pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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.

(probably more of a reflection on my idiocy than anything else)

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

― Left, Sunday, 5 November 2023 7:45 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

100% opposite of this is true fwiw. music criticism has all but vanished from the world and people’s music tastes are less idiosyncratic than ever. the world is awash in middlebrow lcd gruel. people liked to complain about them but critics, tastemakers, hipsters etc were good. also the pitchfork scores are fun and quite informative if you know how to read them imho

music got way better in the 10s, imo

wasn’t a statement about the quality of “music”

hipsters were not good

kids listen to all kinds of things that aren't supposed to go together according to old school hipster ideology and that's really cool

maybe you just know the wrong people

Whew, glad that's settled

I don't think "maybe you don't hang around enough kids" is as effective a zing as you think it is

do you really want to go back to the days when all the critics agreed that animal collective was the most important band of 2009 because that was fucking painful

whiney classy as always

I don't know that peoples music tastes are less idiosyncratic at all. Average listeners are being exposed to decades and decades of obscurities that have reached them via smart music supervision and algorithmic buoyancy.

Yeah I agree – from what I see IRL (I’m not observing kids but more grownups, fwiw) people’s tastes are pretty darn diverse… (notwithstanding the Taylor hegemony).

Yeah, tastes are all over the place these days but the music still sucks, so win some, lose some

not talking about people i know but congrats on being friends with the cool young kids lol

On the flipside, I’m also not sure how many people’s taste were ever really influenced by music critics, in the grand scheme of things?

Sounds like someone does not remember Northern State

The average critic's review only generates a few thousand hits, but everyone who clicked on the link joined ILM.

I voted for Gore

music criticism was already like 90% of the way dead in 2009. now it’s like 99.99%

100% opposite of this is true fwiw. music criticism has all but vanished from the world and people’s music tastes are less idiosyncratic than ever. the world is awash in middlebrow lcd gruel. people liked to complain about them but critics, tastemakers, hipsters etc were good. also the pitchfork scores are fun and quite informative if you know how to read them imho

― flopson, Sunday, November 5, 2023 5:35 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

100% otm

Average listeners are being exposed to decades and decades of obscurities that have reached them via smart music supervision and algorithmic buoyancy.

I think this is true, but I also think this reliance on prestige tv music supervision and algorithmic buoyancy can engender an incredibly superficial relationship with music. Then again, you did say average listeners.

like if you transpose this to film, would anyone argue “people should just scroll netflix and watch whatever idiosyncratic garbage they find there” and that critics like pauline kael roger ebert—or just the random critic in any local news paper before that industry died—would occasionally have some influence in getting random ppl to go see something new and good they wouldn’t otherwise. seems obviously wrong, because it is. true for music too

the music in prestige tv (the curation of which is complete shit) is a good example of a negative consequence of the degradation of music criticism in society. the fact that that feeds into peoples music tastes is a feedback loop into yet more crap. critics were better gatekeepers

Ppl seem really into “film” these days though! To a degree that surprises me

kids must be lost at sea these days without robert christgau to tell them who's fuckable and who's a prude

I’ve also found some really good and (genuinely “artistic”) movies on streaming services that I never would’ve heard about otherwise, and I have to imagine the same thing is happening with music for some folks…