pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

ok so we've covered the "why isn't she paying attn to ___ which is worse??" argument, i guess we can expect "she's the REAL racist" any minute now

I get that, but if your argument is predicated in no small part on "there are not enough people like me, and these are the four examples," then really every excluded or overlooked example weakens the argument. Especially if you're vague about criteria. That's why I think the essay would have worked better as a strictly personal account of what it is like to be or feel excluded, because the way it was presented the piece unfortunately boils down to the banality of numbers. But obviously there could be lots of people "just like me" and I can still feel left out, overlooked, excluded or underrepresented. The cultural blinders and insensitives of indie and really all music across the spectrum is pervasive, and I guess I would have preferred a piece along those lines as opposed to something that felt both very specific (south Asians in indie) and yet still somehow incomplete.

But obv, write-on, writer. I'd rather something provocative and incomplete than boring, and she does bring up plenty of great points regardless.

good that you made your voice heard then

hey, she made me think about american indie rock and i don't even listen to american indie rock. not new american indie rock anyway. i do enjoy listening to pavement. i love those guitars!

Good thing there is an online forum where we can post freely about such things as Music and Everything.

ok but

what if instead

you just didn't?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DmYLrxR0Y8

Man, she should turn her scope on Hollywood.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, March 30, 2015 5:29 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah or nazi germany!

ffs

lol

My approach to this kind of thing lately has been "Give 'em enough rope" and I'm happy to see that JiC et al. have proven me right

they make money from music. if u want unfiltred music coverage why are u at p4k. u should only use it for news. it wants you to buy music it links to and ads to. it doesn't care what you think of its reviews or writers. The whole review scoring system is designed so certain albums cannot ever get a low score. p4k doesn't like giving things low scores.

My approach to this kind of thing lately has been "Give 'em enough rope"

Bc that sentence was dumb and looked bad and the essay is less objectionable without it

Lol I was a little drunk last night but just to be clear, my approach to people who react negatively to pieces like this has been "Give 'em enough rope"

You're doing a very admirable job of dying on this little hill, JiC

p4k doesn't like giving things low scores.

― Arctic Noon Auk, Tuesday, March 31, 2015 3:44 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i do miss the days of frequent pans (i suspect my 30 or so reviews would probably have the lowest average score of any writer in PF history), but the funny thing about them so rarely dipping below like 7.6 for well regarded artists is that people now get REALLY up in arms about a 7.5 as if it's the cruelest poison pen letter review ever.

Sometimes a score like a 6.5 or something is even worse than a notably low one because it generates no discussion at all! In the PF universe an album with that score just kind of dissipates from the consciousness of readers without really anyone having even noticed.

after some googling, seeing that they gave scores in the 2 range to both of the latest pixies releases (justified), 3 to gaslight anthem (kinda strange to see ian cohen of all fucking people rip a band that's more or less emo), 3.9 to dillon francis (entirely justified that shit is trash), 3.9 to a terrible/disappointing nachmystium album, and a bunch of stuff i havent listened to beyond that

but most of those are, in one way or another, #onbrand targets for pitchfork - like you won't see anyone breaking ranks to trash the latest pile of body fluids and sounds known as ariel pink's pom pom

i miss these days http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9464-shine-on/

In some UK magazines grade inflation for big acts is so established that a three-star translates as a hatchet job. Likewise any Pitchfork grade below 7 I guess.

and video games reviews, where anything under 80% is a vicious pan

there's also a lot more than 25 albums that get released every week. reviewers frequently want to write about bands that they like. if they had 10 reviews a day instead of 5, they would probably get stuck reviewing more records that they actively dislike, and the average score would likely drop.

El-P Shares Run The Jewels 2 Clean Version

How is this a top news story?

In other news, new Sufjan album has front and back cover art

Because they are concerned with keeping the artists they helped break in the front of your mind and tied in with PF in the process. So anytime you think of the most successful artists in the indie world you think of pitchfork.

Perhaps the conversation has shifted, but I wanted to step up and defend ratings. Not Pitchfork's per se, but ratings in general. (It seems the problem with ratings, for me anyway, is a lack of dissent, but that's another argument).
As a consumer I find them a very useful starting point for discovering new music, especially when I'm doing some type of genre and/or catalog deep dive of music/band with which I'm unfamiliar.

Pitchfork was more fun when it gave 0.0s to Zaireeka and Boy with the Arab Strap.

It's amazing how fast backlash used to be. Arab Strap came out only two years after Sinister, and yet the pfork review talked about how belle and sebastian like they were this venerable institution that was letting down their fans with a "mediocre" record that "parodied" themselves. What was the expectation? I don't think disappointing sophomore albums are discussed this way anymore, especially if they follow fast on the heels of a classic. It's like time has sped up or something

arab strap was actually 0.8; i remember because it is the funniest pitchfork rating ever, to me. so close to a 1! but not quite 1-caliber.

I don't think disappointing sophomore albums are discussed this way anymore, especially if they follow fast on the heels of a classic.

i thought it was still the classic pfork move to laud the debut and shrug at the follow-up.

It's like time has sped up or something

unless it's a rapper who gets constant coverage on the basis of mixtapes and then gets their album panned, but that's more of a general issue.

Have to respect the algorithms of the software they use. The results are scientific and objective.

xp

So were those tweets from the author of that "unbearable whiteness" article ranting about white people real?

Twitter isnt real its just words

Are you a YT? xp

read that as "Are you a YouTube"

wait, did 龜 really mean "are you a YouTube"?

So did I

Seriously though, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBDsRdxWsAAnEb9.jpg

tell me more

More what, context? That Twitter is the author of the article mention previously on the thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xctuMC9jCBk

please elaborate on why those tweets are notable, SurfaceKrystal

poor wites they never had a chance against this yung south asian writer, rip wites

all of those tweets otm

pitchfork is like the only place on earth that ever cared about deerhoof

― J0rdan S., Monday, March 30, 2015 4:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Deerhoof has been a consistant live draw for over a decade

"white people sure are excited about unbreakable kimmy schmidt"

lol

xpost well, she wasn't really done with white people in 2012

Notable? Oh I just thought it was quite funny

why