pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gil-scott-heron-makaya-mccraven-were-new-again-a-reimagining-by-makaya-mccraven/

(Sorry, couldn't resist. I tend to agree with you and Paul otherwise.)

I'm not going to spew any elitist bullshit, but Alanis Morrissette, Kylie Minogue? Oh my fucking God. I'll stay for a little while to see if P-Fork still serves my needs, but with today's front page, I'm not counting on it. I understand the career move, but I just don't think it's going to serve me any more.

― jess, Sunday, March 31, 2002 7:00 PM (seventeen years ago)

Fever was a 'joke' review at the time.

I was gonna say "uh that doesn't sound like jess at all, what the hell" and then I scrolled up to the original hot take, lol

They were April Fools Day reviews. The joke being that Pitchfork in 2002 would never review pop music.

And that they had been sold to a media conglomerate

you had to be there. it was hilarious at the time.

the greatest trick pitchfork ever pulled was convincing the world they'd never sincerely review a kylie minogue album

I was just looking through the Wayback Machine trying to track down an archived version of the homepage on that date. Unfortunately, there's a gap between March and May, but I did stumble upon a letter I forgot I wrote (in the reader mailbag) in praise of Ethan P's Eminem Show review.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gil-scott-heron-makaya-mccraven-were-new-again-a-reimagining-by-makaya-mccraven/

― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul), Friday, February 7, 2020 12:07 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

(Sorry, couldn't resist. I tend to agree with you and Paul otherwise.)

― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul), Friday, February 7, 2020 12:08 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is no reflection on Makaya, as I am an avowed superfan (see International Anthem thread), but this only proves my point (see below). Link me to a Pitchfork review of the new Pat Metheny album, which is getting a lot of coverage elsewhere, including a cover story in this month's Downbeat, and I'll eat my words.

I said free jazz. I also didn't mean the 0.0002% of jazz (mostly coming from the London We Out Here scene and / or Kamasi adjacent) they've deemed worthy of coverage this year. Would be nice to see some coverage of people like Julia Hülsmann (and ECM artists in general), Mary Halvorson, John Zorn, Dave Rempis, Tomeka Reid, etc etc etc. There's a great new Bill Frisell album with Petra Haden they haven't bothered to review.

― Paul Ponzi, Monday, February 3, 2020 8:53 AM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

xp Pitchfork has a reader mailbag?!

It did in 2002! Looks like the last installment was in 2004.

From: mo .
Subject: broke

i came across your website a few years ago and quickly forgot about it. unfortunetely i recently came across it agian. boring. music reviews. who cares what people have to say about music. plus the writing sucks and is boring. double wammy. i can stick a pen in my dogs ass and have him sit on a piece of paper and get better shit then i read on your site. and i happen to catch your year end top , what was it 20, bands/albums. after seeing that i knew you guys suck. keep on trying to be cool. you never will be. i'm not. it doesn't pay to be down.
-maurice

From: nelson
Subject: you suck

You suck get over yourself you stupid fuckin ironic bastard. I've had it with your lot ya lousey posing fucking loser. fuck your your shit man get a fucking real job and tell me to go pound sand cause I will. LA is a brutal place. You can't come.
The innernet sent me free of charge. said it was ok to acedently find you and send insults. i said why not. it's all free and open. you came to my livingroom. i react. eat me grimmy/

Nelson Bragg

Can't imagine why they discontinued that feature!

In other news, this is a well-written review that had me immediately checking out the album: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/higher-power-27-miles-underwater/

Link me to a Pitchfork review of the new Pat Metheny album, which is getting a lot of coverage elsewhere, including a cover story in this month's Downbeat, and I'll eat my words.

FTR, I will be writing about Metheny in my next Stereogum column; I hadn't really been planning to, I'm not much of a fan, but people bring his name up a lot in the comments there, so I checked it out, and it's really fucking good.

Cool, good to hear. Maybe Pitchfork will follow your lead!

yes we need to lift pat metheny out of obscurity

says the person who recently started a Sarah McLachlan thread

how tf is that relevant to this discussion?

Brad made a snide comment about Pat Metheny being undeserving of coverage in SG because he's not obscure. I was merely pointing out that their refined tastes didn't prevent them from starting an ILX poll about one of the most famous (and blandest) pop artists of all time

Don't spend all your time waiting for that second chance at an explanation. For that would make it okay. There's always some reason to bring up Sarah Mclaughlin, and it's hard to post coherently at the end of a Friday. I need some distraction. Oh, beautiful ilx. Memories of p4k seep from my veins. Let me be empty- oh, and weightless, and maybe I'll find some Pat Metheny tonight.

I kind of love that part of Friday afternoon when everyone is some flavor of "u mad"

xp The mailbag was priceless. The mailbag was actually how I found out that the Alanis/Kylie reviews were an elaborate troll (this being before in the days before it was standard for websites to prank their readers on April Fools Day). The reader vitriol was real.

hi what'd I miss

i was making a snide comment about your weird priorities paul. i love pat metheny and can't wait to hear the record/read whatever idk prob seth colter walls has to say about it

and i not only started a sarah mclachlan thread here, a few years ago i wrote about her... for pitchfork... oh nooooooo

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gil-scott-heron-makaya-mccraven-were-new-again-a-reimagining-by-makaya-mccraven/

Quit yo carping and listen to this.

did they review the new Jeff Parker?

they bnm'd it, iirc

here: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jeff-parker-suite-for-max-brown/

unrelated, i thought that photo of julian casablancas in their top spot was billie eilish for a sec

oh good, like that a lot and it seems solidly in the "jazz records Pitchfork might review" zone

decrying a lack of jazz reviews seems particularly off the mark: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/?genre=jazz

iirc Mary Halvorson and ECM were both specifically mentioned upthread yet both have featured within the past 4 months

obvs there are reasons to critique pitchfork but the "pitchfork" itt is a chimera

All media are chimeras.

This is much more like it. Exactly the kind of record they should be digging up on a Sunday.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/buffy-sainte-marie-illuminations/

Yeah, that was a really interesting review that makes me want to hear that album. (My mom owned Fire & Fleet & Candlelight when I was a kid but I don't think she ever played it for me or my brother.)

Amazing album and an amazing write-up. “God Is Alive..” is my vote for the best recorded song of all time tbh. Buffy told me she wrote it the day she’d recorded it and was literally just singing with a copy of Beautiful Losers open in front of her, and told me she’d only performed it once, since, for a CBC thing with a teleprompter. (A Buffy superfan I spoke to contradicted this, and insisted that Buffy had played it live in the 70s.)

-0.8 for not being Xenakis, amirite?

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pauline-oliveros-stuart-dempster-pan-deep-listening/

Haha. Good review though! Oliveros deserves all the credit that is (long) overdue.

I find it kind of funny that someone sat through eight episodes of a Justin Bieber docuseries, just to report that it is, in fact, bad.

"redemption propaganda" is how i'd describe his previous album too

saw SNL, why does he dress like he's selling drugs outside the Anger Management tour?

because he's a fucking moron?

he’s hilarious, just look at the man

A long piece titled We Didn’t Need the High Fidelity TV Show starts off by talking at length about how retrograde the book & movie were; spends a few paragraphs talking about how the new TV series (starring Zoe Kravitz) is better; but then -- citing the thesis of an older NY Times article -- concludes (again at length) that the show is nonetheless a drag, because it uses a gender-switch in an attempt to absolve the source material of its sins.

I guess this is a totally valid way to critique a TV show (and it's not poorly written)... but like the Bieber thing, it had me wondering, Who is this being written for?

FWIW, the answer to the article’s core question —

Is High Fidelity really so beloved (or its brand name so powerful) that they couldn’t have started from scratch on a series about music obsessives who aren’t exclusively straight white men?

Why spend all this time, money, and energy updating and changing the gender on source material that, in hindsight, is pretty dodgy about women? https://t.co/gKpWJ33b2Y

— Pitchfork (@pitchfork) February 14, 2020