pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

somebody add it to their wikipedia page

Yes, a band in their perfect groove. I reached bedside to my DC City Paper and began to frantically search for them live. That's when their cover of "Come On Eileen" came on. I think I came. Great music that won't be soon forgotten by anyone who's heard them.

i assumed this had to be a joke, but looking at the other works of James P. Wisdom I'm almost willing to accept this is not an ironic slam.

the name "james p wisdom" just sounds too good to be true.

james w pissdom

(It's also a statement of allegiances: though Blake-- as Harmonimix-- has worked with Lil' Wayne's voice, he doesn't seem to be as interested in current American hip-hop and R&B as much as he is in picking up where Timbaland and the Neptunes left off at the end of the 1990s.)

this is a weird statement -- clearly neither timbaland nor the neptunes (who were barely even starting in the late 90s) "left off" at the end of 90s -- unless powell is insinuating that timbo & i guess the neptunes started going in different directions musically at the turn of the decade (and i wouldn't even agree with that), the timeline of this is obv pretty messed up

this is still puzzling me

what review?

n/m

This one was bugging me the other day:

Despite an absence of the band's best-known songs, the sweaty, grimy Exile on Main St. has grown into the Rolling Stones' most universally acclaimed record. Despite dozens of hits, putting together a cohesive album often seemed to be beyond the Stones, tripped up by either manager Allen Klein's publishing-rights parasitism or the band's 1970s hubris. That leaves a catalog in which only Exile is built not on hits but on vibe and: the album's singularly sleazy sound and making-of legend.

Bold mine.

Wait, no bold. Anyway, it's the repeated "despite" that bothered me.

Despite dozens of hits, putting together a cohesive album often seemed to be beyond the Stones, tripped up by either manager Allen Klein's publishing-rights parasitism or the band's 1970s hubris.

The Stones had recorded "cohesive" albums since 1966 at least, and I'm only including the entirely self-written ones.

how is sticky fingers not a cohesive album?

or yeah as alfred says, like most of them?

the stones always feel more cohesive to me than the beatles

How is that second despite bothersome (aside from the writer just needing a thesaurus)? The writer is emphasizing his thesis statement; the Rolling Stones were good at pumping out appealing, easy-to-acclaim singles but had problems focusing that energy into a cohesive, easy-to-acclaim album.

Whether that opinion makes any sense is better handled by the people already making fun of it.

Who wrote that Rolling Stones review? That's some incredible wrongness.

I think starting two sentences with Despite is the bothersome part.

I'm not sure he's constructing parallel structures, but even if he wasn't both uses of "despite" are correct.

How is that second despite bothersome

It just didn't flow like he was emphasizing it to me. The ideas that he expresses don't need that kind of build.

Despite an absence of the band's best-known songs, the sweaty, grimy Exile on Main St.

"Tumbling Dice" isn't one of their best-known songs? If he'd said "an absence of the band's biggest hits," he'd be correct; "Tumbling Dice" "only" hit #7.

That seems nit-picky. "Tumbling Dice" isn't as well known as their best known songs, yes.

ha, I was all ready to say "I have never heard this song before in my life" and then it got to the "baaaby" part:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sh-fMOecSE

Are those Playboy dice?

I have never heard this song before in my life.

(I mean, maybe I have. The "baby" part does sound familiar, but I don't know if it's actually familiar or just familiar-sounding.)

I've never pegged you as a Stones fan.

i think it's true -- in all my days as a classic rock radio-listening pre-teen/teenager, Exile songs were *not* the Stones songs they played on the radio very often. to this day, i bet there are at least 15 Stones songs more likely to be played on the radio.

"Tumbling Dice" never got as much play as the sixties stuff, the Some Girls threesome, and "Start Me Up," but I heard it enough. Its chart position is exactly right: big enough.

Opening "ooooooh-oooooooh" of the background singers in Tumbling Dice always hits me like a greeting from a great old friend.

actually, the one I feel like I've heard the most is "Beast of Burden," which seems kind of weird. but this is just my experience ...

That's totally weird.

In my last town I think the classic rock station played "Beast of Burden" every day.

Yeah, the last time I spent any significant amount of time listening to classic rock (lol 1987) "Beast of Burden" was played a lot.

might just be that it's the stones ballad of choice -- Wild Horse is a little too draggy for classick rock stations, probably.

96 Rock in the ATL played "Tumbling Dice" all the time; it's a pretty southern rock-y single, which the Stones don't really have very many of, given their fixations---there's "Brown Sugar", and not many others.

This is my kind of Pitchfork thread! (I mean the Stones part.)

I've never pegged you as a Stones fan.

I'm not. But I just looked at this list and can count about 15 songs that I instantly know how they go, which means there's probably also a handful of others I might know if I heard them.

I was jokin'. Beast of Burden is a very, very famous song by the Rolling Stones.

http://www.rollingstonesnet.com/images/BeastOfBurdenPS.jpg

Although when I image searched it, I came up with a bunch of Magic: The Gathering cards.

http://twitter.com/pitchforkmedia/status/15357256549

pretty thrilled they've started having entire news items that quote stuff like Colin Meloy weighing in on the MIA saga via Twitter

You're being ironic, I hope.

ugh that Andre 3000 "song" is so sad

like, this is what yr wasting yr time with dude? really?

http://pitchfork.com/news/39014-echo-chamber-colin-meloy-vs-mia/

^ SEO SEO SEO SEO SEO

also: zzzzzzzzzz

Sorta half serious question -- it feels around ILX like though Pitchfork often covers the albums that get a lot of discussion, it's kinda a closed circuit. Outside a few columns (specifically Why We Fight, Poptimists, stuff like that), they review an album and then outside this thread or others like it there's no relationship to the review. I assume a good Pitchfork review can still help sell a record, but has their critical impact waned at all (I mean, more than the general critical impact of music writing has waned)? I can't even remember what they wrote about any of the albums that I'd consider interesting this year -- even stuff that formerly would've fallen into their critical context (like Vampire Weekend or Sleigh Bells). Is this anyone else's experience or am I totally off-base?

always hear "beast of burden" as "pizza burger" as in "i'll never eat your"

Super lol btw at Colon Meloy taking a shot at M.I.A. After this fiasco - http://www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/music/taynted-love/ - you'd think he'd have some empathy for musicians getting into embarrassing fights with critics.

read that cee oh tee tee piece as sophomore in college. embarrassing for everyone involved

I've seen a few people suggest recently that it's in some way mean or cowardly for Pitchfork not to allow people to comment underneath its album reviews, as if (a) this is some entrenched right of the modern internet user and (b) P4K comment boxes wouldn't attract the worst people on earth

Oh man, Chris Ott is terrible.