pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

how likely are you to google/allmusic every song title just to see if anyone else recorded it first?

― some dude

Which goes back to Whiney's comment about the rise of the "google expert". It's hard to write intelligently about music when you're ignorant of its larger context. Knowledge and deep familiarity really do count for something, and this relates to those gloomy panel discussion summaries curmudgeon linked to in the role of a critic thread.

does the shit people review even come w/credits anymore?

― call all destroyer

If it doesn't, is it maybe a good idea to do some research before rendering an "expert" opinion about it?

Towards the end of my time writing for the metal mag that just folded, I was typically getting sent a link to a zip file with the mp3s and nothing else.

yeah that's what i'm talking about. so should reviewers like google every song title to make sure it's not a cover or something?

god no. that would take a whole minute.

The Fork review of my old band's new record had all kinds of understanding problems. Called the dude who mixed it the producer and extrapolated some ideas about the music due to the producer's role. One of the guys in the band wrote to the reviewer and pointed out his mistakes he changed his review around.

im sympathetic to the plight of reviewers getting their zip files w/ no other info but its not that hard to email the publicist and ask for the press release, the liner notes, etc. i do this not cuz i dont want to be wrong but cuz it can be a lazy way to find a hook for a piece if im having trouble figuring out what to write.

i mean it's just kind of like if record companies don't care enough to address these things not sure reviewers should

i don't review a record without asking the publicist for a one-sheet, which every record has, without exception

Duh
"Called the dude who mixed MASTERED it the producer

i don't review a record without asking the publicist for a one-sheet, which every record has, without exception

tbh I think this should be standard policy for everyone

I'd imagine that it's in a reviewer's own best interest to look like a non-idiot as often as possible. Ignorance that parades as "expert opinion" reflects badly on the reviewer, the editor and the publication as a whole. So yeah, don't do that. It's not the fucking record company's fault. "Well, you didn't give me enough information to protect me from saying stupid shit, so..."

um yes it is also the record company's fault

i can totally see being like "well this is what they gave me so this is what i'm going with" but a) i don't review records b) i can be a jerk about things like that

Okay, HD, but the critic's exposed ignorance only the record company's fault in an indirect way. A very indirect way. I read criticism due to a presumption of expertise/intelligence, not a presumption of ability to transcribe one-sheets.

Seriously LOLing at that review. No matter how it happened, that reviewer looks like an idiot. It's some kind of a success for the artist though, since his attempts to de-contextualize the original material has obviously proved to be somewhat successful. At least to pull the wool over this dork's eyes.

Best part: "...a bleak, sometimes frightening character portrait of Oliveri as an outcast not fit for normal society."

u should get credit for dude changing it

lol

judging by recent accounts of olivieri's temperament, you can see why the reviewer thought it was his own song.

getting sent MP3s with nothing else is an annoying trend. what are PR companies for if they're just gonna email you the music?

I could picture a Vietnamese whore saying that whilst doing a striptease.

oh man, I get so paranoid about exactly this thing with mp3s, to the point of creating these elaborate, ridiculous worries -- what if I don't realize it's a cover album of 60s obscurities, what if this line I say I hate is actually a reference I'm not catching, what if I criticize the drumming without realizing the drummer lost an arm in an accident and is re-learning to play like Rick Allen, what if there was a mistake and I got sent the wrong album entirely and I write that it's a ridiculous Bowie rip-off when they accidentally sent me a mix of Bowie b-sides I didn't know about, etc. etc. etc. sometimes it gets you; it's something it's normal not to know, googling won't turn it up, and you just eat it and make corrections.

This probably says more about what I write about (namely, stuff that's either too small to have a publicist working it or too big for anyone working it to care about me, and things sent directly too me by artists and/or by artists that I already have a good working knowledge of), but I almost never ask PR people for anything, unless they happen to mention something I'm actively interested in in some mass e-mail I get. I mean, it's not that hard to find one-sheets or equivalent info just with a quick search anyway if I'm really in the dark on some detail I don't want to get wrong in a review.

pretty sure nick oliveri has a publicist

he murdered his publicist

the review told me

he murdered his publicist

^^^well done

actually GG Allin murdered his publicist first

oh man, I get so paranoid about exactly this thing with mp3s, to the point of creating these elaborate, ridiculous worries -- what if I don't realize it's a cover album of 60s obscurities, what if this line I say I hate is actually a reference I'm not catching, what if I criticize the drumming without realizing the drummer lost an arm in an accident and is re-learning to play like Rick Allen, what if there was a mistake and I got sent the wrong album entirely and I write that it's a ridiculous Bowie rip-off when they accidentally sent me a mix of Bowie b-sides I didn't know about, etc. etc. etc. sometimes it gets you; it's something it's normal not to know, googling won't turn it up, and you just eat it and make corrections.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, October 9, 2009 1:18 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rap music's constant self-referentialism makes this even harder fwiw

and hilarious when new-jacks fuck it up

rawkan

jk <3 u tom

The sound has many names, but none of them seem to fit just right. Dream-beat, chillwave, glo-fi, hypnagogic pop, even hipster-gogic pop

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for " hipster-gogic pop".

is Marc trying to create the world's worst meme, just for larfs?

Results 1 - 10 of about 333 for "hipstergogic pop". (0.21 seconds)

Not actually 333 different mentions of the term, but still

i don't review a record without asking the publicist for a one-sheet, which every record has, without exception

the problem arises when you find that a potential issue crops up here but your deadline is RIGHT THERE FIVE MINUTES AWAY

xpost oh yeah, I read the Reynolds article. I guess the term didn't have any epoch-defining effect on me, for some reason.

That's all true, but I think there's also a tendency in a lot of reviews to treat lyrics as a direct sort of window onto the artist's soul.

^ this. Also, overemphasis on lyrics in reviews of bands/music where lyrics plainly aren't the main focus. Up to, and including, peppering the review with random couplets. Dunno if this is because critics are more likely to be 'words' type people, or whether the music side is harder to write about.

I think it really is that more critics are writers who like music than musicians and/or students of music theory who also can write well. A really stunning number of critics seem to talk about only the text of the lyrics as if they're writing about poetry, and treat the music as almost incedental.

Granted, a lot of brilliant musical minds can't write for shit and I wouldn't want to read them as critics. But on the other end of the spectrum there are a lot of critics who don't know shit about music but express their shallow lit 101 ideas about it really eloquently.

[looks around nervously]

think it really is that more critics are writers who like music than musicians and/or students of music theory who also can write well. A really stunning number of critics seem to talk about only the text of the lyrics as if they're writing about poetry, and treat the music as almost incedental.

Really? If anything the lyrics-are-just-as-sound school has been so successful that I've known critics who get self-conscious citing examples of good rock lyrics (I don't excuse myself, one of the world's biggest Bernard Sumner fans).

Oh there are definitely lots of successful critics in both camps, if we're gonna run w/ my shaky premise that everyone is one or the other. But I feel like there are more, especially nowadays, who can go deep into the meaning of a song (at least as they see it) w/o ever giving you the slightest idea what it sounds like.

A pretty high percentage of critics I know play music. At least a little. (At least indie-type critics.) Some just play an instrument. Some have fun doing home recordings -- nothing serious, just for the enjoyment of it, but enough to give a person a sense of what it involves to put music together, how it goes and how the tools work. Some are full-on musicians with albums you can go buy at the store. (On Pitchfork's staff that includes, as far as I know: Matt Lemay, Mia Clarke, Drew Daniel, Joshua Klein, Dominique Leone, and Douglas Wolk. And even just I personally have heard for-fun recorded music by at least five more.)

So I wouldn't leap to the assumption that critics/writers don't know anything from a musician's perspective. I think a lot of folks have worked on or played with music enough to have a little bit of grounding in how it works. Which is helpful, sometimes. I don't know that it's always necessary, and sometimes it can even get in the way. But I think a decent number of critics have some of it, just enough to see a few things about what musicians are doing.

Yeah, plenty do, of course. But I'm saying if I had to guess probably less than half? I don't think that's a hugely unlikely thought.

NB: One thing I do think critics do, often, sometimes well and sometimes badly, is to try and isolate some core thing about the essence of the record they're writing about, what the music's really about or what's it's offering -- and then try to locate how that's reflected in the lyrics, which you can actually quote on the page and say this, this right here sums it up.

Which might account for some of the lyric stuff being discussed here

that's what I end up doing, mostly.

Yeah, that definitely happens a lot too.

What always irks me about the Christgau school of thought is when a critic seems to decide on what the record stands for or symbolizes, and then takes some kind of ethical or intellectual stance on that, as if that tells you whether it's a good or bad piece of music.

from a reader of music reviews standpoint, i have to stay, i really can't stand the idea of a critic telling me what the music is about. i can see how it works fine for some people, but not for me. this also extends to book reviews as well, so, you know.

And I'm on the other side of that fence. For better or worse, I tend to approach almost all art as an argument of some sort, and figuring out what's being said is job #1. Even if it's just presenting an aesthetic or working through a process, I tranlate it into argumentese so I can more effectively comp and rebut it. Therefore I like reviews that deal with music on a similar level, though not to the exclusion of all other considerations. Funny thing is that I'm taking the reviews as arguments, too -- arguments about other arguments that I can then argue with on a number of levels.

n Pitchfork's staff that includes, as far as I know: Matt Lemay, Mia Clarke, Drew Daniel, Joshua Klein, Dominique Leone, and Douglas Wolk

Mike Powell is in the band Festival (though he didn't play on their most recent album).