pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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

Re "Breathe", it hits the same haunting and lonely vibe for me as Albuquerque by Neil Young, complete with the absolutely perfect use of pedal steel.

Dark Side is an album that's almost impossible to truly hear — 50 years of cultural context sit between you and it. I mean, I first heard that record probably 35 years ago, and at this point it's like Kind of Blue for me, I have so much of it memorized that I don't know if I could find anything truly new in it if I tried. That's probably why I listen to Animals and "Echoes" more, because I can still be surprised by those. But this piece is a really good exercise in thinking-about-Pink Floyd. And there are probably readers who've never heard the album who will be inspired to do so by reading it. Which is the goal.

Side note: Eric Harvey's Who Got The Camera? is one of the best music books I've ever read.

Seconded

This is one of the biggest selling albums ever; I can wait until the 11th graf to read how the guitars sound on "Breathe" or whatever

criiiiinngggge it’s really fucking sad how so many music writers don’t seem to actually like writing about music, a lot of the time I can’t even tell if they even like listening to music or are interested in it :(

― brimstead, Sunday, August 6, 2023 12:48 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can't tell if this is real.

really hate when writers vaguely allude to things and link those vague allusions to wikipedia articles. happens at least twice in this

otherwise piece is fine, a lot of things i knew restated

Yeah I think it would be interesting if it tried to assess what it sounds like to listen to the album in 2023, rather than just tell you it’s (supposedly) about Watergate and recession, etc.

I didn’t read it, but I don’t think there should be any real rules or expectations on an essay about a 50 year old album

I'm actually really surprised this album had never been reviewed. I'd say that for all the extraneous stuff surrounding this album that makes it huge, it's imo such an intimate and lonely piece of music, it has this outsized reputation as a behemoth but I do find it closer in spirit to Tonight's the Night than it is to a lot of prog rock.

Dark Side is an album that's almost impossible to truly hear — 50 years of cultural context sit between you and it. I mean, I first heard that record probably 35 years ago, and at this point it's like Kind of Blue for me, I have so much of it memorized that I don't know if I could find anything truly new in it if I tried. That's probably why I listen to Animals and "Echoes" more, because I can still be surprised by those. But this piece is a really good exercise in thinking-about-Pink Floyd. And there are probably readers who've never heard the album who will be inspired to do so by reading it. Which is the goal.

Side note: Eric Harvey's Who Got The Camera? is one of the best music books I've ever read.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Sunday, August 6, 2023 12:57 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

All of this. And I just started Who Got The Camera? yesterday, and so far it's brilliant.

Like saying what this “should” describe or do is weird to me. If it was 20 grafs describing bass tone, that’s just as valid as a ‘70s politics exegesis because ultimately the only point of a review of a 50 year old album is to basically be a creative writing exercise

This is well-written but it's so corny at this point to connect everything Floyd back to Syd. What's next, a think-piece on Animals as the answer record to 'Effervescing Elephant'?
Also, neither Ummagumma nor Atom Heart Mother were concept albums, and the latter was a UK #1, hardly indicative of "paltry album sales".

...unless the concept for Ummagumma is "we already hate each other and won't play on one another's songs".

I kind of feel like any album where the artist gave thought to the track sequencing is a concept album.

I feel like any album where the artist determined track sequencing through D20 rolls is a concept album.

Wow, what a fantastic piece!!!

Kudos to Eric Harvey