pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Yeezus, etc.

That album ended up getting a 7.7... the artist may have preferred a 0.0, for the notoriety.

Cool Chavez review. But why not complete this thought, and mention that James Lo was in Live Skull?:

Chavez began life as a supergroup of sorts, at least by an extremely 1995 metric. Lead singer and guitarist Matt Sweeney had been in Skunk, who put out two albums on Twin/Tone that sounded like New Jersey’s answer to old Twin/Tone Soul Asylum. (This is a compliment.) Guitarist Clay Tarver had been in Boston’s Bullet LaVolta, which put out a couple of albums of East Coast grunge before breaking up in 1992. Chavez was (significantly) greater than the sum of these parts.

(The review only glancingly mentions Lo; which is kind of weird, considering how important his drumming is to the band.)

Pusha-T’s third solo album Daytona re-established the early 2000s legend as a singular voice in hip-hop. Daytona couldn't be more 2018 if it tried.

i guess the first sentence is a matter of opinion but what does this second sentence even mean?

even being charitable, when i think of what rap music in 2018 sounded like it certainly was not this

when you know you know

You had to be there.

the paragraph's supposed to be awkward

Two years later, Daytona is still the only album to be celebrated in the INSTANT CLASSIC video franchise

https://pitchfork.com/tv/56-liner-notes/kendrick-lamar-or-damn-or-instant-classic/

It’s a Nathan Fielder kind of 2018 reference

"SAINt JHN was crooning woozy knock-off Future verses when a 19-year-old in a village in Kazakhstan illegally made him a hit."

uhh just my opinion but really uncharitable reading of saint jhn's career

Alfred!! Wtf

https://img.discogs.com/lO3KlBn5Y3WaSJKLgX7maElQFUw=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-827485-1308703158.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/lO3KlBn5Y3WaSJKLgX7maElQFUw=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-827485-1308703158.jpeg.jpg

What? I like the album, though it's more epochal than good.

you can talk about it down at the station

okay this revive got me to go look at pfork to see what you guys were talking about and i have two items to address here:

1. why is that album being reviewed? was it recently reissued?

2. yes i'm sorry alfred, we're going to have to bring you in for this. your bail will be set at seventy million dollars.

Yes. A 25th anniversary edition.

I'll have to sell Negronis at lemonade stands to make bail.

Alfred mentions it the beginning of his paragraph, but the editor failed to do their job and mention in the subhed that it's an anniversary edition -- thus leading to Austin's confusion.

(*third paragraph)

I like that review Alfred!

Absolutely stunned to learn that Aimee Mann is 60. I mean, it makes sense when I look at the arc of her career, but it still also doesn't make sense at all.

It's okay because I'm gettin' flayed on Twitter.

and thanks, jon

I love that ilx is a safe space for idiosyncratic takes, a place for true iconoclasts. However, Alfred is wrong; the songwriting is Great

You know what’s good though? Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory

it's practically hidden in the review that it's a reissue. i was so confused.

not trying to nitpick you, alfred. not your fault at all, really.

It didn't help that the label was coy about the title because it's...26 years since My Life.

Annoying that people interpret anything less than an unqualified rave as a personal attack.

A couple people called me a cracker.

i'm also a cracker. self-proclaimed.

hive culture sucks

This is depressing to see happen more frequently. Was there a big stan backlash against those middling BTS reviews?

isn't that funny how this works?

"you hate the same things that i hate, so you're cool."

"you don't blindly love the same things that i do, so you're terrible."

katherine's Kylie review caused some awfulness too, this performative standom is the worst

What’s the album already

Ah ok, yeah I like MJB, that’s a good album.

Rating inflation is a blight so props to Alfred and katherine for helping curb its spread.

Yeah, that's what I meant about the increased frequency of this shit. Between rabid personal attacks against critics who give anything less than a perfect score and this whole idea where you can't be a "real fan" until you buy 12 copies of the new album to "help your faves", modern pop fandom is seems even more toxic and dangerous.

but pom, you're not understanding: ALFRED IS A *CRACKER* for not blindly handing out elevens.

Right, of course, why didn't I think of that? This just goes to show how illegitimate my own discursive position is.

Reminder that the reviewers don't choose the ratings (unless Alfred somehow did in this case).

Well, no, but it is still these individual reviewers that have to bear the brunt of these stan swarms, which makes it even worse imho!

Not to "blame the victim" - or more precisely, the victims' publisher - but maybe Pitchfork could help curb this ugly trend by doing away with the ratings altogether. Force ppl to actually read & engage with the review.

(Though I guess Metacritic assigns fake numerical ratings when they compile reviews anyway.)

Reminder that the reviewers don't choose the ratings

it remains more complicated than this

i don't think it's very difficult to understand why a lot of ppl would be mad at pitchfork for giving an album that has been considered a pillar of R&B for decades a 7.0.... read the last 20 years of the room

my life is at least an 8 and is mjb's best record imo, "rating inflation is a blight" may be true to you but pfork giving a mary j. blige record a 7 isn't a fight against rating inflation, that's the status quo