pitchfork

i think you, sarah, are distinctly and perhaps (close to) uniquely outside the venn diagram, relative to most of the regular p4k thread coffee klatch/bitch fest. i mean, you are just not sufficiently indie.

no offense...

imidswtpitbh

lol - i am insufficiently indie it is true! thank you all for sincerely answering my sincere questions. i feel like i have learned something v important about ilx tonight.

contenderizer: dusted is pretty solid

yah, for real! dusted is where i get most of my irl music pointers. or those that don't come from ilm, anyway...

if this stuff is really annoying to you (any of you), and barely covers the music you are genuinely interested in, then why bother paying attention to pitchfork?

― sarahel, Friday, September 3, 2010 2:32 AM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think sometimes people pay a lot of attention to stuff that annoys them! not even by choice. like the nyt style section annoys me to no end but i read it every week. twice.

i feel like i have learned something v important about ilx tonight.

what, that it is crazy indie fuxxors? cuz...

sarahel, if you don't mind me asking, what is your "affinity group"?

wish list included big l, big pun, and ween

noize iirc xp

yeh, it is the undiscovered country

who is spock in this scenario

@contenderizer

jesus lizard and boredoms were both on the list iirc

― Dan S, Friday, September 3, 2010 5:58 AM

I believe shellac and polvo were there also

were they? i miss so much...

again, was primarily concerning myself with teh all important/coveted top 100 slots

wow. im really really surprised by these results

also, fuck weezer forever

god i hate that band

if this stuff is really annoying to you (any of you), and barely covers the music you are genuinely interested in, then why bother paying attention to pitchfork?

i took this to heart last time people said it to me, when i bitched about pfork on the EOY lists, and i'm proud that i basically managed to completely ignore this list while it was happening. sarahel is right here, really. it's important to remember that this is NOT any sort of definitive or central canon, unless you associate yourself with a particular niche group of music fans. which i, obviously, do not.

but god wants me to love gold sounds

this is a weird-azz top 20 str8 up

it is a house divided against itself

i dont think its that weird, its pretty good, i like loser, and weezer, and all the bands lex hates, and i like a lot of the musicians he loves too, seems to me that if you made a cd with all these songs i would play it all the way through, probably even the pavement song

what about mazzy star

fuck yeah

i like pretty much every song i've heard out of these 20, exceptions being NMH & radiohead

the mazzy star trk is probably the only choice in the top 20 that didn't have me wondering why they chose that track from the particular artist

i have made out to that song too many times not to have feelings about it

i thought the choices in the top 20 were less bizarre than the rest of the list

only "protect ya neck" through me off

i don't really know tons about like mbv tho or something, maybe that one was a weird pick

threw*

i probably would've picked "ATLiens" or "rosa parks" for outkast but i'm not about to quibble w/ someone thinking "spottieottie" is that good

there's an old ilm post somewhere which basically says "mbv = enya with layered guitars instead of layered vox", and it's otm.

björk songs from the '90s that are way way way better than "hyperballad": human behaviour, come to me, aeroplane, play dead, big time sensuality, one day, enjoy, isobel, the modern things, bachelorette, jóga, pluto, hunter, unravel, all is full of love, my snare, sod off

actually i also way prefer the awesome brodsky quartet version of "hyperballad" to the original

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

"How can you delude yourself for this long?"

Board description? Please?

man I was sure the #1 spot belonged to me this time, wtf, had booked a table at le bernardin

there's an old ilm post somewhere which basically says "mbv = enya with layered guitars instead of layered vox", and it's otm.

easy to say, but ignores that how you layer is at least as important as that/what you layer

also ignores the fact that enya with layered guitars is rad

feel free to explain enya's layering in detail! i have only ever given a cursory listen to both acts and neither grabbed me, and it sounded pretty accurate from that.

i'm saying that yes, both consist of the layering of a given element and strive for/arrive at a soft, enveloping effect - but beyond that there isn't much similarity. enya's layering has less to do with textural contrasts and manufactured disorientation, doesn't run sharp/harsh tones into softer ones or try to generate soft sounds out of intermingled harshness. otoh, they both do wind up working in a similar way, so i understand the comparison.

lol at Pavement taking #1

totes mediokes imo

Trip-hop was already plenty cinematic by 1996, when DJ Shadow dropped his stunning debut LP Entroducing.... His contribution to the scene was to focus on the small stuff. Shadow dropped the world-weary narratives associated with the genre and zoomed all the way in, creating richly detailed atmospheres out of samples that felt less like film scenes and more like a master painter's collected work.

feel like this cat is bluffing most of the time. a bit like the blur thing earlier, it seems weird to me to talk about shad's 'contribution to the scene', as if he didn't help build the fuckin thing. i guess massive attack had 'world-weary narratives' but a lot of trip-hop followed in shadow's footsteps -- was instrumental hip-hop. whether his atmospheres are less filmy than painter-y, idk.

eh i didnt say it was a BAD top 20 i said it was a weird one. rlly shocked nirvana in particular didnt make top ten, and lost out to, well, weezer

Pitchfork's review section is pretty broad-minded - in the past two weeks they've reviewed Kemialliset Ystävät, Oren Ambarchi/Keiji Haino/Jim O'Rourke and Fennesz/Daniell/Buck amongst other non-fuxxor releases - but this isn't reflected in their charts or in the canonical history adopted by the site. As has been observed, one factor is that the intersection of the reviewers' tastes is presumably indiecentric and any consensus work will reflect this. Another factor I think is that their historical perspective (what they cover in terms of reissues/retrospectives) is a lot more limited.

But yeah, it's not as if Pitchfork=the critical universe. Their reviews don't have much influence on my purchases (unlike say 10 years ago) but I check it mostly to see what people are buzzing on.

xp - Weezer > Nirvana is a classic result.

this list is so hilariously challoping at every level

except of course that afaik its basically about counting up ppls votes

if in order to make it interesting you need to do things like say gold soundz is the best pavement song; maybe you shouldn't have made the list at all

then a group of ppl were challoping with their votes--don't see why that wouldn't follow

I thought it might be interesting to compare the Pitchfork poll with the results of ILX's 1990s singles poll. So here's the Pitchfork top 50, and I've put the song's placing in the ILX poll in brackets:

50. Oasis - Live Forever [#73]
49. Yo La Tengo - Autumn Sweater [-]
48. Foo Fighters - Everlong [-]
47. PJ Harvey - Rid of Me [-]
46. Stardust - Music Sounds Better with You [#16]
45. Geto Boys - Mind Playing Tricks on Me [#5]
44. Massive Attack - Unfinished Symphony [#15]
43. The Chemical Brothers - Setting Sun [-]
42. Nine Inch Nails - Closer [-]
41. The Pharcyde - Passin' Me By [-]
40. The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds [#43]
39. Beastie Boys - Sabotage [-]
38. A Tribe Called Quest - Check the Rhime [-]
37. Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U [#17]
36. Guided by Voices - Game of Pricks [-]
35. Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth - They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.) [#65]
34. New Order - Regret [#6]
33. Missy Elliott - The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) [#62]
32. Bonnie "Prince" Billy - I See a Darkness [-]
31. Underworld - Born Slippy NUXX [#28]
30. The Flaming Lips - Race for the Prize [-]
29. The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony [-]
28. Nas - It Ain't Hard to Tell [-]
27. Elliott Smith - Needle in the Hay [-]
26. Blur - Girls & Boys [-]
25. Mobb Deep - Shook Ones Pt. II [#51]
24. Built to Spill - Car [-]
23. Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (Elvis Version) [-]
22. The Breeders - Cannonball [#3]
21. The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979 [-]
20. DJ Shadow - Midnight in a Perfect World [-]
19. Mazzy Star - Fade into You [#49]
18. Daft Punk - Da Funk [#23]
17. Belle & Sebastian - The State I'm In [#21]
16. Outkast - Spottieottiedopalicious [-]
15. Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence [#24]
14. The Notorious B.I.G. - Juicy [#35]
13. Nirvana - Smells Like Teens Spirit [#12]
12. Aphex Twin - Windowlicker [#8]
11. Björk - Hyperballad [#10]
10. Weezer - Say It Ain't So [-]
9. Beck - Loser [#14]
8. Aaliyah - Are You That Somebody? [#13]
7. Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 [-]
6. My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow [-]
5. Wu-Tang Clan - Protect Ya Neck [-]
4. Radiohead - Paranoid Android [#9]
3. Dr. Dre feat. Snoop Doggy Dogg - Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang [#18]
2. Pulp - Common People [#1]
1. Pavement - Gold Soundz [-]

8 songs in the Pitchfork top 20 also made it to the ILX top 20. 7 songs in the Pitchfork top 20 didn't place at all in the ILX top 100, though My Bloody Valentine, Wu-Tang Clan, and Pavement all had other songs place in the ILX poll. Oddly enough Outkast had no songs in the ILX top 100.