pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Also, considering how the piece sets up as its theme that "the real story of Siamese Dream is the story of a sound," and spends the next paragraph focusing on the influence of MBV, it feels like a missed opportunity not to note that after months of obsessive recording, Corgan & Vig were too wiped out to mix the album – so they handed it off to MBV/shoegaze guy Alan Moulder.

I know these retrospective reviews don't have to function as Wikipedia entries – and this one seems to deliberately want to move away from the usual focus on the circumstances of Siamese Dream's production (which is totally fair) – but I think a few more lines on those details would have bolstered its own premise.

(Sorry, I have a lot of thoughts on this album!)

Today’s Siamese Dream review has some really great parts… I didn’t realize Pfork had never tackled it.

They had - Ned did a joint review of the 2011 Gish and Siamese Dream reissues. Is this the first time the "not in our archives" rule has been bended to mean "as a standalone review"?

Oh, apologies to Ned… will look back at that. Wonder if he mentioned MBV! ;)

i’m dredging this up from memory so it could be apocryphal or straight up wrong but one of my favorite stories about the siamese dream sessions is corgan recording “mayonaise” on a guitar that went out of tune as soon as he started playing it, which was apparently responsible for that horrible/wonderful feedback sound in the chorus

also my sunday review of jimmy eat world’s clarity replaced an old bad review so like “not in our archives” has been extremely flexible for a while

yeah, the story is it was a cheap guitar that created that weird sound whenever he stopped playing it. the other great "mayonaise" story is that he got the title from "looking in the refrigerator"

Glad it’s not called “Pickles.”

also my sunday review of jimmy eat world’s clarity replaced an old bad review so like “not in our archives” has been extremely flexible for a while

Yeah but I thought replacing reviews that were pulled from the site years ago (because 90s or Ott) was the only flexibility. Regardless I'm all for one publication offering several perspectives on the same record.

Ned gave SD a 10, so this new review is a downgrade

Is this… serious/major touring season? (Maybe it is. I don’t go to many shows these days.)

Had to look at the site for context, but yeah, it's kinda bonkers out there, everyone is touring at once. Though that thing on Fork is pretty loose with the definition of "tour," or even "most anticipated."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/12/magazine/maneskin-rock-band.html

lmfao

by David Brooks

He also comes up in Jon Caramanica's piece on P. Diddy!

I swear this exact article was already published

maneskindela effect

Strangely, today’s retro review covers an album they straight-up reviewed before, and whose original review remains up on the site. (I remember its curious opening paragraph being flagged recently.)

I see they removed the boldface phrase from the intro this time:

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible.

lmao that original review

Oh I see there’s a note at the very bottom:

Editor’s Note: The Sunday Review series is intended to cover albums not included in our archives. This album was previously reviewed on Pitchfork in 2001. Due to an oversight, it’s been revisited here with a new essay.

Why replace this kind of genius writing?

Luckily for Gillian Welch, the path to acclaim in the folk-country genre doesn’t require moving to Oklahoma, Appalachia, or a Mississippi riverbank. Nor does it call for songs about killing people, peddling crack, or mining for black ass–gold (in fact, the latter is probably anathema to the cause).

'Due to an oversight'? Does that mean 'We didn't like the old review', or 'We forgot we already had a review of this up', or?

I like how the OG review returns to the Ice-T thing in the final paragraph, like summing up a thesis.

xp would guess the latter

The little intro in the Sunday Review riles you guys up like nothing else.

Also Ice-T was from Crenshaw

Ice-T was from Jersey.

My theory is they saw folks clowning on the original review (when that was happening months back), and decided to commission a new one. The “oversight” line is appropriately ambiguous. But who knows!

They should accidentally overlook the Bobby Digital in Stereo review

lol this review, what year does this guy think it is?

This is exactly the sort of album you gift a middle-age, mid-divorce dad who’s flailing for direction as he speeds around town in his post-split sports car, cranking the Stones’ anti-romance rants....”

You can picture Dad pounding his hand against the steering wheel in time to “Bite My Head Off,” four minutes of punk so patrician that it takes a blown-out bass solo by Sir Paul McCartney for it to sound remotely tough. During “Driving Me Too Hard,” Jagger threatens to escape to Morocco or the corner bar, then concocts neologisms for crying, an emotionally unavailable man too afraid of these things called feelings to name them. What’s more, it sounds like the Eagles trying to be bland.

number one, the middle aged dad in question in 2023 would want like i dunno a new Deftones record or something...

the guy he's talking about probably would be touched you got him the CD when you visited him in his semi assisted living senior apartment complex with the grandkids

either way like work out your issues with your dad dude

but i dunno i guess writers have like 5-10 more years of boomer bashing left let em enjoy it while it lasts

maybe it's just a way for millennials to feel young again but it feels meaner than it used to

if I was going through a divorce and feeling genuinely lost in life I'd probably be driving around listening to Cake's Prolonging the Magic or something

when he said awww yeah alll right oh no I really felt that

Just wait until they're in their 70s and Radiohead puts out a new album

I am rather moved that they full-on dismissed this thing.

I think the album is middling but I swear several negative/negative-leaning P4k reviews from recent times lean into the tepid 'music for...' trap (am I imagining that?) so the Dad stuff made me roll my eyes.

Still, the press this album has received elsewhere does make the review quite refreshing.

McCormick's Telegraph review (no I haven't read it I've read the blurb on Metacritic) has convinced me he approaches everything as a joke.

Middle aged dads are comforted by old-school snarky pitchfork reviews, not stones albums.

The one thing I might’ve liked to see in the review that we didn’t: thoughts on Watts’ drumming.

I am 48, so totally middle-aged, but whenever I go to some legacy boomer band show, I still feel like one of the younger ones, lol

OTM

(Whoops… that was meant for the post that revived this thread. The others hadn’t loaded yet)

But in North America, The Masterplan was a crucial act of fan service. In the ’90s, the stateside singles market had been all but snuffed out by a music industry that had conditioned consumers to pay $23.99 for a full album to get the one or two songs they liked.

This is from the recent Oasis review and the $24 statement is confusing me.

Think I figured that one out. The writer appears to be Canadian. The exchange rate in 1998 was about 1 USD = 1.50 CAD. So $24 was probably the price in Canada for a $16 CD in the US. He writes "stateside" but forgets that the price he remembers was not the price in the States.

lol yes I have had some bewildering conversations in Canada about CD prices (e.g., a friend, with surprising vehemence: "CDs are a scam!"). It took me a while to figure out that in addition to the exchange rate, CDs were simply noticeably more expensive up here than in the US

the provinceside singles market

Even as a Canadian, I don't remember CDs being that expensive in 1998. I remember them being at least 3 dollars cheaper. And that was without getting them on sale or buying them from some place like Zellers or Wal-Mart.

I wasted so much money at Music World before finding better stores.

At a certain point CDs within the time period of "I like the singles so I'm getting the album" hit $17.99 maybe $18.99 price points iirc. But maybe the writer was thinking of a deluxe edition!