pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

oof

i think it's clear from listening to childish gambino that donald glover is a really good actor.

Why are you all tying yourselves in knots over this list when there’s a perfectly good thread on uk streetsoul like 15 down from here right now

― what else are you all “over” (Champiness), woensdag 9 oktober 2019 3:34 bookmarkflaglink
underrated post

This might be a comment that belongs in another thread, but surely I'm not the only one here who questions the sense of having a genre-inclusive ranked list of any kind? Like, what does it even mean to compare Nicki Minaj to (Sandy) Alex G (to pick two adjacent artists)? They work in two almost completely dissimilar idioms. You can't say that a comparison isn't being made because...the list is ranked. If it were an unranked list, that would be a different story. But a ranked list of this kind always becomes sort of one long non-sequitur. Even if you were to separate it into genres you would probably still have similar problems.

TL;DR Get rid of ranked lists, scores, and any "objective" assessments of art that pit artists and styles against one another, IMO.

*Note--I am a filthy hypocrite, having participated in the iLX best of the 00s poll. :/

just view it as The Pitchfork 200-Album Canon 2010-2019, 2019 Version

Featuring Lady Gaga

Get rid of the canon too, while we're at it

I don't mean the existing canon, I mean the idea of canon

surely I'm not the only one here who questions the sense of having a genre-inclusive ranked list of any kind? Like, what does it even mean to compare Nicki Minaj to (Sandy) Alex G (to pick two adjacent artists)? They work in two almost completely dissimilar idioms.

I said this exact same thing, in the context of their "Best of the 1980s" list (I think that brouhaha is way upthread somewhere).

we're at the heart of it now, gang

Anyone tried to load this entire thread lately? RIP browser.

No kidding! I spent long enuff searching for what I said earlier (as if anyone cares!) that I'm gonna paste it, so the work was worth something:

I think that ranking all these albums against each other cuts against the grain of elevating new/different artists in a certain way (even in cases where they sit comparatively high on the chart), because it creates this weird arena in which ESG dukes it out with Bruce Springsteen (and wins handily!), and the resulting hierarchy relies on the conceit that albums from different genres -- and artists with totally different goals and approaches -- can even really be ranked comparatively at all. I do acknowledge that fewer readers would look at the list if it weren't ranked, tho.
― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Tuesday, September 11, 2018 5:20 PM

September 11, 2018 -- Never Forget (I weighed in on the Pitchfork list).

It's a point that can't be made enough, it seems!

a highwater mark of the morrisp canon

a few songs in he said 'if you're just here to hear redbone and this is america you can leave right now' lol

― flopson, Wednesday, October 9, 2019 3:47 PM bookmarkflaglink

would have been amazing if this led to a mass walkout

I remember going to see Electric Six at a festival years ago and they made the mistake of playing 'Danger High Voltage' and 'Gay Bar' as two out of the first three songs and believe me you have never seen a field empty so fast.

That had to be intentional, for whatever reason.

The funniest thing about this Gambino story is that he's referring to the hit from his last album and his new hit single. He would have been better off saying, hey I just need to workshop this newer stuff for an hour first

More evidence that dude should’ve just stayed a comedian

Someone should have yelled, "Where's Abed?"

I think AC/DC is the only band I have ever seen successfully open a set with its biggest hit.

Moneytalks?

dirty deeds!

i saw phoenix in the wolfgang amadeus era and they opened with lisztomania. not quite the same, cause they did close with 1901

same as Phoenix (but even moreso), last time I saw Beck he opened with Loser.

it was fuckin' awesome, too.

this made me laugh:

If you didn't make the Pitchfork Top 200 Albums, congratulations! You're in a cool band.

— ᴘᴀᴛʀɪᴋ sᴀɴᴅʙᴇʀɢ (@PatrikSandberg) October 9, 2019

congrats to 3 doors down

if you came to hear Kryptonite, go fly a kite

zchyrs you’re describing my long-standing complaint with, specifically, the decimal system— it seemed fun and arbitrary ca. 2003, and then became A Serious Barometer With Actual Career Implications in 2004 and it seemed.. destructive.

The industry 2005-2012 was so set by Pitchfork’s clock that I once stated to an editor there that I believed that a system was being created where musicians would make creative decisions with the specific intent of appealing to “the Pitchfork aesthetic”— the editor was horrified at the implication, but I saw that shit first hand. It was happening consciously and subconsciously.

Publicists would meet musicians and ask what their numbers were before agreeing to take them on as clients. It was weird! 2003 was better: I liked when they’d hand out 9s to like... Sunburned Hand Of The Man and we hipsters would turn up to that band’s trash show like “wow there is a dog in the band”. Comparably I remember literally nothing remarkable about the show I saw by The 1975 except snatches of not great bob lyrics

The ideal format for music reviews afaic and I apologize if they pay badly and I know the shitty politics are shitty but it was honestly actually Vice. Best of the month, worst of the month, best cover, worst cover, pass/fail, arbitrary evaluations, petty pettiness. I seem to remember them panning Halford’s solo album just because he was gay. The criticism cut right to the heart of how we actually consume music and (when I cared) opened my ears to lots of meaningful and amazing albums (I would’ve never heard Kid 606 “The Action Packed...” unless Vice pushed it so hard, and they were right to do so, it’s a fucked up album; Pitchfork gave it a 7.0)

a dog!!! someone should revive that, it would play really well nowadays in peoria (i.e. on twitter)

I saw Sunburned Hand once (they opened for Sunn O))) at Tonic). I don't remember a dog. I do remember being unsure when exactly they stopped tuning up and started the actual "set."

Is there anything on these lists that's not on a streaming service? The MBV omission looks dodgy to me. Seeing a few p4k writers posting their lists on Twitter and it is showing up on some of those, so the idea that it's been forgotten because it's not on Spotify doesn't hold much water.

Sunburned Hand is playing at the venue near my house in like 5 minutes and I kinda want to go now.

Well, seventeen years ago? They ruled

Comparably I remember literally nothing remarkable about the show I saw by The 1975 except snatches of not great bob lyrics

seems weird to me to suggest 1975 are exemplars of pitchfork writer taste ...? it crossing to that audience last year was 1. belated & 2. kind of representative of an insurgent pfork tastemaking choice rather than the kind of depoliticized inertia i feel like you're describing

I think all music reviews should follow the BeerAdvocate.com format:

look: 4.25 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.25

honestly there used to be some underground zines that would break down music / lyrics / production for ratings, can't remember which ones, but it'd be cool to see something more like that imo instead of the Michelin system that governs now

Kool Moe Dee's Report Card should be the minimum standard for all points-based artistic reviewing

xp i feel sceptical of the idea as a lot of video game journalism used to have a similar format which only seemed to encourage the reviewers worst tendencies. the criticism was generally so bad anyway that the problems that the format created mightn't apply more widely though idk

I don't believe there's any incorrect methodology for "best of the year/decade/whatever" as long as you think it looks dope after it's finished, or if it feels like it fits really well for the audience you're trying to reach.

untrue. the correct methodology is to pick the best things, and put them in the order that corresponds to how good they are.

yea, no shit.

"the best things and their order" will be what's implied after it's done. good job on pointing that out.

Is there anything on these lists that's not on a streaming service? The MBV omission looks dodgy to me. Seeing a few p4k writers posting their lists on Twitter and it is showing up on some of those, so the idea that it's been forgotten because it's not on Spotify doesn't hold much water.

― Position Position, 11. oktober 2019 02:13 (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

There's a couple that is only on Bandcamp or Soundlcloud, so it's not as if they only put Apple Music releases on there. But yeah, it's really, really weird.

I like the old Dusted zine format--writeups addressing the strengths and weaknesses with no metrics involved whatsoever.

This utterly daft paragraph, from the Lindstrom review, is peak Pfork.

"Which can’t be said of the third track, titled by a lousy joke that feels, well, profane. How about we not appropriate the sacrament of an African American spiritual promising biblical deliverance from slavery in the service of a hardware pun? How about we not “Swing Low, Sweet LFO,” with its plinky Pianet and sugary Prophet 6 sweeps, less offensive than Moby’s appropriation of spirituals for car commercials but also, unfortunately, very much not as memorable?"

oh man just wait til he finds out about England's rugby fans

Forgive the wicked Norwegian, for he knows not what he does.

Ha ha, indeed.

(to both posts)