pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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!

working in music retail for many years in a us city of about 250,0000, the absolute highest price that i remember for a single disc new release was $21.39 after tax.

and that was in the early 2000s.

i, too, am wondering where this person was buying cds in 1997. i hope they got in on that class action lawsuit that repaid people who got ripped off by cd prices.

$17.99 maybe $18.99 price points iirc

The popular new releases lining the front of the store, yeah. Back in the racks at Music World most albums were like $23.98 + tax.

19% sales tax for me lol

Did Pitchfork accidentally publish that Hotline TNT review and Best New Music a few days early? Because it's no longer there now.

it's still up at the direct link: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/hotline-tnt-cartwheel/

It's mentioned here, but it's not in the Reviews section or the band's own aggregate page.

huh, I still see it on the main page when I checked now

Oh wait sorry it is there

Dude, it wasn't on the homepage or the Reviews page a minute ago, I swear

(Oasis was the big/featured review)

I just checked not long ago and it was gone

You’re not imagining things

What's with the weird score format though:

Rating: 8.4/10 (info link that goes nowhere)

Lol Pitchfork just because I thought it was confusing doesn’t mean the review should be taken down. https://t.co/YDzqypEXpk

— Travis Shosa (@tsdenizen) November 3, 2023

The Oasis review has that same new score format (but not the others on the homepage)