pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

they've been weirdly stingy with bnms recently.

Beatrice Dillon was the one previous to Grimes I think. Plus Jeff Parker, Blood Incantation, Davido....can’t remember other recent ones.

Destroyer, Gil-Scott Heron

They've had 5 so far this year, only 3 going into March last year.

every question about pitchfork can be answered with the words 'brand positioning'

― strangely hookworm but they manage ream shoegaze poetry (imago)

about life too

Best New Music isn't just about attaining a particular decimal score. If it were, there would be no need for a separate designation at all.

Oh, here we go:

How does Pitchfork's Best New Music system work? I've read reviews where two albums get a score of say 8.2, but one is BNM and the other isn't. --Aurora Nuncio

The truth of it is breathtakingly simple: Editors choose Best New Music albums based on the records that we think are the cream of the crop. These are excellent records that we feel transcend their scene and genre. When an album gets Best New Music, we think there's a very good chance that someone who doesn't generally follow this specific sphere of music will find a lot to enjoy in it.

(From a short-lived revival of the reader mailbag in 2012. It appears to have lasted four installments.)

alternately, if it pairs well with a particularly hoppy IPA, it's in

I'm sure ppl who hate metal would still get something out of, er...Blood Incantation?

Funny how that 2012 query also involved two 8.2 ratings

well, there are plenty of 8.0s and 8.1s that don't get BNM and very few 8.3s and above that don't, but 8.2 seems like it can go either way

I think the explanation for BNM makes perfect sense, but it just highlights how janky their rating system is.

they should add another decimal imo

it seems like they're just trying to re-introduce a qualitative aspect to a very quantitative rating system

 These are excellent records that we feel transcend their scene and genre. 

I hate this line of thinking, just offensive to me

the best music transcends all scenes and genres dontchaknow

i also think it sucks but whatryagonnado

Back when I used to write for P4K there was also a sense that BNM selections needed broader editor/staff momentum behind them. “Transcends genre” is probably code for “a broad swathe of writers as well as the editors listened to and rate this.”

If I wanted to give a 8.0+ score to a techno album that barely any other writers would be inclined to check out, there would usually not be too much pushback or eyebrow-raising re the score I proposed (perhaps on the basis that barely any readers would notice - different if we were talking about an album from a well-known pop star) but the prospects of getting a BNM were very limited. Other than that he’d days readers are much less precious about what sort of music Pitchfork can endorse, I imagine things have not changed that much in the past half decade.

Though that said Caribou is exactly the sort of artist you’d expect to be BNM’d so it might just be a question of timing.

They're using the red breaking news chyron for album releases now, huh? Or have I just missed this before?

surprise releases, maybe

Yeah I guess maybe that makes sense, just typically used to seeing it for a death or arrest or something. For a second I thought Lil Uzi Vert had died.

The new Caribou record is amazing, “Our Love” was stinky-poo but they gave it a 9 or something,

really enjoyed 'new jade' and the album closer

(Retroactive) 10 for Björk’s Post! Wow

Deserved.

I know the math makes sense but the realization that Björk has a 33 yr old son does make me feel vv old.

Realized I can’t think of a single album from the past 25 yrs to which I would assign a 10.0 (which I take to mean, “This album is so perfectly realized and historically significant that no other rating would make sense, and identifying any ‘flaws’ would feel utterly superfluous”)... guess it’s good I’m not a Pitchfork editor, lol.

from the past 25 years?:

midtown 120 blues
aaliyah
discovery
third

it's odd that whenever I've talked about Björk with millennials they've brought up that TV clip

I had never heard of it until now.

voodoo

yes

was gonna offer BLACKsummers'night

that too

Cuban linx

it's odd that whenever I've talked about Björk with millennials they've brought up that TV clip

what TV clip?

Ready To Die misses by three months

Some of the old stuff that’s gotten 10s are “flawed masterpieces” and some of the old stuff gets treated more harshly I don’t totally get it

what TV clip?

It’s linked in the beginning of the review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A78yTvIY1k

(It’s cute, but I’m not sure why it’s worth spending the first two paragraphs of the review on...)

Pivot to video

the review wasn't linked tbf

That’s why I answered yr question; I assumed you hadn’t seen it.

Anyway, does this mean Telegram deserves, what, a 12.0(?) Because the mixes are better, plus it has “My Spine”?

lemonade

The review concedes that Post is, at best, Bjork's third-best album:

She would soon leave London for the south of Spain and then New York, recording her two towering masterpieces—1997’s Homogenic, which Missy Elliott once gleefully likened to “Mozart at a rap show,” and the introverted microbeats of 2001’s Vespertine

Post > Homogenic > Vespertine is such a perfect run of albums.

And I love Debut.

her two towering masterpieces

^I think you can see the superfan revealed thru the critic’s veneer here

FWIW, Homogenic also received a retrospective 10; though Vespertine, which was reviewed upon release, got a 7.2

So this is it. The great follow-up to Homogenic we've anticipated since that overcast late-September afternoon in 1997 when we first sat listening to the album for the first time, wondering what she might do next. Somehow, it doesn't seem worth the wait.