pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

I still like the first two Doves records. The Cedar Room soundtracked a good chunk of the early 2000s for me.

Britpop was over once Oasis lost Bonehead and Guigsy.

I like those Doves records, too. I pulled out Some Cities not too long ago and was still pretty happy with it. They weren't bad live, either.

I didn't like Some Cities much. I didn't like the production, thought the songwriting wasn't up to snuff and got the feeling that the band had said all it needed to say on its first couple of records. I got off the bus at that point.

Anyway, as I was saying on the Boo Radleys thread, I've made my peace with quite fair bit of stuff from this '90s period of UK guitar music - there was quite a few years when I wasn't interested in at all and it was very much the last thing I wanted to listen to. My stance on the whole period is that "Britpop" is a useless word which doesn't actually mean anything and arguably it didn't even exist, and it's easier to look at that period as just a series of guitar bands... some which were good, some which weren't. Some of the music has aged well, and some hasn't. Yes, guitar music was popular to a degree, but a lot of other things were at the time. Yes, Oasis may have headlined Knebworth and were an incredibly popular band at the time, but when it comes down to it this period of guitar music was not really as popular as the likes of John Harris pretend it was. It was but one thing happening during a time when there were many things happening, and its "importance" has become unnecessarily overinflated. It does the best of the music made during that time and the artists that made that music no favours at all.

i just picked up a 2CD of doves last broadcast that had a bunch of electronic remixes on 2nd disc

Ach, my post here went to I donno where in the ether, but basically ach i donno. But Some Cities gets more play in this household purely by being in a differently shaped case (possibly a special edition), it is filed more accessibly than their other albums (which may be filed in the most convenient/unaccessible rn place: my mother's loft). All great tho. I had major positive comments regarding Kenickie and Shampoo and (even!)Hefner, but I ain't typing all that shit again, that is a nonsense list and anything I type in response is nonsense. Short version: St Etienne win whatever.

bb-era suede are fucking amazing, obviously

doves records sound great but don't really have great tunes.. they get too corn syrupy sometimes too.

and yeah saint etienne win everything

i love that embrace song! it builds in a pretty great way.

― maura, Thursday, March 30, 2017 6:27 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i really like the whole album.. i'm not sure why, the mix of tuneless oasis rips and dreary ballads seems like it would be the most boring thing ever but i feel it hard.

Post-Bernard Butler Suede are great too: sure, they went off the boil a little after Coming Up, but Bloodsports and Night Thoughts are both wonderful records, IMO.

yeah Night Thoughts (almost wrote Night Sports) was surprisingly excellent! tbh, it was probably your effusive posts in one of the suede threads that got me to check it out

I was hoping that Blur could have pulled off a similar return, because I really liked 'Under The Westway' and thought they might be able to return refreshed with a new record, but The Magic Whip was underwhelming. Reading between the lines, though, it seems that Damon really wasn't into the idea of making a new Blur record to begin with, whereas with Suede they're definitely all on the same page these days.

How about this bullshit nugget:

"The French psych pop musician released her self-titled debut in 2012, and, for much of that time, the production of Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker defined her".

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/18955-melodys-echo-chamber-cross-my-heart/?mbid=homepage-more-latest-and-video

"Rock’n’Roll Animals: Musicians Tell Us All About Their Pets"

It's weird how you can still see remnants of the old site clutching on, a Mike Powell review here, a Marc Masters review there, etc. And just utter crap rising up around it. I feel like someone else made this point earlier in the thread, but it reminds me a lot of the transition Melody Maker made before it folded.

looking forward to the Top 50 Romo Albums list on Pitchfork soon, then

controversial opinion: if Melody Maker's transition had involved more articles where musicians told us about their pets, it would not have folded.

but seriously, the pets article should be in the pitchfork is good thread, not the pitchfork is dumb thread. pop stars talking about their pets is always good.

they actually reviewed an Ahmad Jamal re-issue the other day, probably a tactic to try and draw old degenerates like me in and then snare me with their upcoming Camden lurch top 100.

i like that pets piece but i generally like pets

the pets feature is great!

http://www.spin.com/tag/pet-sounds/

yeah i really missed that feature!

I didn't invent the idea of musicians talking about their pets obviously (CMJ and Decibel did it before me, I think). Best one of that batch was Marnie Stern, because it's not only the cutest pet but had a harrowing tale

hipster puppies of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your leash

hipster puppies were so cute, def one of my fav internet things

:)

Chance the Rapper Had the Most Amazing Birthday Cake

also, who edits this fucking thing?

It’s back-to-basics energy and prosaic storytelling make it his best solo album in years.

its not it's and prosaic is a bad thing, you idiot

No it isnt

lmao

If someone called me 'prosaic' I would absolutely assume I was being called 'basic,' and so would you. I just have no idea why someone would use that word to describe Ray Davies, who is an "everyman," sure (I guess that's what the author is trying to say?), but--like Mark E Smith or Lou Reed--is a poet first and is anything but ordinary and dull, which is what 99% of people think when they see that word

I also probably wouldn't have noticed the shitty word usage if the author knew the difference between "its" and "it's"

but let's split hairs, sure

mark e smith lyrics are prosaic u dismal pedant

Barry used the word correctly in the article, Wimmels. Your problem is with the dek which, in most cases, "the author" didn't write.

no katherine

This is by no means a hill I wish to die on, but there isn't a writer alive who would take being called "prosaic" a compliment, which makes the word choice in the context of this very positive review rather baffling

Barry says Davies' details are prosaic, not Davies himself. And this isn't even some "I didn't call you a bitch, I said you were acting like a bitch" pedantry. Sometimes masterful songwriters sing about prosaic details and its what gives their music depth.

Like what would a song like the Beatles' "A Day In the Life" even be without the prosaic details?

4000 less holes

tbf those holes were rather small

http://pitchfork.com/features/festival-report/10059-are-music-festival-lineups-getting-worse/

this is a weird article in re how it doesn't really address the question in the title and doesn't acknowledge any kind of inside perspective into festival lineups vis a vis pitchfork fest. in fact, pfork fest is barely acknowledged at all. i'm also confused by the gender breakdown chart - if there's a band with two women and two men, it seems like that should count "more" than a solo female artist, but it doesn't seem like they're counting it that way? i don't know, just a weird and not particularly useful article.

to turn the pedantry up a notch, let's consider this alternate reading of the sentence:

"It’s back-to-basics energy and prosaic storytelling make it his best solo album in years."

i.e. the album is back-to-basics energy; prosaic storytelling make[s] it his best... (in which case the error here would be the plural rather than singular form of "to make")

eh?

anyway, agree w/ wimmels that prosaic as a descriptor for lyrics is almost always derogatory; the word more or less means banal, pedestrian, unexceptional, even dull. "dazzling with prosaic details" is just a very misguided construction.

to turn the pedantry up a notch, let's consider this alternate reading of the sentence:

"It’s back-to-basics energy and prosaic storytelling make it his best solo album in years."

Again, this sentence was probably not by the author of the review, which is who Wimmels is quibbling with

i think you're sort of missing my point, but yes i understand the author didn't necessarily write those first two lines.

anyway, the author certainly wrote this:

This is Davies in Dylan mode, hyperbolic but as dazzling with prosaic details as his student Jarvis Cocker.

i'm not saying that a lyricist has never employed the prosaic to artistic effect. i'm just saying that it would be an unusual choice of words to call that effect "dazzling," and for that reason i think the author doesn't know what the word really means. that's all.

or maybe it was slang for prose mosaic

regardless, we should really keep this conversation going

lmao holy shit i was reading the story about the brainiac documentary and the hyperlink for the kickstarter campaign was this http://deadspin.com/5986076/ladies-jr-smiths-twitter-come-on-will-have-you-sopping-wet

no idea why I was mentioned, I don't give a shit about "prosaic" either way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

not to speak for whiney but i think he was nodding to your past posts about editors sabotaging stories by tinkering with the titles

xpost lol @ ulysses

the very existence of public-facing stories is greater sabotage than any editor could possibly inflict