pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

There's a long line of hyper-precious pop that PC Music falls into, from Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep to Hey QT. While AG Cook may not have heard of Joey Levine, the blurring of lines between product and song for each of them is delightfully subversive.

No it doesn't sound like that at all. For a start, Hannah Diamond doesn't use sped up vocals.

― everything, Monday, May 4, 2015 4:32 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A lot of this stuff feels like bright euro dance-pop, the sorta thing you could find on Aphrodite or any of the last 3 or 4 Britney albums, just with one or two elements rendered "off" to produce this deliberate alienating effect, like how the stilted singing on Everything is the only thing that stands between it being a typical pop track you might have heard on the radio in say 2012. Keri Baby specifically reminds me of like a mid-2000s girl group song.

But I mean, if you don't hear it, that's cool too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

count me in the crowd who fucking hates PC Music but thought the review was excellent (even if I disagree with it all)

I have no idea if the review is accurate at all in regards to the cultural context of this music but I will say a) it describes a kind of music I would never want to listen to and b) the clips accompanying the review are godawful

I guess I can't escape the conclusion that a hatred of biology (being "anti-physical") is ultimately futile and pointless, biology rules us

I haven't read the review or any other 'thoughtful' pitchfork crap lately but Greer's blurb (xpp) seems like the kind of review that I could stand by. I haven't heard PC Music either but I know a good review when I see one

and pitchfork is stupid

I hope there are more pitchfork writers on ILX than Ned Ragget (or whatever his name is (and I don't know if he's still posting)) because I would love to see that smug tear in their eye when they find out they are writing for something that is stupid

:'O

lol

has pitchfork ever published a parenthetical within another parenthetical?

maybe in that guillemots review?

still easier to read than pitchfork

you tell 'em onceler

soon their media empire will be in ruins

feels like writers dust off variations of this ""anti-physical music for an anti-physical time" type trope whenever they're trying to make ____ happen

film at 11

think u mean a once

derr

las

That's a miserably overwritten piece even by Pitchfork's standards, wow. Surprised GFOTY even got a mention, given she doesn't rly fit the aesthetics Tolentino's intent on bashing into PC Music

anti-physical music should be played in a vacuum

feels like writers dust off variations of this ""anti-physical music for an anti-physical time" type trope whenever they're trying to make ____ happen

― Darin, Monday, 4 May 2015 22:03 (Yesterday) Permalink

I think you guys are reading as praise (or PR) that which is flatly descriptive

Like, this stuff is very much non-functional--love or hate it I think we can agree upon that--it's intentionally detached, distancing u from the function of its source influences

re: j-pop/k-pop question, the thy bronze track is 100% early/mid-career perfume/nakata and kero kero bonito. everything about it, really. even the hook is in faux japanese-person-singing-english inflection (specifically nakata stuff).

"it describes a kind of music I would never want to listen to" Absolutely. Even the best writing about PC Music makes it sound horrible. One thing that surprises me is the absence of any reference to other people who presented pop as product in an arch, alienating, anti-authentic way. That was a major strand of New Pop eg Heaven 17/BEF. All I hear so far with PC Music is bad pop and a basic concept.

I don't get how "minimalist" and "chaotic" are opposite (also none of the PC Music I've heard cld be described as either of those things, so), or why we "have to" "chip (our) way to the real through this pixelated thicket", or how this isn't an awful review

And the vocal on Beautiful doesn't sound like a girl, bt eh it's Pitchfork

One thing that surprises me is the absence of any reference to other people who presented pop as product in an arch, alienating, anti-authentic way

because the acknowledgement that pop has a long history of playing with these themes and that pc music's "ideas" are far from novel would make the entire argument for their importance collapse.

i don't understand why "fascinated with commercial pop" is a noteworthy artistic trait, among everything else

i don't understand why "fascinated with commercial pop" is a noteworthy artistic trait, among everything else

Because so many critics think their own fascination with commercial pop is noteworthy?

the ideas/paratext associated with pc music are whatever. i just know all the music i've heard from them has been really awful.

Considering that SOPHIE was on the last Madonna record, I don't see any subversive value whatsoever in PC Music's take on mainstream pop. Pop has assimilated much stranger (and better) underground sounds than this.

I don't get how "minimalist" and "chaotic" are opposite

She doesn't say they are opposite.

(also none of the PC Music I've heard cld be described as either of those things, so)

I dunno about minimalist, ive only heard a couple songs, although the way it's used these days tends to be relative, but the songs I heard are definitely 'chaotic' gtfo

or why we "have to" "chip (our) way to the real through this pixelated thicket"

isn't this a way or reasserting the connection between the art & the real world, a sorta poetic praxis? idk, it seems to me to complement the piece's overall argument which is that this album at once attempts to liberate you from the boundaries of IRL thru the internet while reminding you that such liberation is impossible. the thing is, again, i don't think the prose here is turned on blowing up how good this record is; it's def artful but in the name of precision and effect, rather than hyperbole

or how this isn't an awful review

because it's very well written?

can't remember if this was linked up above but ilxor of merit wrote about this stuff too on p-fork:

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/485-pc-music/

My main issue is all the "woe is digital life" isn't a novel approach in a world full of Radiohead LPs.

i don't really know this stuff at all. i did enjoy "bipp" a lot. and did feel like it was a subversion of something or other.

i'm thinking my 9 year old would love this stuff.

I think appreciation of the review depends on thinking that PC Music justifies that kind of analysis. If not, it reads as overblown. By taking a more sceptical approach the Guardian feature gave readers who suspect that it's bullshit more to chew on.

PC Music is just a bit of fun, let's be cool

Getting through this entire album is an unbelievable chore

This melody is like a Garth & Kat sketch.

https://open.spotify.com/track/4FFLoQUHYvKaa3aU2gE7Rz

I think appreciation of the review depends on thinking that PC Music justifies that kind of analysis.

― Continue your brooding monologue (Re-Make/Re-Model)

no it fucking doesn't, this is stan logic. (or, maybe more accurately, comments section logic.) if your criteria for whether a review is good are "do I agree with this score?" then that's your problem and you should probably deal with it.

http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/video/video.snl.com/SNL_1564_08_Update_4_Karth_Kat.png

IT'S beeeEEEYUUUN

this is pretty terrible writing sorry: "Instead of affection, they’ll give you a heart-shaped simulacrum—and maybe, as suggests PC Music, that’s what you wanted after all. When physical presence is a source of so much complication, sometimes an abstraction is the only thing a person can bear," and if you're going to ref baudrillard i think you need to do more w/ it than describe the aesthetics - there needs to be a broader reading of how PC Music a. reflects society at large, b. is even more real than the society it nominally represents.

'heart-shaped simulacrum' i don't even know i guess it sounds pretty

"simulacrum" is sufficiently well-known as a concept that writers can now use it without spending 1000 words per piece wanking about Baudrillard (who is never mentioned; if you really want to read a PC Music/Baudrillard take then that's also on you)

'You wish you didn’t live in a world that produced PC Music, but you do—and because you do, thank the god in the machine for PC Music. It’ll come whispering and screaming in an absolute vacuum; it’s a party reconstituted long after anyone’s been there to laugh. It’s empty, and yet somehow the stakes are monumental. Can you chip your way to the real through this pixelated thicket? Well, you can, and worse, you have to.' idk, maybe the review is kinda doing what it claims PC Music is doing - layered vapid signifiers as an empty artificial representation of content - which is clever, i guess. but i don't really know what much of this is trying to say. how is PC Music a 'god in the machine'? it is coming to save us from itself? why does it exist in an absolute vacuum? i thought the point was that it was an artificial representation of reality? and is it itself smashing some kind of alienated access to the real, or do you have to chip through yourself as a listener? if its the latter, why do we need PC Music at all? bc it's so gross that it serves as a wake-up call?

sorry this is probably giving it much more thought than it wants. as a review mirroring the pastiche of PC Music it is very clever and i like some of the turns of phrases in it. which is a lot like my appreciation for PC Music - some of it is catchy. not much more than that.

katherine, I wasn't actually criticising the review. I was just trying to figure out why some posters thought it was so awful and wondered if it was more to do with intense dislike of PC Music's schtick than the writing itself. But that obviously backfired.

One thing about PC Music's alleged relationship to mainstream pop - mainstream US/UK pop doesn't sound like this. This sounds more like the sort of thing Richard X was doing 10 years ago, ie already quite cute and knowing. Tweak Keri Baby or In My Dreams slightly and they could be Annie singles.

"sorry this is probably giving it much more thought than it wants"

i'd say the review was a success. made ya think - made ya think!

I'm down for hearing some PC Music, if anyone wants to post a link. I just thought the review said very little about the music itself and read more like a press release from OK Computer or something.

lots of music in the PS thing on PC that i linked to above:

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/485-pc-music/