pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Heyyyyyoo

The Worst Party Ever album is like

Five Takeaways from Clicking X on the Full Page Ads Pitchfork Loves

good lord the number of proper nouns in this review made me dizzy: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yard-act-the-overload/

also a funny read after spending time in the british expressions thread

Good call on the proper-noun barrage. Also:

How you feel that he shares the same last name as Mark E. Smith—fun happenstance, insufferable media bait, a shrug—will probably tell you how much you’ll enjoy what Yard Act is selling.

(I do like the extended talk about a particular song to end the piece, though)

My Bloody Valentine Call Out Spotify for Sharing “Incorrect and Insulting” Lyrics

^they’re reporting on a tweet, by telling you what the tweet says (and that they have no more info to share). That is not news

i mean fox news does it . . . why not pfork?

The inexplicable historical revisionism of Third Eye Blind being good is baffling: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/third-eye-blind-third-eye-blind/

Why? The earth belongs to the living and not to the dead.

they were always good

It’s a good piece. I also didn’t know what a huge dick Jenkins apparently was to the guitar player etc., until I read this last night (and then some other stuff)

I acknowledge their existence

some otherwise very trustable music pals of mine were obsessed by 3EB growing up, and still love them today. i was in the right place at the right time for that but it didn't happen

The key line (in a "there is an unbridgeable gulf between this writer's experience of life and art, and mine" sense) is when they seem to compare Stephan Jenkins favorably to a youth pastor, as if either of those — singer for Third Eye Blind, or youth pastor — could ever possibly be a good thing.

a buddy of mine was their publicist for awhile, she seemed happy with the work

I dismissed 3EB when they were popular because I was a pretentious college freshman and they represented the lame mainstream. Now, however, I think they're musically more interesting than most bands of their ilk.

from what i could gather as a middle schooler who liked songs on the radio and mtv/vh1 but was rapidly transforming into a huge snob, most ppl who cared to listen to the s/t at the time discovered the same thing

(i know ned has always been immune)

I just can’t get past “||: doo doo doo, doo da-doo! :||”

To me they are like “whoa-ohs” in music, the singalong thing, no thanks. If a musician is doot doot then I will listen to “doot doot”, because at least that song has a cool keyboard part

musically more interesting than most bands of their ilk

A bar so low it's digging a rut into the floor.

this is how you doot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0uxnnzY-n0

xp It rare I’m aligned w/unperson, but yeah lol

when i was in 10th grade i would just play the third eye blind s/t and built to spill's perfect from now on on a constant loop

admittedly 3eb is what happens when a very smart and good-sounding rock band is fronted by the worst coffee shop-ass self-stylized beatnik poet you've ever met (even though i think his lyrics have been consistently very good and funny on every record), and this fact makes his desperate grabs for indie rock cred in interviews over the years super pathetic and pretentious. but on record it actually works that way for me, it could sit next to matchbox twenty (uuuuughhhhh) on the airwaves but it had the depth and dynamics of pretty much all the indie i listened to at the time

If people enjoy the music of Third Eye Blind good for them i guess. But that piece is ott enough that big chunks of come off like the 90s pop-rock version Patrick Bateman on Huey Lewis: "Sure, crystal meth will lift you up — but Cadogan’s dulcet strumming is a steadier kind of high... [swirls snifter of Jones Cola] ...Even deeper cuts like 'The Background' spin every instrumental into wispy wonders."

i disagree with this piece's thesis about kevin cadogan. he was good but out of the vein, the first record they made without him, isn't noticeably worse than the s/t or blue. jenkins is the band unfortunately, and there's such a consistency in sound between records that imo you wouldn't notice the band had almost been entirely replaced unless you already had this information

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAta5RbJayw

the string slide that opens this song is my favorite sound in all of music

Who gets credit for that long gtr/instrumental break in “Jumper”? I always really liked that

maybe i'm overstating that jenkins "is the band," but he's the common denominator. get deep enough into the weeds of 3eb legal stuff and you will become aware of xeb, a sort-of-tribute band made up of ex-3eb band members, and they sound just terrible

"jumper" is credited solely to jenkins, cadogan probably played the guitar line, who knows beyond that

If I need mid 90s pop rock sound I reach for bands like Poole but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a whole 3EB album either.

I read about XEB last nite, had no idea…

third eye blind had their fifteen minutes. fuck off and don't come back.

I spent this entire revive wondering why no one was mentioning the band's famous singer, before realizing I was mixing up Maroon 5 and 3EB

proper insult, that. well done.

Maroon 5/Matchbox 20/3EB poll time

Millennial critics really picked some of the most absolute dogshit popular music of the late 90s to critically rehabilitate

They're like newborn ducklings who mistakenly imprinted on a dog.

Like if you would have told 17 year old me in 1997 that Backstreet Boys, Shania Twain, Blink 182, Sarah MacLachlan and Third Eye Blind would one day be the "good" music and Prodigy, Wyclef Jean, Moby, Tool and Soul Coughing would be the lame bullshit, I would have looked at you like you were absolutely crazy

joke's on you. moby, tool, and soul coughing were always lame bullshit.

here we are
going up our backsides

the stuff about cadogan literally could have been c/p'd from a contemporary issue of guitar world, for whatever reason it was considered a big deal that a GIT type of dude would be in one of the many nakedly careerist "alternative" bands of that micro-era. i have never been able to figure out what he's doing that is supposed to be so interesting except that he's clearly better than any of the guys playing in, like, fuel or tonic, which is not a high bar.

He’d trained with instrumental rock legend Joe Satriani from a young age, then left the world of classical guitar for the local ska and punk scene as a teen.

Wait, did he actually study classical guitar? Because afaik that's not what Satriani has ever played or taught.

Third Eye Blind opening for Oasis is the double bill that lasts for 1000 years of purgatory.

If you had told me in 1997 that you can see into the future of music, I would’ve asked: “Ten years from now, will Puffy and Mase still be on top?”

I really liked "Never Let You Go" when it came out. Tried to get into the rest of the album but in the end it didn't really stick.

Maroon 5/Matchbox 20/3EB poll time

so trivially 3EB, i have no particular love for them but "semi-charmed life" still blows away everything the other two have ever done

joke's on you. moby, tool, and soul coughing were always lame bullshit.

Yeah, my eyes were crossing going over and over that post in search anything remotely good. I mean, Prodigy were momentarily diverting...but that's all they ever were.

I mean, Korn, Hootie & the Blowfish, the Spice Girls, Hanson, Shania Twain, and late-period Rolling Stones albums made Rolling Stone's Essential Recordings of the 90s list in 1999.