pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Head Over Heels might replace the duo’s trademark mannequin legs on the cover for their own, but these days such co-opting of realness is real meh. It’s genderfluid like a tech bro in a stunt romper drinking a Monster. The farce is strong with these ones.

yeah... the farce is strong... with fucking chromeo!!!!!!!!!!

funny to imagine being chromeo and winking at the woke era by putting on he heels that have always been attached to mannequin legs on your album cover, and then some kid reviews your album for pitchfork without a single trace of irony and is like "this song about a man using his credit card to take a woman on vacation is morally reprehensible"

oh this is the same guy who wrote the troye sivan blurb, nice

lol J0rdan

https://pitchfork.com/news/person-killed-in-hit-and-run-after-dutch-festival/

If we're reading Pitchfork, chances are pretty good we've heard of Pinkpop and you could just say Pinkpop in your headline.

really? is pinkpop a big deal with American millennial males?

It's dumb clickbait. They've never reported on pinkpop before (they would've *maybe* if they've existed in 1992 when Eddie Vedder fell from an amp tower or w/e). Nothing indicating a trrrrr attack either.

yeah to me Pinkpop and Rock Am Ring are as familiar as Glastonbury and Reading

ditto for Summer Sonic

very light on the 'aughts. no Fischerspooner no Peaches no Goldfrapp

how is the new chromeo tho

It's good. If you like Chromeo, you'll be pleased.

i love chromeo

how does the dude look in heels to you

suits Dave better than Pee but they both wear it well

https://pitchfork.com/news/mobb-deeps-havoc-shares-posthumous-prodigy-freestyles-listen/

Wow if Prodigy is freestyling from beyond the grave, he's an even more talented MC than I originally thought

Man, the Gruff Rhys review they shoved down to the bottom of the page over a week after it came out reads much stronger than a 7.8.

After the album came out*

https://pitchfork.com/news/elon-musk-feuds-with-lisa-prank-over-stolen-farting-unicorn-illustration/

Jesus that url

wtf is this shit?

In the living room of his tiny, late-’80s home in Aberdeen, Washington—the small town where it has been said there is nothing to do but “smoke pot and worship Satan”—Kurt Cobain filled a bathtub with half a dozen turtles. They are model beings for shy, hardened people: wise, solitary, with wearied eyes, and the envious ability to escape inside of themselves completely. “Turtles basically have this ‘fuck you’ attitude,” Cobain explained in 1993 Nirvana bio Come As You Are. Giving voice to his aquatic comrades, he went on, “I’m stuck in the tank, I’m miserable, I hate you, and I’m not going to perform for you.” Being a classic water sign—sun in Pisces, moon in Cancer—Cobain naturally related: Those tough exteriors were facades for an overwhelming sensitivity to the merciless world, a feeling Cobain voiced with every note.

that...is from a good review and a solid piece of writing?

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nirvana-incesticide/

p funny to read totally straightfaced astrology in p4k tho

Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed that piece (about a band idgaf about fwiw), it's very good writing, but the astrology bit definitely tripped me up, too. Still doesn't make it worthy of this thread

I actually really appreciated the Incesticide review.

The astrology thing is the worst part of it, but there are like 30 superfluous words in that paragraph, and that goes as well for most of the article. It's awful writing through and through.

why would you even want a concise review of a nirvana album in 2018

Aside from maybe “ Being a classic water sign—sun in Pisces, moon in Cancer—,” I don’t see any superfluous words in that paragraph.

why would you even want a concise review of a nirvana album in 2018

― lowercase (eric), 1. juli 2018 17:45 (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why would you want any review of a nirvana album in 2018? there are no new insights there, no surprises, there's just an endless stream of observations and background facts, kitted together through purple prose, and going on and on and on until it begins to feel definitive. it's in the eight paragraph we get to the music. it's everything criticism should not be, regurgitated details + ornamentation to reenforce what we already know.

Pelly is a writer whose work I almost always enjoy--she's thoughtful and funny and knows what she is talking about--and her only crime afaic is being instrumental in making a household name of Snail Mail, possibly the most offensively mediocre and uninspired indie rock thing Pitchfork has ever put their muscle behind (except for maybe Frankie Cosmos, but at least no one seems to be drinking that particular Kool Aid, despite their increasingly desperate looking best efforts). But that's for another thread.

Frederik, maybe you can link us to a recent review you find exemplifies good music writing and contains no purple prose?

xp idk i got a sense of how a sort of constellation of ideas and influence and reaction from it, does a v good job of placing it w/in that constellation and how it's central to the act of listening to the album, or at least posits that it is, and i think it does so v convincingly. i also doubt a lot of people are aware of the context, and part of the purpose of this series is as a introduction, or reintroduction, of sorts

otm. Like many of you, I lived through this Nirvana stuff and there was a lot here I didn't know. I had no idea about Cash Cow, for instance. Also wanna reiterate I don't care at all about Nirvana (especially not in 2018) but the fact that I made it all the way through the piece is a testament, I think, to the strength of the writing.

Nirvana were a shit band, but they're one of those shit bands that a whole new crop of 14-year-olds discovers for themselves every year, so a piece like Pelly's is great. It takes an old, not very good record and with a mixture of history and hyperbole, turns it into a signpost to point 14-year-old boys and girls in potentially worthwhile directions.

Paul – I don’t dig Snail Mail much either, but that seems a bit harsh? (also they were pushed hard by everyone, not just Pfork, in the album’s big promo blitz.)

Paul, a much better example of the same thing: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/hole-live-through-this/ It immediately manages to make a case that this record is better than its reputation, then uses a contemporary quote and explains how that was wrong. It's so much more nuanced and wrestling with the strengths and limitations of what Courtney Love did and could do. Heck, it's better at explaining the limitations of what Cobain was trying to do than the Incesticide review: when Cobain wrote about rape, he wrote sardonically, and from the point of view of the rapist. The irony in his songs was apparently lost on some of his listeners. In that Vanity Fair profile, Love relayed a chilling anecdote she had heard about a girl who had been raped in Reno, whose rapists had been singing Nirvana’s song “Polly” while assaulting her. “These are the people who listen to him,” she said.

Paul – I don’t dig Snail Mail much either, but that seems a bit harsh? (also they were pushed hard by everyone, not just Pfork, in the album’s big promo blitz.)

Ok but profiling emerging artists seems like an odd thing to be pissed at Pfork about...

Nirvana were a shit band, but they're one of those shit bands that a whole new crop of 14-year-olds discovers for themselves every year, so a piece like Pelly's is great. It takes an old, not very good record and with a mixture of history and hyperbole, turns it into a signpost to point 14-year-old boys and girls in potentially worthwhile directions.

― grawlix (unperson), Sunday, 1 July 2018 16:17 (forty-four minutes ago) Permalink

“Nirvana were a shit band” ok bud

I was with Fred (the other big unnecessary line would be the sentence about what turtles are like, which is random and irrelevant) until he said no one should be writing about nirvana in 2018 like what? They’re one of the most significant bands in history lol

classic for "Turtles have this fuck you attitude"

i've loved Nirvana for 30+ years and never heard this line but hearing it now makes me smile

That's not what I meant. I meant that there is no need for 'reassessments' that basically just repeats what's been said for close to thirty years. The Hole review is also a bit about Nirvana, and it's great.

(the other big unnecessary line would be the sentence about what turtles are like, which is random and irrelevant)

funny solecism in it tho that makes u imagine a furiously jealous turtle refusing to come out of its shell

it's not at all random and irrelevant from the guy that wrote "It's okay to eat fish cos they don't have any feelings"

Unperson, you ok bud? Wrong opinion

Ross, you crack me up – wish we could have a beer or something IRL

Ok but profiling emerging artists seems like an odd thing to be pissed at Pfork about...

― i’m still stanning (morrisp), Sunday, July 1, 2018 1:02 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not to get too into the weeds with this but it was an extensive profile that preceded any emergence, that was January 2017, they had one EP and had played maybe 25 shows by that point total, hadn't toured yet. I don't like SM and I'm certainly not pissed about it, it's just bizarre - I mean, she has the best PR people in the world evidently.

In all honesty, that is kinda what I want pitchfork to do, lol. And I don't particularly like Snail Mail either.

xp idk i got a sense of how a sort of constellation of ideas and influence and reaction from it, does a v good job of placing it w/in that constellation and how it's central to the act of listening to the album, or at least posits that it is, and i think it does so v convincingly. i also doubt a lot of people are aware of the context, and part of the purpose of this series is as a introduction, or reintroduction, of sorts

lmao

hi

pelly seems like she has her ear to the ground so i'm not too surprised

i got some chuckles from the new Gorillaz review.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gorillaz-the-now-now/

At 50, Damon Albarn is still writing songs for the world’s most popular cartoon band because he believes in the romantic idea that an international charting group can change the world.

ok right off the gate setting this guy up to be the new John Lennon or something

Cartoons appeal to young people, which makes illustrator and co-founder Jamie Hewlett’s multicultural avatars—2-D, Russel, Noodle, the “imprisoned” Murdoc, and stand-in bassist Ace—a Trojan horse for the kind of politics that people prefer not to hear from millionaires.
The records range from eco-centric protests to dystopian party playlists

really building this up, this is going to be life changing music! what are some examples?

“Calling the world from isolation,” the album begins, a mantra that shape-shifts to allude to Brexit, gun laws, and other political specters.

i guess young kids have never heard the kind of lines Radiohead would have done 20 years ago.

“Baby I just survived, I got drunk, I’m sorry, am I losing you,”

the only other lyric quoted, about getting drunk. yeah pop music isn't exactly at a loss for millionaires talking about isolation and self-harm. it is funny to talk about this like it's some new approach and this guy is some romantic who wants to change the world w cliche rock n roll platitudes. not even rock n roll, this shit about feeling alienated and losing yourself in self destructive consumerism is a staple of mass pop culture. it is the religion of consumerism.

at least Kurt Cobain had a weird sense of humor and some genuine subversive energy to his stuff, the new Gorillaz sounds like an old man pretending to be the Clash.