pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

No Josh

yea, exactly. especially that last part -- the reviews and the coverage run constantly but it's all just kind of "there." all this kind of started with the "hipster metal phenomenon" around 2004-2006 but their coverage has just continued.

― marcos, Thursday, August 1, 2013 2:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and despite the high coverage w/ reviews and columns, has metal been incorporated into the more influential "tastemaking" features of the site? (e.g. best new music, the year-end lists, etc.)

― marcos, Thursday, August 1, 2013 2:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doesn't that just make metal like several other genres that are frequently reviewed on the site, but don't have enough fandom within the overall staff to consistently have a major presence on the year-end lists? isn't that a good thing (assuming the reviews aren't clueless/bad)?

lol waterface is a ghost in the machine reference

i'm still blown away some people are accepting that early era CDs with the horrible digital mastering and CD players with DACs that are a joke by today's standards were better than a good record player and good records in the early 80s.

i sort of question whether some ppl on this thread have heard a clean record on a good player before.

but man the industry saw gold in them hills and wanted to sell you all the warhorses over again and boy did that early anti-record propaganda stick around in the ether

nobody on this thread ever really said 'cds rool, vinyl drools,' that's just been waterface's hallucination

not really

but please, everyone continue to misinterpret me

wouldn't want to do that

yea, exactly. especially that last part -- the reviews and the coverage run constantly but it's all just kind of "there." all this kind of started with the "hipster metal phenomenon" around 2004-2006 but their coverage has just continued.

― marcos, Thursday, August 1, 2013 2:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and despite the high coverage w/ reviews and columns, has metal been incorporated into the more influential "tastemaking" features of the site? (e.g. best new music, the year-end lists, etc.)

― marcos, Thursday, August 1, 2013 2:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doesn't that just make metal like several other genres that are frequently reviewed on the site, but don't have enough fandom within the overall staff to consistently have a major presence on the year-end lists? isn't that a good thing (assuming the reviews aren't clueless/bad)?

― some dude, Thursday, August 1, 2013 8:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yea defintely, i'm not making any value judgement on p4k's metal coverage -- it's totally a good thing that other genres are getting coverage on the site, assuming the coverage is of some reasonable quality. despite reading the site a lot, i myself don't even really follow their "core" coverage of indie rock and hip-hop. i'm just pointing on that this one particular genre (metal) gets consistently high coverage on the site despite not seeping into their broader assessments of "the best music." like pitchfork covers some international/world music (especially their writer joe tangari) but it's not like every single day there are 1-2 world music album reviews along with a world music column.

a few thoughts paraphrased from algerian goalkeeper's Post 1990 British Indie Rock/Rock/Metal thread. they were always meant to go here, but got distracted along the way:

i'm a fan of heavy/harsh indie rock from way back, and i trace my current interest in metal to the gap between dopethrone and dopesmoker, so i figure i embody the "nigel hipster" strawman as well as anyone. imo, a good chunk of the crowd that would have been listening to noisy, scurrilous US indie rock in the 80s & 90s are listening to metal these days (thrash, doom, black, "extreme", converge-style metalcore, w/e). indie as a contemporary genre no longer makes much room for the noise, ugliness and aggression that were once so central to indie as an ethos.

the two streams have never been all that far apart in the first place. many of my college friends dug voivod, metallica and slayer alongside sonic youth, scratch acid and butthole surfers. indie/metal cross-pollination bred & fed the likes of soundgarden, monster magnet, kyuss, helmet and the jesus lizard in the 90s, though i jumped ship on "alt metal" at a certain point. moving into the current era, stoner rock (qotsa, fu manchu, nebula, high on fire, e-wiz, boris) got lots of attention from the indie/generalist rock press circa y2k, along with art-doom from khanate and sunnO. earth and melvins as through-lines.

Indie certainly no longer has a DIY punk aesthetic overall. So much of it is clinical and edited very specifically to match some predetermined vibe. All of the album covers look like magazine ads as well.

AKA I agree on that overall contemporary indie genre assessment (if "indie" can even be defined at all anymore)

idk if contenderizer is "otm" there but as an '90s indie/college radio guy who has been shifting increasingly toward metal/noise/punk/heavy/whatever over the past few years, all that stuff made sense to me

oh it was on this thread.

my metal/grunge/noise rock/hardcore listening started at pretty much the same point (post-nevermind) so I never graduated from one to another but at various times from then til now I will have listened to one more than the others. (Why I'm still seen as a non-metal outsider on the rolling metal thread by some haha). It can only be a good thing if metal is getting quality coverage from Pitchfork IMO.

Perhaps p4k are trying to build up their own metal community from people outwith the site rather than convert their existing, some may say, boring and close minded conservative, demographic/strawmen?

Jon/Via/Chi was always pissed off despite good reviews metal bands never got best new music. Has anything changed on that front?

i just scrolled back through a year of BNMs, around 50-55 albums total.

Converge and Deafheaven were in there. also Swans, GYBE, Iceage and Metz. Draw yr metal line where you wish. (you can see where mine falls.)

some would say "so zero metal albums"

Who cares?

Do you guys care?

yeah i think some would say converge and deafheaven fit a certain pitchfork aesthetic regarding metal and thats why they got a BNM. Fine albums regardless.

xpost, I don't really care, but am interested in the discussion of Pitchfork's metal coverage vs. Pitchfork's demo and so was just pointing out which albums have been elevated to BNM.

i dunno, i think marcos (right?) brought up an interesting point.

Who cares?

― Charlie Slothrop (wins), Monday, August 5, 2013 10:15 AM (4 hours ago)

like you, i care enough to post in an internet thread

oh keep shooting the shit by all means I just meant does it matter if stuff gets "best new music"

i suspect it matters to most bands, whether they say so or not. generally speaking, it means more exposure, more gigs and more record sales.

fwiw i was never "pissed off" about metal albums not getting BNM, i was just curious about the few times that a metal album had a 8.2+ rating a didn't get BNM. but i really don't care anymore, so whatever. just thought i'd clarify from AG's post above.

ok

no big deal, i just don't want to be known as "the guy who rages about pitchform scores". i've already got a dodgy enough rep around these parts.

but "the guy won can't type" is apparently still in contention, ffs "pitchform"

why is it ok to parse the minutiae of everything pitchfork on here for years but as soon as someone mentions "best new music" everyone gets all WHY WOULD YOU EVEN TALK ABOUT THAT NOOB

Because how dare you speak of BNM as if it matters. It only matters to dorks. Pitchfork is only worth ridiculing, gawd.

re: who cares? yea i never got the sense anyone had any emotional investment in this conversation beyond some interest in discussing some points. nobody is butthurt that metal isn't getting "best new music" or topping the year-end lists. it's more just a curiousity -- pitchfork gives significant coverage (30%?) including highly positive reviews, runs 1-2 metal reviews everyday, but yet not much is seeping into their more influential features. i have no investment in what pitchfork covers, i don't even know 85% of the shit in best new music or their year end lists. but i do read enjoy reading the site (mostly columns and features tbh) so i'm just curious.

also, i feel like pitchfork had a similar shift with rap/hip-hop in the early 2000s, like there was this period when they started covering a lot more rap in addition to the indie. i feel like hip-hop is more integrated in the site, to the point where it's been getting BNM and year-end accolades for years now. like i just see it as part of the shit that pitchfork covers, it's part of the site now in a way that 12 years ago it wasn't. so it's just interesting to see this other genre (metal) that's similar been incorporated into the site, but not totally. ha, like out of the 5 album reviews they run everyday, all the metal albums are always 4th or 5th.

BM Music.

BNM directly correlates with higher sales as far as I've always seen. I think it is a relevant point in regards to whether any band of (truly) indie level rises in popularity or not.

Yeah it defintiely does, at least according to the dudes I've talked to at Reckless. I think I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but one of the problems they run into is Pitchfork giving a fawning BNM review for a record that hasn't been released yet. That same day they'll get tons of people asking for it, so they'll crank up the number of copies they order. Then the record finally comes out and everyone has moved on and they end up sitting on a big pile of 'em.

Heh, yeah I've seen that first hand. Insound.com never had to worry about that though- just a spike of pre-orders followed. Yet at the record store it always ended up being too many copies of one BNM item and not enough of another. That mostly had to do with the shitty one-stop we used (I think they still use it).

giving BNM to all those 8+ metal albums would probably hurt the brand with casual readers who look to it to be steered toward the next Illinoise or whatever

Well that's the thing- I hear it all the time but an 8+ review doesn't automatically mean BNM. It seems to be given to albums that are exciting in categories beyond "solidity" and represent beacons towards where the site predicts music is heading (as is their opinion hence the taste-maker function).

It would hurt the brand because it wouldn't mean anything except "8+".

every music site runs reviews before release date because leaks and pageviews

I don't think anyone was complaining about that.

someone upthread mentioned BNMs coming out before official release dates so

it just seems like a weird thing to single any one publication out for when everybody does it

I will complain about BNMs coming out before release dates because it's such a ridiculous practice that only exists for legacy reasons. I hate it.

We were talking more about how the BNM specifically directly results in sales. So when the review runs earlier than the release suddenly all these people are clamoring for it but by the time it comes in the peak interest from the public has passed. It wasn't a criticism on the fact that they run reviews early. Just a frustrating repeat occurrence for retail stores.

Actually, it sounds like a valid criticism to me.

What is the impetus to run reviews early anyway? To make a flack happy? Yay team.

To establish a website as "cool" and "hip" because WE HEAR IT BEFORE YOU DO? Yay team.

Part of it i guess is that they don't follow up every BNM review with equal ongoing celebrity obsession in the news/articles. So that interest doesn't last until the release date in many cases.

Or isn't sustained as well.

pretty cool thread from 2006