pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Today they bnm'ed Wadada Leo Smith & Vijay Iyer and Charles Bradley's new Black Sabbath cover. Are they changing away from indie-hype as well?

Nah, they just looooove Vijay Iyer. They've been polishing his knob for well over a decade.

Historicity

Accelerando

Solo

Tragicomic

In What Language? (with Mike Ladd)

A Charles Bradley cover that was originally released in 2013, and then later re-released late last year in promotion of his upcoming album now gets "Best New Music"? Better late than never, I guess.

Charles Bradley's retro soul is standard fare for indie fans as well

kinda feel like indie is not a thing anymore, like it doesn't exist

lol, sorry to rail on this one more time but now they have to do a quasi-news item to explain that they've named something a best new track:

http://i.imgur.com/Xtt1aa1.jpg

"there's got to be a better way"

Because it's a "big deal" duh!

lol at Charles Bradley's Cover of Black Sabbath's "Changes" is Named Best New Track. Too bad the Senate will never vote to confirm dudes.

Would find it really funny if this "news" gets reported by another Music website, given that a lot of them just seem to report on the same stories.

Aggrefork blog BNMNOW.com begins to outperform the hub site; buys conde nast and vows to become the new home for meta-millenial men

baaaaha, i thought it was just a one off mistake but it looks like it's a thing

http://i.imgur.com/8LTm4l7.jpg

Pleeeeease let a band called Track release a really good song with Track in the title, so it can be named best new track, given the best new track tag, and also the tracks tag

i don't ask for much

they'll be reviewing the reviews next

Charles Bradley's Cover of Black Sabbath's "Changes" is Named Best New Track, And That's Okay

is the blessed impossible day upon us

is ilm seceding from pitchfork

every site looks like pitchfork now. blame facebook. (kind of not kidding.)

I usually just blame Apple.

surprised (okay, very slightly) that ratings below 5 are hardly used if this index is correct:
http://www.albumoftheyear.org/ratings/1-pitchfork-highest-rated/2016/10

btw redesign has introduced abstracts for all reviews, thx p4k!

I'd be like "hey good point we should probably include those summaries in the actual reviews as introductory paragraphs in boldface or smth like they do in the papers"

― niels, Tuesday, February 9, 2016 2:31 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

x-post Not too surprising, as p4k tends to only review the sorts of albums they are predisposed to like (as opposed to Spin or RS reviewing Dave Matthews records and such)

yeah, that does make a lot of sense too - guess it's kind of old school to position yourself through disliking (even if any reader will get the implicit dislike in ignoring a popular artist entirely)

Bad reviews/ratings seem really scarce in the whole world of music publications, not just P4K.

That's because everything's awesome now. Right?

its that buyers guide/curatorial/RIYL thing that the internet has brought about. equal parts Amazon and insane rock list-makers. discarding/ignoring the bad stuff (or what people think is bad stuff) and focusing on whatever your niche is. makes sense with so much stuff out there. people don't want to read a ton of bad reviews they want itunes/spotify playlist choices.

there need to be more "worst songs/albums of the year" lists.

and then just for fairness there should also be like "the 20 most bleh middle of the road songs/albums of the year that were approximately a 5 out of 10"

You would think more publications would be down to review Twenty One Pilots since it can be kinda fun to write bad reviews.

where is the pitchfork version of this book?
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WGnJIEHQL._SX314_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

i feel like in film or lit or many other mediums, getting one star or zero stars or whatever is common because there's a sense of like, this movie was botched so badly on some fundamental level that there's no audience that would think highly of it, whereas with music, i dunno, i think there's a greater sense of, we're only writing about it because somebody does like it, it holds some value for some audience, or there are good songs but as a whole it's not great.

back IN MY DAY most of my PF reviews were under 5/10, but that was when they would make people review any old garbage from the promo pile.

i've often thought that there's a niche (likely online) for eviscerating and ONLY eviscerating reviews; don't get why whiney isn't doing that

i think you kind of have to wait for bad records to come to you for it to not seem forced, if you're just doing a performative IT STINKS schtick it doesn't really have the same effect

every month i write about my 10 favorite albums that came out that month and one 'worst' record, and there've been ties when the 'worst' review will get more attention than the others, although i don't go scorched earth every time, sometimes i'm just genuinely disappointed in a record i was looking forward to.

If only Pitchfork would tackle the upcoming Lukas Graham album.

I remember when an ilxor wrote a semi-negative review on p4k and Genius annotated it to explain to her how wrong she was

she went against THE BUZZ and that's unconscionable. similar fits were pitched about their Lil Yachty review.

me and maura pitched a book like that after our F2K posts did monster traffic in 2009

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/f2k-the-50-worst-songs-of-the-00s-6629282

No one wanted it.

lol somehow I missed that there's an actual artist going by "Lil Yachty" and I was trying to figure out if that was a reference to something else

I remember when an ilxor wrote a semi-negative review on p4k and Genius annotated it to explain to her how wrong she was

Is this about Wet?

come to think of it, i haven't read a good/funny negative review in a long time.

If only Pitchfork would tackle the upcoming Lukas Graham album.

I mean there's a charlie puth review. anything is possible

I just learned that I went to high school with two of the writers of 7 Years.

@billstevejim have you seen this

http://www.amazon.com/Worst-Rock-Roll-Records-Time/dp/0806512318

i bought it for less than 3 at a waldenbooks when i was 16, and it probably changed my life.

also guys don't you know that negativity is out unless you're talking about out-of-context photos of people in embarrassing situations

is this the point where i say that I think "Seven Years" is very poignant and the right kind of saccharine sentimentality for me to unreservedly enjoy

a data-journalist should graph the evolution of the distribution of pitchfork scores to test the 'no more negative reviews' hypothesis

the end of negativity is possibly an undesirable side effect of the positive development of too much music. at one point Scott Plagenhof was on some ilx thread saying 'we genuinely prefer to review an album we like over one we don't', and as the # of albums increases if they stick to that principle the % of neg reviews should decrease (assuming music as a whole doesn't get worse). so they don't go out of their way to shit on a random indie album as much anymore (or only Ian Cohen does). but i feel like they still have some degree of integrity and if a notable album sucks they'll give it a nice salty review

I think Cohen has stepped away from that role.

I was going to mention a negative review in The Wire from a few years ago but, frankly, their house style makes negative reviews pretty boring

dry british academic voice meets salty dialogue isn't very biting

that thing Lex wrote about Future Brown last year was a good 'ah, they just don't write negative music criticism like this anymore' moment

wapo can be pretty negi at times.

If I want reviews that don't flow with the current of pop (sub)culture opinion, I wade through RYM, and various music-themed message boards/genre-specific sites. There's a lot of bad writing at these places, and I'm sure plenty of the contributors would love the exposure somewhere like Pfork would give them. However, there are also people just writing because they love the music, or they know so much about it, good or bad, they can't keep it down. Opinions about music, art, film -- hell, ANYTHING -- carry the most weight to me when people don't have anything to gain by giving them out. Business, by definition, don't fit that criteria.