Is everybody who writes for Pitchfork this stupid????

and that polemic the writer went on about paul sevigny wasnt quite off the mark. brain and (whatshisface) were all long haired 'rock' types, whilst paul stood around in his yves saint laurent tshirt looking completely out of place. kinda like he was slumming in his own band or that he was just in this band to hang out and be famous, not to necessarily perform or anything like that.

I agree; they're HORRIBLE live. But how does that (or what Paul What's-His-Fuck looks like) make the album any worse?? (Actually, the line above suggests you might even LIKE the album!) But we've been here before, way too many times; ditto Northern State. So never mind.

>>Chuck why did you find this review so objectionable? (He asked earnestly.)<<

Well, the 843 dumb platitudes about race and class and gender and hip-hop and age and talent it contains, for starters. (I counted.)

But, yeah, pigeonholing the entire PFork staff as a bunch of cranky music-hating self-involved funkillers is as fair as, y'know, pigeonholing the Voice music writers as a bunch of overintellectualizing music-hating self-involved polysyllabic obtuse theorists (as some of the naysayers 'round these parts have claimed from time to time) (which, in case you're curious, I think is total asscrap) (tho I'm only clarifying my position because I love parentheses).

I was just mentioning the Paul Sevigny thing because that part of the review was somewhat justified. But yeah, apparently the pitchfork crew like to make themselves out to be class warriors or some sort of indie rock guardians of equality. Unfortunately this kinda stance results in dropping the ratings of albums they review by 2-3 points.

>>Clearly children of privilege, Northern State commit the terrible fallacy of coopting street argot... Northern State sound like suburban brats playing with Ghetto Barbies.<<

..and hardcore bands who came from the LA suburbs (not to mention Long Islanders Public Enemy) have no right to be pissed off, right?

>>the album actually betrays no knowledge of hip-hop history whatsoever. Judging from the evidence presented, Northern State base their understanding of the genre entirely on the Beastie Boys.<<

(Forget that the Beastie Boys were hardly the first group to actually switch off interesting voices; if you have a REAL knowledge of hip-hop history, you'd know that that's what most pre-1983 hip-hop did!)

>>Robert Christgau-- exhibiting distinctly lecherous tendencies in his old age<<

Which is almost as idiotic a line of horseshit as:

>>It needs to be said that most of the critical ink-jizz lavished on Northern State squirts from Christgau's pen<<

Which is a blatant lie.

>>Beat-wise, the album is bland and fey, with no low-end nor hooks to speak of<<

Which basically proves the writer can't dance for shit.

I don't know about Pitchfork or the Voice, but each member of the Reader staff has been expressly instructed to develop his/her own UNIQUE system of well-argued playa-hating and ill-concealed dilettantism. It's in the contracts. They're tattooed to our ass cheeks.

(But really: are all of the lyrics on that album that dumb?)

If we decide to hire you...

Is this an electronic pub that really means:

If we decide to 'hire' you, be advised that 'hire' has zero to
do with the Webster definition -- 'to get the services of
a person in return for payment' with payment to mean cash
money.

>>Voice music writers as a bunch of overintellectualizing music-hating self-involved polysyllabic obtuse theorists<<

I guess this refers to Metal Mike Saunders, Scott Seward, Hillary Chute, George Smith, and Amy Phillips. (But anyway, the title of this thread was a QUESTION -- I honestly have no idea what Pitchfork's other writers are like. That's why I asked, see?) Hi George...

But, yeah, that's Pitchfork for you.

One might estimate general quality on the basis of willingness to accede to requirements for submissions.

All submissions must also include:

A list of your Top 10 favorite albums of 2002

A list of your Top 5 favorite bands from each decade (1960s-1990s)

A list of the last 10 CDs you bought

Estimate of the number of CDs and LPs you think you've owned

Boy howdy!

(& I really hope that you folks calling me out on my Voice generalization caught my parenthetical aside) (I'd hate to be misrepresented because I'm overtired) (&, in retrospect, trying to take the "don't generalize" defense is pretty uninspired & lame on my part, so I apologize for that bushleague move) (& I'll go get some shuteye)

and also, if Public Enemy had come out with lines like that Gore line (is that supposed to be ironic?), they would have no right to be pissed off.

I was actually quite conflicted about the Northern State review. I'll put it this way: if I hadn't heard Northern State, the tone of the review probably would have convinced me that I'd likely disagree with the rating. But I have heard Northern State, and, you know, yeah: not so hot, I don't think.

Mr. Diamond: could you expand on your comment? Is it that you think the Beastie Boys reference is ill-applied, or that you don't think it should be used at all? Because let's face it: the Beastie Boys may be a Northern State reference point so obvious you feel guilty even using it -- so overwhelmingly what-the-average-person-would-think that it seems to actively distract from saying anything meaningful about the record -- but dude, they sound a lot like the Beastie Boys, and saying so surely starts to draw the average reader a pretty clear picture of what they're up to. (I think his way of putting the comparison, by the way, was awfully presumptuous and way more condescending than I tend to like in reviews -- but then on the other hand, there is this small part of me that says "but they sort of do sound like that.")

I have not yet developed a coherent rationale for liking Avenue D's "The Kind of Sex that I Need" so much better than Northern State.

By the way, I think there are good reasons to dislike Northern State just musically, but yeah -- making fun of them in quite this way seems to have less to do with music and more to do with a pervasive hipsterish male fear of the flat-out earnestness of activism. Activism, especially women-heavy activism, totally requires the dropping of the arms-folded hipster attitude, and that seems to be the sort of mental field Northern State are coming out of. Yes, this is bound to irritate people who go for more critical poses -- just the same way plenty of people with various political beliefs are too cringey and possibly snobbish to actually go out and demonstrate or engage with other people who share those beliefs, out of a distaste for communal agreed-upon celebrations of simple slogans and the like. . . Rambling here, but it strikes me that the social vibe of women involved in activism is just miles and miles and light-years away from the attitude of the indie-rock guy.

I should clarify, couldn't get over the sense *from them*, etc. -- I appreciate pride in what you do and all, but still.

So is this why people like Northern State? Not because they have any exceptional skill as rappers, but because they're presented well as personas? I'm one of the people who just "doesn't hear it" but after reading XGau's glowing reviews, I got the impression that he liked the sense he got of who they were more than what they could do. (I'm not asking anyone to speculate on XGau's opinions, I'm just citing an example.)

anonimust so on the money, not for the originality of her observations, but the freshness of elocution. We all know those things to be true but here's a rich and succint statement of them.

nabisco you must know musicians have the better deal. ask any kid if he'd rather be a guitar player or a drummer or a rock critic and he'd ask what's a rock critic? ask any adult who they more fantasize about getting with and invariably they'll admit never once having thoughts of hot groupie sex with richard meltzer or lester bangs or even jim derogatis. and who wouldn't rather be paid attention to by a drunk sweaty club full of good time seekers than someone reading your opinions about music? not that there's anything wrong with being a rock critic at all but it is not the romantic calling art is

(b) Contrary to the popular belief of people who think being a musician would be awesome, having people want to sleep with you is not the pinnacle of human existence. Someday if you're lucky a few people will want to sleep with you, and you'll learn this.

What about the argument of thinking you are cool vs. doing something cool? Buying a house vs. buying a mansion vs. buying ten houses?

It seems silly to have this argument. Some people are more/less creative/analytical than others. Some people are more/less likely to take the most/least likely path to what they want. Some people like sitting at desks. Some people like getting drunk in public. ... etc etc etc.

So is this why people like Northern State? Not because they have any exceptional skill as rappers, but because they're presented well as personas? I'm one of the people who just "doesn't hear it" but after reading XGau's glowing reviews, I got the impression that he liked the sense he got of who they were more than what they could do. (I'm not asking anyone to speculate on XGau's opinions, I'm just citing an example.)

Dahlen raises a valid issue about persona -- one I think I personally started to think about when I wrote about how much I couldn't stand Jim O'Rourke's music, in part b/c I couldn't stand him personally. Image and pop obviously go a ways back. But with celebrity culture dialed to the max, and persona increasingly supplanting (as opposed to complementing) the music as the main attraction, one does start to wonder when the time comes to just call bullshit. I mean, even after watching Tupac Resurrection last night on Showtime (and enjoying it), I'm not about to start combing the DC record stores for his record-breaking number of posthumous releases. And I'm not losing sleep over it, either.

As sort of a tertiary point, seeing Tupac Resurrection last night on Showtime made me want to start a "Tupac Mythology: C/D?" thread — only, I don't know his music for shit and I was certain the likes of John Darnielle would shame me for life.

yes

There is a reason people have been driven to create for as long as human beings have existed in the form we know them today. Rarely has it been illuminable via "objective standards." Still, I'm sure it's entirely true that not only will post-modern cynicism buy you a bigger house, but help you to appreciate it.

“I’m terrifically guilty of trying to describe music in that instrument-by-instrument way: I feel flashes of duty that way. (I think there’s also a tendency—especially if you’ve worked on any music yourself—to forget that plenty of listeners really don’t break the sounds down at all and just take in the effect; less so with a lot of indie rock-band types, but still.) “

One of the nice things about not being a particularly talented musician is that you don't break the sounds down. It means a lessened appreciation of certain types of music, but a much greater appreciation of music generally.

This is why professional music reviews and reviewers mostly annoy me - everything is judged either historically or technically. You rarely hear someone who knows how music is made in detail talk about the effect, say, Loveless has on a person. All you hear is that Kevin Shields was a visionary, or that the album reaches new heights in such-and-such-a-genre, or conversely that Kevin Shields isn't a visionary and he's only doing what such-and-such a band did ten years earlier, and that all his technical advances were made by such-and-such anyway, blah blah blah...

The best reviews are always amature because professionals only KNOW about music, an amature is in a better position to appreciate it. I don't mean this in the sense that because they're a normal person they can tell what normal people will like, I mean it in the sense that comedians stop laughing at other people's jokes after a while and simply notice when something is funny or when it isn't - surely the point of comedy is to make people laugh.

A good review should be about the music, but not broken down into instruments. A good review will describe music poetically - with imagery rather than over-used, value-based adjectives, and metaphore rather than comparison, noting shifts in mood and texture rather than chord or instrument. I'd always prefer to read a review of music than of musicians, but the various breeds of cynicism that pervade almost all music publications, and certainly all of the widely-read ones, deny journalists the ability to write reviews in any style other than "how does this band fit into musical history?"

It's a fair point. For the record I don't think all music criticism is a bad thing, I only complain about the way in which most people do it and the various institutions that have grown from it. The truth is my overly-long attack on the pitchfork guy was an attempt to keep a genuinely important essay at bay.

I think my main point is that what I wrote can stand as a general criticism of the attitudes and methods of Pitchfork, and is the only one I will ever write. This guy, on the other hand, churns out his crap for a living. While other people spend their lives putting off essays and striving to understand the underlying essence of the universe through art - using the poetic rather than the logical to achieve the absolute - this guy spends a good part of his time thinking about whether this or that indie band/corporate rapper can be held above the other indie bands/corporate rapper due to the fact that they sound more or less like whichever older indie bands/corporate rappers are most popular at the time.

For anybody who's wondering - I love The Cure, and have not had any significant breakthroughs since age 15. Thankyou.

I suppose there's always a black-metal fan around the corner armed with too much hyperbole and not enough knowledge, but there's always good poetry and bad poetry, and certainly good poetry is always based on a certain amount of knowledge about the subject. Like most things, it ends up as a question of balance - and at the moment there's just way too much weight on the "historical and cultural analysis" side, and nowhere near enough on the "pretentious imagery" side.

BINGO. Plus, I'm lazy and generally read most reviews for information, not to be entertained by the critic (although it's great bonus, when it happens obv).

Buying a house, I've concluded, is overrated.

you have indeed reached the right message board then.

also, feel free to ignore this and all other of my posts, thanks.

I take issue with this -- there is SOME truth to it, but it's silly to assume that because I know what each instrument is doing that I can't drive 80 on the highway smacking the steering wheel to AC/DC like anyone else. Sure, it's a danger for musicians that they might fall into a purely analytical way of listening, but it's not inevitable, and musicians can relearn to hear like the people do.

As someone who's been fascinated by music since childhood, it's hard for me to understand why anyone who wants to write about music wouldn't WANT to learn a little more about what's going on. I always felt compelled to learn -- if something really made my ears dance I wanted to understand it better. That doesn't mean, of course, that you have to spend too much time talking about it in reviews.

http://pitchforkmedia.com/features/weekly/05-08-22-the-chumbawamba-factor.shtml