pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

yeah wow, that's not a well written review.

Enter Downtown Boys, self-billed as a "bi bilingual political dance sax punk party from Providence," which, okay.

A moratorium, please, on comparing synthy indie records to John Hughes soundtracks, especially as most of them don't actually sound like John Hughes soundtracks.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20345-glitterbug/

BWIP
BOM BOM
CHK
CHK-CHK AH!

this had to be written by an ILMer

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/719-in-defense-of-fangirls/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=general&utm_campaign=thepitch

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/peanuts/images/e/ed/Charlie-brown-1-sad.jpg

That Downtown Boys review is hilarious. Adds more fuel to the "Is Pitchfork racist?" fire.

Am I the only on who finds it weird - if not shocking - that Pitchfork has thus far ignored the new Built To Spill album, Built To Spill being one of the bands I used to very closely associate with Pitchfork, for better or worse?

the album comes out tomorrow. they don't seem to run reviews before the week of release very often (at least that had been the case for a number of years -- i was surprised recently that they ran a review of Mac McCaughan's album 3 weeks before its street date).

I thought this album was released on RSD?

maybe on vinyl or something? doesn't go on iTunes and stuff til Tuesday.

maybe Built to Spill are Country now

*Asian

yeah i think they moved to get the vinyl out for record store day early

I prefer the Asian Built To Spill to the Country Built To Spill, but I hear they're gonna put out a split 7" on Black Friday, so that'll probably be a 8.2 easy.

"Earlier this month, word arrived of a new album by the musician Jim O’Rourke. To some people this will mean a great deal; to the other 99.99% percent of the population it will mean nothing at all."

"A quick show of hands among Pitchfork contributors showed a low level of Jim O’Rourke recognition[...]"

: (

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/745-jim-orourke-on-drag-city-a-primer/

i can see how younger people might not be super familiar -- he's been pretty low profile for about a decade now.

haha i think of O'Rourke as kind of the first artist that Pitchfork had a really tortured love/hate relationship with

oh right isn't there a review about how o'rourke ignored the writer at a party?

gastr del sol >>>> o'rourke

I can't wait to measure Mike Powell's career in a show of hands

lol

jim o'rourke is good, and he should put insignificance on itunes

imo mike powell is a great writer, that downtown boys blurb is lazy garbage though

"O’Rourke's first Drag City record—four long instrumentals led by fingerpicked acoustic guitar—took up the project of the Beach Boys circa Smile or what the guitarist John Fahey called “American Primitivism”: Acoustic music that put an alien perspective on old forms."

like imo this is a very precise description

he kinda gave short shrift to insignificance and halfway to a threeway though. "Not Sport, Marital Art" is the best song ever

"Earlier this month, word arrived of a new album by the musician Jim O’Rourke. To some people this will mean a great deal; to the other 99.99% percent of the population it will mean nothing at all."

true tho

which means Pitchfork belongs to the .01 percent.

brad otm, doubt pitchfork has a better writer

def capable of hackwork; but sins, stones

if there's anybody I'd trust for a retrospective it's Mike Powell.

(I only know O'Rourke as a producer and guy on board for three good to excellent SY albums).

dissing "All Downhill from Here" and then comparing it to Collective Soul......... .... .... .... .. .... .. .

i'd rather listen to collective soul. they had some decent riffs.

I too have been thrilled by a bar band playing December

"A quick show of hands among Pitchfork contributors showed a low level of Jim O’Rourke recognition[...]"

Well tbf there are only so many hours in a day in which to pontificate on the minutiae of rap mixtapes

"I can't wait to measure Mike Powell's career in a show of hands"

are you jk w/ this shit

Well tbf there are only so many hours in a day in which to pontificate on the minutiae of rap mixtapes

imo this is an extremely valuable service

FSA's Dave Pearce came to Terrastock for his first U.S. performance, but none of his usual collaborators made the trip. Instead, he was backed by Chicagoan Jim O'Rourke, who overpowered Pearce's gentle picking with his white-noise guitar, and ruined the vibe by telling a dumb and seemingly endless joke midway through the set.

I like Powell and I hope that if/when his own writing is compiled the foreward doesn't concern itself so pettily with the visibility of his work

it's such a lukewarm and tossed off 'retrospective'... he doesn't even like Insignificance !

everything is ok now.

pitchfork has reviewed built to spill.

omg, I'm glad the mike powell o'rourke article is mentioned here so I don't have to bring it up myself. on those rare occasions when pitchfork covers artists that I like (this is rare because there isn't any new bands that I really care about), pitchfork mentions the most annoying shit in their reviews regardless of whether they get the score "right" (usually not).

take the o'rourke article for instance:
1) paragraph #1 - let's write about how no one really knows anything about this artist because the way I judge their popularity is important criteria for this review
2) paragraph #2 "sprawling, orchestrated suites that sound like progressive rock played by a somewhat irritable marching band".
-Admittedly I haven't listened to much of the improv stuff but never once have I heard anything similar to a marching band
3) paragraph #2 "He is one of those musicians whose admirers call him a "composer," as though what he does requires a level of thought and expertise that places him above people who just pick up a guitar and start shredding, which O’Rourke often does"
-Are you shitting me? It's only the 2nd paragraph and you've already proved that you are annoying as hell 3 times. How does a non-Jim'O admirer know anything about Jim'O admirers at all? Has he actually ever heard anyone call O'Rourke a "composer" or is that just what the voices in his head are telling him when he trys to get in the mind-frame of a Jim O'Rourke admirer by listening to his music.

actually I'm gonna stop here. it never fails. i read one article and I have a renewed hate for pitchfork. the kind of hate that ultimately means jack shit because pitchfork is just gonna keep on being pitchfork and I'm gonna keep on reading their articles whenever they cover a band I care about. god damnit

its not a review, its a primer, he is mentioning the popularity as a reason for the article. he thought people who were unfamiliar with his work would find it useful

why do you think he's a non-jim o'rourke admirer?

maybe he is a jim o' admirer but why would he show it by writing shit/shittily about him

some more quotes from that article:

"This is the record I like to imagine Sufjan Stevens might’ve made had he not been polluted by wonder."

about my favorite O'Rourke album Insignificance:
"I don’t listen to this one much, and have a somewhat active distaste for "All Downhill From Here", which reminds me of Collective Soul and a host of other meaty, neo-buttrock bands that inadvertently got me into indie music to begin with."

Sure it's not Mike's fault that he judges one artist based on similarities to another artist. But the Sufjan comparison is far fetched and the collective soul comparison is an important lesson why you shouldn't let your opinions on band x and genre y influence your album experience of someone, that despite the similarities, is doing something very different. Post-buttrock maybe

"mildly godlike"

"subtly defiant"

For when you want to be subversive and challenging but not to the point of attracting attention.

actually now that I think about it, I don't even know what buttrock is

To me it fails as a primer because it doesn't really make O'Rourke's work seem particularly appealing or worth revisiting. It also doesn't make a good case that the work is worth grappling with despite its flaws, or influential, and it doesn't make a point about, say, why O'Rourke isn't as "famous" as he used to be. The basic format is:

a) Here's this guy who used to be revered
b) No one's heard of him anymore I guess.
c) Most people who like him are pretentious assholes
d) I like his records fine, here are some lukewarm descriptions

slow news day?