pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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

i feel like i’m too much of a floyd fan to really criticize the voice this piece adopts or its constant dartings away from musical analysis into social context but the “us & them” paragraph is pretty emblematic of how little i’m getting from it, anyone who’s put themselves through the wall or god forbid the final cut knows what happened to waters’ dad. (and did you know there was another war going on at the time of dark side’s release.) if this is a creative writing exercise it comes off way too much like an excerpt from a very dry book

i did in fact enjoy the paragraph about the literal dark side of the moon bc it evinced some style. but whiney’s right, why do i even care, this can be whatever it wants to be bc it’s an album that’s been written about to death, it can even a recapitulation of the recent tweet war between waters and gilmour for whatever reason

They.. tweet at each other?

i did also enjoy how the wizard of oz digression revolves around the specific journalist who wrote about it instead of just being presented as a wacky coincidence that gained purchase with the most profoundly stoned of floydheads, and the way this furthers the metanarrative of technology restructuring our relationship with art and spectacle, yeah maybe this piece is better than i’m giving it credit for, i’m very tired

I didn't know it was Charlie Savage!

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.

What do you have against bass tone?

Sorry if you mistook what I said personally or something

― brimstead,

Not at all. This thread has gone in fascinating directions today.

it was just unclear whether the post was sarcastic or sincere. i'm still not 100% but leaning towards sincere now

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


Hmm idk about that

part of what is annoying about this record and this band is really encapsulated by that bogus statement— from day 1 of being aware of this album and Floyd in general, I read all kinds of things about them. “best psychedelic band” “great rock band” “politically and socially astute” “intimate”


and none of that hyperbole has matched up with my feeling while listening to the records.

a friend put dark side of the moon on during an early formative shroom trip and i asked him to turn it off cause did not sound remotely psychedelic to me

I'm way less a Floyd listener than most of you but I too find it an intimate record.

It always struck me (esp compared to adjacent albums, Floyd and otherwise) as a marvel of “clean production”, it sounds just miles ahead of any other contemporaneous album in this regard, even Steely Dan stuff

I should probably hear this album, I think the Wizard of Oz thing is all I really know about it. Enjoyed "Fearless" on the radio the other day and was surprised to learn who it was.

dark side is probably the least psychedelic-sounding floyd record, certainly their album most in debt to the sounds of contemporaneous r&b. for all its high concept lyricism and sound collages, its an astonishingly easy album to listen to. it’s languid and loose, lots of two chord minor two-major v7 progressions that invite improvisation, saxes and gospel choirs all over the place. there’s a reason it never left the charts

"Fearless"

one of the very best post-Syd tunes imo (it helps that david sings)

fearless rules.

great album, bust your windows what a classic, that should get best old music instead of this student poster crap

blame Clintonism, dear

this is the post-syd pink floyd that i have listened to more than any studio album. its just all so beautiful. this 2LP boot is cobbled together from different sessions. but i'm used to it.

https://i.discogs.com/8nggd6FvcTnZSE1Cvq7TGGgNGN66pxyJ3K1H8YqIJE4/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:591/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE5OTcz/MzctMTM4ODM1OTYz/MC0yMzAwLmpwZWc.jpeg

https://archive.org/details/pink-floyd-bbc-archives-1970-1971-london/02_The+Embryo_Pink+Floyd.mp3

ty!

https://archive.org/details/pink-floyd-bbc-archives-1970-1971-london/02_The+Embryo_Pink+Floyd.mp3🕸

1970 to 1972. love them. and david gilmour was such a hottie. (1970 to 1972 my fave grateful dead years too. strength upon strength. running on all cylinders. all that. youth. talent. luck. pompeii. before the drugs went sour.)

fwiw when it comes to the floyd worship culture on this board, i have no problem admitting that on my part it's half-jocular. i say "pink floyd rules" in the same way that i would say e.g. "megadeth rules" -- have not interest in declaring either band the "greatest" or "most advanced" or any other tired boomerism that the pfork article trotted out

i have played that 80s-era boot so many times and it staggers me every time by how great it sounds! the sound is unholy good on those sessions.

and david gilmour was such a hottie.

I keep reading this!

and Left otm: Jazmine Sullivan rules.

yeah budo jeru the "pink floyd rules" this was kind of a joke at first but then pink floyd does also does pretty much rule so it's sort of a loving half joke now plus saying "pink floyd rules" rules

i asked a group of writer friends who are all pretty music-obsessed (on a Discord) and they are in agreement with me— a fine band to which the hyperbole can never match.

also otm re: psychedelia, I truly think some of the journalism featuring talk of the music’s psychedelic elements was written by people who have never melted face off a hit of clean blotter.

who are your writer fiends? Name names

Is this thread now responding to some “if you don’t like Pink Floyd you don’t like music” straw man?

I am not sure what the debate is here, but re: BBC sessions this is essential:

http://www.profstoned.com/2023/02/pink-floyd-bbc-sessions-1967-1971-prof.html

a marvel of “clean production”

Yeah, this is where I fall, I think. It's like this impeccably crafted jazz-rock fusion (but not "fusion") that's mostly a joy to listen to (maaaaaan). It's simply too slick, too smooth to be psychedelic, imo; "Echoes" is probably the best or only example of Floyd pseudo-psych that is also pretty smooth. But yeah, on the rare occasion I play "Dark Side" (not because I don't like it, just because I have other things to listen to) I almost have to concentrate extra hard to get beyond the baggage, the familiarity, the ubiquity, to hear the album on its own terms, with a fresh ears mindset.

i don't think that's the point?

like, the 2 most important things about DSoTM

1. the audio feat of creating a pure black backdrop where the negative space around the parts is an infinite void

2. the cover art looks the way this sounds

Re psychedelia, there's the Butthole Surfers from 1983-1987, and then there's everybody else. Pink Floyd are far closer to Steely Dan than the Butthole Surfers. I would never call them a psych band (or a prog band, for that matter). They make really smooth, drifty/dreamy rock. And they rule.

(this is one of those threads where it's impossible to load the skipped posts so walking in on the middle of a movie here)

i always felt like all music was psychedelic when on...psychedelics.

isn't dark side kinda alan parsons' vision of the universe. felt like he spent the rest of the 70s trying to replicate it.

leslie duncan is on dark side. i heart leslie duncan.

i always felt like all music was psychedelic when on...psychedelics.

like, the 2 most important things about DSoTM

1. the audio feat of creating a pure black backdrop where the negative space around the parts is an infinite void

2. the cover art looks the way this sounds

i have nothing to add on dark side, just wanted to say that "childhood's end" on obscured by clouds has my favorite gilmour solo

that $17 Springsteen article ran more like an ad for TickPick

“Did you have a strategy?”

I went on some websites and these were the cheapest.

(write up that story!)

(this is one of those threads where it's impossible to load the skipped posts so walking in on the middle of a movie here)

I'm always baffled this thread has never been split. Makes me sad that I can't find old parts of discussions for future reference.

waiting for pitchfork to do another dumb thing so we can start the next thread

giving it a 10 is too predictable, 9.9 too much of a troll, 8.0 too confrontational. 9.3 is the perfect rating to piss everyone off for reasons that sound silly when you actually type them out. idk folks maybe Pitchfork's still got it