Pitchfork Strikes Again

if "irony" bores you then ignore it and listen to the thing straight (which is probably what's intended anyway, deep down: cf daft punk)

sontag wrote a whole (bad) essay on camp in order to screw up and buttress the courage to say to the HighCult World that she quite liked the Supremes: the evil here isn't nervousness (unless you like attacking the obviously vulnerable) (which = all brits when it comes to expressing emotion haha) but the opportunity afforded the likes of ott to be so fatuously complicit, basically, in in fischerspooner's apparent fear of their own deep feelings

Oh god I'd love to be able to do that - but can you teach it, or is it one of those 'JUST DO IT' or 'ask = neverknow' deals?
I suspect sometimes the only way it can be achieved is to be unknowing/ignorant of all the context in which the work is embedded - but of course you lose a lot that way too. :(

I mean, I like them. They're not as good as they should be, but they're not as bad as you'd think they are. The article fails on all points because it's "Ooooh, it's pop, it's electronica, it's not guitars, we're Pitchfork, run away". Shame really.

Is this a joke?

define "irony", pls.

Also: "not afraid to push karaoke .. so far that it becomes its antithesis, authenticity. "

If the difference between Fischerspooner and 'a Pitchfork band' is that they're looking for "the authentic" in different places (because hey, to Casey Spooner synths and dressing up are "authentic"), then they are both trying to be "authentic" (which may or may not be the least "authentic" thing you can do) and so any judgement has to go beyond image and into the actual quality of the music.

Which is why, as people have said, this isn't a good review. But a review of (guh) 'a Pitchfork band' that said lots of indie kids like this, it has lots of noisy guitars on it, wouldn't be any better.

and I haven't been reading this thread carefully, so I'm not really talking about anyone or anything in particular.

Please, explain all four of these things to me Ronan. What's "the genre", first of all - this is great - what, "electro" or "electroclash" is a self-created genre, free from comparison to the early 80s sticky-up hair bands they photocopy? I'm at a loss.

Phoah! Well, let's see. Of all the records mentioned in various ILX electroclash discussions, how many have Pfork reviewed? Riiight. So the percentage of electroclash records Pfork likes would be a bit fat zero? Riiight.

Whether or not you agree with that, it's a valid position to take -- especially in the light of some other terrible dance albums released recently (Rinocerose comes to mind).

i would hope that the validity of a position like 'there are lots of shit dance albums out, so it's ok if we give them bad reviews and don't bother reviewing the good ones' is obvious to all and sundry, yourself included.

You're half-right Chris, but viewing a genre merely through the spectrum of another (even if they are inextricably linked) can never lead to anything other than a blanket assessment of that genre. Go ahead and do it, by all means, but the "Fischerspooner are not as good as New Order" approach is a weak argument EVEN THOUGH IT IS CORRECT.

(I've come around to no longer disliking your review though - but I still think that if you're so eager to point out what the band do wrong you could spare a thought for what the band might do right. That they're not and cannot be New Order and Wire is not an astounding explanation, and it leads to the suspicion that you dislike the entire genre on principle).

They cover Wire. I am taking them to task for presuming they have the talent and/or right to even listen to Wire records. I mention New Order because Fischerspooner have repeatedly claimed people aren't doing enough with electronics in the studio today. This still makes me laugh.

I realize you were mostly offended with Brent's (was it Brent?) review of Basement Jaxx, and I mean...I think that review puts forth a facade of "We're so over this" that's too cynical, even for me. I don't speak for Pitchfork, but I thought the idea that they could drop a review that presumptuous and cocky about a genre (techno pop) they pay little attention. When the punk and/or "art" pretensions of IDM and Electroclash come in, I think PFork is well within their scope to review it, but they don't seem to take seriously or follow the pop side that Roni Size / Daft Punk / Fatboy Slim have found the most success with.

I'm sure Colin Newman will thank you for your chilvary.

That's the thing aswell, as you say when there's some pretention involved it seems ok to give the thing a fair review even, or a fairer one. However musically Fischerspooner aren't greatly pretentious, I mean if they stuck a fucking ape on the cover of #1 and kept their mouths shut we'd either have no review on Pitchfork, or one complaining about god knows what fundamental aspect of electro.

My only point was that when you run two or three perfectly spot-on, entirely-justified trashings of electro records but never find one to praise or champion, you're essentially saying that (a) "yes, we've been keeping up with the electro scene" and then (b) "no, we haven't found anything good in it quite yet." I don't think that's true of Pitchfork, so it strikes me as a disservice to readers to approach things that way, even if the albums in question actually do suck: why not, umm, tell readers about electro records that don't suck? (Is there any possible answer to that apart from the completely untrue "because there aren't any?")

I also think we need to stop thinking of it as some sort of criticism to say that Pitchfork is basically an indie review, with a good amount of expansion out into IDM and occasional looks elsewhere. I mean, that's fucking okay: unless you can run fifty reviews a day, you sort of have to pick an area and stick to it. Pitchfork does a good job of hovering around Magnet's territory and extending a hand toward URB's, which is well and good and wonderful so long as Pitchfork, like, remembers that.

Tim - could you give an example of what kind of thing you would have preferred?
I actually liked the FS album, but in terms of going 'beyond' that and into the realms of what FS 'mean' as an art/entertainment system, I find the Pitchfork review and reasons, er, reasonable. I think I'll only like them less and less the more I encounter all the extra dimensions. So what 'other thoughts' did you have in mind over and above what they sound like and all the cultural stuff ?

That said, what did you rate the Interpol record?

I look forward to your comments. Seriously...don't wait 'til Thursday, though! And don't pull any punches -- if you think I came across as an idiot just say so.

It was just a really clear example this morning, to look at the front page and say "Ooo, I've been waiting to see what Eric would have to say about Interpol" -- followed by "Oh, how Pitchfork, we have to talk about whether their marketing budget and label affiliations are acceptably indie." Cause boy, wouldn't that be embarrassing if you liked them but then normal kids started liking them too.

This sort of fey posturing has as little place in music today as it did in 1975: bryan ferry, sparks, the dolls, and oh for good measure, eno to thread.

Shades of Kraftwerk appear in the refrain, "You don't need to/ Emerge from nothing," and genuinely make me question my relationship with pop music.: are we ever given any idea of what this relationship is? other than the sort of vague, old man griping i could read in dozens (if not hundreds) of publications, print and e.

The band's attitude, full of snorts and disdain, is pure Frankie Goes to Hollywood.: how are we supposed to discern from this anything other than that snorts and disdain = bad (ironic), and therefore frankie = bad?

A more cynical recycling of pop music and punk rock history is impossible;: USE OTHER THOUGHTS PLEASE.

Along with New Order, Wire remains one of the most capable, innovative bands ever to infuse traditional pop music with synthesized sound. On 154, Chairs Missing and even their lackluster later work (see "The Finest Drops" and "A Serious of Snakes"), Wire were transcendent, combining an astute appreciation of grandeur and the ridiculous. Their decades-old masterpieces are creatively deafening in comparison to the dull, digital thuds so carelessly looped on #1.: this SAYS NOTHING. they were "transcendent." they were "capable" and "innovative." (capable, eh? should we have thrown in "workmanlike" too?) the closest this para actually comes to saying anthing is "combining an astute" (blah) "appreciation of grandeur" (what kind?) "and the ridiculous" (ditto.)

In interviews, Fischerspooner arrogantly blather on about people "not realizing the potential of technology" or "not taking it far enough." New Order and Wire changed the musical landscape forever with a fraction of the technology. A band as revelatory as My Bloody Valentine understood this and more:

a brief list of bands/artists who have released technologically forward thinking records and used electronics in a live setting IN THE LAST DECADE:

- matt herbert
- bjork
- matmos
- the evan parker electro acoustic ensemble
- mimeo
- todd edwards
- richie hawtin

perhaps in trying to disassemble and prove FS's oversimplifications (i'd hesitate to call them "lies" because the only malice of forethought was from a promotional standpoint), the best way might not be to talk about bands who's last releases are over a decade old now.

it seems to me that art ought to do something more than mock itself.: why? i suspect i'd agree with you, if i was given any indication as to why you think this is.

frank kogan on the new york dolls:

“In the meantime, any time the New York Dolls played within a 150-mile radius or something like that I would go see them… I don’t think I actually saw them until [the first LP] was out, but I was reading the Village Voice and they reported on them. The Dolls always got very mixed press — the Voice was giving them good press, and Creem, but everyone else was saying ‘This is utter garbage and trash and they’re only doing it for the money.’ A really weird thing to say.”

frank again (i hope he doesn't mind me quoting him so much, but i do think it's relevant):

Simon Frith points out that most magazines now "edit every contributor into a house style expressing house opinions." This is in order to match taste with publication, publication with reader. Even those "intellectual" magazines that wouldn't think of editing someone's opinions will nonetheless choose writers whose styles fit the magazine's brand. "Intellectual" is itself a style, a brand.

There are arguments to be made in favor of imposing a uniform style, maybe the best arguments being analogous to the ones for school uniforms: suppressing personal characteristics also suppresses social and class characteristics and therefore suppresses social conflict and gang warfare, thereby allowing the school to get on with its business. But no one claims that school uniforms are somehow more *intellectual* than regular clothes. Yet academia and journalism do try to claim that the enforced style is more intellectual or "objective" than any other.

Maybe you should write more reviews for pfork. Actually, I said the same thing to ethan, but apparently nobody wants to stand up for what's "right".

Because the next sentence states that "a more cynical recycling of pop music history...is impossible"; the intended inference is that I consider Frankie Goes To Hollywood a valid part of said history, but I'll admit it's not clear enough.

it seems to me that art ought to do something more than mock itself.: why? i suspect i'd agree with you, if i was given any indication as to why you think this is.

Can't really debate this one - that sentence / thought was inserted by the editor, it's not an opinion I agree with.

As far as the "more recent electronic artist" argument, the whole review tries to speak to the era of electronic music the band slavishly imitate, the post-disco / dead-tech fusion culminating in works by Heaven 17, Human League and later - most commercially - by FGTH, who also had a hell of a stage show.

I'm not trying to say my take is irrefutable, I'm trying to clarify it as many people here found it moved too quick and didn't explain itself. I won't be writing reviews for Pitchfork on a regular basis if again - this was a one-shot thing - so this is all interesting since the last time I wrote for PFork, ILM/Indieshite and everyone else were talking about Braid.

and actually now i can believe it, which saddens me to no end.

i was wondering if i was the only one who had really soured on it after initially being a fan. it's got hardly any fun party rap songs! it's like he's given up on being funny! i think most of the stuff on marshall mathers is miles ahead of what he's doing now.

A lot of what Jess said in his mammoth post. But how about:

- As default representatives of a scene by virtue of their flamboyance, what musically/imagewise can we point to within Fischerspooner that causes them to fail but isn't a broadscale indictment upon electroclash as a whole? Or, if we can't separate the two, what is it about *electroclash* that makes it a doomed experiment?

- Why doesn't/can't a policy of musical reductionism work in the hands of this band/this movement? What is it about an unaccompanied kickdrum that is offensive in this context - the sound itself, or the implied lack of effort? Would the music be better if it had the technological savvy of more forward-thinking groups (to which the answer is micro-electroclash, ha) or is it irredeemable either way?

- What is a "cynical" reading of pop and punk history anyway? In what way do Fischerspooner sell out the dreams of Frankie Goes To Hollywood - ie. how do they debase the base? If they are a bundle of empty signifiers, what contextual aura do they lack that prevents them from seeming, like their similarly empty predecessors, to be "full"?

The "use other thoughts please" plea = the past-present comparison that forms the heart of Ott's piece doesn't impress me - the unspoken implication is that no current electronic music, let alone electroclash music, can live up to his lofty standards. He presumably hates all of it, or he doesn't care to differentiate between Fischerspooner and the scene they've emerged from.

Tim, I don't understand either of these sentences. Almost all my thinking is done by way of comparisons, and there's no way that you or I or anyone can know what the comparison will lead to until I actually make the comparison and follow it through. The strength or weakness of "Fischerspooner are not as good as New Order" depends entirely on whether or not Chris or I or you - whoever makes the argument - goes on to say something powerful and illuminating. And to repeat, there's no way you can know in advance whether or not this is possible. You yourself in your most recent post here give some tips on how Chris could make his argument strong.

The first issue of Why Music Sucks was splattered from top to bottom with my setting genre against genre, band against genre, band against band, past against present. I was unrelenting. And one of my arguments was that our current use of old music wasn't just producing shitty new music but was wrecking the old music as well, disemboweling it and neutralizing it. (I don't remember if I mentioned New Order, who were new music at the time, but I did call the British wave "a new wave pseudointellectual contamination of disco," quite quite quite very much thinking of New Order and ilk when I made that assessment. In WMS#2 I took a swipe at the Pet Shop Boys for being worse than Donna Summer, without even bothering to back up the contention.) Maybe there's an argument to be made that Fischerspooner are not just lousy in comparison to New Order, but that Fischerspooner damage New Order. Again, you can't dismiss such arguments from the get-go.

the unspoken implication is that no current electronic music, let alone electroclash music, can live up to his lofty standards. He presumably hates all of it, or he doesn't care to differentiate between Fischerspooner and the scene they've emerged from.

This isn't fair. You've been riding the word "implication" way too hard, just as you've been riding too hard the fact that this is in Pitchfork. It's not Chris's responsibility to evaluate the entire genre, or to tailor his review to how it fits into Pitchfork's normal take on such music. Yes, he could have said if there were any current electro bands who do better with the Wire/New Order legacy, or current ones who evade the legacy altogether, but why should he? Those are your concerns, not necessarily his, and you shouldn't read him as addressing those concerns.

Tim, I don't necessarily disagree with the thrust of your criticisms; I'm reacting against the idea that we know what music critics can and should do.

that sentence/thought was inserted by the editor, it's not an opinion I agree with.

I'm disturbed that this statement evoked no comment.

I thought this was pretty standard practice in Pitchfork's reviews...at least, the larger ones.

I was generalising dangerously ;-) But my point was that these meta-comparisons tend themselves to be universalising. Chris says that the guitar-meets-electronics approaches of Wire and New Order are much more exciting and transcendant than the electronic pulse and vocodered vocals of Fischerspooner. By not explaining why Fischerspooner's electronic pulses and vocodered vocals are bad, Chris lends me the impression that he thinks electronic pulses and vocodered vocals are bad, period (maybe I'm overstating the implication, but this is how it honestly strikes me). So bye bye electroclash as a genre (and much electronic music for that matter). Thus this Fischerspooner review speaks for the state of electroclash without explicitly mentioning another electroclash act, in much the same way as a Strokes review damning retro garage-punk bands as revisionist retro-bullshit would also be an indictment of The Hives.

"The strength or weakness of "Fischerspooner are not as good as New Order" depends entirely on whether or not Chris or I or you - whoever makes the argument - goes on to say something powerful and illuminating."

Yes this is absolutely true, but then I don't think the comparison was made to tell "us" anything new or illuminating about either groups - at least not any us that has already come across "new electro vs old electro: fite!" thoughts before. Okay, so Chris isn't writing the article for me specifically, but I'll maintain that this sort of approach (eg. one of Chris's main points seemed to be that the eighties bands he mentioned had more ideas with less technology, whereas Fischerspooner has less ideas with more technology --> the fumblings of invention are better than the perfect simulacrums of retro-appreciation) should either be put forward very convincingly or very unconventionally, or it should be retired to the Michael Goldberg Pasture of Received Assumptions. Maybe then Chris's argument is not a weak one so much as an overly familiar and unconvincing one for me.

(the My Bloody Valentine cross-reference further confuses me - is Chris saying that the perfect simulacrums of retro-appreciation are okay so long as they are done respectfully, and can trace their lineage back one step to genuine innovation?)

In comparison, defending disco from the onslaught of New Order is a relatively unfamiliar critical trope (at least for me) so the comparison itself invites a new approach to the two artists involved - setting the brain to wondering, what is it that disco needs saving from? Moreover (and leading on from the point immediately prior), WMS-style comparisons (even the unsubstantiated throwaway ones which I actually like least) tend to have less of a sense of closing-the-book finality and more of a groping inquiry. The entire pitchfork review format (which Chris has adhered to and is thus cannot be fully absolved from), from the rating to the self-contained nature of the review, suggests that such comparisons are made with a positivist sense of judgement.

"It's not Chris's responsibility to evaluate the entire genre, or to tailor his review to how it fits into Pitchfork's normal take on such music."

What about Pitchfork's responsibilities though?

Why isn't it? What responsibilities do critics have?

The anonimity of the internet is often cited as being responsible for phenomenon like trolling and flaming. Critisism is a similar one directional phenomenon.

Though it may be that critics don't have responsibilities, I would suggest that the best writers assume additional responsibilities anyway. Its not mandatory to be a responsible critic in the same way as it isn't mandatory to be any good.

Standard practice or not, it's unethical. If Pitchfork interviews Chris and then inserts into the interview statements and ideas that are not his, as if he'd said them himself, they potentially face a lawsuit. I don't see how the fact that Chris is writing for them rather than being interviewed makes the ethics any different, though it might shield Pitchfork legally. I suspect that what happened here, though, was that the editor simply thought he was saying better what Chris was intending to say, and thought he was thereby helping Chris. Still, it's a fuck-up, and it's bad editing. And if this happens a lot, then there's a systemic problem: editors with poor reading comprehension and an inability to work with writers, or a fear of talking to them. All the guy needed to do was give Chris a call...

By the way, I thought Chris's review was off-the-wall, but I didn't get from it the idea that he was dismissing a whole genre - rather, that he was angry at Fischerspooner for cheapening a genre. In general, what pisses me off in journalism is the smug attitude of "It goes without saying that disco/dance/pop/Britney is really not worth talking about." Whatever Chris's ideas and attitudes, he's not coming across as smug, and I don't see where his review leads people away from taking in the genre. In fact, it made me curious to hear more (as has this whole thread).

What's on my mind is that let's say hypothetically - very hypothetically, since I've never written for them - Rolling Stone asks me to review Miss Kittin & the Hacker and I submit a piece that says - remember, we're still talking very hypothetically - that the beats have a cheapness that reminds me of punk in a good way, but that this doesn't make them good beats, necessarily, and Miss Kittin comes across as a total moron. And suppose the editor then says, "Frank, you have to change this to a positive review, because we hardly run any reviews of the new electro and so people might mistakenly take your review as representative and think that we think the whole genre sucks." I would tell him: (1) I don't give a fuck what the readers think about Rolling Stone and its attitudes, and (2) I'm never writing for you again.