pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Gave me son a stern talking to at dinner about this very thing. I don't want to even hear about your favorite albums of the year until after we clean the plates on Thanksgiving.

"You guys weren't here for Beyonce in 2013, or Black Messiah in 2014. They gave album of the year to Run the Jewels! It was a catastrophe!"

What new score format is this? Nothing seems out of the ordinary looking at either Oasis or TNT

Both seem to have reverted back now...

If you weren't there on Friday, November 3, 2023 btw 9:42 and 9:46 AM, you'll never know what it was like, man...

These are always some of the most whogivesashit.jpg obsessions this thread has

mod autoreplace

Don't get me started on the aesthetics of this graphic!

https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/654263e8e2e78963b84a3694/2:1/w_1920,c_limit/Readers%20Poll-08.png

These are always some of the most whogivesashit.jpg obsessions this thread has

― The SoyBoy West Coast (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 3, 2023

whiney otm

It's not like there's anything else going on in the world.

Where’s the “Under the Silver Lake” for website formatting hijinx, I ask

my workplace’s year end review process meant I had to have my documentation in by today!

there are the music outlets who do the same thing where they want to have it all tidied up and ready to publish before the winter holidays and those who roll
the dice with just publishing in late january. I don’t love the former but I get it as long as nothing good falls through the cracks

Most tedious P4k thread conversations:

7. "Why are they posting about [thing that isn't music]? When did they start doing this?"
6. "Actually, the way they come up with the scores is..."
5. [Alfred Soto full-throatedly defending a piece of writing that everyone sees is clearly bad]
4. "Ah, 8.2 no BNM means..."
3. "This thing was off the website/improperly formatted/improperly scored for five minutes."
2. "Well after Condé bought them [idiotic opinion]"
1. "I wish they posted the individual writer's ballots"

almost as tedious as constantly policing threads

You're forgetting "Inconsistent scores/opinions on artist's albums by two different writers"

Or nit-picking the rules about the Sunday Review

That's a good one, yes, that's like no. 2

the pitchfork is dumb thread is dumb (#4376437323)

some people are just really into the fork and that’s okay

I never do anything full-throatedly, not even sex.

c&p to "ilx quoted very much in-context"

It's that age old question of what is worse - nitpicking trivial bullshit that is ultimately meaningless? Or nitpicking about the nitpicking trivial bullshit that is ultimately meaningless?

I'd argue that nitpicking about the nitpicking about the nitpicking trivial bullshit that is ultimately meaningless tops them both and I've FPed myself accordingly.

https://i.imgur.com/Jf0qifw.gif

If someone noticed on Twitter that a review was published and then disappeared, I don’t see why that’s too trivial for a poster to ask about (and us to discuss) in this thread. And the rating is the first thing you look at, so a change in the design of that is also noteworthy.

Forget it, morrisp; it's Whineytown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oF1Rd5kis4

One thing I'll say is that Sodomsky's Sisters of Mercy review last Sunday was so f'n good... it's one of those pieces on a band/album I knew nothing about which is so well-written, it had me immediately running to check out “This Corrosion,” a song it talks up (...kinda disappointing, sadly!)

Sodomsky's great at conveying enthusiasm for something in a way that makes you want to hear it, even if (and often if, in my case) it ends up not aligning w/your personal taste.

That was a really good piece. I am of the (somewhat heretical) opinion that the bigger and more garish the Sisters of Mercy got, the better they were. Others seem to think that their early, (to my ear) plinky and underpowered singles represented them at their best, to which I can only say in my best Alex in NYC voice, "CLEAN YOUR FUCKIN' EARS OUT, YOU CLODS." I mean, that's like thinking Big Black's Lungs and Bulldozer EPs were their best work.

I tend to agree, though I love just about everything they’ve done, early plinky singles through Under the Gun. Floodland is probably up there in my top 10 favorite albums of all time; never get tired of listening to it. The Pitchfork piece was great and spurred me to finally start Paint My Name in Black and Gold which has been sitting on the nightstand for a few months. Also curious about Waiting for Another War which came out fairly recently; anyone read that one?

just chiming in here re:a couple things—
i don't get how "nitpicking" isn't the exact thing this topic is for. we all know some pforkers post/lurk and there have been times that this very thread has served to correct factual errors on the site. i think it's fun and this thread specifically has softened my stance on the site over the years because of the discourse that's happened — tedious as some of it may seemed at the time.

i think of music writing the same way i think of documentary making: if it's done well, you'll be interested (and maybe even enthusiastic) about the topic even if you knew nothing/were skeptical going in. agreed re:last sunday's sisters review. i went in already knowing i don't care for the band, but at the end i found myself thinking, "well maybe i should give `em another go?" i haven't noticed any sodomsky for this reason in the past, but that was definitely a great piece.

I thought the new rating design which was briefly visible y'day (presumably due to a dev/prod error) was interesting b/c it was smaller and said "8.4/10" on a single line (instead of a huge "8.4"); which "de-emphasizes" the rating in way. Pfork has obv been criticized (whether rightly or wrongly) for how focus is drawn to the ratings, possibly at the expense of attention being paid to the reviews themselves; so a move away from that would be notable to anyone who cares enough about the site to talk or read about it.

i've always hated leading the review with the score. i mean i get why, but (imo) it was problematic in print media long before pfork was getting criticism for it.

opinionated ephemera:
a perfect review design looks like a big hq graphic of the cover art, under that the artist and title. beside the cover art a highlighted excerpt from the review with `by (author).` and then, at the very end of the review, the overall rating —whatever it is: numbers, stars, mics, owls, idgaf— is there, the same size as the text of the review.

I’ve said it before but the best reviews are the capsule descriptions on hardwax’s website

scores are the patriarchy and should be abolished anyway

agree 100%

why stop there -- why not "reviews are the patriarchy and should be abolished"?

"get rid of the scores" is basically saying everyone should have to do all the work... pfork reviews are like 800 words long, and there are 20 a week. how do i know which ones to bother reading?

sounds like a you problem

Sounds kind of patriarchal to force people to do unpaid eye labor just to find out if a new shoegaze album sucks or not

“if”

I would be very keen for music writing to finally move beyond the consumer guide model

people would have much more interesting and idiosyncratic tastes if they didn't rely on critics to frame everything for them

I would be very keen for music writing to finally move beyond the consumer guide model

people would have much more interesting and idiosyncratic tastes if they didn't rely on critics to frame everything for them

I would be very keen for music writing to finally move beyond the consumer guide model

people would have much more interesting and idiosyncratic tastes if they didn't rely on critics to frame everything for them

so nice I posted it etc

brimstead otm

"get rid of the scores" is basically saying everyone should have to do all the work... pfork reviews are like 800 words long, and there are 20 a week. how do i know which ones to bother reading?

Putting aside that even negative reviews can be worth reading(!), ideally the subhed will give you the flavor of the piece. At S0nicn3t, we published dozens of reviews per week, and didn't use ratings (even Rolling Stone did away with ratings for years!).

NB, I don't care whether Pitchfork does away with ratings or not (and suspect they won't).

I only listen to albums with middling review scores

aka The Dirty Work Dictum.

y'know, this brings up an interesting sidebar:
every album that pfork has given a 0 to, i've checked out. however, there are still some 10s that i've never heard.

make of that what you will.