pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

ilx

http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/92f094f881cb805fa168a4defeabd6ad/201527734/lead10-2016-acura-ilx-fd.jpg

LOLJ

I would bet there is a better good-review-to-purchased-album ratio from a Needle Drop than Best New Music at this point

literally no-one in the biz would take a needle drop absolute rave over a pitchfork 8.0

I don't think festival bookers or whoever have picked up on it yet

Simply cannot believe people in THE BIZ are out of touch! Someone brew some coffee and call Lefsetz, we're gonna have an all-nighter!

Ian Cohen's ANOHNI tweets

I wish blocking somebody extended to hearing about them on Facebook, group chat, irl conversation, not to mention their livelihood

Whatever room that man is in he is the worst man in it

he contrasted it with an emo album about the awesome overwhelming organizational powers of hetero love which is unfortunate

(meaning the hotelier's goodness)

he awesome overwhelming organizational powers of hetero love

how is that any different from most emo

i would totally buy an album about the overwhelming organizational powers of hotelier love.

how is that any different from most emo

most emo is extremely bitter about the failures of straight love!

That's also really interesting to see what looks like a very aggressive rebrand of Pitchfork to include more R&B and Datpiff rap mixtapes instead of like reviewing 300 Burger Records clones and letting Grayson and Marc talk about Hair Police or w/e. All of which means more POC, more women, more LGBT — all unquestionably awesome and great from a purely ideological and philosophical standpoint that I'm sure 100% of ILX (including myself) would laud.

I wish Pitchfork wrote about Hair Police.

how is that any different from most emo

most emo is extremely bitter about the failures of straight love!

― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson),

cynic = failed romantic, etc

straight love drives like THIS. and gay love drives like THIS. is what i think when i see "straight love". i've watched too many simpsons.

lol

One makes babies and the other makes 9/11

I wish Pitchfork wrote about Hair Police.

they come to me in my hair

why are all the references to Scientist in the past tense, dude is still alive:
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21810-junjo-presents-wins-the-world-cup/

well I guess it's one reference "was a master of the form". He's still a master of the form!

I feel like what's happening to P4K now is roughly analogous to the way Melody Maker went down. Less outsidery stuff, short form winning out over long form, a lot of writers who'd been there for a while suddenly disappearing or marginalized, ham-fisted attempts to court audiences outside their regular demo. I see why it's being done of course, it's just not all that interesting to me.

short form winning out over long form

curious narrative derived from a site that started out publishing 600-ish word reviews and still publishes 600-ish word reviews. like, i know i'm a contributor but i'm not exactly here to defend the site, i just don't see this (or see it in a way that isn't also echoed in 100 percent of the rest of the internet)

a lot of writers who'd been there for a while suddenly disappearing or marginalized

several contributors followed jess hopp to mtv news

Well, if you open up the site the first thing you see at the top of the page are three short form news stories. There are less album reviews being published, or they've been bumped to the Saturday graveyard. The Out Door is gone. The Pitch and track reviews are somehow not very easy to find. There are boxes all over the homepage full of short news stories. That's clearly the emphasis now.

junjo lawes was the king of 1982! love him soooooo much.

my friend tippa does gigs with scientist. very alive and very well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvKX64DHmqI

ALSO TIPPA'S NEW ALBUM ON STONES THROW IS REALLY GOOD PITCHFORK YOU SHOULD REVIEW IT. pitchfork lurks here, right? here's tippa giving me my copy.

https://scontent-yyz1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13001289_10154700574167137_1744310443394894160_n.jpg?oh=911b102d6928f91564fdacb9227d4a97&oe=57A2F355

Simply cannot believe people in THE BIZ are out of touch! Someone brew some coffee and call Lefsetz, we're gonna have an all-nighter!

lol these clueless squares actually know a fuckload more about actually making money than, say, yrself (or me, mind)

needledrop review = hey cool! somebody might maybe come to a show and buy merch!
pitchfork review = hey cool! money!

I feel like what's happening to P4K now is roughly analogous to the way Melody Maker went down. Less outsidery stuff, short form winning out over long form, a lot of writers who'd been there for a while suddenly disappearing or marginalized, ham-fisted attempts to court audiences outside their regular demo. I see why it's being done of course, it's just not all that interesting to me.

― Position Position, Thursday, May 5, 2016 12:13 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk if 2012 counts as "been there for a while" (and I still write for them, plan to keep writing for them) but I would say the fluctuation, movement and disappearance of writers is more due to a) larger media trends and b) events in writers' personal lives.

Quitting writing is like planting a tree, the best time to do it was 10 years ago, the second best time is now

^^^ wisdom of silenus

Quitting writing is like planting a tree, the best time to do it was 10 years ago, the second best time is now

so very much about (music) writing 2k16 irritates me but none of it irritates me as much as this jaded (ex-)writer shtick (or worse some smug fuck who never made it their career) of telling writers they're stupid for trying to do it

not so much stupid as cursed

as we know from cable news talk shows, embittered former nobodies can sometimes make a living

that is also an irritating insinuation

xp

obviously being a writer is a very tough career in many ways but it's incredibly unbecoming imo if ultimately you're not a bit grateful that you got to spend some or most or all of your career making a living, however small, from it i would rather have had the past decade and counting of being broke and uncertain than sitting mouldering in an office job that i hate, even if it allowed me to buy a house and have a pension. so quit the fucking jaded shtick

95 percent of music writers should quit right now, today, not because it's a doomed career path but because they're fucking terrible at it and the market will never reward them for getting better.

I don't know if I agree with that -- I get a moderate amount of emails from high school and/or college students asking me how to break into journalism, and I never respond, not because I don't care but because I don't think I can ethically encourage them to do this to the rest of their lives, and I've never believed in the whole "you regret what you didn't do, not what you did" meme. if that makes me jaded, so be it.

but then, I am also fucking terrible

the implication of my post of course was that writing=living and quitting=dying; i guess i'm grateful for life but i don't go around recommending it to the unborn

*apathetic shrug, puff of clove*

thread getting weird

95 percent of music writers should quit right now, today, not because it's a doomed career path but because they're fucking terrible at it and the market will never reward them for getting better.

― Don Van Gorp, midwest regional VP, marketing (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, May 5, 2016 7:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've seen the market reward PLENTY of truly terrible writers

david brooks is his own cottage industry of hate reads

yeah you can do really good being shitty. it probably even helps to be a little shitty.

most people hiring writers just want what most employers want from their employees. the ability to crank shit out fast and not complain. and to be on time.

being broke and uncertain than sitting mouldering in an office job that i hate,

what's super cool is doing both at the same time

actually, i don't really mean shitty. though there is a lot of shit. but people who can blend in with a format/style in a generic way. they tend to do better. i think they always have. that doesn't have to be shitty. that's just being a pro (or a hack if you are mean). i've always thought that people who did a lot of newspaper writing were best able to fit the format elsewhere. magazines, websites, etc. you learn a lot doing grunt work journalism. i read a lot of stuff now that just seems really inexperienced and written by people who will be doing something completely different in a few years. that's why i appreciate the good stuff so much now when i see it because it isn't really necessary to BE really good in so many places.

I'm grateful that I did it as long as I did, but tbh it was mostly just good luck. I think it sucks the way things are but by the end I almost felt bad that we'd have interns classes every three months. Lots of good writers but where are the jobs going to be? It's just tough and frankly I saw the future and it scared me. With a kid I just felt like I couldn't afford to gamble. No one retires a game writer, and if I didn't change now when? 10 years from now? With no experience besides the one jobI'd already had for 16 since I was an intern in college? I had recruiters tell me straight up that was a problem some companies wouldn't wasn't to look at me because I guess having one job is bad now. If can see why that came off as smug but I was scared shitless. And that was the last couple years, what about in 5? 10? I hope to maybe write for fun or beer money down the road but I don't know, I certainly wouldn't encourage my daughter to go into journalism. And shit we were still like the 5th biggest mag in the U.S. W 6 million circ and I know they already cared more about youtubers and twitch.advertising was down for years.

Shit was always hard for freelance as far as I can tell, I wouldn't have had the guts for that. So I had to gamble my future on another 25 years of a cushy mag position, or bail.

Plus I really if I was being honest with myself ib wasn't really enjoying it, the current climate isn't very fun, felt like you'd try to do something good and it gets no hits then the worst things I would do just to get something up would do great.... I also became paralyzed by the comments like you end up spending half your time antipating every possible angle someone could rip you apart in the comments or on Twitter, especially with reviews. Then gamergate happened and people are getting like death threats over video game bullshit and now I write marketing copy and stuff but I go home at 5 and don't have to work until 1 am on deadline and we have great coffee.

thread got dark night of the soul

Ha overcompensating for being overly glib. But I just think that continuing to say oh you can do it just gotta adapt, be great and hustle ignores all these large scale economic, business, tech and social trends that just make it harder for writers now. And yeah sure I could tell about 80 hour weeks and 20 workdays when I started but mostly I was in the right place at the right time and there are just less of those places and times now.