Pitchfork

Whoa!

Anyway, this was funny to see:

Echo Chamber: The Who

"It didn't even feel like a concert. It's a television show. And what can you do in 12 minutes? ... Cameras were everywhere, I was so blinded that I couldn't see."

-- Roger Daltrey makes excuses for the Who's shit-sandwich performance at this year's Super Bowl. In other news, I still want those 12 minutes of my life back. (via ESPN, via Spinner)

Posted by Ryan Dombal on February 12, 2010 at 2:45 p.m.

I didn't think Pitchfork news writers were encouraged to be this nasty still!

Should say- I would have thought they were encouraged not to be this nasty these days*

Pitchfork

I just used this thread because I liked Ned's reaction to it.

(Ned)

man, that really is mean. i hope roger daltrey is going to be ok after that comment he'll never see

xxpost -- One tries.

Its not about it hurting his feelings, I just haven't seen such an angry blurb in the news section on that website in awhile. Whiney sorry again for motivating you to create an online sensation.

I don't give a shit about how mean it is to The Who.

wait, who?

the point being that it's safe for mags to be snarky and mean to people that don't pay their bills.

ie, they would never be like "The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart a bunch of piss-drinking cumlords, here's some of their tour dates"

lol que

cum-drinking pisslords

what?

Haha true Whiney, but it still was pretty emotional. I was amused.

Should have said emotional instead of nasty originally.

Pitchfork's reputation will probably never recover from giving a 1.6 to "Two Against Nature".

i don't think it was especially nasty or emotional. all guy was saying was The Who, as good as they are or have been, put on a disappointing halftime performance, strongly worded as it was.

'shit sandwich' rubs me as more silly than nasty or emotional. also very accurate.

a shit sandwich would be pretty nasty imo

Well it was strongly worded! He was clearly venting, he wasn't merely "disappointed." Thats all, just thought it was amusing and wanted to share it.

Or never mind you have a point.

I thought it was just a reference to spinal tap?

http://twitter.com/pitchforkmedia/status/9082564986

http://pitchfork.tumblr.com/

Tracks is now "The Playlist"

From the news post New Section: The Playlist:

We're still going to be presenting and discussing individual songs there, but we won't be rating them, and we're not going to be talking about songs we don't like. This space is where we'll talk about songs we're digging that we think might be worth your time.

(via)

ehhhhhhh

a change that can only be for the better, since they gave the Drake single a fuckin 8 today

my guess is that most readers didn't bother reading reviews for low-scoring tracks. by no longer talking about songs they don't care for, they're making it more likely people will read more pieces in the section. result: page views & revenue go up.

http://www.dirtybutton.com/media/db2072-i-love-to-fart.jpg

I dare them to try this with album reviews. What an optimistic and unpopular website it would turn out to be!

So why not consolidate this and the "Forkcast"?

I always read that section, and I'm actually disappointed they're not including tracks they don't like anymore. I actually did like some of them, but now I'm not given the option to make up my own mind.

yeah! the scathing negative reviews are the funniest.

seems like an idea that albums are the really important things is one effect?

since everyone seems to jizz about scores u know

How are we supposed to know what songs are merely 7s?

or 3s!

the "track review" is sort of a fatally flawed concept--every score was in the 6-8 range.

they're dropping this because it didn't work from an editorial standpoint, not because they're like masters of pageview manipulation or something.

also, the pageview explanation doesn't make sense because i have a feeling that people just clicked "track reviews" or w/e and read the three that were posted for the day -- that's just one "view," regardless of which you actually wanted to read

the problem w/ the current track reviews section imo is that it seems to deal much more with songs no one has heard of as opposed to songs that are "out there" -- i think it makes sense & is valuable to write negatively about songs that people are hearing, are on blogs etc, and i wish they would still do this -- the thing is that it doesn't make sense to give 5/6 to a song by a band that no one has ever heard of, and i don't know why they started doing this in the first place

maybe i'm remembering the OG tracks review section wrong, but it def seems like this iteration leans more towards turning people on to new music they haven't heard of as opposed to giving the pitchfork crit view of songs that people are hearing

yeah otm, i complained about that exact thing when track reviews were revived in the first place

yeah that's exactly right--i feel like a lot of the neg track reviews the way they were doing it was when some established band put out something lesser as compared to their earlier work.

Perpetua comments on the change: http://perpetua.tumblr.com/post/450151149/matthew-what-are-your-feelings-about-pitchfork

valuable link

Please, no anonymous questions.

so awesome

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archives/2010/05/and_now_a_galle.php

#pitchforkbumperstickers

best first post of all time

agreed. and the reply is so perfect and hilarious.

I would welcome his joining ILX tbh

^^^^^

is anyone else having trouble bookmarking this thread, btw?

I just bookmarked it. I also I sent the guy a link.

I also I sent I uh the guy I a link uh

I press "Bookmark" and nothing happens

alright, I deleted all my bookmarks and it worked

Z S, did you explain what an ILX is?

do u even post on ilm z s?

i don't know who 'Joe Tangari' but i'd like to thank him for the new display name

zvookster, I invented ILM

markers, I just told em' to check it out

hehe, z _ _ _ _ s _ _ _, now that I think of it, I think I ONLY posted on ILM for like 2 years before I even realized there were other boards on ILX! :)

yeah Z S been round here

tbh I had/have almost 0 interesting opinions about music, though, which is probably why I post on the other boards way more often these days

I lurk ILM like a mother though

PRR guy reminds me a lot of ultra-earnest ilxor-nublets. i like how he seemingly can't help but be honest.

^^TRUTH

Did we ever figure out the life cycle of an earnest ILX0r?

ksh...how long did we take to break your spirit?

a month or two? maybe a bit longer? not sure

My spirit is immune to ILM, but my taste isn't.

Which is a good thing (he says earnestly).

I was posting on the Via Chicago Wilco forums in high school, which was alright, but doing that is a recipe for some serious tunnel vision

Tunnel vision maybe, but that's definitely one of the most friendly and knowledgeable boards I've ever done any long term lurking on. I soaked up everything I could from the gear/recording forum, posted one lousy cover tune (well, medley of two tunes), and then vanished back into the aether. Much better than being on certain dedicated recording boards (besides the obvious mixing of ingredients, studio work/pro audio seems to have a lot of the same macho hierarchy as cooking/restaurant work).

Anyway, tunnel vision is relative, considering many ILXors claim to not care about Pitchfork's opinions, but care enough to keep four (count em!) Pitchfork threads on the go, along with all the haggling over scores in individual artist threads. Slag the reviews reviews guy all you want, but lots of us are doing the same thing here, day in, day out.

As for the earnestness thing... nabisco has a great tumblr post about the effort required for honest advocacy vs. juvenile takedowns. My top two artists on last.fm are The Shins and Jeff Buckley, but I know that (a) they're not exactly short of admirers, even in my corner of the planet and (b) that I'm wasting my breath convincing ILX of their (lifechanging!) (heartbreaking!) (falsetto!) worth.

Earnestness ultimately sustains the whole community, though, and stops it turning into a sort of freemason's handshake.

I mean. I was being tongue-in-cheek at least a little bit. I'm about as earnest as ksh is/was. If I didn't honestly think that music was heartbreaking and lifechanging and wonderful and magical, I wouldn't be here. Life's too short.

It's just nice to temper the breathless enthusiasm with measured analysis and description and consideration every so often. I get the sense that PRR's voice is a pretty calculated decision to some extent, tho.

xpost

Yeah, the VC people are super, super friendly! The focus of the forums was just kinda too narrow for me, and I never got into it the way I've gotten into ILX.

guys I'm going to start a separate thread for PRR

Pitchfork Reviews Reviews

guys I'm going to start a separate thread for PRR

oh god why would you do this whyyyyyyy

so we don't put all that stuff here -- as a side effect, now you can just safely avoid that one thread!

dunno if it deserves a thread

you can tell jess harvell was having so much fun writing this morning’s Zero 7 review, honestly i imagine him grinning and nodding in self-agreeance as he articulates everything that’s wrong with a whole subgenre and the group of people who bought its records!!

i mean, is agreeance even a word? im not convinced. or is PRR a sophisticated joke at some1's expense?

if no one wants use the other thread that's fine, it'll just drop off the front page

so we don't put all that stuff here -- as a side effect, now you can just safely avoid that one thread!

seriously what's the appeal of talking about that stuff? it shouldn't be put ANYWHERE. seriously, dissecting some loser who devotes himself to dissecting a shitty indie website? that's interesting?

can't speak for anyone else, but I find talking about that interesting

i think p4k should take a page from coke machine glow. they give both an individual score and a combined score. and for divisive albums, like the new MIA, they will often post a counter-point review, which is great for actually getting a conversation going.

prr was inevitable but it still must have taken a lot of balls to do something so radically uncool, i wonder if he tells people irl that that's what he does in his spare time

HRO exegesis is ok. kinda. i don't read it. but this is super lame.

how is someone analyzing HIPSTER RUNOFF in the "ok" realm but PRR isn't

guys we post to ILX

analysing hipster runoff is not in the "ok" realm

neither is reading hipster runoff tbh

^^^Lex totally OTM

From PRR

this blog does not have any vendettas against any individual pitchfork writers, honestly. i realize that there are certain writers who i am consistently up or down on, but i am not looking to go in on any one writer, and every review i write about stands on its own. a pitchfork writer who drops a Worst New Review yesterday could drop a 9.3 today and i would write about it as such. yesterday a commenter wrote that i should only write about pitchfork reviews negatively, because that’s what pitchfork deserves or something like that, but that’s not what this blog is about

the other day i was incredulously complaining to a friend that pitchfork isn’t sortable by writer. some of the pitchfork writers i’ve talked to have said the “web guys are working on adding that feature”, but if they can put in a feature that lets you watch Broken Social Scene from six different angles before they can make pitchfork searchable by writer, well, i’d say the writers who tell me they’re “working on it” are basically telling me that the check is in the mail. if you’re not american and that idiom doesn’t make sense it means that they’re bullshitting me

really, a big part of the power of pitchfork is our notion of their consolidated opinion. you’re NOT SUPPOSED TO BE thinking about pitchfork in terms of individual writer but in terms of the collective, you know, the hive-mind, and while this seemingly displeases the writers to no end (what self-respecting critic, bright people who pride themselves on their individual insight, wants to be thought of as part of the hive-mind? as recreational listeners we don’t even wanna be thought of as part of the herd, so imagine how you feel people thinking that about you if thinking to music is your profession), but it makes sense from an administrative standpoint. if you’re thinking about pitchfork reviews by writer than it’s one guy’s opinion, but if it all blends together than you’re reading the work of a panel of experts, which is so much more powerful of a voice than, like, “23-year-old larry fitzmaurice is lukewarm on the new Magic Numbers record.” there’s a huge element of pitchfork’s magic, and, to me, a lot of why they captured a generation of listeners, so why would they ever chip away at it by making their site searchable by writer?

so to the guy who commented that i should only shit on pitchfork because of what they’ve done to contemporary indie music, i see where you’re coming from but obviously there’s more to it than just, like, they’re evil and they need to be destroyed, because really they’re not evil, and there is no way to destroy them, and i don’t think i’d want to. i mean have you read music reviews elsewhere on the web? it’s writing of a different caliber. nobody would ever have listened to pitchfork if it was bad at what it did or just went around slamming records it didn’t like and leaving out the stuff it did like, and if this blog was all negative all the time like that, why would anyone read it? popular internet curmudgeonry is sooooo web 1.0. if you really wanna slam it, try writing something negative about all the reviews and you’ll realize you’re out of material pretty fast. BUT:

part of my hope for this blog, by identifying the writers by name a lot and isolating their tastes and writing styles and seeing patterns in their work that defy the voice of the whole but otherwise get lost in pitchfork’s sea of unified voice (like when Larry Fitzmaurice quips that Vivian Girls and Beach Fossils suck), is to maybe chip away at the power we’ve lent it by reading it as a monolith instead of a stable of capable writers. so here’s something that the writers might be happy about but maybe the editors won’t: there’s a search bar on the side of this blog where you can type in any writer’s name and everything i’ve written about them comes up. it’s not their words (well some of it is), and it’s an incomplete record, it’s just some kid’s interpretation of their words, but in a way, you know, it’s the closest you’re gonna get to pitchfork being searchable by writer, and that in itself might chip away at their magic in the way you’d want it to

part of my hope for this blog, by identifying the writers by name a lot and isolating their tastes and writing styles and seeing patterns in their work that defy the voice of the whole but otherwise get lost in pitchfork’s sea of unified voice (like when Larry Fitzmaurice quips that Vivian Girls and Beach Fossils suck)

I like the random pettiness of this.

I have been thinking about starting Pitchfork Reviews Reviews Reviews.

is that from a private email? google's got nothing

I have been thinking about starting Pitchfork Reviews Reviews Reviews.

must be done. in the name of science.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Otk-knCm-nw/ShT1-MhpVtI/AAAAAAAAAQQ/pUPoWxUyy3w/s400/bee+watcher4.jpg

^^this thread

^ dying @ this

must be done. in the name of science.

Hmm, maybe someone who is less lazy than I am should do it.

http://i.imgur.com/LY2wZ.png

T/S: St. Anger vs. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

I honestly think more than a few ilxors would struggle over that one.

loool

http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/passion-pit/