Pitchfork Reviews Reviews

Yeah. He also reminds me of James Frey, bio-maker-upper extraordinaire and author of "A Million Little Pieces". "Then I went to the cafeteria and put eight slices of bacon on my plate and ten pancakes and I poured syrup on them. Then I sat down by myself and ate the bacon and the pancakes. I was still hungry so I went back through the line. There were other men there, and one of them wore a black bandana that covered his right ear. He chose three pancakes and took a cup of black coffee. I took five more pancakes and some orange juice and poured syrup over the pancakes and sat down again."

(that was xpost to Dorian)

happy never to have read james frey so that i can enjoy unmolested the sui generis brilliance of pitchfork reviews reviews lol

If the guy's smart he should cash in on the current interest in indie/hipster anthropology by rushing out a voice-of-his-generation rites-of-passage novel set in Williamsburg. People would lap that shit up.

xpost I loathed Frey's book but it had a similar effect on some people - "What an original voice! He cuts through the bullshit!" etc - before it turned out he was just purveying a different brand of bullshit.

Also, his interview with Avey Tare reminded me of the end of Almost Famous where the kid, after all that he's seen and learned, finally gets the chance to interview Billy Crudup, turns on the tape recorder and his first question is something like, "What do you love most about music?" And we're meant to find it endearing and deep and out-of-the-mouths-of-babes.

yeah, but i felt like his questions to avey were supposed to read as "i am a giant dork and i don't know how to relate to people."

But it's all so stylised that his giant dorkishness is part of the pitch - self-deprecation is such a standard ploy for self-obsessed writers now that I don't really believe it most of the time.

agreed, fair enough

would like to see a few more threads dedicated to worthwhile writing. yea, because i'm lazy, but also because it'd be nice to have a forum for talking up what's great, as well as shooting down what's bad

i post great writing all the time, usually in the relevant artist/genre threads. one that springs to mind is http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=76396 - that album seemed to catalyse lots of amazing pieces

doesn't that usually bring up the thread title? uh. http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=76396

The thing is that this thread is kind of the criticism equivalent of the "lol unicorns" thread about HOOM--I don't know if any of those 20 great music writers Whiney mentioned would want individual threads 95% of which were devoted to trashing them and the two posters who defend them.

okay, so i dug through that longish rhianna thread and found the ann powers and [other] reviews that i think lex was tipping towards. ann powers is solid, the other is, uh [other]. (hey, no offense, as nabisco said, it either works for you or it don't.) honestly, i don't think either has the distinctive voice or story construction chops that PRR dude brings to bear, but that's just me. fire away...

why does music criticism need to be about story construction

well, it doesn't. i don't give a shit about PRR as crit. it's totally useless as crit. i read it as music-centric fiction. music-centric young adult fiction, not to put too fine a point on ot. and as such, like harry potter with kyp malone instead of severus snape, i think it's pretty ace.

edit: not to put too fine a point on ott

so what's your point

:(

like harry potter with kyp malone instead of severus snape

this is praise?

it's comforting to know that a PRR fan dislikes good writing, re: the rihanna pieces! they must be doing something right.

sorry, that came off snappy. but it's like saying "man, sontag just doesn't have the attention to detail that james frey does." why are you comparing the two. and sorry, if your best defense is to approach it as "music-centric harry potter" I don't think you've mounted a very sterling defense or PRR

xp

umm, it's praise of a sort?

and hey, the ann powers piece is totally solid, no complaints. didn't blow me away, but i respect it and am not cutting it down at all. wouldn't choose myself to compare it with PRR. they're aiming for very different effects & audiences.

anyway, i wonder if PRR has any appeal for those without an abiding love of (perhaps overly sentimental) young adult/coming of age fiction.

cuz that's the spirit in which i take it. thinking i love you, junie moon.

comparing it to harry potter was meant to read as comic self-deprecation, just so's we're square

think your digging yourself into a hole here tbh

oh, no sweat. i'm pretty okay with liking stuff that sensible people abhor.

listening to hidden hand and lords of the new church tonight.

note to self: stop digging

i think contenderizer is onto something - i like reading this guy's stuff cuz they're just these weird little stories too... it doesnt have to like, replace good music criticism. it's just something else. still not sure why it makes everyone's BLOOD BOIL

i mean i'm not sure if i really want to engage with 'u mad'-type stuff but usually when i learn about a new internet site i can at least grasp the gravity of it, whether i like it or not--hro is a decent example of this--but with this guy i just have no idea what separates and elevates him from like a million other bloggers, except i guess that he has successfully "done meta"

i mean maybe i'm missing the part where he's been acclaimed the greatest music critic of his era, like, where is this dude being so overhyped? besides getting to occasionally write for 'the awl'

i dunno, yeah, on the surface, he could be like a million other bloggers, but his stuff has a readability to it that sets it apart.

well he was profiled in the times

well that might be a little much haha. but the times will desperately write about anything if they think people in brooklyn like it these days.

i guess i'm not sure where else he's being overhyped! but i find the extent and tone of some of the praise on this thread baffling--like ppl are reading something different from what i'm reading.

so yeah while i am not thrilled about continuing to post on a thread about something i don't like, i do kind of want to keep exploring why this guy is compelling to some of us--i think we made some progress on this last night.

yeah i think the NYT profile was when people started going o_0 - i still reserve my actual boiling blood for the editor who commissioned that/writer who degraded themselves to write it.

i find his shit completely unreadable fwiw, as in i have never been able to actually finish any of his pieces because when they're not grating they're extremely fucking tedious and just tl;dr tl;dr all over. it feels like someone is dribbling gently but ceaselessly on your face.

in a good way tho right?

i think we've probably reached a point where ppl need to just agree to disagree in re: his style--some of us like it, some of us can't stand it.

but i'm much more interested in how people are responding to the content.

i think people will read almost anything if it's on the internet and looks halfway decent on the web page

seems like most ppl who have beef with the style have it with the content too though? xp

ie it's self-indulgent and doesn't convey anything that the wider world remotely needs to know about

i like reading this guy's stuff cuz they're just these weird little stories too... it doesnt have to like, replace good music criticism. it's just something else. still not sure why it makes everyone's BLOOD BOIL

^^

i thought before you were saying he shld be in the da capo book of music writing? or did you mean the da capo book of weird little stories

i like reading this guy's stuff cuz they're just these weird little stories too... it doesnt have to like, replace good music criticism.

don't fool yourself; it will

not my problem

* drives off in porsche *

*Yello heard faintly in background*

ie it's self-indulgent and doesn't convey anything that the wider world remotely needs to know about

― I ain't that kind of player I just foul a lot (DJ Mencap), Wednesday, September 29, 2010 9:45 AM

Yeah, it is self-indulgent. But the audience for his stuff isn't the "wider world," it's people -- some critics who and indie kids -- whose musical world is, at least in part, the American indie rock scene. The morning roundup stuff isn't interesting to me. I imagine that at least some of the critics who work for Pitchfork are interested, at least a little, in seeing what the dude has to say about their work. The other stuff, which seems to be what people in this thread are most interested in discussing, isn't really about the music itself, it seems to me. Which is one of the reasons the kid isn't a rock critic. Because critic implies criticism--a critical engagement with something, and I don't see that happening too much here. What I do see, however, is one kid's stories about what it's like to be an indie kid and hang around some people who are relatively high-profile, again, in the American indie rock scene. So this is super, super niche: relatively high-profile in the American indie rock scene. I'd guess that at least one of the reasons he has a readership is because:

(1) Some people find his writing engaging. I'd agree that it's definitely not "good writing," if by good writing we mean stuff that's well-edited, smartly paced, etc. It's a mess. But it's a blog, and it's a mess some people, myself included, sometimes/often find fun to read.

(2) Some people are interested in the topic of American indie rock. If you don't care about the dudes in TV On The Radio, getting in to YYYs concerts, DJing, etc., then his stuff probably isn't going to be for you, unless you just find it pleasurable to read the writing itself or are someone who's just really curious about stuff you're not super up on. But, for the most part, this is stuff for people who are interested in indie rock minuatae and pretty engaged with the scene.

^ didn't really edited that, which is in the spirit of the topic imo ;-)

edit, obv

yeah markers but what you're seeing but not getting is that prr guy basically used the initial cheap one-joke meta conceit of his site, couple with the increasingly high-profile of Pitchfork, to both call attention to and validate what essentially is his blog diary, and what I think burns a lot of people round here is how some ILXors are getting suckered into thinking this stuff is relevant to music writing when they really should know better...

I don't know the kid behind the site well enough to know whether it was his intention or not to piggyback on Pitchfork's work in order to get attention, but I have a feeling he was probably just interested in writing about Pitchfork and his stuff eventually just gained traction, at least in part, on its own merits. Ripfork, a site with a similar conceit, gets no attention because it sucks.