pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Something that happens to me more and more is that I want to have lots of time with whatever I've reviewing - like weeks. I don't want to spend a week with the album PLUS (in some cases) cramming to get up to speed on a back catalogue. So generally when pitching I'm gonna pitch way in advance, which in a world full of scheduled and stunt releases, presents its own set of problems. Also: unless it's an artist I care about or it's awful in a spectacular/interesting way, I don't really want to write a negative review, I'd rather write about something that blows my mind or opens up new vistas.

Oscar gives it four-and-a-half phooeys.
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/muppet/images/e/e1/SYSATMR.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100218024413

PHOOEY PHOOEY PHOOEY PHOOEY (and one-half PHOOEY)

A Visual History of Battles (the Band)

When I saw this headline, I'm expecting it to be a visual history of Robbie Robertson getting into it with Levon Helm.

What's with all the Deftones love this week?

I dunno. If I had realized they sounded like Thursday, I might have listened to them 15 years ago.

What's with all the Deftones love this week?

long overdue imo

i feel like p4k has been covering a ton of old bands lately, makes me question whether their core audience really is passionate millenial males tbh

right now on the p4k home page are:

queens of the stone age
at the drive-in
metallica
pj harvey
the shins
the black keys
the beach boys
deftones

p4k becoming Rolling Stone for aging hipsters?

well p4k is about as old now as Rolling Stone was in 1984

http://rymimg.com/lk/f/l/65603346bd3ac5016e5ae1e0d2be25f7/3802938.jpg

that album is great, 10.0 #bestoldmusic

so there IS a new issue of the pitchfork review coming out. but i'm not in it. sad really. i liked being in a pretty magazine that you could find at the last remaining barnes & noble on earth. it's the jazz issue too and i totally could have written about the best dollar jazz records! i'm guessing j-hop was my only champion over there.

Maybe you can write about jazz for MTV or wherever she went.

yeah, she went to MTV.

tbh the website redesign is so bad I've basically stopped reading

me too

did u guys read my pj harvey story though #RollingStoneforaginghipsters

I read stuff you link via twitter but I just can't look at that site

i will always read ilxors on pitchfork if they link it on the facebook. but that's all i read on there.

i actually think the pitch section has really improved lately -- less hot take-y stuff and more interesting niche pieces.

it has (including your stuff!), but unfortunately it coincided with the time that the section got demoted to a tag

more of a promotion tbh

yeah i don't know, it seems more buried now? but it also just looks the same as the rest of the site ... guessing that most readers don't really care what section a thing is in

i mean, everything is kind of buried now. but at least they appear as news items when fresh

they should bring peter sotos back to pitchfork. his critical voice has been sorely missed.

http://pitchfork.com/features/show-no-mercy/6398-show-no-mercy/

yeah i don't know, it seems more buried now? but it also just looks the same as the rest of the site ... guessing that most readers don't really care what section a thing is in

― tylerw, Thursday, April 14, 2016 12:49 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

everyone gets their articles through twitter and facebook

lol i kind of wish people shared p4k articles on my FB, no one talks about music in my feed, it is all bernie bros and bad memes

A lot of the people I'm connected to on Facebook actually work for record labels, so I see more links to Billboard than to Pitchfork.

My FB is about 99% articles about which poets are white supremacists and/or rapists

FB feed, that is

"bernie bros" is a thing?

i saw the link to ilx in the xiu xiu twin peaks review classy

Now, having long ago donated the majority of the Kickstarter proceeds to a Malian NGO, Dibb has finally emerged with a mostly self-financed, small-scale album that was quietly released this month in a special cassette/book edition for donors (and on Bandcamp for everyone else). But despite all the Kickstarter confusion and communication breakdowns, none of Dibb’s out-of-pocket supporters should feel short-changed. Because whatever anxiety Dibb felt about not following through on his Kickstarter campaign has been channeled into a wonderful little album about overcoming the anxiety of not following through on your Kickstarter campaign. Okay, so Sleep Cycle doesn’t include any lyrics that specifically reference inflated funding targets and comment-section outrage, but this exercise in self-help psychedelia provides a poignant portrait of an artist regaining their confidence one song at a time.

aw i love this http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1083-lisa-simpsons-second-grade-blues/

Pfft. "Lisa's Sax" was a Season 9 episode, not a Season 3 episode!
I hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

Only four album reviews up today instead of the usual five.

Maybe there are no other new albums?

Sturgill is so good it counts as two albums

4 reviews fits their layout better

on mobile

"Animal Collective’s most mysterious member."

sneaky deaky

And this is why there are only four reviews:
http://pitchfork.com/news/64915-pitchfork-to-publish-album-reviews-on-saturdays/

also genre tags are back for album reviews

though maybe this has been the case for a while? maybe i missed it

I kind of like this change.

do you any of you remember when they used to do that? there would be microgenres too like i remember "glitch" being there

2016 marks the 20th anniversary of the Squirrel Nut Zippers most celebrated and commercially successful album Hot. Originally released in the summer of 1996, Hot was the follow up to the band’s critically acclaimed debut The Inevitable. By this time the group had already established a substantial live following across the country thanks to early support from NPR, college radio and non-commercial stations. Hot wound up selling over 1.3 million copies.

Pitchfork, which was in it’s second year of operation at the time, raved about Hot giving it a 9.5 and saying: “When you first splashdown into the CD, ya hit this realization: that people even older than your parents liked music like this. …Hot is exuberant, gin house swing without apologies and it rocks without pretense. If you can manage to resist liking it, you must be dead.”