pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

For when you want to be subversive and challenging but not to the point of attracting attention.

actually now that I think about it, I don't even know what buttrock is

To me it fails as a primer because it doesn't really make O'Rourke's work seem particularly appealing or worth revisiting. It also doesn't make a good case that the work is worth grappling with despite its flaws, or influential, and it doesn't make a point about, say, why O'Rourke isn't as "famous" as he used to be. The basic format is:

a) Here's this guy who used to be revered
b) No one's heard of him anymore I guess.
c) Most people who like him are pretentious assholes
d) I like his records fine, here are some lukewarm descriptions

slow news day?

i mean you gotta write about something.

To some people this will mean a great deal; to the other 99.99% percent of the population it will mean nothing at all.

jim o'rourke should do a Back To The 90's tour with built to spill. get his name out there to the kids.

It's abt the writer and what he wants us to think of him, I think

powell otm re: insignificance afaic, that is a shit record

what triggered me about that release is my own personal baggage re the-way-people-talk-about-jim-o'rourke. dude has been working his whole career on projects of all sorts of scale and levels of visibility, and yet mike powell essentially reduces his output to a ranking of his five DC releases. which is how most people approach him, ignoring his other contributions. i can't imagine any jim o'rourke retrospective not starting with fenn'o'berg. and also how most people deal with him now, like, "oh where's he been all these years?" as if a working musician's existence hinges exclusively on their visibility. maybe it's just my own baggage. i just think the "lol what happened to HER?" kind of US weekly approach is suuuuuper out of place when you're talking about a friggin drone musician / producer-mixer of weirdo records

*article, not release

Jonathan Zwickel's review of Sherwood at the Controls is a million times better than that horrible O'Rourke thing, maybe he's Pitchfork's finest

Agreeing w/ the ppl who are saying that that O'Rourke article is absolute dogshit - I'm not a regular PFork reader, but my memory is that they did used to have writers who knew SOMETHING about improv/noise etc, and who might have been able to write something interesting and useful about some of the hundreds and hundreds of non-song based albs that O'Rourke has made.

FWIW, The Wire ran a much better, more comprehensive and less ignorant O'Rourke overview a couple of years ago.

Wasn't O'Rourke pretty involved in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? Only mixing, but a lot of what people like about YHT is the mixing, right? Wouldn't it have been the logical thing to tell people to drum up interest, or have the kids these days already forgotten YHT?

Yeah! Good chance the reviewer forgot/didn't know/cldnt be bothered doing research, to (maybe unfairly, oh well) judge by his tone

he has a fair few performance credits on yhf too so i'd be surprised if he didn't have at least something to do with the arrangements on it.

The O'Rourke albums Powell includes are, in fact, the only ones I've heard. I like all of them, but I've never had much interest in checking out his other stuff (besides Gastr del Sol, which is what got me into him in the first place). I suspect that there are would-be O'Rourke fans with interests and sensibilities similar to mine, so a primer explicitly restricted to his Drag City output makes sense to me.

I do see fgti's point that it inadvertently reduces his career to those five albums ... but if it's written for people who haven't heard a lick of O'Rourke, are those not good places to start?

Eureka is kind of a perfect pitchfork album. but do pitchfork readers still care about van dyke parks? the world moves so quickly now...

i've never heard a jim o'rourke album or an album that he was a big part of that i needed to keep. he's done a lot for sure, and worked with lots of people i like, but his stuff always feels like exercise to me. the trying on of hats. talented in his way, for sure!

in fact, my primer would be a list of recordings by people he has played or worked with. there are borbetomagus and voice crack albums that are way more essential to hear then any o'rourke record. same goes for haino, ambarchi, faust, tony conrad, uh, it's a long list. brice-glace and gastr del sol were "avant garde" within the context of chicago indie rock of that time, but in the wider and wilder world of weirdness, they are pretty low on the totem pole.

Those yearly Haino/Ambarchi/O'Rourke live recs are some of the best things any one of them have been involved with, imho, and O'Rourke's solo alb on Mego - I'm Happy and I'm Singing - is as at least as good as any of the Drag City albs

i actually see a lot of his activity as boosterism for other people and he probably does bring attention to other people who i admire more ( kinda like thurston does) and this is always a good thing. if only one indie jim o'rourke fan buys a hafler trio or christoph heemann record....the world will be a better place. or loren connors. or zeena parkins.

at the end of the day, weasel walter is a more compelling figure to me in the world of prolific and hyperactive 20th and 21st century american composition.

Yeah, was just going to post that a better Primer would also include some of the things he's reissued, like Plux Quba or the stuff on Dexter's Cigar.

That Nuno Canavarro album "Plux Quba" on Moikai is an all time top 10 or so for me, so yeah

Whoops yeah as said, sry

the o'rourke (via sonic youth) gateway into improv etc was definitely a big one for me in my late teens, yeah. he's also a much more appealing ~character~ (which is presumably useful for this kind of primer) as this roving polymath doing electroacoustic albums one day and indie pop ones the next than as just some dude who released a few nice indie-ish albums a while back

i actually see a lot of his activity as boosterism for other people and he probably does bring attention to other people who i admire more ( kinda like thurston does) and this is always a good thing. if only one indie jim o'rourke fan buys a hafler trio or christoph heemann record....the world will be a better place. or loren connors. or zeena parkins.

― scott seward,

if only one scott seward could crawl out of their asshole....the world will be a better place.

I want to make a comment/retort here but I keep circling back to the idea of a group of people sharing an asshole and shuddering

i was just hoping for a gif

you sure about that?

well... I don't want spread cheeks if that's what you mean

this sure took a turn

And coughed

You need to find another doctor.

human centipitchfork

pinch forks's bum (#3438465

http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/9634-boss-status-speedy-ortiz-make-power-moves/

I feel like in 2015 we can concede that it's not interesting or unusual for someone who plays "indie rock" to enjoy hip-hop music.

Hip-hop has been mainstream popular for over 30 years. It's not interesting or unusual for anyone to enjoy it.

the resilient, outspoken, and autonomous attitude of rap

full quote is "the resilient, outspoken, and autonomous attitude of rap at this point," which I guess is in sharp contrast to the focus on codependency and meekness that has defined the rap music before this point.

almost startling to read "the 26-year-old poetry MFA holder" as a neutral descriptor

x-post--

And though the 26-year-old poetry MFA holder grew up enamored of the songwriting of Elliott Smith and Fiona Apple, her psychic compass can’t help but pull towards the resilient, outspoken, and autonomous attitude of rap at this point.

I think the writer's use of "at this point" here is to compare what Dupuis "grew up" with and what she is listening to now, not rap then and rap now. In a NY Times interview she also talked about listening to rap (as well as Pavement and Aaliyah) but as I recall the interviewer did not add any special descriptive terms to describe her listening-- it was just "hey what are you listening to?". Pretty standard question to ask any musician, even if its generic.

yeah, you're right, classic dangling modifier situation

I've written that phrase many times in student essays.

Does anyone actually listen to Speedy Ortiz or do they only exist in retweet form?

Glass houses, dude

?

oh you made a "who cares" dig despite knowing your friends like this band, so i did the usual call out of irony, don't sweat it no harm meant

I think the four or five music media professionals I know that like this band don't count as "anyone" except in the most literal sense of the word

i know maura is a fan; she is a very literal someone by my estimation (and yrs of course)

Damn that's cold

Xpost