pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

I haven't heard a note of this but I'm liking the idea of a third Paul brother trying to make a go at making an outsider house tape for Orange Milk

p4k is just Rolling Stone now.

"now"

i'm all for anybody making a go at outsider house

P4k won't be rolling stone until they give every hype album 3 1/2 stars

I can't see P4k truly becoming Rolling Stone, because they don't have a legacy act like a Bruce Springsteen or a U2 that they will give a high rating to regardless of an album's content. They are a little more concerned with hyping the new. Most bands that have been around for a while tend to get stuck in that 6-7.9 range.

they don't have a legacy act like a Bruce Springsteen or a U2 that they will give a high rating to regardless of an album's content.

Radiohead of course

I guess that's true, despite King of Limbs getting 7.9.

Radiohead preceded them, though. p4k's legacy acts are Arcade Fire and Animal Collective, both of whom they've either trashed or given lukewarm reviews to in recent years.

kanye?

not defining to their brand, of course, but i'm curious to see whether they give the next album a high rating after Pablo was the benefactor of a sort of critical ac/dc rule

I would not be surprised if a new Kanye album didn't show up this side of 2020, if at all

true, doesn't seem a high priority for him.

more on-the-nose p4k darlings are probably LCD Soundsystem, Bon Iver, and Fleet Foxes.

yeah otm, was gonna say LCD but they got a rave review last year. same goes for recent Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes records. so, point taken

Grimes? idk... p4k really only had a monopoly on taste in the mid/late 00s. LCD is spot on, I was gonna say Interpol too but like The Strokes they had that last gasp of support from MTV & radio. Same goes for Kanye.

Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Dan Deacon... these are artists that owe p4k their careers imo

The Black Kids, of course

ahahahhaha

the difference is that there were a buttload of other sites/magazines rating that LCD album. Are there any heritage artists p4k goes out on a critical limb for?

clap your hands say tapes n tapes

Wasn't p4k pretty late on the Bon Iver bandwagon?

xxp right, that was my thinking. when they broke in 2002, p4k was still competing with mags & MTV & the last gasps of major label raiding.

oh yeah, add The Decemberists to the list. Microphones/Mount Eerie too.

xp i don't think so fred, i remember them giving a rave review of for emma forever ago before it had even been reissued, though i could be wrong. but they definitely weren't late on that one.

other sites rated the lcd album, but p4k did that hagiography of every single one of their tracks when they first "broke up". i feel like their commitment to making them Important goes beyond that of other pubs

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10709-for-emma-forever-ago/

I don't know, it's positive, but it's not even BNM'd.

it was overlooked almost everywhere iirc, broke a year after release

broken social scene

totally, it may not have gotten BNM but 8.1 is a ringing endorsement, and the fact that they reviewed it in early October 2007 is telling. I certainly found out about the record from p4k and didn't see it written about anywhere else until the early months of 2008.

xp yes! BSS absolutely

every indie act that broke from '04-'09 owes something to P4K, from Grizzly Bear to Vampire Weekend to Dirty Projectors to Sufjan to Hot Chip to The Knife, etc.

otm

might be a more fun exercise to see if there were any indie bands that broke despite neglect or a bad review from pitchfork, can't think of any off the top of my head

a lot of emo and twee stuff was v poorly reviewed in its early years, including early Of Montreal iirc?

these don't really count but they dropped extremely negative reviews on Andrew W.K. and Mumford & Sons pre-breakout.

Taylor Swift

iirc maybe the first review of Discovery by Daft Punk was a lot lower than what i'm seeing now?

Future Islands and early Ariel Pink

Future Islands was neglect, and Ariel Pink's lo-fi records were all trashed. over the top praise for Before Today and making "Round and Round" song of the year in 2010 was a panicked atonement when they saw how many of those fucking chillwave bands that came and went cited him as their primary influence.

iirc maybe the first review of Discovery by Daft Punk was a lot lower than what i'm seeing now?

― omar little, Wednesday, January 17, 2018 2:21 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is true, but i think they atoned fairly quickly and put the record in the top 25 or so of their half-decade '00s list iirc

Daft Punk preceded p4k, I saw the "One More Time" video on MTV programmed between Gorillaz and System of a Down. we're talking about bands that emerged after p4k had become the tastemakers. '04-'09 is a spot on window.

That entire circuit of indie rock/Bonnaroo festival bands like Airborne Toxic Event, Silversun Pickups, Cage the Elephant, Cold War Kids did remarkably well w/o Pitchfork's help and sometimes with their direct antagonizing

it's still the same review tho. A Schrieber classic

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2134-discovery/

xp those are great examples.

add Minus the Bear and maybe Dr. Dog to that list

Animal Collective, Dan Deacon, Grizzly Bear, etc. all would have had big indie success without a p4k. maybe not as big but "p4k made these bands" is as silly as saying Rolling Stone magazine made Bruce Springsteen

menomena

Grimes? idk... p4k really only had a monopoly on taste in the mid/late 00s. LCD is spot on, I was gonna say Interpol too but like The Strokes they had that last gasp of support from MTV & radio. Same goes for Kanye.

― flappy bird, Wednesday, January 17, 2018 12:37 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

are people seriously suggesting that Pitchfork somehow had anything to do w/ "breaking" Kanye West??

That entire circuit of indie rock/Bonnaroo festival bands like Airborne Toxic Event, Silversun Pickups, Cage the Elephant, Cold War Kids did remarkably well w/o Pitchfork's help and sometimes with their direct antagonizing

― mag gerwig! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, January 17, 2018 2:44 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Different demos though? These bands exist in their own universe that's almost as distinct as those of AP magazine.

if you really want to split hairs between the mid-Aughts cool "i'm white and i'm online all the time and go to oberlin/pratt" indie rock vs. the mid-Aughts uncool "i'm white and upwardly mobile and go to a state school and/or live in California" indie rock, be my guest

huh i thought airborne toxic event was like guitar hero metal or something

can we collapse all of that into mtvu-core or whatever

or like those bands all named Bad City Chain Gang who opened for Velvet Revolver or Black Label Society

if you really want to split hairs between the mid-Aughts cool "i'm white and i'm online all the time and go to oberlin/pratt" indie rock vs. the mid-Aughts uncool "i'm white and upwardly mobile and go to a state school and/or live in California" indie rock, be my guest

― mag gerwig! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, January 17, 2018 4:43 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you bet your ass i wanna split that hair