pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

to your latter point: not really

I suppose in the list of necessities, reissues by my favorite band rank well below food and shelter, but as far as reissues go, they've done an excellent job. I'm more than happy to hand over my money to them.

these vinyl editions sound superb tbh, the CDs sounded fine but there are some excellent extras and as far as vinyl repressings go, this is a superior product. i think this is probably about twenty bucks less per album than i've seen most other deluxe set triple LPs, it's pretty nice to be able to have them out there.

Yeah, that Maxo Kream review is a real case in point. It makes it seem like if you've got a good enough back story, you should just release your rap album acapella, because flow and production are beside the point.

They should have just run it in The Pitch ("What Maxo Kream's Daddy Issues Say About Contemporary Masculinity") instead of calling it an album review.

October presents: "Maxo Kream talks about family ties, incarceration, and his favorite beers"

"There's a Tear in Maxo Kream's Favorite Hand-Crafted Beer"

My god, that review reads as if the reviewer didn't actually have access to the album for whatever reason (his stream failed for technical reasons, or the record company failed to send him a recording, or he went out on the piss for two days and by the time he got home the stream had expired), and had to write the entire thing on the basis of a lyric sheet.

That Stereolab ETK review was kind of next-level for me - most reviews I read seem about as good to me as I was when I wrote music reviews for tiny magazines back in the day. But that seemed way more sophisticated and literate, and even more discerning than I am about that record, which I have listened to and loved since it came out.

sorry to hijack but where is BEE OK and which thread's hosting the P4k festival stream party?

BeeOk was last seen in the Spoon thread

Here’s a review that at least turns its attention to “the music” for a few sentences in the final paragraph (as if dutifully including a point required by a writing teacher): https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kaina-next-to-the-sun/

Went to Pfork thinking “no way in hell can they pull off a connection between the music world and Marvel’s Comic-Con announcements, no matter how much the algorithm would love that”, but lo and behold:
https://pitchfork.com/news/mahershala-ali-cast-in-marvels-blade-reboot/

Half-expecting a retrospective on “Confusion (Pump Panel Reconstruction)” in The Pitch by tomorrow morning

From Sherburne's Mars Audiac Quintet review:

Dots and Loops, widely considered their masterpiece, is the pinnacle of their mature phase; when most people think of Stereolab, that record’s kinks and quirks are probably what first come to mind.

This was decidedly not the case until recently, right? I wrote a defense of D&L for Stylus in like 2006, on the premise that it was underrated and unfairly maligned, particularly by fans of the early stuff. (I name-checked Ned, iirc.) Has the consensus now totally shifted?

I still maintain that Switched On is their masterpiece

Also I googled the lyrics to Cybele’s Reverie a few days ago and wow that is an amazing lyric

i thought emperor tomato ketchup had always been considered their masterpiece and that dots & loops was significantly more controversial even now

Also, I don't know if it's talked about, but Laetitia really did something new and interesting with her insistence on "bad weighting of lyrics", singing her lyrics in ways that are weighted all wrong, both in English and French. It's so unique! I remember feeling put off by it when I first got into their music, thinking it was a by-product of English not being her first language, but now I realize it's deliberate, and it's one of things I find most charming about her songwriting

^^^ this is otm

They killed at the festival yesterday

Yeah, I never thought about that, but it’s totally OTM xp

I think a few of the pfork reviews mentioned that

There's a video up of the full set btw

I went home when it started raining, so missed the (truncated) set. But the first couple of things I heard were weirdly negative, so I watched the set before bed and thought, hmm, no, sounds like Stereolab! I wish I saw their full set elsewhere the night before. But they'll be back and I'll see them then.

even when I became obsessed with Stereolab in early 2016, ETK was the consensus "best," inasmuch as it's a good middle ground btwn their fuzz phase and their lounge phase. only in the last year have I seen D&L spoken of w/o reservation, and that's the first time I've ever read it referred to as their "masterpiece." I mean, it is, almost all of their albums are, but ETK is the only one that sort of shows you the many different areas they explore. Switched On comps are good for this as well but you'd need all three (Aluminum Tunes was my way in: Pop Quiz).

Cybele's Reverie is a beautiful lyric, one of my all time favorites. Even more beautiful in English somehow...

my favorite Laetitia lyrical weighting is the ending of Ping Ping: "Don't worry, shut up sit down / Go with it and be happy"

ETK is the consensus peak. D&L is the dividing line and also where I got off the bus (for awhile). I don’t like it at all, John Mcentire and mouse on mars et al were a bad influence.

omg Diagonals is my all time jam - that track at apocalyptic volume is untouchable

(and I adored the Lab from the moment I saw the video for "Super-Electric" in 1991)

Alfred, I didn't know you were at the fest! (Unless you mean you watched the live stream?) I had the odd but increasingly common experience (as I get older) of going to Pitchfork by myself and not recognizing a single person I know there.

Just copy-pasting the lyric from "Cybele's Reverie" that I adore:

Que faire quand on a tout fait
Tout lu, tout bu, tout mangé
Tout donné en vrac et en détail
Quand on a crié sur tous les toits
Pleuré et ri dans les villes et en campagne

Translated:

What to do when one has done everything?
Read everything, drunk everything, eaten everything?
Given everything in truth and in detail,
When one has cried on all the rooftops,
Wept and laughed in the towns and in the country?

idk I love rhetorical questions as lyrics

I think "en vrac" means "in bulk" not "in truth"

You are correct (I just copy-pasted from an online translation and didn't notice the error)

wow, with today's needlessly vicious, mendacious takedown, Pitchfork has managed to do something I would have never thought possible: it has actually made me want to root for Iggy Azalea

This line sounds like something from that David Foster Wallace book about rap:

Iggy Azalea is not the only current rapper who fills songs with dreary, monotonous references to sex and money, but many find creative, amusing, and even raw ways to write and spit about both.

Even raw, huh? Wow, I need to check out some of these amusing current rappers.

Oftentimes I've noticed a clear connection between the ways that arts reporters write about their subjects and methods of abusive control, methods of toxic fandom. Everything the author writes in this article smacks of entitlement, resentment, nudging their colleagues knowingly. Attempting to exert control and influence over an artist's career via a review that is entirely hollow moral judgement about How Iggy Just Isn't Contrite Enough For A Comeback to mask the author's complete inability to actually form and express critical opinions about the content of the music in front of them.

An inevitable side effect of reviewing an artist’s “narrative arc”

fgti otm

Didn’t we cancel Iggy Azalea?

That was the pitch in the editorial meeting.

No one has learned a thing from the 2016 election

bernie would've won BNM

Bernie would have 9.1

A penitent rap album sounds like a blast

any editor worth their salt would've printed that as

Didn't we cancel Iggy Azalea? (ed: The staff of Pitchfork have not, in fact, "canceled" Iggy Azalea, as proven by the publishing of this piece.)

This line made me laugh too, the scolding, disappointed tone: "Name a major artist—Halsey, Snoop Dogg, the cartoon character Peppa Pig—and Iggy has entangled herself in some sort of feud with them." Like gosh, imagine a rapper so gauche & clueless that they would actually feud with other artists rather than support & uplift them. Truly sad.

I have to think that they think that putting her review second on today's list is a humongous slam.

Am I missing something? Did she do something seriously bad, or was she just, like, mildly annoying to some people

The tone of this is like she's Louis CK and has some serious behavior to atone for before returning to the public eye

https://jezebel.com/iggy-azalea-is-sorry-she-used-to-be-homophobic-and-raci-1710047844

(first thing i found, probably not the best summary)

remember that time Iggy Azalea broke the L.A. Lakers?

thx karl