pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

kind of an accomplishment to get attention for writing articles at all when the content mills keep churning

"her and her team"?!?!

you think you're so hard
you and your crew

https://www.vice.com/en/article/j57jw7/my-quest-to-find-where-in-london-you-can-shit-for-free

"her she and her team" — Ed.

this is also the same writer who had that whole "st. vincent asked me to take down this interview" kerfuffle imbroglio in 2021

wait these are different writers, no?

no, Emm@ M@dd3n wrote both

oh I finally actually clicked on the article, for some reason I thought it was written by a guy. hahaha

all right, I found that interview on archive.org and I’m done looking into this writer before I feel stalkery

I remember if being kind of… off.. at the time and it’s clear St. Vincent was kind of nervous and maybe answering questions she wouldn’t normally. and the questions are very much of the “why would you even ask that?!” variety

In 2001, Ontario’s Joel Gibb founded Hidden Cameras, a self-defined “gay folk church music” act that helped revive the city’s perishing indie rock scene with sexually lascivious live shows.

The city in Ontario, you know the one

to be fair, pitchfork is dumb.

Kind of curious where we are in the series at this point.

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/journalist-emma-madden-on-the-ups-and-downs-of-freelance-work/

whoops I meant to make that a hyperlink, can that be fixed?

oh, she was the one who wrote that awful review of the last Everything Everything album, makes sense

it's hyperlinked (xpost)

the longer that interview in creative independent goes on, the more and more self-important this writer appears and the worse she comes across. for someone who has only been doing music journalism for a few years, it's not a good look.

emma is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, just fyi

ty maura

Oh sorry, I meant a hyperlink via a "title" to help google-proof it

xp maura - sorry about that, thanks for letting us know. and it was unhelpful of me to say their review was "awful" - rather, i thought it was dismissive and made some assumptions about the band that i disagreed with. i still don't like the review much but EE are a polarising band and i can see why someone would think that way

Back in the American suburbs

― Bittern Storm Over My Hammy (morrisp), Friday, July 7, 2023 9:40 AM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

this wrt to Huskers is annoying as hell, they met when Mould was at Macalester College in St. Paul, the very definition of a very international, diverse, very liberal, artsy private college. The band was formed in the city. They weren't a suburban "garage band" by any stretch they were an urban band and very much part of the urban punk scene in the Twin Cities.

sorry every american town not named ny, l.a., or chicago (maybe) is the suburbs

Back in the Merica burbs
You don't know how lucky you erb

I don't know--these are some pretty suburban lyrics:

Something I learned today
Yield to the right of way
Stopping at a four-way sign
Someone else's rules, not mine, not mine

oh god the amount of 4 way stops in minneapolis and st. paul with four minnesotans all having a standoff by refusing to take the right of way

lol yes

I am not that far from the downtown of my midwestern city and I was showing another ilxor where I live on a map and they were like "so it's a suburb?!" because it's mostly residential, houses with yards, etc.

tbf my neighborhood looks like those built in a similar era in minneapolis

when I was growing up in the suburbs I appreciated "Books about UFOs" because I often sat on the roof reading.

i love that image

I am not that far from the downtown of my midwestern city and I was showing another ilxor where I live on a map and they were like "so it's a suburb?!" because it's mostly residential, houses with yards, etc.

Reminds me of when people were listening to NWA and imagining some urban hellscape because they'd never actually seen photos of Compton.

Compton is a suburb, too!

It's interesting how the city with more autonomous neighborhoods model contrasts w/cities with boroughs, cities where it's more of a county-level (or multi-county) government like LA where it's really a cluster of cities

Even if you read "Many of indie rock’s major players came out of suburbia, itself a hotbed for whiteness and heterosexuality" as meaning that some of them literally grew up in the suburbs, and did their earliest home recording there (which is def true for some major players that come to mind), it's not really saying anything other than the tautological "these are largely straight white guys/ gals from the suburbs." And, yeah, then they ended up actually playing shows in cities & college towns, because that's where the community was – same as for any music scene.

Btw, I think the Magnetic Fields get no mention – maybe they're not "secret" enough for the secret history(?), but seems like an oversight (sorry if someone mentioned this already, I can't easily re-load the above comments without freezing my browser with the entire thread).

It's such a funny fucking conceit because like 90% of "indie rockers" who grew up in the American suburbs would probably tell you that they found living there oppressive and *leaving* the suburbs was a top priority

^^^^

I don't know if i'm going to get over the "correction" of

"Arcade Fire’s 2010 album The Suburbs — which includes string arrangements from a queer artist"

"An earlier version of this piece misstated the number of people of color who have appeared on Belle & Sebastian record sleeves"

"Some of my best string arrangements are gay"

No mention of Thalia Zedek

The way the article sort of leaps from B-52's and Pete Shelley to Pansy Division felt like maybe there might be some more secret history the writer might have missed

Stephin Merritt releasing, in 1995, an entire album of indie-rock "stars" singing his lyrics is probably a more on-target example of "queering indie rock" than, say, the aesthetic of a major-label band coming out of a college town in the late '70s (not that the B-52's aren't great & worth writing about!).

Describing suburbs as “a hotbed for heterosexuality” is very hilarious to me, such a stupid phrase. Makes the suburbs seem a lot sexier than I think the writer intended. "Heteronormativity" is maybe the more apt word there

I remember my youth in the suburbs… a HOTBED of heterosexuality, it was. Every day at 5pm sharp the dads would all get home from work, and the heterosexuality would start spreading like wildfire… you could hear the indie rock for miles around, some nights…

Give John Cheever the news.

roll over Beethoven

When a son reached a certain age, his father would take him to his wood shop in the garage and give him an issue of The Big Takeover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRQ7ecvU56k

a hotbed for whiteness and heterosexuality

isn't this the by-definition coldbed

I saw Hotbed of Heterosexuality open for Corrosion of Conformity... it was a pretty sick show.

Lol morrisp

J Hus review is like a real live "Goop on Ya Grinch"

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/j-hus-beautiful-and-brutal-yard/

Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s best-known revelation after a decade of exile and imprisonment was that “the line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.” J Hus seems to have had a similar epiphany after 27 years of London, and eight or so navigating the music industry. On the cover of his third album, Beautiful and Brutal Yard, there are two houses: one engulfed in flames, the other smothered in bright blooms. Smoke and petals intermingle, and the whole thing takes the shape of a human heart.

........

Thumbed, hall party highlife basslines are refigured for a new generation—though some of the more choice lyrics about “the finger blaster” and sticking a “thumb in your anus” might raise more than blushes among the aunties and uncles.

lol I meant to post this quote after reading it this morning:

"Like Solzhenitsyn, J Hus is just as concerned with unpicking the knots of his own humanity as he is the societal structures and injustices that have shaped it."

Pfork says the Barbie soundtrack is one of “8 New Albums You Should Listen to Now”; but essentially drags it both in its own blurb and a neighboring blurb, and links to a 5.4 review (also published today). Are they being forced by a partnership or something to begrudgingly include the album in their weekly rundown?