pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

I wonder if it's going to serve anyone's needs. I don't think a web- only publication can attract readers interested in Alanis Morissette and Kylie Minogue. To my knowledge, no one actually hunts down information about such artists. People just hear about it on tv and that's it. Let's give Pitchfork a few months, until the corporate contributors pull the plug.

QUOTE OF THE YEAR.

the first thing i thought (after, well, this is no all cure all the time) was that i wished they really had "sold out" (what the fuck, is this 93?), because maybe it would mean LESS GODDAMN PROG.

Well, the Albini thing practically is...

Makes sense, really.

Well, the Albini thing practically is... huh???

You have completed your learning of life's lessons. Now, you suck ass just like all the other bores before you. Kylie, Alanis? Whatever, bitch. I am sure you already have the defense mechanisms in place so, this will mean nothing but, another exercise in...oh, who cares. Looking elsewhere for reality...or maybe I can pretend to be a rubber worm like pitchwhore.com...here big fishie, look, I rounded 'em up for you in a arrel. A whole demographic!

Not Funny

Y'know sometimes they really are asking for it:

"White Williams issues a debut album layered with impeccable influences-- including Roxy Music, Beck, and T. Rex-- and a sense of calculated disaffection."

Well shit SIGN ME UP.

Yeah, that was a bit of a repellant blurb if I ever saw one.

Wait, are you saying that doesn't seem accurate?

I read 'White' as 'While' and thought "The Saul Williams album sounds like that?"

it's more that they used that as their _hook_

x-post

The front blurbs are always stripped/condensed summary descriptions from the review inside -- in this case

His songs are thin and languorous, with impeccable influences and the sort of calculated disaffection that comes from an MFA in design and a good weed connection.

omg that is horrorshow

The blurb >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the article quote

I assume that's an article quote; nabisco, if you just made that up then SHAME ON YOU.

why would a critic ever try to guess where a song comes from?

I'm more bothered by beck as impeccable influence

Wait, are you saying that doesn't seem accurate?

The description of "a sense of calculated disaffection", a combination of words that makes me imagine the shittiest band of all time, followed by "recommended" was repellant for me. I guess I like my disaffection to be natural, not carefully planned, so I would never recommend something like that.

Then again, I've never heard it so what do I know and so on.

b-but someone at pfork said "hm, how can we get people to read this review? I know! we'll mention the artist's impeccable influences and calculated disaffection! that'll reel 'em in!"

RIP satire etc

they could have collaged+mis-used _anything_ from the article, and they collaged+mis-used that

The White Williams album reminds me much more of late 10cc and Bread than of Roxy Music. That bit was like the classic "Let's over-hip our influences" review.

The description of "a sense of calculated disaffection", a combination of words that makes me imagine the shittiest band of all time, followed by "recommended" was repellant for me.

See, this sounds like the blurb WORKED for you -- i.e., efficiently let you know you would probably not like this act.

I agree, though, it looks kind of weird to have such a neutral-to-disparaging summary blurb on a recommended album.

I like how they gave the new Babyshambles, which is actually tuneful and a good all around album, a 4.0, but gave the first one, which is dreadful and hard to listen to / bloated, a 7.3,

Yeah, it was definitely TWICE as good as the new one. Fuckin' morons.

ugh, "impeccable influences" is really repulsive.

(xpost) was that a parody or are you really getting worked up about an internet score for babyshambles

He was worked up?

wait, i thought the grading scale was logarithmic. like 5 is twice as good as 4. somebody email ryan schreiber to find out.

shit, now i need to reevaluate all my purchases of the last five years.

It's actually modelled after the Richter Scale, hence the superlative designations of various well-reviewed albums as either "Reccomended," "Best New Music," or "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On."

"White Williams issues a debut album layered with impeccable influences-- including Roxy Music, Beck, and T. Rex-- and a sense of calculated disaffection."

if anything, that reads like a good reason not to check out the album....

richter scale is logarithmic xpost

but kudos nonetheless

yeah sorry the "actually" sounded like I was disagreeing when it more of an "yeah and" thing

No band has marked indie's prog revival more definitively than Battles: Their debut, Mirrored, took rock for a set of puzzle pieces, but was ultimately defined by its pictorial sensibility-- each song felt like a cartoon soundtrack-- and the incorporation of jokes into the most historically humorless music in the known world.

wtf, wtf -- wtf? -- wtf!

the incorporation of JOKES

ya i saw that too... pretty lazy writing

How can you get paid to write if you don't know what "but" means?

jokes?!?!? has dude ever read the back of a don cab/a minor forest/whoever cd?

That bothers me more in a semantic sense: I think the album has a sense of humor, sure, but I don't know what "jokes" refers to in a largely instrumental piece of work.

joeks, bruv

You can here an interpolation of classic knock-knock jokes in "Atlas".

<i>jokes?!?!? has dude ever read the back of a don cab/a minor forest/whoever cd?

-- YGS, Friday, 2 November 2007 19:53 (10 minutes ago) Link</i>

"jokes" was horrible word choice on my part--john is right--but come on, do you really think that having a punny song title is the same as making music that is formally and sonically <i>humorous</i>? eh. don cab always struck me as definitively unfunny, they just tried to compensate with SURREAL HEADLINES.

Ha, I didn't even read the review, so I didn't know it was you, Mike.

There is a strong semantic difference between "humor" and "jokes"; they shouldn't be used interchangeably and, based on your followup here, you definitely meant the former.

Also, why did you use "but" as your conjunction? The second clause does not invert, negate, contradict or palpably change the meaning of the first clause (Mirrored being defined by pictoral sensibility and humor is not a condition that lies in opposition to it viewing rock as a set of puzzle pieces), so your sentence winds up not making any sense; you've either left out a critical piece of information or just flat-out used the wrong word.

There is a strong semantic difference between "humor" and "jokes"; they shouldn't be used interchangeably and, based on your followup here, you definitely meant the former.

Also, why did you use "but" as your conjunction? The second clause does not invert, negate, contradict or palpably change the meaning of the first clause (Mirrored being defined by pictoral sensibility and humor is not a condition that lies in opposition to it viewing rock as a set of puzzle pieces), so your sentence winds up not making any sense; you've either left out a critical piece of information or just flat-out used the wrong word.

-- HI DERE, Friday, November 2, 2007 8:19 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

you're right, 'but' wasn't a great choice. i think the idea was to say that though it had this puzzle-like quality--you could talk about how the parts fit together, like everyone does in a math-rock review--it was, for me, defined by these more abstract qualities: its sense of humor, its ability to be pictorally evocative. sure, i get what you're saying.

but seriously--human being here, willing to engage, bristles as asinine comments like the "knock-knock joke" one. furthermore--and i'd never slag scott or mark because i know they're incredibly busy guys--i think you bring the same charges to an editor. just saying.

sorry, you *could* bring the same charges. lord i grow weary of life's endless ironies.

I'm just glad you're writing regularly.

I think I'm pretty much firmly on record as someone who thinks there are a lot of editors out there who aren't doing what they should. This mostly stems from a desire to be an editor (ha).

Also I think the egregious misspelling of "hear" is more offensive than the actual knock-knock joke comment (which was an allusion to a recently-revived ILE thread).

Joke: pretending "Atlas" has a different lyric when he is very clearly singing

people like to
people like to
eat a sandwich

Also I think the egregious misspelling of "hear" is more offensive than the actual knock-knock joke comment (which was an allusion to a recently-revived ILE thread).

-- HI DERE, Friday, November 2, 2007 8:35 PM (44 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

and there i thought you were just aping my ignorance and carelessness.

(xpost - that's not actually funny, of course: people do like them some sandwiches)

i always heard the "eat a sandwich" bit as "penis terror"

though i think the sandwich lyric, in the context of the song's muscular schaffel, would basically make it a burger king commercial, which would be funny. sort of.

lolol xpost

I also first misheard the start of the chorus as "singing this hook, o-way-o," which made me imagine Battles as the Disney dwarves marching off to play songs -- hi-ho, hi-ho, singing this hook, playing this drum part, etc.

Yeah, so not spot-on, as he admits, but what Mike said in that review is clear enough, and cogent (whether you agree with him or not, he says why the band are worth considering, what's distinctive about them). Although I'm prejudiced, because I happen to agree with him:Battles are actually funny, and all about making giddy, hyperacticulate sounds that aren't just a blur or overload; in that sense, they have pop-rock appeal, like Don Cab at their best, and much more so than most of what gets called math-rock--they have a deliberately goofy-seeming grace, like the Harlem Globetrotters [which also goes with the visuals the music evokes-]and yeah, most prog isn't actually funny, def including most of the stuff that tried to be funny---although Soft Machine had their moments, til they canned Wyatt).

I also thought it was "sing this hook, o-way-o", which was much better.

people who think prog wasn't whimsical/jokey have never been forced to sit through a gentle giant cd

exception/rule.

Gong as well.

like I said, a lot of proggies *tried* to be funny (and some actually succeeded)(although whether it was as funny as the ones who didn't mean to be)

perhaps this is old news.....Atlas' lyrics, courtesy of Battles' myspace:
PEOPLE WONT BE PEOPLE WHEN THEY HEAR THIS SOUND
THAT'S BEEN GLOWING IN THE DARK AT THE EDGE OF TOWN
PEOPLE WONT BE PEOPLE, NO
THE PEOPLE WONT BE PEOPLE WHEN THEY HEAR THIS SOUND
WONT YOU SHOW ME WHAT BEGINS AT THE EDGE OF TOWN

THE SINGER IS A CROOK
THE SINGER IS A CROOK
THE SINGER IS A CROOK
THE SINGER IS A CROOK
THE KITCHEN IS THE COOK
THE SCISSORS ARE THE BARBERS
THE SINGER IS A CROOK
THE CHORUS, FULL OF ACTORS

*THE CHORUS DOESN'T MATTER (LAST VERSE)

okay.....thisreview

an iTunes-only collection of songs meant for charity? why is this even worth reviewing? (much less as the headlining review of the day?)

granted, i've got basically zero interest in this collection or Natalie Portman's charitable acts, but still, i guess i'm not sure whether a thrown-together comp meant to raise money for a charity really calls for substantive musical criticism. there isn't anything more musically interesting that was released this week?

It's a compilation with exclusive tracks from the Shins, Devendra Banhart, Beirut, M. Ward, and Rogue Wave and tracks by Antony, Vetiver, Thee More Shallows. That's relevant to our audience.

What else came out this week? Jay-Z, a Sigur Ros comp, a Grizzly Bear EP, Burial, a Tokyo Police Club EP, Citay, a Wire EP. A lot of records with little lead time between promos and release (burial, sigur ros), no promos (wire, jay-z), and some indie rock EPs.

That said, this isn't an ideal headliner to open a week. But expect a lot of compilations, reissues, and major-label releases as headliners for the next six weeks-- that's basically all that's being released.

thanks, scott. sorry for the tone - i didn't mean to come off as pissy i did

nah, it's ok-- there's also a Nas best-of, etc. This time of year advances go out very close to release dates in many cases and we don't review based on listening parties/sessions-- we prefer to wait-- so scheduling reviews is a bit of a hassle in Nov/Dec. Like I hinted, when I first made this sched this wasn't the review for today. (Hell, when I first made this sched, this release wasn't annoucned!)

Less getting up on my hind legs, more coffee.

November 6

Angels & Airwaves I-Empire Geffen
Barenaked Ladies Talk to the Hand: Live in Michigan Shout! Factory
Bright Eyes Motion Sickness: Live Recordings Team Love
Chris Brown Exclusive Jive
Dion Son of Skip James Verve Forecast
Nick Drake Fruit Tree Island
Dust Galaxy Dust Galaxy ESL
Grizzly Bear Friends EP Warp
Jay-Z American Gangster Roc-a-Fella
Daniel Johnston various re-issues Eternal Yip Eye
Van Morrison Still On Top Polydor
The Mother Truckers Broke, Not Broken Funzalo
Gram Parsons Flying Burrito Brothers Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969 Amoeba
Sigur Ros Hvarf/Heim XL
Soundtrack American Gangster Def Jam
Tokyo Police Club Smith Paper Bag
Stevie Ray Vaughan Solos, Sessions & Encores Epic

Still no new High on Fire album review? :(

oh man, I just remembered something almost as obnoxious as the Kylie review on April Fool's, about a year before that Pitchfork had a weird ironic news item about Mystikal tourdates (and this was when they were reticent about running Talib Kweli reviews, way before the Lil Wayne stan era, so they weren't just randomly posting about NOLA rappers back then). it was when "Stutter" was out so the headline was "quit your lyin', heffer," which I guess was the whole stupid point of posting it.

haha alex, i remember that but i actually lol'ed at it i think :(

"quit your lyin', heffer" = funny in any context, but they were still being dicks regardless

heifer

haha yeah sorry, i googled the lyrics w/ "heifer" at first but found nothing until i spelled it as "heffer" so the wrong version kinda stuck in my head when i posted here.

heffer=The Girls Next Door (icky "reality" show about "girlfriends"/coyly in-sin-uwaiting huffers of King Tut Hef, although I bet He don't get none of that and don't remember)

way before the Lil Wayne stan era

Ryan Schreiber:
01. Dismemberment Plan - Emergency and I (DeSoto)
02. Built to Spill - Keep It Like a Secret (Warner Bros.)
03. Lil' Wayne - Tha Block is Hot (Cash Money/Universal)
04. Ghost - Snuffbox Immanence (Drag City)
05. Olivia Tremor Control - Black Foliage (Flydaddy)
06. Archer Prewitt - White Sky (Carrot Top)
07. Jimi Tenor - Organism (Warp/Sire)
08. Beck - Midnite Vultures (DGC)
09. Sam Prekop - Sam Prekop (Thrill Jockey)
10. Pavement - Terror Twilight (Matador)

^^^is that a joke or was schr3iber 6 years ahead of the time of his own site?

people who think prog wasn't whimsical/jokey have never been forced to sit through a gentle giant cd

-- strongohulkington, Monday, 5 November 2007 13:28 (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

Gah, I'm listening to The Power and The Glory right now and it's fantastic.

i saw gong live and that was really whimsical and shitty

they took down the interpol interview where Ryan Schrieber makes an affirmative action joke re: Nelly. :(

the bass player really looked like a hobbit though and even went barefoot and played a one of those steinberger headless basses from the 80s and it was the singer's 65th birthday and he wore a silver suit with wings

ok maybe it was awesome

^^^is that a joke or was schr3iber 6 years ahead of the time of his own site?

-- J0rdan S., Tuesday, 13 November 2007 21:22 (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

Simon Reynolds was a Wayne stan back in 1999, dude probably picked it up from there.

lol they edited it out!

"Wait, you look really familiar."

"Yeah. Ryan." I extend a handshake. "I'm here from Pitchfork."

"Ohhhh!! Man, thanks for putting us on your 2002 list. That paragraph was fantastic!"

Which was a surprising response, since the paragraph in question was something of a piss-take, noting the band's "skinny ties and terrible hair," and referring to them as "art-house darlings" whose "appearance was their most embarrassing aspect."

"Well, uh, it was pretty much you guys or Nellyville."

used to have a line about how they were gonna give it to Nelly due to affirmative action but that they couldn't get past the "stupid band-aid."

the bass player really looked like a hobbit though and even went barefoot and played a one of those steinberger headless basses from the 80s and it was the singer's 65th birthday and he wore a silver suit with wings

-- M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 16 November 2007 10:55 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

terry gilliam made a movie about this

Can't wait for them to shit all over the new Hives record, largely because I like it so much, so they'll clearly be sharpening the knives.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/47031-frank

Just as guilty of reviewing her persona rather than her music as what it's railing against.

Really, what the fuck else is there to talk about with Winehouse though? Her music?

Certainly.

Re: expected trashing of the Hives. WTF? 6.2 and not a bad word against them.

LARF!
http://www.pitchforkmediadotcom.com/

^lolled at this

Ha, what else would the guy expect?

Seriously, it's like pretending like you're about to punch someone in the face and then getting mad when their first reflex is to punch you in the face for real.

I just mean ... there are lots of things people will joke around with you about via permanently preserved correspondence, but legal issues surrounding key business trademarks = seriously not one of them! I don't know that that's even a punch for real, more of a "this is not really an area in which anyone is going to dick around and have fun with you."

Ouch.

pitchforkmediadotcom is dumb (#1 in a series)

Given how many times this album was pushed back, it wouldn't be out of the question to suspect some quality control issues, but RZA himself said in The Wu-Tang Manual that he tended to gear the overall style of an album based on what time of year it dropped, and 8 Diagrams couldn't have debuted at any time other than winter-- perpetually overcast, dark before the afternoon ends, and freezing your eye water.

freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water
freezing your eye water

http://virginsuicides.no.sapo.pt/frozentear.bmp

the comments on the 'worst covers' list are, for the most part, more embarrassingly awful than the artwork.

Seriously, it's like pretending like you're about to punch someone in the face and then getting mad when their first reflex is to punch you in the face for real.

-- Alex in Baltimore, Friday, 16 November 2007 20:28 (4 weeks ago) Link

It is more like yelling, in your worst French accent, "Ah m goiiin too pawnch zhoo in theh fehce (frog laugh)" with one eye closed while dangling a baguette delicately between two fingers like a distasteful pornographic magazine discovered during an unscheduled room cleaning by your disapproving Belgian mother and then being forced to write every victim of violence in the entire world ever (even those made into kidney pie maggot-styley) explaining that a consciousness-raising committee had been formed to ban people like yourself from ever talking in silly voices about silly things again.

that is what the pitchforkmediadotcom.com situation is like.
what do I know, though?? I am just a PASSIVE OBSERVER.

No, threatening a lawsuit and assuming everybody's gonna know you were just a-funnin' because, hey, the way you phrased things was totally funny - that doesn't really compare to telegraphing your intentions via ridiculous accent and costume.

webdev lulz.

Seems more intelligent and thought out than usual. What gives?

the email to pitchfork is confounding not because it touches on "serious", unfuckwithable issues but because it's simply unfunny and pointless.

wouldn't this http://www.pitchforkmediadotcom.com/index6.htm get him off due to fair use laws regarding parody? or is the url too intentionally misleading?

also, I laughed at "beanbag chair chorizo"

<i>No, threatening a lawsuit and assuming everybody's gonna know you were just a-funnin' because, hey, the way you phrased things was totally funny - that doesn't really compare to telegraphing your intentions via ridiculous accent and costume.

-- J0hn D., Friday, 14 December 2007 10:47 (4 weeks ago) Link</i>
Well John, at least you find me totally funny! :-)

yay a famous person likes meeee

^^ ahaha !

Two of the questions from Pfork's interview of Colin Greenwood, bassist for Radiohead:

Pitchfork: The Pitchfork review of In Rainbows suggested "Radiohead have grown tired of trying to outrun themselves." What do you think of that assessment?

Pitchfork: The Pitchfork review of Hail to the Thief put forth the idea that "anything Radiohead does from here on out will sound like Radiohead"...

"For personal questions, please press 2. For favourite Torchwood character, please press 3."

I would wager most of the people who posted in this thread in 2002 and 2003 have gone on to write for the site.

I think the only one who has "gone on to" write for the site is Jess. Raposa, Dare, and Leone were already on staff at the time. I mean, unless mr. sparkle is a pseudonym for Tom Breihan or something.

who was dare

Christopher "Double" Dare

mr. sparkle = Ray Suzuki

mad lolz @ ljag

xpost: mr. sparkle = http://www.liquidmatrix.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/mrsparkleorig.jpg

i posted to ilx before i wrote for pfork, pplz

lord forgive me, the hennesey got me not knowin how to act / i'm fallin and i can't turn back

lmaaaaaaao

the mobb deep quote fits like a high-top fade, but will it make up any of the cred i'll lose forthis??? let's fucking hope so!

-- ethan, Thursday, September 13, 2001 8:00 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Link

trifnan delong

there practically isn't any Pitchfork writer on ILX who didn't post here before writing for them, except for a couple PF lifers like Rich@rdson and, well, me.

and i don't really count cause i was there for all of 3 months.

yeah i mean i started in 01 but i was posting here in 2000

xp nice try, lifer

do we count ramosi here too?

Oh hey you guys, it's Jeff again. I figured since you all collectively have such a vested interest in my, uh... COMEDY I would let you know that I'm working on a new cartoon series called Starving Muppet Babies.

Oh and here's a direct link to the most recent episode.

More to the topic, what's w/ the grade inflation lately??? So much BNM, not enough monkey urine.

FFS, Cohen, get over yourself: The Cinematic Orchestra Live at the Royal Albert Hall "review"

why do you guys bother reviewing albums by your own writers if every single one gets b/w 7.5-7.7

it's kinda played out but i still fuck with every day.

What is song Ma Fleur?

pitchforks say oneida in north carolina the 21st

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/50720-oneida-turn-iweddingi-lp-into-live-spectacle-tour

terrastock says oneida's at the fest the 21st

http://www.terrascope.co.uk/Terrastock7/Terrastock7_performers.htm

what is wrong, pitchforks?

today's two main reviews:

Bun B - II Trill - Rating: 7.7 -------------------- Recommended

Steinski - What Does It All Mean? - Rating: 8.7 ----- Not Recommended

...
..
.

????????????!??!?!?!?!!

If the Recommended or Best New Music tags were STRICTLY a function of the ratings, there wouldn't be any reason to have them.

It does say Terrastock on the 21st...of June. Winston-Salem, N.C. is the 21st of August.

Nabisco's right, but in addition to that compilations/archive releases/reissues of older material, etc., don't get those tags. (The other one being "Best New Music" and all.) There have been a few exceptions for collections of recent-ish 7"/12"-type material that most readers wouldn't have been previously familiar with (this was really stretched for the Braxe comp) but that Steinski is a collection of material from the past three decades, so...

good point Scott (i realized it was a comp. after i actually read the review, duhhh)

why does pitchfork writers never want to bob their heads to trip hop?

i would like to see a 5.8 rated album get a "Recommended"

why do you guys bother reviewing albums by your own writers if every single one gets b/w 7.5-7.7

Ta-da.

why do you guys bother reviewing albums by your own writers if every single one gets b/w 7.5-7.7

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/50523-supreme-balloon

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/50868-dominique-leone

Close but not quite:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/43468-arms-down
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/18319-geography-cones

what did rollie pemberton get

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/16509-cadence-weapon-is-the-black-hand?artist_title=16509-cadence-weapon-is-the-black-hand

I like Festival.

Not sure if it belongs in this thread (could be classic or dud)... it's known that music journalists often don't listen to records enough to make a true judgment, if at all (see: Black Crowes/Maxim)... but I rather like this admission from Scottpl. in his Pfork review of the new Radiohead best of:

The packaging is merely a few promo photos and a long essay I didn't read (sorry).

C/D?

nonfamous local chicago bands almost always ratings between like 6 and 8 also, guessing they don't want to offend

from the Notwist review today:

Acher provides a candid glimpse into a troubled marriage by describing it in terms of the material goods used to prop it up-- "I remember good lies/ When we carried them home with us/ To our bedside tables and the coffee sets"-- thereby keenly drawing parallels between dysfunctional relationships and the IKEA-furnished apartments that house them: the cool surface appearances barely concealing the soul-deadening sterility.

Yeah, the SQUARES are all, like, ROBOTS, man!1!!

METRIC, Grow Up and Blow Away
In fact, Metric's songs are often characterized by a commercial sheen-- they're smart little packets that, even as anti-consumerism screeds, have a compact luster that makes you feel like getting online to price experimental shelving units from Ikea or browsing all-over print hoodies at H&M.

THE RADIO DEPT., Pet Grief
Their second album, Pet Grief, is stacked with syrupy pop songs, as Johan Duncanson's effortless vocals ride the crest of soft-focus synths and programmed drums. But too often, the songs come off like the sonic equivalent of IKEA furniture: highly functional, sleekly designed, and sterile.

TORTOISE, It's All Around You
More frustrating, however, is that, after the scrappy Standards, where Parker spiked the mix with sparks and grime, Tortoise have pressed their music back into Scandinavian furniture. Cold Ikea percussion frames hold downy white duvets of keyboards, the music sterile and functional.

MORCHEEBA, Charango
The Sire execs saw to it that all elements of darkness, ethereality and-- gasp in shock here-- black soul were quickly and efficiently excised from the mix, to be replaced by the most predictable, glossy surface settings this side of IKEA.

use other stores, please

lol

by 5 different writers?!

Did you guys know that IKEA is a furniture store that is popular in urban and developing urban areas that has some hip appeal due to its distinct european charm and a low price that leads to its use in the homes of those who are young and aspiring to that aesthetic?

The frequent usage makes sense, though: "IKEA" is a single word that carries a whole host of connotations, many of which are relevant and appropriate when also describing music.

Cold Ikea percussion frames hold downy white duvets of keyboards, the music sterile and functional

this sucks, though^

this sucks less

Cold percussion frames the keyboards, the music sterile and functional

That Tortoise one is very strained, I agree.

gah i hate lofty-minded writers. everyone should write like a mix between hemingway and a 40s beat reporter.

Haha that Tortoise one is BRENT D who I haven't thought about in years. What a goof that dude was.

He writes for Time Out Chicago now, so I still see his byline almost every week.

deja vu

Did I mention that last night?

haha yes

gah i hate lofty-minded writers. everyone should write like a mix between hemingway and a 40s beat reporter.

-- Granny Dainger, Thursday, June 19, 2008 9:18 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

are IKEA references your idea of lofty writing?

why do ppl hate on ikea so much? it's like if you don't have a lot of dough and just need a dresser or coffee table that looks decent enough it's not a bad place

no this is though: Cold Ikea percussion frames hold downy white duvets of keyboards, the music sterile and functional
xpost

i only hate on IKEA when it's used in figurative language in association with a music review

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/7/2008/03/ikea3.JPG

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/F0322403au9.jpg

i only hate on IKEA when it's used in figurative language in association with a music review

THIS ^^^

i hate on ikea cause its a horrible place to be inside

this one dude i saw on the news had been waiting on the street for two days to get into the red hook ikea to get free furniture

http://weblogs.amny.com/entertainment/urbanite/blog/line.jpg

it was crazy

The only way you could compare music to IKEA would be if, say, the download cost you $.99, but then you had to pay another $.10 to load it into your iPod, another $.10 to put it in a playlist, $.50 for the metadata, another $.50 for the album art, etc...

You gotta love a business model that sells you the table separately from the legs. Genius.

more like you have to buy percussion separately.

"hi hats are an extra .10"

exactly! i guess that's sort of the radiohead model for those remixes stems, no? i wonder how many of the contest remixers scrimped and didn't buy, say, the bass.

Isn't it good? Scandanavian wood

What's odd is that the music review references to Ikea always make the furniture sound more glossy and professional and, well, sturdy than it actually is.

Like, the real IKEA pop would be Robyn - not because she's from Scandanavia, but because there's that same sense of rickety el cheapo construction aspiring to ape the high-tech and high-cost fashions of the day.

This is just what happens when the generation who watched Fight Club too many times during adolescence grows up and becomes music writers.

(I know because I am part of that generation)

You gotta love a business model that sells you the table separately from the legs. Genius.

That's great because you can choose what color legs to go with what color table!

paint would be cheaper. and more versatile!

What these writers really mean to say is "This music reminds me of IKEA because they play stuff like it at IKEA."

mostly they play stuff like it at urban outfitters but nobody wants to admit they shop there once they get their first job

also THE CONTAINER STORE people
fills more inches and is less done

do they play stuff like this at IKEA? the ones i've been to are playing kinda normal supermarket/mall sort of music. i think.

Actually I haven't been to IKEA in years so I don't know.

Pretty sure the first time I'd ever heard of IKEA was via the Pavement song "Date w/IKEA."

jaymc always with the really random cultural blind spots!

What these writers really mean to say is "This music reminds me of IKEA because they play stuff like it at IKEA."

-- Hurting 2, Friday, June 20, 2008 12:53 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

they play soft rock/pop radio at ikea

not the alt/indie peter bjorn & john style soft rock but like air supply and shit

It was 1997! They hadn't yet penetrated the Midwest.

I'm with jaymc, that too was my first exposure to IKEA.

Yeah, it looks like the Schaumburg store opened in fall 1998.

ironically, the first time i heard of pavement was at an ikea.

You should've borrowed my Walkman on the National Honor Society field trip to Navy Pier.

i hate on ikea cause its a horrible place to be inside

Sometime around 1999 I think I nearly had a relationship end entirely because of the stress of a day at IKEA. You can walk in at 10am and find yourself at 5pm, still there, wanting to murder everyone around you, you and your companion both convinced that the other is the most irritating soft-headed pain in the ass ever to have walked the earth. There should be some sort of Survivor-style reality show set in an IKEA.

(I think the only reason the girlfriend and I didn't wind up killing one another that day was that I managed to carry a 7-foot circular rug through crowds and down three flights, which gave me immunity.)

i wasn't in NHS! just NJHS. (and i was lying. i'd heard of pavement in Spin)

http://www.telefonica.net/web2/marcshaiman/cds/scenes.jpg

xp For some reason I think I knew that. (The first part, I mean.)

The best part is that if you go in the morning and do all your slow strolling and looking around and considering options, by 2:30 or so you'll be tired and snippy and running around trying to gather things up and get the hell out of them -- except then there'll be an afternoon crowd of couples strolling happily around considering options, and you will probably want to punch them all in the face and tell them that love is an illusion and they'd better get the hell out of your way because this is the real world and you are putting your foot down, getting the original lamp, taking it home, and strangling yourself with the cord. It's like an instant aging process between the morning and afternoon crowds: "Remember back at 11 when we were like that, so happy and full of dreams? These poor bastards have no idea what will happen to them in two hours."

it's been very freeing to purge myself of all my ikea crap, though i've found it very difficult to find a new dining table on craigslist because it's all ikea bullshit.

say what you want about ikea but if you have a shitlaod of books like i do their cheep bookcases are a fuckin godsend

Not to mention that by late afternoon you're liable to start buying a bunch of random cheap crap from the housewares section that will uselessly clutter up your apartment.

(xpost)

actually wait, the only thing i haven't purged is the EXPEDIT, which was a bitch to put together but it was totally worth it and it looks pretty good, too. it fits records perfectly.

yeah, I was thinking about getting some EXPEDIT for our new place when we move

I found myself the other day missing my JERKER (OOP)

I prefer to get my houseware clutter from Crate & Barrel and World Market

Obviously most of the people on this list are too young to have had to remodel their tenants' kitchen without going broke. Ikea is essentially irreplaceable for that.

I don't object to the cheap, normal furniture, I object to the drill-camp stores.

I also commend them on the obviousness/honesty of that whole ad campaign where they were like "hey, IKEA shoppers, you're older and got promotions and want nicer stuff, so we've started making it in order to keep you from shopping anyplace else."

say what you want about ikea but if you have a shitlaod of books like i do their cheep bookcases are a fuckin godsend

-- s1ocki, Friday, June 20, 2008 3:17 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

just a lonely guy thinking baout a shitlaod of books

BRAGGIN 2008

say what you want about ikea but if you have a shitlaod of books records/CDs like i do everyong on ILM does their cheep bookcases are a fuckin godsend

if you have a shitload of CDs and DVDs you really need to grow up and get some of those pleatherized case logics

records obviously another story but seriously those "limited edition digipaks" are just silly

That all said I am a big MARKOR fan

i want a pleatherized case logic for my books so i can rip out the pages and be done with them

also THE CONTAINER STORE people
fills more inches and is less done

-- El Tomboto, Friday, June 20, 2008 5:01 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Link

OTM

plus shit is even cheaper

all my records are in container store boxes now

i want a pleatherized case logic for my books so i can rip out the pages and be done with them

http://www.aarongershfieldsydney.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/kindle.jpg

Pretty sure the first time I'd ever heard of IKEA was via the Pavement song "Date w/IKEA."

Same here, and I thought it was about a girl!

Quirky Swedish indie girlfriend

someone's been reading ILM:

Back when Sweden took up less of the average indie fan's headphone space-- remember two years ago?-- it was annoyingly common for critics to compare Swedish pop to the Scandinavian country's most famous non-musical exports: IKEA, H&M, Saab. The Swedes aren't much on inspiration, these metaphors (tritely) suggested, but boy are they good at turning others' ideas into safe, efficient, everyday-luxury items.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/51447-love-is-all-wishing-well-5-ep

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/144530-various-artists-the-complete-motown-singles-vol-10-1970

it's instructive to realize that what we figuratively consider "the sixties" is roughly the period from 1965 to 1973, when the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War and undergoing the paroxysmal changes that made it into a true democracy for the first time in its history.

I stopped reading after that.

someone's been reading ILM

Haha, I like how he posted like two posts above that, too.

Curious - what don't you agree with there, Shakey?

its a tossed off historical generalization without any actual thought behind it. I assume he's implying that black people (and women) not having the vote meant that America was not actually a democracy...? Except the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 (granted, Voting Rights Act was 1965)...? And most of the real civil rights work was done pre-1965? And America isn't technicallya democracy anyway, its a republic? Was Greece not a democracy because they had slaves? What kind of democracy is the writer referring too anyway? Its just lazy writing.

I mean, it's potentially a dubious claim, but I have a hard time getting upset about it when they have stuff this this in their archive:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/16264-john-coltrane-live-at-the-village-vanguard-the-master-takes

Shakey I am tempted to say that's lazy nit-picking

I mean, for one thing the word "true" seems to have been used specifically because of all your rhetorical questions there. (This is leaving aside that you're objecting to a "historical generalization" in a record review, which seems to me a fine place for historical references to be a tad generalized.)

I'd say its out of place in a record review, period. Mostly it begs the question of what happened between '65 and '73 that turned America into a "true" democracy (hint: it wasn't passage of civil rights legislation, cuz that happened mostly pre-65)

(and it goes without saying that schreiber penned some terrible crap)

It might raise questions. It's not an example of something that "begs the question," though. (See? Nit-picking is fun!)

hahaha okay you got me

Shakey, it's only really out of place if you ignore the sentence that comes directly after it:

Indeed, the social concerns of the 60s are on bolder display here than on any of the series' previous volumes

... which is kind of why it seems like you're nit-picking: it's a slight generalization that leads into the substantive point (which I'm assuming you don't object to)

the substantive point about Motown transforming to incorporate social issues of the day is totally relevant. what that has to do with America becoming a "true democracy" is rather dubious.

I've been listening to lots of Rye and Arabic music, so it's not really "a song," but I've been listening to a lot of really poorly labeled mp3s, and Auto-Tuned-out North African pop stuff.

Wed: 11-05-08
Guest List: DJ/rupture
Guest List by DJ/rupture
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/145972-guest-list-dj-rupture

It's "rai" music not cornbeef on rye.

Rye and Arabic music sounds like a good combination.

lots of wry and arabic music

Rye and Arabic foods: wld eat.

i want matzoh ball soup now, damn you curmudgeon.

jace:

November 5, 2008
even better than Arabic “rye” is cumbia sonidera, i mean “Sonny Guerra”!

that mis-hearing may send people on some frustrating Google searches… maybe we should invent a person called Sonny Guerra and attribute a new style of music to him, retrospective reality google hack

Jace/Rupture on his blog comments

Since Dave Stelfox left for a fulltime journalist job in the mideast, I do not think Pitchfork has added a new reggae/dancehall columnist. Although they did at least run an obit for Byron Lee.

Miles Davis:
Dark Magus
[Columbia; 1974]
Rating: 9.5

* Buy it from Insound
* Download it from eMusic

Good old Japan. We bomb them, so they horde this Miles Davis gem, out of print for ages in the U.S. It's the best $27 spent outside of the massage parlor in eons. Yeah, I buy CDs sometimes, too. Why? Friggin' label won't send 'em to us. I'm willing to look the other way this time, because this two-disc set, to put it simply, rules.

Recorded at Carnegie Hall in '74, Miles leads a spacey Bitches Brew-esque jam session, always loose in the middle but tight at the ends. The band of two guitarists, a bassist, drummer, percussionist, sitar player, and a couple of sax honkers launches Dark Magus upwards. Just when you think the shit can't get much higher, Miles comes in and hits the wah-wah down hard on the horn and the next thing you know, you're slappin' five to the man upstairs. Four jams, each divided into two parts, no rules except to keep it real.

You think I know what I'm talking about? Damn right I don't. I couldn't be this cool if I smoked menthol PCP and changed my name to Charlie fucking Parker. I probably don't have enough street cred to give it up for the late Satchmo. Yeah, I know Louis Armstrong was Satchmo, but it's a pretty cool name. I think I'll change my name to Satchmo. Oh, and my last name to Bronson. Satchmo Bronson. I could kick ass and have a five-octave range on the trumpet. That'd be awesome. Whoops, left the sentence hanging. But that's none of yo bidness. By the rite of Dark Magus, I can fake the cool in no time flat.

- Jason Josephes, August 1, 1997

Yes it's a dumb review.

if anything it's disappointing in its dumbness after the heights of that Coltrane review linked upthread

the kanye review had the 808s song cited as "see you in my knightmares" -- the way it came on tagged on the leak -- instead of "see you in my nightmares", which is the way that it appears on the back of the album

There's really no factual error Pitchfork can make anymore that would bug me more than them always putting commas and periods after endquotes.

Alex in SF I see you have received my communication!!

DUDE that pisses me off soooo much!!!

xp

surprised this revive wasnt about this:

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=132958

There's really no factual error Pitchfork can make anymore that would bug me more than them always putting commas and periods after endquotes.

this is the british way (sometimes).

ummm i successfully avoid pfork these days but sometimes i want to read tom ewing's stuff and accidentally click on another link once there, which is to say that the pfork beyonce review was hugely dumb and annoying.

Man wasn't pfork in '97 like schr1eber and a couple of high-school buddies or something?

that's the grammatically incorrect way you mean

i prefer the british way of periods/commas

looks way better imo

I used to think it looked better or at least OK when I was much younger (and still writing for pitchfork lol), but after years of doing it the U.S. way it really gets on my nerves, especially from a place staffed almost entirely by Americans.

the british way is if it's a full sentence the full stop goes inside the quote marks, if it's not then it goes outside, which makes sense. when it comes to song titles, putting commas and full stops inside the quote marks looks unbelievably retarded to me.

agree

lex otm about commas and beyonce reviews

i thought scottpl's kanye review was alright

lol @ josephes, though. yeah, he wasn't a great writer, but i still think his Soft Bulletin review is classic, if only because i need a six paragraph memoir appended to my two paragraph reviews every once in a while. not enough writers do this.

lol xpost

Man wasn't pfork in '97 like schr1eber and a couple of high-school buddies or something?

That's how I understand it, but you'd think they'd be embarassed about it or something. Jason Josephes turned in some particularly ridiculous crap, such as this one and the Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin review, which contains the following text before even mentioning the album:

"Hey, Jason. Where you been?"
That's an awfully good question, kids. Never let it be said that I would forsake the fine people of Pitchforkmedia.com, and by "people" I mean esteemed editor Ryan "Come On!" Schreiber, our other fine writers, and you, the reader. Let me fill you in on everything; trust me, this is all going somewhere.

I recently moved out of The Box. The Box was where I lived in Seattle for my first year-and-a-half-- a small room in a terrible house. I had an ogre of a next door neighbor named Richard who didn't like any decibel level that went above a whisper. Another neighbor, a homely looking mama's boy of some sort, had weird nasal problems that forced him to make this really loud noise that sounded like a collision between an orgasm, a yawn, a primal howl, and the deafening roar of a tortured honker.

The morning of my move, I checked my e-mail only to discover a rather unfortunate note in my box. A particular woman whose only flaw was in her geographic location (Jerusalem) told me not to come and visit her this summer, and that it was time for her to "get on with her life." I'll translate that: "bang other people without guilt." I saw it coming, but by e-mail? A year and a half of tortured long-distance amore dissolved via Hotmail? By a certain point, you're worth more than e-mail. A phone call. Shit, a letter would have done. No. Not only am I being broken up with, I also have to look at a banner ad for TalkCity.com. Can my life sink any lower?

Last night, I tried to figure out where my life was going. It seems to be on the course where I'm just thinking about where my life is (or isn't) going. Great. Wake me when it gets exciting.

Well, today, it got exciting. I was at work for about six hours when I decided to call my old number and retrieve my messages. There was my temp agency telling me not to go into work today. I guess the object was for me to find out before I left for work (it was 7:30 when they called), but instead, there I was working when and where I shouldn't have been. I called the agency and they said they'd call me back. I sat at my desk awkwardly. Should I be working? If so, why? If not, what should I be doing? I tracked down my supervisor who gave me two reasons for my termination. One was that the workload had dropped and they didn't need that many people. The second reason, of course, was that five people had commented to him that I didn't seem to love my job.

Well, duh. Sorry to go monosyllabic, but... well, duh. I sit at a desk. There's some asshole who insists on whistling all day, and man cannot live by headphones alone. Even today, before I found out I was already yesterday's employee, I commented to a co-worker, "Pretty soon, I'm gonna stab that guy in the throat." Of course, I wouldn't do that. But sometimes, I think that's my big misgiving in life-- no follow through. "I don't hate my job," I told my supervisor. This was true. Boring? Yes. Hate? No. This was going to be the job that gave me enough money to go on a vacation this fall.

"Well, I noticed it, too," he said. "If five people see it and I do, too, then doesn't that tell you something?"

"Did you ever think of asking me?" I asked.

Of course, there wasn't a good answer for that, so I immediately shifted gears. "Hey, if five people came and told you that I was practicing black magic, would you believe them?"

"That's completely different." When I asked him why it was different, he changed the subject to me leaving.

eh, i'd much prefer they leave warts-and-all early reviews in the archive than start deleting or editing that stuff way after the fact.

Two weird things about reading Pitchfork in the mid/late 90s: (a) it was not hard to assume that you were the only person you'd ever met who read it (apart from friends you yourself had pointed it out to, or who'd pointed it out to you),* and (b) you had zero idea what sort of people were behind it; they weren't "proper" critics, obviously, just people talking on the internet in an era before message boards and mailing lists and whatnot had made us all so able to sort people's tastes and rhetoric into predictable camps. Point being it kinda worked for them to do big digressions about temp work, because you weren't necessarily approaching the site for authoritative, useful information -- you were going to this random bit of internet you'd found where people shared opinions about music (many of them amusing or strange or half-assed) almost more as a form of shit-shooting entertainment than anything else,** and I for one recall actually enjoying weird glimpses of who these people were I was going to this place to listen to and be entertained by.

* In fact, for all you knew you were one of two dozen readers, total, and this was true for lots of non-corporate websites you'd look at; there was some other site at the time that did short indie-rock capsule reviews and rated things with, if I remember correctly, between one and five puking-baby icons (?), and I still have zero idea whether I was one of 10 people who looked at it or 10,000.

** Let's not forget that a way-higher percentage of internet use in those days consisted of "I have found this weird and lovable thing floating in the ether," and there was, briefly, an actual level of fun and humor in the idea that people would put up stuff on the internet that would read kinda crazily in print equivalents -- these days, with internet critics, we write that off to Lester Bangs worship, but really I think early internet writing just naturally grabbed onto that same "hahaha I can write this as bizarro as I want" spirit.

Yeah, as cringe-inducing as it is now, I remember reading that stuff at the time and finding it incredibly refreshing, just in the way it broke through the usual staid models of criticism. I remember telling a co-worker in late 2000 or early 2001 about the site (a guy who was very much into indie rock) and using DiCrescenzo's review of Stereolab's Cobra Phases Group as an exemplar. (I disagreed with the score but was captivated by the outlandishness of the review.)

(a) maybe in the mid-90s that was true, but by '98 (when I first got internet access at work haha) it was pretty clear that it was being read by quite a few folks (it was linked a lot of places.)

(b) uh what? It seemed pretty clear what it was to me (a couple of guys with some free time on their hands and decent web design skills who wanted have a music website--probably to get promos in those pre-filesharing days--and had some friends who were willing to write for them--promos that is.)

so basically no one cares about this Pitchfork/Fader thing

I care. But I had nothing to say, so.

Stopped reading that story as soon as the Fader dude said "leverage"

I don't even know what you are talking about.

Fairly or not, I didn't read Pitchfork for years after glancing at stuff like this. But this was a blessed long time ago.

Pitchfork essentially becoming a marketing dept

xpost

- not arguing with the first one

- not sure "guys with free time who want a music website and want promos" is really a very specific sense of who people are or what "sort" of people they are

Yeah, J, this was probably my own failing for not buying more books, but most of the music press available to me back then was glossy-magazine stuff -- which made it fun to see stuff bubble out of the internet that was more just ... talking crap about music.

and per Alex in SF's appraisal of PFork in the late 90s, I have to agree that even then they had some serious cachet on the internet and it was fairly accepted that if you got a decent review on PFork, it meant your band was gonna get a huge boost in listeners. which was indeed the case.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/20825-pet-shop-boys-nightlife

peep the last line in this PSB review, al

"- not sure "guys with free time who want a music website and want promos" is really a very specific sense of who people are or what "sort" of people they are"

They were dorky white guys who were in (or had just graduated from) college. Is that a specific enough "sort"?

If you want to be incorrect and/or boring, maybe

hahahahaha that Nightlife review is amazing

peep the last line in this PSB review, al

Sunshine on a cloudy day.

xxpost Haha I'm pretty sure none of those statements is incorrect.

Despite myself, I'll seek solace in my beloved Gay Dad album.
- Paul Cooper, Drummer of Gay Dad, December 31, 1999

The one fan.

Yeah Alex I can tell you're confident in your wrongness, but Ryan didn't go to college

And (wild guess) Samir Khan wasn't white

Oh no my illusions are shattered!

Okay exceptions to the rule noted, I think my generalization stands and regardless of race/education level there wasn't much mystery here for most of us.

I mean, you are basically saying "I'm guessing the people behind an indie-rock website fit what's come to be accepted as the core demographic of indie-rock listeners," which isn't a particularly clever proposition, and did not really answer any of the questions I'm saying I'd have had about the site in the mid-to-late 90s, e.g. where are these people from, are they younger or older, are they nuts or not, why is this person called "Richard-san," etc. etc., and all the elements of constructing an image/personality of a writer in your head as you read

This is a simple point that a lame zinger does not really undermine

I guess you thought about it a lot more than I did then.

I mean I just assumed they were mostly around my age, had some time on their hands, were not nuts, called themselves whatever they pleased and wrote about what got sent them.

^^^this. Especially since a lot of their staff were on the same message boards as me at the time.

It didn't require thinking -- my original point was that if one of the writers went on a bit about moving or temp work, this read not as an annoyance but as a tidbit of information about the person whose reviews you'd been reading blind. This wasn't a point about the writers being fascinating enigmas, it was a point about readers' relationships with the personalities beyond the screen being very different at that stage than they are now.

I find it hard to imagine that I'm the only person who, when reading a given periodical, becomes interested in the personalities and circumstances of the people I'm reading -- especially in a context where it's somewhat non-professional and there's no concrete information available.

^ make that "when REGULARLY reading a given periodical"

I do that with ILX.

I think that REGULARLY is probably key here.

I would assume that the bulk of Pitchfork's readership in those early days was regular.

Really? Why would you assume that?

I found all their digressions stupid and irritating and signs of bad writing more than anything else

cf wizard's cap

Even if you were a regular reader, i.e. clicking on the site every day/week (it wasn't always daily updated was it? I can't recall now) I think how invested even a regular reader was, probably had a great deal of variance.

xpost - It was a small unpublicized sometimes-amateurish site with a niche audience and a lot of voice/style involved; its selling point was regular coverage of music that wasn't covered a ton of other places online; it eventually put up a reader-mail page that usually contained missives from people who seemed to follow the site. It seemed like the sort of site that people would either click across once and forget, or else start reading regularly because it covered stuff they were interested in (what review outlet isn't kinda like this?), and hindsight/history seems to confirm that this was the case. I'm not sure how, at this point, to imagine some kind of shifting/sporadic readership in those days, but maybe you know something I don't.

xpost - okay, we're either talking in circles or you're just disagreeing with things for the sake of it, given that my whole point was that pretty much anything I read repeatedly over the course of more than a few months will prompt some kind of "I wonder who's writing this" curiosity

(I'd note also that people still engage in lots of weirdo imagination of who the site's writers are or what they're like, though it's very, very good that no multi-paragraph review intros are answering those questions)

I'm sure there were plenty of people who read the site obsessively and wondered "who's writing this", but I think there were also plenty of people who clicked on the site, checked if anything looked interesting, glanced at a review or two, and then went on their merry way (hell this is how I still read the site and many others). They didn't care whose name was on a review and they didn't give much thought to who the writers were than I did above.

I don't think I've ever read a music review

Alex in SF you are obtuse.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Triangle-obtuse.svg/460px-Triangle-obtuse.svg.png

When I wrote this:

Do we need to go back to those PFM reviews that start out with awful academic presumptuousness and opening sentences like "Poor black Americans in 1973 thought that Nixon was..." and other shifting viewpoints and strawmen?

When I wrote that a few weeks ago I had no idea it was such a close parody to an actual PFM review opener. That is, until I saw Shakey Mo's Motown excerpt upthread.

Again, the real thing.

it's instructive to realize that what we figuratively consider "the sixties" is roughly the period from 1965 to 1973, when the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War and undergoing the paroxysmal changes that made it into a true democracy for the first time in its history.

I totally want to avoid getting all Captain Save-a-Prose on this or any other thread, but Cunga, can I just ask what's bad or incorrect or non-illuminating about that statement (the 60s one)?

Some will quibble about "true democracy", I suppose. And the "now I'm going to teach you kids a lesson about this" tone never seems to make friends around here.

Somebody was saying something about comma placement.

load all messages nabisco

Oh right, I forgot we went over that. But I get the feeling that Cunga's objection to that sentence is not the same as Shakey's. Cunga seems to feel there's something horrible about it as a sentence (?), whereas Shakey was just making a substantively questionable nit-pick about what constitutes a "true democracy" (a nit-pick I still find completely baffling and silly, sorry).

pitchfork was a pretty special place for me in the late 90s, and as a teenager then i thought i stumbled upon a pretty awesome little corner of the web.

you were going to this random bit of internet you'd found where people shared opinions about music (many of them amusing or strange or half-assed) almost more as a form of shit-shooting entertainment than anything else

^yea this gets at what i liked about the early site.

i do cringe now at some of the old reviews (the coltrane one upthread is pretty awesome) but i think those reviews had a lot to do with why i liked the site then. as some have alluded to, that kind of amateurish, but very enthusiastic tone kind of paralleled how my friends and i talked about music at that age. i hadn't heard of a zine at that time and pretty much read about music in spin, so to find the site at that time was pretty cool.

It's weird for me to think about how upset I used to get about Pitchfork reviews in 2000-2002. Now it is one of the blandest websites I can think of, and I miss all those old wars.

It's like Pitchfork's been soft ever since Snoop came through and crushed the buildings.

LOL at this - I don't think Marissa'a PR company could have licked her colon cleaner:

Hells Yeah, New Marissa Nadler Album!
Blonde Redhead, Beachwood Sparks members guest

Sub-zero temperatures, snow quietly cascading onto barren branches, and Marissa Nadler playing on the stereo; some things were just made for each other. Hopefully snow will still be falling on some parts of the world come March 3, as that's when Ms. Nadler's due to drop her fourth full-length, Little Hells.

The follow-up to 2007 breakthrough Songs III: Bird on the Water and likely little bit o' heaven, Little Hells collects 10 new tracks and features production from Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, !!!) and contributions from Blonde Redhead's Simone Pace, Beachwood Sparks' "Farmer" Dave Scher, and Black Hole Infinity's Myles Baer. Kemado will have the pleasure of releasing it.

And just in time for this chilly season, relatively new Kemado offshoot Mexican Summer (named after a Marissa Nadler jam, no less) issued Marissa's debut album, Ballads of Living and Dying, on vinyl this week. Swap out "stereo" for "creaky turntable" in the scenario above, and you really have some things that were made for each other.

In other Marissa rumblings, the lady has a new original track due on a forthcoming compilation to benefit the Save Darfur campaign and the World Food Programme, and a cover of Judee Sill's "The Kiss" is set to appear on another upcoming comp. Nadler notes that the Sill cover will be credited to Marissa Nadler & Black Hole Infinity and marks her first "attempt at electronic drum beats." Nice.

I can't wait until this album comes out so I can forget all about killing myself.

Also LOL at 'attempt at electronic drum beats' garnering a 'nice' from Pitchfork - if Rivers Cuomo or Ryan Adams said that shit they'd open up a can of nerd whoop-ass to beat the (Beta) band.

Oh, hilarious, increasingly ridiculous Pitchfork.

tbf, given the way they used to gather their news, Marissa Nadler probably wrote that item.

Oh, hilarious, increasingly ridiculous Pitchfork

Hilarious, increasingly, ridiculous, gay, homo, awful, Pitchfork, media

For those of you nostalgic for odd tangents in a review lede, I recommend checking out today's Cat Power review. The critic's sister just had a baby!

That's not at all irrelevant to the review, though.

dude it was a pretty lame review

is it really that hard to just write "this Cat Power record, like all Cat Power records, was boring"

no, but they won't pay you for a review less than 20 words long unless there's an accompanying dog or monkey-related visual.

what about a picture of chan marshall's bush

or a lolcat power

"I can haz cumpleet silenz wile I restarts song fiev times?"

That "Blind" song they named song of the year is a piece of shit.

blind is awesome imo

HOMOPHOBE!!!

haha. anyone who hates hercules and love affair= homophobe. i think we established that over on the NME best of poll.

yeah I saw them on Sunday and all of a sudden regret not hanging out in the VIP all day in case Nomi came out for a cocktail

though Erlend Oye did come out and dance with me during H&LA

Three years passed between the Austrian electronicist's landmark Endless Summer and 2004's relatively underwhelming Venice.

Nuh Uh.

Venice was pretty good.

I'd say it's roughly on the same level as Endless Summer. Granted Endless Summer came out 3 years earlier.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/download/148213-pitchforktv-usa-for-affluence-ft-tim-harrington-moby-andrew-wk-will-sheff-fred-armisen-carl-newman-and-many-more-beardo-episode-5-cash-for-christmas-video-mp3

I had the misfortune of watching this. It doesn't work as a song. It doesn't work as an ironic anti-song. The level of wealth, complacency and self-satisfaction evident in that video is not as far from what you would get if you put a random selection of Chase employees in a room (a few wealthy ones like Moby, a few middle-management types like the relatively successful of that bunch, and a few mailroom types like the "struggling" of the musicians) as what the people in the video would have you believe. I think the movie The Distinguished Gentleman has a deeper political critique than this song. And that movie was actually funny.

NB I haven't eaten in the last 48 hours.

Ugh,that was excruciating. I've seen a lot of funny stuff about the recession and this is not it. Although, it probably is the best song Excepter's ever made.

^that didn't need a comma.

Someone explain this sentence pls:

One of the most dynamic singers ever to put his stamp on the pop charts, Redding consistently emphasized song over performance, which means each take is singular and unrepeatable.

Tried. Only way I could decode it was if the writer was making an error. If he emphasized performance over song, then each take would be singular and unrepeatable. If he emphasized song over performance, though, presumably each take would be exactly alike because he'd be executing the same platonic ideal of a song (and not paying attention to the particular moment/performance the song was occurring in). Of course, assuming it's not a mistake... it makes no sense.

Each take is always singular and unrepeatable no matter what. (A repetition is obviously a new take.) So the consequent of the proposition

(consistently emphasized song over performance) => (each take is singular and unrepeatable)

is true, and the basic theory of logic tells us that the entire proposition is then true whether the antecedent is true or not. QED.

gotta ask what the point of this is http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/download/149449-video-gucci-mane-stoopid

granted im kind of protective of gucci and concerned w/ how he is portrayed on the internet but it's the first time pfork has ever mentioned the dude and we get some condescending nonsense like

"Bolstered by snare taps and synth stabs, Mane declares the stoopid-ity of his chain. Then he runs for mayor, repping East Atlanta. "I'm not very articulate," Mane says"

what is this ''adding to the conversation''? the post is written like pfork readers have an intimate working knowledge of gucci's music, and by not explaining at all why anyone should care about gucci or what makes him great all this serves is to get pfork readers to laugh at this "dumb" rapper. well, i guess it says gucci's not stupid. that's something!!

gucci mane is stoopid (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

complaining about pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Drake sold you ringtone boys out.

i know right

autojudas

anyway stephen it's not dumb to complain about pfork, nor do i think it's dumb to demand that if they are going to cover things that they don't 'need' to cover that they do it well and not condescendingly or lazily

i wish there was a way of subscribing to the finney/ewing pfork pieces but NONE OF THE REST OF IT* - as it is i just end up missing their stuff b/c i refuse to take the chance of accidentally encountering bullsh like that :(

*dunno who else is writing for it these days. deej is, you say? ok his too

it would be nice to have author-specific rss feeds or something

it would be nice if their search function was as decent as it used to be

it would be nice if most of their authors were as good writers as tim and tom and david q. drake esq

"authors"

critics

i dont know how the forkcast blog works but there are actual rap writers working for the site who could've written this. if marc hogan proposed this i wonder why nothing was said about the song beyond that it has synths and drums and isn't a stupid song

it would be nice if their search function was as decent as it used to be

― go to club ban with me pls (some dude), Tuesday, March 3, 2009 1:09 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^this

i dont know how the forkcast blog works but there are actual rap writers working for the site who could've written this. if marc hogan proposed this i wonder why nothing was said about the song beyond that it has synths and drums and isn't a stupid song

― Funky House, M.D. (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, March 3, 2009 6:10 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dude it's a little blurb the accompany the video... i wouldnt get so worked up

granted im kind of protective of gucci and concerned w/ how he is portrayed on the internet

jordan have you heard 'shopaholic'? i love it so much

i suspect that you : gucci :: me : nicki minaj though

haha yeah - and "shopaholic" is great

kudos to nicki for the benzezez/yenzezez/lenzezez/sensitive/tentative rhymes (though possibly someone should...tell her that china isn't where they have yen) on that, also bobby v's plaintive vox even as he hands over his credit card

it would be nice if I could load their site without overloading my laptop's puny cpu

granted im kind of protective of gucci and concerned w/ how he is portrayed on the internet

― Funky House, M.D. (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, March 3, 2009 6:15 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is he your baby brother or something?

twin, actually

HE CALLED HIM MANE. THAT'S STOOPID.

Jordan S. Mane

rappers getting referred to by their fake 'surnames' is one of the best running gags in music writing/reporting

like what? calling soulja boy Boy?

Mr. Pop

anyway stephen it's not dumb to complain about pfork, nor do i think it's dumb to demand that if they are going to cover things that they don't 'need' to cover that they do it well and not condescendingly or lazily

No you're right, I was just kidding. I'm not sure "demand" is the right word, though...

i think the more stupid thing about this is dude just has bad info -- that song is like a year old & the video was released by Big Cat which isnt even Gucci's label anymore, its the same label that has been capitalizing off his old shit for the past 2 yrs by releasing unofficial singles & albums

actually im more mad i didnt get to break gucci over there ;_;

Wow: I feel like I'm prose-stanning here, but I don't get what's particularly condescending about the quoted bit, which seems to me like just a description of what's in the video being presented. Like most other videos that get teased/linked in the Forkcast section:

The clip for this electro-pop slow burner finds the French singer looking more like a Cali beach bum, playing a white grand piano while the tide laps at his feet and some blue-skinned honeys from the Star Wars galaxy keep him company. Then all of a sudden, he's riding a horse across a girl's backside.

In this strange, CGI-heavy clip ... Tim Exile's heavily treated vocals dance around his stairstepping techno beats, while a school of leopard-print fish dart around greenscreened cityscapes and rural highways.

Bolstered by snare taps and synth stabs, Mane declares the stoopid-ity of his chain. Then he runs for mayor, repping East Atlanta.

^^ The only rhetorical thing I see happening here is that a lot of the imagery in music videos sounds kind of funny when you describe it, so it's tempting to say things like "oh and then he rides a horse across a girl's backside."

yah seems like a pretty silly method of coverage considering folks can watch the vid imo but whatever -- not to speak for j0rdan but im sure its also got more to do w/ the fact that the guy has been recording music for years & was the biggest rap artist of the year last year & this is the first coverage hes gotten so it seems kinda ... slight. i think way more bothersome is the simple misinformation about labels & lead singles etc that i just mentioned

I feel like that's been changing lately, which is kind of nice -- there used to be a lot more "new video from X, involves horses, good one!," but more of them lately have packed interesting thoughts or bits of micro-criticism into those few sentences.

kudos to nicki for the benzezez/yenzezez/lenzezez/sensitive/tentative rhymes

^^def official

nabisco you're probably right about the (non-)condescension - but mostly my beef is w/ the fact that the video is just presented as is. i think that's an appropriate thing to do when fleet foxes or fever ray videos are being posted, but with gucci mane the non-post post (aside from having its facts wrong like deej says) is just pointless and disappointing. there are plenty of interesting things to say about gucci, and i wish this post would've just said something.

Yeah, sure, that's fair. Haha I'm sure you'll be totally looking forward to an LP review on the site

& was the biggest rap artist of the year last year

By what measure?

buzz, # of tracks released, amount of actual rapping on his records (sorry kanye)

Yeah, that struck me as weird, too, Jay. I've never had anyone irl talk to me about Gucci or heard anyone irl play his music.

I'm sorry, didn't both Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy exist last year?

haha yeah guys you're gonna have to get used to jordan & deej's gucci mane tunnel vision. although i am actually hearing about him up north more now and radio is actually playing the OJ Da Juiceman single, but still lol.

i don't agree with deej totally - because wayne, jeezy etc yeah - but gucci really was huge last year as long as you were paying attention to the 'right' places. it's hard to quantify in numbers because he didn't release an album or even a single, but no one was more eponymous on mixtapes last year - and more importantly imo no one was more bootlegged (not even wayne) - than gucci. dude has tons of underground 'buzz' in the truest sense of the word, and if he wasn't locked up in jail right now i think he'd be readying a pretty big push for an album.

there were a lot of mixtapes named gucci mane?

let me be clear (agaIn) that i think deej and i don't see eye-to-eye re gucci's stature - deej lives in a big city, knows ppl irl who like rap, etc etc - but we're pretty close. gucci was inescapable this year if you paid attention to non-album southern rap at all. it's how careers are built

this year last year same thing

massive lols, s1ocki

there were, yes

Lil Wayne (red), Gucci Mane (blue)
http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=%22gucci+mane%22,+%22lil+wayne%22&date=all&geo=all&graph=weekly_img&sort=0&sa=N

No data available

i for one am shocked that the biggest pop star in the world is more trendy on google than gucci mane

jaymc the notion that google search volume is a reliable measure is suspect when lil wayne is getting on katie couric etc

how much music did lil wayne actually release in '08?? the one studio record right? maybe a mixtape or two? id argue that w/in a general rap fanbase gucci was a much bigger rapper last year. wayne was barely rapping on it too

jeezy, you could argue he was bigger but itd be debatable

cursory google searches aren't turning up that many mixtapes named "Gucci Mane" although he does appear to be on a shit-ton

Jeezy, Gucci

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22gucci+mane%22%2C+%22young+jeezy%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=%22gucci+mane%22,+%22young+jeezy%22&date=all&geo=all&graph=weekly_img&sort=0&sa=N

obv when i was saying that im making some challops about lil wayne's career have peaked earlier than '08 with most rap fans even if you define that group pretty broadly

would love to know how many of the search queries at the peaks on that graph also contain the words 'megaupload rapidshare sendspace'

cursory google searches aren't turning up that many mixtapes named "Gucci Mane" although he does appear to be on a shit-ton

― Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Tuesday, March 3, 2009 5:36 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

there arent any mixtapes named Gucci Mane

Anyway, "biggest rap artist of the year" to me means "most popular artist who happens to be a rapper" (in which case Wayne being on Katie Couric proves my point exactly) rather than "most ubiquitous rapper within the rap community" or whatever -- I couldn't even tell you anything about the "rap community," so I'll cede to you there.

make up yr mind, dude

(not you, jaymc, J0rdan)

Oh no, I know. :)

lol j0rdan & his critic words

yup

pitchfork is dumb (#4357385639):

Finally, out to everyone asking about my Pitchfork "Month in dubstep and grime" columns. The situation is that they've asked all the specialist writers not to contribute columns for Jan and Feb. I offered to write it for free - trust me, I've not been doing it for the money - but this didn't help. So, we'll see.

try and imagine a month without grime

rather, imagine a world where monthly dubstep and grime coverage is supplanted by "The Month in Being in the Band the Pains of Being Pure at Heart"

OH NO PITCHFORK IS WRITING ABOUT THE MUSIC THAT'S PUT MONEY INTO THEIR POCKETS THROUGH THE LAST TEN FUCKING YEARS, THEY REALLY SHOULD SWITCH TO WRITING ABOUT SOME BULLSHIT NOBODY CARES ABOUT LIKE DUBSTEP SO I CAN POST A SNIFFY MESSAGE TO ILX ABOUT SOME MINOR FACTUAL INNACURACY IN THEIR REVIEW OF A FUCKING RUSKO ITUNES ONLY EP.

The Month In Nebulous 'Nuum Beats

Young, Dumb and Full Of 'Nuum.

the connection between pitchfork and music hype came to yet another embarrassing pick with the new (and mediocre) Wavves record review

are you saying the review or the record is mediocre

ha..no, the record itself.
i understand the logic behind the connection ive mentioned, but arent there any limits?
are pitchfork capable of writing,for example, a bad review for a record that otherwise gets hype+good reviews everywhere else?

i have no idea but right now it's pretty obvious that they are, at an editorial level, going in hard on noisy/lo-fi/vaguely "pop" stuff from both coasts. they're jumping a trend and we're just gonna have to see how it plays out.

it will play out like most trends in music history.

bloodily

if they start going in harder on noisy/lo-fi/vaguely "pop" stuff from one coast than the other, we could be looking at another deadly east/west beef

drummer from no age and avey tare = next pac and big

"Reggae is vile."

xp hahaha yeah but instead of them ending up dead one of them is gonna get butthurt over their blog being hacked or some shit

lol yes sign me up for some delay pedal grunge songs about how animal collective are wack

I saw the video and wanted to post something quick about it in the time I had. I definitely try to work bigger points into posts where possible, all in some vain effort to make Forkcast into something more critical than the usual "here's this video it's AWSOME" blog thing, but as you pointed out there are guys on staff like Tom who would probably have a lot more to say about Gucci Mane than I do, when the time is right. (Oddly enough, Pitchfork has barely written about him.)

big ups, thx for the response

http://images.lowriderarte.com/drawings/0701_lrap_06_z+drawings+notorious_big.jpg
I want ya'll to play this at funerals in the hood.
Til all this black on black crime stop.
Some say the blind lead the blind.
But in the ghetto you never know,
When it's gon be yo time.
http://images.lowriderarte.com/drawings/0701_lrap_06_z+drawings+notorious_big.jpg
[Sons of Funk, Mo B. Dick, O'dell]
Sittin at the ghetto thinkin bout
All my homies passed away (uuunnnggghhh!)
Candy painted cadillacs and triple gold
That's how me and my boys rolled
How could it be?
Somebody took my boy from me
My best friend's gone
And I'm so all alone
I really miss my homies
Even though they gone away
I know you in a better place
And I hope to see ya soon someday
http://images.lowriderarte.com/drawings/0701_lrap_06_z+drawings+notorious_big.jpg
[Master P]
I used to hang with my boy even slang with my boy
Used to bang with my boy, goddam I miss my boy
We started out youngstas in the park throwin birds
In your hearse, damn it's sad to see my nigga in the dirt
The game got me workin, got me perkin, never jerkin
Still blowin dolja fo ya cause I know you up there workin
Ya little baby's cool and ya baby's mama straight
But today's a sad day to see the t-shirt with ya face
From the cradle to the grave, from the streets we used to fall
In the park you liked to ball, put yo name upon the wall
In the projects you's a legend on the street you was a star
But it's sad to see my homeboy ridin in that black car
A lotta soldiers done died, a lotta mothers done cried
You done took yo piece of the pie but you was too young to retire
Why soldiers ride for yo name leave it vain
Some Gs never change, damn they killed you for some change
Smile for my homie Kevin Miller my boy Randall
The ghetto persons that lost they loved ones to these ghetto scandals
http://images.lowriderarte.com/drawings/0701_lrap_06_z+drawings+notorious_big.jpg
Take a minute to smile for the dead (uuunnnggghhh!)
Smile for the dead (RIP 2Pac, Makaveli)
All my homies who done made it to the crossroads
(Biggie Smalls)
http://images.lowriderarte.com/drawings/0701_lrap_06_z+drawings+notorious_big.jpg
[Sons, Mo B. O'dell]
How could it be?
Somebody took my boy from me
(It's like I can't believe you gone)
My best friend's gone
(Sometimes I feel like I can't go on)
And I'm so all alone
(Everytime I see something you done left
I really miss my homies
(It just remind me, more and more of you, dawg)
Even though they gone away
(I just keep reminiscin)
I know you in a better place
(Cause I know you alright)
And I hope to see ya soon someday
(And I keep smilin, knowin I'm a see you in the crossroads]
http://images.lowriderarte.com/drawings/0701_lrap_06_z+drawings+notorious_big.jpg
[Pimp C]
We used to grip on the grain and flip them candy toys
But I'd give up all that bullshit if I could get back my boy
Off in the club smokin weed til 3, hollerin at the hoes
Spendin $4000 on me on gators and clothes
When I turned to rap, he had to chase the game
Nigga told me, "C, leave that dope, cause rappin is yo thang"
I ain't gone even lie, some nights I ride and cry
Wonderin why the real niggas always the ones to die
So I just smoke my weed and try to clear my mind
I wish that I had the power to turn back the hands of time
I wonder if there's a heaven up there for real Gs
For all the niggas in the game that be sellin keys
I keep my memories, try to keep my head stromg
But baby it's hard to be strong, when yo main homie gone
http://images.lowriderarte.com/drawings/0701_lrap_06_z+drawings+notorious_big.jpg
[Sons, Mo B. O'dell]
Even though you gone away
(Even though you gone, you ain't never gon be forgotten)
I know you in a better place
(Cause as long as I'm here
You gon live through me and other TRU playas)
I really miss my homies
Even though they gone away
I know you in a better place
And I hope to see ya soon someday
http://images.lowriderarte.com/drawings/0701_lrap_06_z+drawings+notorious_big.jpg
[Silkk]
I'm just sittin here dazed thinkin bout all the times we had
Thinkin the past, some was good and some was bad
Remember Dante?
It was a group of us, just a group of five
Now three dead, one in jail, it seem right now I'm the only one alive
To all my soldiers before me, may ya'll rest in peace
When He took three, took my soul, just the bodies
He at the crossroads guide us out to the rest of me
Wishin I could rewind time like demos
Me and you gettin girls, writin down numbers like memos
Makin million dollar bets, makin all our money stretch like limos
Even though I smile, it's sad, but they say gangstas can't cry
But if I close my eyes and visualize me together
Then I suddenly wanna smile
To see you laid down when it's yo time, when your time was up
You never seen your child, but he's here to remind us
Even though you was wrong, I never could belive that that was true
You was with me forever, you could check my rest in peace tattoos
See me and C and P forever gon be ridin and thuggin
Rest in peace to all the ones that didn't make it
And rest in peace to my brother
We gon miss you
http://images.lowriderarte.com/drawings/0701_lrap_06_z+drawings+notorious_big.jpg
(I love these fools)
I know you in a better place
(Every time I get on my knees)
And I hope to see ya soon someday
(I pray for you, I'm glad you in a better place
I hope I see ya soon, ain't no more killin
Ain't no more fights, and ain't no more tears)

Not terribly dumb, but...does this really read like a 5.7 review?

wtf?

O_o wtf indeed

yeah that's really weird. i wonder if it's a mistake?

Dumb broads can't score out of ten for shit.

yeah, I'm sure it's a mistake

don't have time to read it right now or ever but 5.7 is actually about right for that album imo

It ends with the phrase "that rarest of remix albums: the kind might play start to finish, and more than once" -- I don't pretend to know Jess's process, obviously, but if he happened to feel like this was a good instance of a not-very-essential type of project, it might make sense to use a 5.7 (which should ideally mean "better than average record").

It reads 7.5 when I click on the link above. I guess they changed it?

haha alternately slight dyslexic moment

Ok, that makes sense...

Brief derail to ask a question about the album, for those who've heard it: is it full tracks or did Get Physical/Koze go ahead and make it a mix album, like the early press release suggested? Because the latter is clearly an awful idea, and the Pfork review makes no mention of it, which leaves me hopeful.

full trax

From today's Red Red Meat review:

if you can picture a scrubby patch of weeds and in it a clump of gauze, possibly soiled, twitching in the breeze, and the disconnected image of decay stirs something in you, you're on your way to falling in love with Red Red Meat.

if ya'll haven't seen it, i love the new updates on musical Twitterers.
http://pitchfork.com/news/tag/Echo%20Chamber/

i kinda like that description tbh xp

as far as pitchfork is dumb goes, this month's "puritan blister" is up there:

I’d vowed that 2009 would, at least initially, be a year of pure pop escapism, especially after how pointedly/limitingly I used music as a sort of tourniquet/palliative for 2008's psychic wounds. But just two weeks into the new year, a family friend killed himself while arguing with his fiancee. Those of us by whom he is survived are, understandably, agonizing over the subjective prescriptions we could have offered him: religiosity, Successories, credit lines, lasagna, advice, etc. But as ridiculous as it may sound, even by Puritan Blister standards, I am tortured that, as I sat beside him during Christmas dinner, or on New Year's Eve, I didn't recruit him into the cult of Kanye West's latest album, because it might have saved his life, or at least gotten him through the season.

i'm not the type to get offended by things (and this isn't an exeception) but i can imagine someone getting hilariously angry at the writer of the column after reading this. like maybe the fiancee of the guy who offed himself. "oh right, all he need was to have heard 808s and heartbreak a few more times."

http://pitchfork.com/features/puritan-blister/7587-puritan-blister-42/

Yeah, that's . . . not well thought-out.

It resonates with me, actually.

WOW

ilxor is so clearly a sock

I'm sure it was written with good intentions, but using your friend's tragic story as a framing device to write about the new Kanye West album seems inappropriate (to me, at least). Especially given how serious the situation apparently was: "K---- shot himself in the head, in front of his intended, who'd been re-contacting an ex and who was threatening to leave him."

in today's Prince review written by the guy who started this thread, he refers to himself as 31 a paragraph after implying a birthdate that would make him 29

His rise to success, beginning with 1979's Prince, pretty much mirrored my pre-adolescent development as a music fan.

You think this implies that Jess was born in 1979? That seems like a big leap.

lol they edited it. when i read it, it said something like "Prince's first album, released only a few months after I was born..."

That's true, though. Jess was born Feb. 21, 1978. For You was released in October 1978.

lol jaymc

good review btw

^^ (xp)

they've def edited it in the past hour, though. not a big deal really tho imo, and it was a pretty good review

yeah not a big deal at all, just wanted to clown jess in his own thread for old times sake

I'm sure it was written with good intentions, but using your friend's tragic story as a framing device to write about the new Kanye West album seems inappropriate
Yeah, and claiming that listening to a record could have saved this poor guy's life is just boneheaded and minimizes the tragedy.

PB is usually my favorite read on pitchfork but the last couple have been questionable.

that article is terrible

How to let K----‘s death be about K----, and avoid letting it serve as an excuse to lube up the gorge of self-trivia? I mean, pop's escape has nothing to offer if one can't weather the phrase "I just died in your arms tonight"! I feel suddenly mean about an unsympathetic post-mortem review of an Elliott Smith disc that I typed for (cheap irony alert) No Depression.

http://pitchfork.com/news/35087-lil-waynes-latest-amazing-mixtape-cover/

if lil wayne bootleg mixtape covers are "news" then 77 is like the new york times

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=66238

Album-covers-as-"news" is a part of EVERY successful music site tho. As pretty much the first sign that an album is ready, you instantly become one the first google hits as it nears release date. These days, music writing is all internet math, and that's true for every website, not just pfork

even the jaded snarkballs at idolator do it

well imo "reporting" on the "release" of the decemberists' new album cover is one thing, but doing the same for a bootleg mixtape as if there aren't 495898 hilarious photoshopped mixtape covers every day is another

i kno im getting pedantic but it's not like its a "lil wayne mixtape" -- if in 10 mins i rounded up leaked cam'ron tracks and made a zip and then photoshopped his face over billy mays's body and put jim jones' face in a juicer, i wouldn't expect pfork to "report" on it

as if cam'ron was releasing a new mixtape with a hilarious cam'ron sanctioned cover

slow news day i guess \o_O/ + it is a funny cover

that cover is sick!

dude, yahoo and cnn fill their quotas with a stable of wacky "news," why would a music website be any different?

They could just hype up a worthless band or two and use their "output" as filler quota material and then dump them a year later when there's actually news on bands people like to report.

Just sayin'.

"Do purple pontiffs leave paisley piles in the Minnesota woods?"

i miss jess being around

no sarge you do have a point, wtf is the point in putting up a bulletin about an "amazing" garden variety mixtape cover that has nothing to do w/ the artist's official output

i know they throw 10s at reissues all the time but putting them in "best new music" is a little nutty. been thinking for a long time they should just create a special reissues section apart from the new album reviews.

yeah it's not included in the BNM section though, it's just given the tag next to the review. which is a little confusing

btw starting threads about batshit pitchfork reviews is so 2002

ok pitchfork is dumb: none of your old links work anymore

lol @ JT Ramsay

Let's just admit it: "JT Ramsay" was a pseudonym Jaymc wrote under

If you don't believe me, note that JT RAMSAY is an easy anagram for "SMART JAY"

in the tradition of Pfork anagrams: I always thought Sam Ubl was a fake name because it's an anagram of "Albums."

Nice dude, tho.

JT too fwiw

Mullah Omar, though, that was real.