pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

thank u j0rd, prob the most reliably great post-writer on this web site, for saying nice things about my descriptive music writing, which involves such effort it's hard for me to feel gifted in the least, but still, thank you

this discussion makes me feel fortunate to have grown up in the blogging era, where i felt like i was pretty consistently encountering magazine-quality pieces for free that were exploding with creativity and formal innovation. like, music writing would be so fucking boring to me if i had not been immersed in that, and i would've given up ages ago. also grateful to have had very brief intense obsessions over the classic rockcrit writers so that i could take what i needed from them and throw the rest away. idk maybe the kids are still doing this. cultural writing at its best is so deliriously good that i can't imagine a strict diet of not it. but also i very vividly recall an old lex post where he expressly discouraged music writers from reading any other music writing, which, when i read music writing, i'm always like, "damn... i get it girl"

I love people writing about music, but I've grown increasingly wary of music criticism, as such. Even when well intentioned it often still feels so mean and unnecessary, especially since it doesn't exactly move the needle any more, it just adds to the negativity and noise, which is in no short supply (and which went up proportionally, and unfortunately, with the rise of downloading and decline of income from actually making - and maybe coincidentally, writing about - music).

Cant agree with this. I love criticism, when its good. I cant imagine throwing out the form.

dont you guys all feel like, inundated with shit all the time? like the amount of stuff you're expected to be conversant in. and that if you treat it as 'new to you' even though it is there are a hundred ppl there to tell you your take doesnt count because theyve been in it longer? the saturation of info makes it really challenging to write from an authoritative perspective even personally. So rather than lamenting the mediocre critical writing there is & throwing away the baby w the bathwater I salute the people who figure out how to navigate an increasingly complex, overwhelming (amount of stuff to consume) yet boring (amount of stuff not worth consuming) commercial landscape to help *others* navigate a sea of garbage

I bring up the 'authority' of being 'new to something' specifically because I think curiosity tends to lead ppl's insights, yet 'mastering' knowledge tends to lead to fewer insights but more self awareness ... the balance is a tough thing to strike ... and we are so inundated with STUFF.

I still feel enthusiastic about writing; evoking the texture and posture of the albums I review, in addition to putting both in context, is the most exciting thing about it. I make an effort to avoid citing lyrics unless I'm making a musical point.

few weeks ago there was a 'songs of the summer 2023' feature on p4k that was like "songs to get our ass eaten to" which was p revolting to me

and it was all Pimp C songs

weeks ago there was a 'songs of the summer 2023' feature on p4k that was like "songs to get our ass eaten to" which was p revolting to me

― flopson, Saturday, August 5, 2023 6:53 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglin

Be more flexible

"the benefit of a review that describes the sound of a song is to make me want to click on that song instead of millions of others"

"This is so OTM (for me). I’m just not gonna click & listen if the blurb doesn’t give me a reason to, and non-musical “context” likely isn’t gonna cut it for me"

this is my problem with movie reviews now. nobody describes the look of a movie or visuals in a way that makes me want to see it. its all plot or it focuses on a specific actor or actors often without ever describing what they even look like! and i know i can go watch the trailer but man i would kill to read someone who makes me excited about movies by actually giving riveting descriptions of a scene or a look someone gives or the way the music or sound fits in with the picture...i don't know why i can't find this anywhere. i was really happy to see that ao scott was retiring at the nyt because he must be the worst at describing the look of a film if he even bothered to do it at all. you might get two sentences in the entire review. so fucking boring to read. AO turned me off of a lot films by being so flat and tedious.
i don't really read music reviews anymore. i read interviews with musicians. thats my music crit.
i do love reviews that get obsessed with certain sounds on a song or album. something that goes beyond the standard info of an album/artist/etc. i never see those. they are probably out there somewhere.

(man if i read a movie review and they mentioned the SOUND of the movie (and this can mean SO MANY THINGS) i would flip my friggin' lid...)

I dunno – I thought Scott was a pretty great movie reviewer, but it sounds like you’re looking for something v specific.

i like movies cuz they move. and sound cool. you would never know this reading ao.

i hate any review of anything that reads like a book report. there are so many ways to give info in a review without regurgitating plot or the tortured history of director A or actor B. i dunno. it doesn't really matter. i manage to find all kinds of cool movies to watch. and music to listen to. but there are ways to get creativity into the nyt. its been done.

glenn kenny tipped me off to that guy...........he's in a literary mag. brooklyn. has a book. i bought the book online! during the plague. then i made fun of steven spielberg and glenn kenny unfriended me on facebook. in any case, hat tip to glenn because that guy is really funny and the only modern film writer i have enjoyed since i enjoyed my kael chips or whatever.

i apologize for not remembering the name of the magazine or the writer! you guys are quick though. you know who i mean.

I personally don’t, but would be interested to know. Does he do these kind of impressionistic film reviews that you describe?

A.S. Hamrah. N+1 Magazine.

took me a minute...

i've never read the magazine. just his columns and then the book.

I've been enjoying Tarantino's book. Even though his chapters mostly focus on individual movies which had a formative influence on him, he digs into other works as well. He's pretty astute! I find myself agreeing with him a lot. He's pretty sharp on the reasons why a lot of the films work and why they don't.

I didn't doubt his book would be interesting, but I actually find it kind of shockingly good.

reading tarantino would have to be better than watching him talk about something.

He writes better than he talks!

Sometimes after seeing a recent movie that I have Opinions on, I use Metacritic to check out reviews (particularly the negative or mixed ones, as those tend to be more interesting). There are always a few that are really good, and make me think… “yeah, some ppl sure do this well.”

i'm sure there is good stuff out there. i don't really look very hard for it anymore.

Sounds like newspaper-type reviews aren’t really your jam anyway.

so, this is fun, i think the only slightly negative review i ever wrote in pfork was for the band sioux falls, who were doing kind of an emo-inflected modest mouse thing at the time (and i think i just have to accept that even though i enjoy many of their songs, i don’t *get* modest mouse at all and never have), and now they’ve made one of my favorite records this year, strange ranger’s pure music. sorry guys! you’re doing great

Saw DSOTM and called the rating before I clicked it. I feel like 9.3 is their standard Sunday rating for super canon albums whose super canon status has perhaps diminished a wee little bit in recent years, idk.

It really only talks about the actual songs on the album for three paragraphs in the middle, huh? Guess they figure everyone's heard it...

i haven't read it yet but wtf, DSOTM is a 10.10 out of 10

it rules

this is my problem with movie reviews now. nobody describes the look of a movie or visuals in a way that makes me want to see it. its all plot or it focuses on a specific actor or actors often without ever describing what they even look like! and i know i can go watch the trailer but man i would kill to read someone who makes me excited about movies by actually giving riveting descriptions of a scene or a look someone gives or the way the music or sound fits in with the picture...i don't know why i can't find this anywhere. i was really happy to see that ao scott was retiring at the nyt because he must be the worst at describing the look of a film if he even bothered to do it at all. you might get two sentences in the entire review. so fucking boring to read. AO turned me off of a lot films by being so flat and tedious.

Even worse in this regard is comics criticism, which outside of the Comics Journal is often either 100% just talking about the plot or the old AV Club model of 90% talking about the plot and then a little paragraph about how the art supports the plot.

The Floyd fandom on here is truly weird.

table, you appear to have mistaken ILM for something other than a classic rock forum?

It's a great piece.

technically an acknowledgement that animals is the best pink floyd album (the decades-old review where p4k gave it a 10 is still up) so i have to give them credit for that

xpost - just say "Pink Floyd rules" once, it feels good

table, you appear to have mistaken ILM for something other than a classic rock forum?

That's a great piece, yet even though I don't think Pink Floyd rules (sorry!) I don't see how or why you wouldn't give that album a 10, and at least on first read the review does not get into exactly what might have made it 0.7 better. Was it docked a smidge for what it begat? For amplifying Waters's ego? For not synching perfectly with "Wizard of Oz"? Not sure. If anything "Dark Side" is one of those super canon albums whose super canon status you *assume* has diminished a wee little bit in recent years, and then you put it on for the first time in a long time and, nope, it's actually still really good.

it reminds me of being in 6th grade Algebra where our teacher said if we completed our daily assignment, she'd give us 94s and I kept saying "why not 100" and she'd say "nothing's perfect" and I said "but you're not grading it for correctness, just completeness", and she said "look it's a damn A now stfu"

I think they docked it on account of AOR radio being sexist, and Playboy readers in 1973 being corny.

playboy readers?

Yep. It’s a weird paragraph

read two paragraphs of the floyd piece, it's just weird and crammed with hyperbole. i just don't see what draws people to writing like that, the tone is so annoying.

I'm not seeing what's hyperbolic and/or weird about those paragraphs other than "Pink Floyd had established themselves as, if not the best psychedelic rock band, then certainly the most technologically extravagant." They consist mostly of reporting?

Lol @ the review spending an entire paragraph discussing the phrase "dark side of the moon. Like a Scalia opinion using Merriam-Webster to define some term as the basis for some dumb ruling.

It can be hard to talk about the music itself

Especially if you wait until the eleventh paragraph to first discuss the music.

Gotta set the stage, man.

the sunday reviews are retrospectives, don’t really I’d rest and the complaint that they don’t spend enough time describing the sound of one of the most-heard albums in history

don’t really *understand

If they weren’t called “reviews” (and didn’t have a rating) it’d all be good I think.

Lol @ the review spending an entire paragraph discussing the phrase "dark side of the moon.

attempts at making profound alienation sound beautiful that aren’t Dark Side or OK Computer inevitably fail.

Hmm idk about that