pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

btw this dude is in grad school

also who the fuck hangs on roger ebert's every word

a fellow Chicagoan with logorrhea.

i think most of the 'big' voices these days, good or bad, are people who write for one site/blog where all the traffic is from people who specifically want to read that one writer -- in that sense anything with as many writers as Pitchfork is going to seem 'faceless' by comparison

Agreed, but can anyone in the former group even be defined as "big" apart from people who made a name for themselves in the 90s at the very latest?

the fact that writers aren't as famous as they used to be isn't exactly unique to music crit, not sure what the point of even focusing on that is

he's the kind of college student who cares what dero thinks, i think it goes without saying we've found a very special kind of useless here

― some dude, Thursday, July 14, 2011 9:44 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bam

what a bunch of self-serious nonsense

I think it's weird to somehow expect the publication to make the writers big or famous. It's going to take some pretty extraordinary writing to make the reader give a shit about the byline, and I think that's probably always been the case.

the fact that writers aren't as famous as they used to be isn't exactly unique to music crit, not sure what the point of even focusing on that is

Not sure if this is addressed to me or to the writer - if to me then i agree? but i'm saying the article fails even to recognise that it's a general truth even just in respect of music crit.

i was responding to you -- if you were asking that question on behalf of the writer or in a devil's advocate way i couldn't tell. in any event what i was saying about identity/personality-driven music blogs doesn't really have to do with whether those people are famous in any real sense.

Well then I agree.

My point is the same as yours I think - which is that the internet just does not facilitate big name music writers, and people who've been able to hold onto their reps in that environment are mostly relics from a prior medium. Even one-person websites can't really achieve this except in respect of very small fanbases with whom the writer often has a social (or at least social networking) connection. The link between the individual voice and the mass audience is broken in this and many other contexts I think.

Interestly, policital punditry is one area where I think the opposite has occured - a relative drop in publication brand power and concomitant rise in name recognition.

i often get the idea that pitchfork writers (reviewers, but obviously the columnists, more) are in dialogue with something, so it seems interesting that they can maintain that, without comments, in an era where comments are practically obligatory on any interweb venture.

I am glad that people have realised that rock critics are not (and should not be) famous. Lester Bangs is not famous outside of a very small circle.

pitchfork likes EMA http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15743-tripper/

...what does this mean?

Conflict, resolution, and character development often slip by unnoticed, eased in their passage by the woozy synths and atmospherics that function as the album's rough-spot-smoothing sonic hand lotion

wait
we're reviewing music here now aren't we

http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Daffy-Duck-masturbating.jpg

"Not since Jonathan Richman has there been a songwriter so willing to convey honest and deep feelings through the most basic pop syntax, and Owens also shares Richman's desire to use familiar song forms to get these essential messages across."

really pitchfork? not since jonathan richman? also, please be more into line-editing

"He has a preternatural gift for turning clichés into into deeply affecting songs, and as they jump from one style to the next, from delicate acoustic balladry to noisy rave-ups, Owens' voice and point of view ground the record and make it distinctive."

I love rave reviews that are basically just "it's good because it's good, and it's just so good at that, y'know?" over and over

as opposed to those quiet rave-ups

Okay, so I can't remember if or where there's been a thread where we pull up embarrassing reviews from the archive, but I was googling reviews of Dark Magus just now and came across this absolute winner from Jason Josephes:

Good old Japan. We bomb them, so they horde this Miles Davis gem, available in the US for the first time. It's the best $27 spent outside of the massage parlor in eons. Yeah, I buy CDs sometimes, too. Why? Friggin' label won't send 'em to us. I'm willing to look the other way this time, because this 2 CD set, to put it simply, rules.

I'm not standing up for the girls review, although I don't think it says "it's good because it's good" over and over, and in a way, even if it had, I don't think I can ever expect much more than "it's good because it's good" or "it's bad because it's bad," as if there were an underlying logic to something being good or bad, unless a critic were to write about something other than the goodness or badness of a work (and this is something I don't think pitchfork reviews do often, except in an intermittent, half-assed way, because it's not what their readers are looking for).

i've always said maybe if pfork didn't insist on these 1,000-word reviews of indie rock footnotes, people wouldnt be always filling them with sprawling, masturbatory prose.

Yeah, it encourages compression, which makes the writing sound unnatural.

I love rave reviews that are basically just "it's good because it's good, and it's just so good at that, y'know?" over and over

― some dude, Monday, September 12, 2011 8:13 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

v. good summation of the problem with that band--if you're not *affected* by the guys voice/lyrics/whatev there's no reason to care about them, and if you are there's no intelligent way to talk about it.

The ineffability of their appeal really works against them. Common problem.

this band, to put it simply, rules

y? because they rule

This is every language problem.

Pitchfork writer Mims

don't really feel like bam or cad really got what i was saying

Lbh ner fb arkg yriry

xp i got what you were saying and was kind of using it to jump off to another point.

this is not the right thread but whatever i'm not going to wade into the girls thread or anything.

"Not since Jonathan Richman has there been a songwriter so willing to convey honest and deep feelings through the most basic pop syntax

lolololololololololol

this looks like an Onion headline, for serious -

http://pitchfork.com/news/44129-own-a-piece-of-unwashed-clothing-worn-on-stage-by-a-member-of-sigur-ros

when did pitchfork start going link-crazy in the reviews? same time as the redesign?

this is like old-school pfork-level ridiculous, reads like a bad press release: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16038-the-9th-inning-ep/

i think that's only weiss' third review so far but he seems like a shitty writer.

lol

not gonna read that, but

conjure Nate Dogg at a séance

. . .

i'm sure the hip hop dudes will mock me for this but as someone who follows the genre pretty superficially i have enjoyed the end-of-the-year best-of comps on passion of the weiss - assuming this is the same dude

Gonjasufi invented intelligent demon music

... I made it exactly one sentence

that's as far as I made it as well

a glass pyramid breaking under the weight of his psychedelic bombed squad

Young writers should experiment but editors should intervene to tell them when the experiment's gone horribly wrong.

assuming this is the same dude

It is.

From the first words of The 9th Inning, we're sucked into apocalypse. Industrial noises clank like robots led to the guillotine.

:o

why do people who write purple prose never realise it themselves? do they not read their work back? well i don't always read my work back but STILL you'd think they'd notice

Sufi sounds like someone who attempted to conjure Nate Dogg at a séance and received a demented ghost from a nearby dimension.

Liked that one, but yeh some real clangers in there.

hey i write a lot of purple prose and totally realize it

this review is pretty terrible though yeah

Based in "the Mojave," the desert-dwelling prophet

nooooooooooooo

actually kinda refreshing that they'd let this one through in 2k11

Yeah has that old-school PF hyperbole vibe. Feelin' it.