singles of this quartal.
http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/statusainthood/archives/2006/10/the_quarterly_r_10.php

i can sent the mp3links out now to lots of addresses because its hosted by PITCHFORKMEDIA and BIGSTEREO so my server doesnt go down:-)

... suggests the person's just taking advantage of the fact that Pitchfork happens to be hosting the song.

i.e., in Breihan's blog

marfloW aka DISKOKAINE @ VICE MAGAZINE(UK)

so its Vice people behind it, but with PF hosting i guess.

I've never noticed if this has been a thing before, but all five of today's reviews have covers that feature a face obscured in some manner. Cute, very cute.

i feel like i've seen a disproportionate number of album covers with people in water lately.

and obscured/distorted faces

anyone else completely despise ian cohen's writing?

no he's good