pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Or her tweets

As I stated above, I have picked stuff up due to negative reviews too, but I don't think it's true that critics writing negative reviews are, as a rule, writing them in the hopes that their negative opinions will get audiences to pick those records up.

xpostx2

I was chatting w bf last night about it, and he said this: “an ideal critical body is one that seeks to put the work into the hands of those who would best appreciate it.”

iirc this is how Allmusic approaches its ratings. What does this Horse Lords, John Mayer, or Miles Davis album deserve to be rated within the context of that artist's oeuvre and the scene in which it exists/existed.

Personally, I never had a problem with Pitchfork's editorial perspective but totally get why someone whose tastes clash with that perspective would be turned off.

didn't realize people still cared about bnm and 3 digit scores. i feel like the cultural cachet they once commanded eroded to almost nothing like, 6-8 years ago

As for those whose careers are indebted to the boost that Pitchfork gave them? I can think of two. Sufjan and Basinski. I can’t think of anyone else.

really? no one else?

We need to rate our 6.6, 7.4, and 8.2 posters on this thread.

I think Vijay Iyer definitely benefited from Pitchfork at one point deciding he was the only jazz artist they were gonna cover.

fwiw, the last 12 albums pitchfork put a BNM label on are fairly diverse, including experimental cellist Titanic, two metal albums, and Sufjan:

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/best/albums/

I was chatting w bf last night about it, and he said this: “an ideal critical body is one that seeks to put the work into the hands of those who would best appreciate it.”

iirc this is how Allmusic approaches its ratings. What does this Horse Lords, John Mayer, or Miles Davis album deserve to be rated within the context of that artist's oeuvre and the scene in which it exists/existed.

These are very different, imo - what you're describing is evaluating a record for an audience that already appreciates an artist, "good for a John Mayer record" is meaningless if you don't already know who John Mayer is.

Honestly I understand anyone who feels that Pitchfork ceasing to exist would be a net positive, I think at its worst it was pretty awful. I think the improvement in my mind was strictly the wider array of voices and more thoughtful takes. Maybe I'm unduly influenced by the peak work vs the valleys. I don't read it nearly as much or in-depth as I once did. But for recent work, a lot of the present company is included in the peaks. I always think of Ivy's review of Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy that's one that made me reconsider that album and her (always thought she was ok but that piece altered my perception wholly.)

I actually liked having the "BNM" stamp, separate from the ratings, meaning something like "P4K thinks this is special". You need highlights to have an identity, to introduce yourself, give a taste, and encourage a dive. Whereas I can't tell apart ratings herded within a 6-7 range when I have to factor in my own taste, the hype factor, the boost given to make it up to the artist for a previous underrated work. It's not as if I'm going to listen and say "no wait, that wasn't a 7.4, this was a 6.3, liars". A 100-system is bound to be inconsistent and I cannot take it seriously. But highlight 2-3 albums I find great, and I'm forever thinking "you got it right those times, and you might again".

As for those whose careers are indebted to the boost that Pitchfork gave them? I can think of two. Sufjan and Basinski. I can’t think of anyone else.

really? no one else?

― kissinger on my list (voodoo chili), Friday, January 19, 2024 10:29 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

uh yeah, that's some nonsense. my friends' band were single-handedly propelled by good reviews in pfork to indie minor celebrity status for a few years, led to them getting signed by 4ad, a euro tour, etc. just one random example

Same experience wrt Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. Even if I never knew Sarah as anything other than the singer of Silence.

i understand musicians having a complicated relationship with the site, but i really don't get ilx type music nerds hating it as readers/consumers. the quantity-quality-breadth of writing was amazing; can't imagine being anything but sad that that will soon cease to exist

One thing to clarify regarding the "BNM culture" thing - feels like there's a knee-jerk reaction to be like "who cares? Why so invested in their arbitrary hierarchies?"

When people fret about it on ILX, I give them the benefit of the doubt that they're speaking more to the weight that dumb lil' tag meant, or used to, from a marketing standpoint. At their height it would really drive sales!

I also think people are overlooking how powerful the scores themselves were as a device that carried a weight of importance other scoring systems didn't, which again is speaking to how this affected the artist from a marketing perspective. The snobby specificity of the number-point-number along with the calibrated-by-design difficulty of going above the +9 threshold meant that despite how good/innovative the writing itself was there was I believe still hordes of visitors that wouldn't even really read the write-up, they'd just come to sear the score into their brain (I always think of all the studies they do where people perceive wine/liquor as better worse purely based on a good/bad score). So they head to the shop and see a new album on the racks and their brain goes "this album = 8.6 BNM" and they most likely buy it. Perhaps, ideally, they read the whole review and liked the overall description, maybe just a memorable blurb from it resonated, but I do think a very large percentage had that glowing red number and BNM flashing in their mind above all else. Just a human psychology thing.

uh yeah, that's some nonsense.

Well, for every recording artist who owes Pitchfork a debt, I can name twenty more whose lives were enormously impacted, negatively, irreparably

And yeah, I feel a desire to reiterate at this time that I feel mixed-sad about this “folding”, and again offer condolences to those laid off, and a strong desire to see the Sunday Reviews continue (and join my voice in shouting out ivy. for illustrating that Talk Talk-Fumbling connection so brilliantly)

xp
yeah I appreciate fgti's perspective itt as I have never been the object of music criticism and have no idea what that is like. But it's frustrating how this conversation tends to dissolve into personal impressions. jaymc posted their 2003 top singles yesterday, and even as a moderate pitchfork defender I was surprised by it: https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5924-top-50-singles-of-2003/

likewise, this isn't directed at anyone here, but it would be cool if the twitter anti-poptimists actually read all of Ewing's columns and explained their problems with the actual texts

xp wasn't saying they didn't also bring artists down, simply that they did wield the power for a while to push them to another level

I actually liked having the "BNM" stamp, separate from the ratings, meaning something like "P4K thinks this is special". You need highlights to have an identity, to introduce yourself, give a taste, and encourage a dive. Whereas I can't tell apart ratings herded within a 6-7 range when I have to factor in my own taste, the hype factor, the boost given to make it up to the artist for a previous underrated work. It's not as if I'm going to listen and say "no wait, that wasn't a 7.4, this was a 6.3, liars". A 100-system is bound to be inconsistent and I cannot take it seriously. But highlight 2-3 albums I find great, and I'm forever thinking "you got it right those times, and you might again".

― Nabozo, Friday, January 19, 2024 10:37 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This too, cause the BNM seemed awarded to the albums they felt had appeal that transcended the genre-heads that would already be invested. An 8+ album without BNM seemed to indicate that it was a solid album for people already interested in that genre. So it was functional, but it was crazy to see how sales spiked when things would get BNM at P4k's height.

Can’t even count the number of excellent things Alfred wrote for them, too— Rush Moving Pictures immediately comes to mind, and Mary J Blige “My Life”; salud!

xxp i also think about ivy's talk talk-fumbling connection often. probably because i love talk talk and listen to them all the time, and also have evocative memories of my mom swaying in the living room at night to fumbling while holding my baby brother to get him to sleep

yeah it was the talk talk connection that really sealed the deal with me (also i love hearing about artists taking hugely to spirit of eden back when it was still just an obscuro flop experiment)

Can’t even count the number of excellent things Alfred wrote for them, too— Rush Moving Pictures immediately comes to mind, and Mary J Blige “My Life”; salud!

― flamboyant goon tie included, Friday, January 19, 2024 10:50 AM

besos!

the power of it at the peak was pretty crazy, my little bullshit local band at the time ended up playing a fundraiser show for Radio K (University of Minnesota's radio station) with Andrew Broder and Tapes n' Tapes. that happened to be the day that the TnT Pitchfork review came out and I was talking to the drummer and bass player like damn that's awesome and they were pretty shocked/excited...but at that time they weren't even like a super popular local band in Minneapolis, a month later they were headlining some big club in New York

lol forgot about them

I remember Alfred's Listen Without Prejudice review made my week.

wait I tried to read the Tapes and Tapes review and it asked me for a login

In 2008, a friend told me she’d emailed a publicist inquiring about employing them, the publicist said “have you been covered by Pitchfork” and my friend said yes, the publicist said “what’s your number” and my friend told them (I think it was a 7.3), and the publicist sighed and said “ok, I think I can work with that”

Tapes n Tapes: https://archive.ph/gF7Mv

that's funny because over time kind of "learning" how to read their reviews I always found the 7.5-8 zone the sweet spot for stuff i would like

Tapes n Tapes: https://archive.ph/gF7Mv

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, January 19, 2024 4:09 PM (forty-four seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

merci

they did wield the power for a while to push them to another level

i think the interview excerpt that jaymc posted is a good example of what a mixed bag, probably net negative, that power was during that time, insofar as schreiber tacitly admits that he understood pitchforks power to help some artists was contingent on also proving their ability and willingness to hurt others. which not only was obv bad for the many artists, but also just not correct. obviously a publication needs to be seen as evenhanded but its also clear that a lot of artists got unnecessarily ground up in the gears just to prove a point.

well put

xxp Obviously *readers* rate books on Amazon/Goodreads, but do critics? I'm not super-plugged in, but I'm struggling to think of an outlet that reviews books with quantifiable ratings, other than like starred reviews on Kirkus or whatever.

― jaymc, Friday, 19 January 2024 bookmarkflaglink

This is a piece on the damage mere *readers* have inflicted, for free.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/18/goodreads-review-bombing

I also know quite a few bands that were launched into another level because of Pfork. My freshman year at Uni, Skeletons— then a bunch of acid-dropping seniors at my school— got their debut reviewed and given a good score, and then they all moved to New York and a few became pretty instrumental in a lot of the scene there. West Nile and the Bkln waterfront scene of the aughts and early teens would not have been possible without that review, I don’t think

well, that review among others obv

xp
I was going to take issue with imago's "optimization" thesis as I think sites like RYM, Letterboxd, Goodreads, etc. (not to mention streaming platforms) better exemplify the problems with treating art as statistical data. I didn't make that post, because I decided we mean different things by the word. I could buy Pitchfork being influential in amplifying the quant approach, but certainly not solely responsible—digitization is at the root.

With Pitchfork, it never felt like “well, that’s a [critic’s name] 7.8.” Whereas Spin (I’m flashing back to scanning their numeric ratings) felt like individual opinions.

Hm, I'm curious why you think so. Both outlets published reviews with numerical ratings and bylines.

― jaymc, Friday, January 19, 2024 9:05 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Speaking from personal experience, with SPIN the rating the critic chooses are likely to near to what the editor allows. With P4K - totally different ballgame, and what hits me as a 7.0 might strike the editor as a 5.3. It was annoying.

There were things ultimately got say in the 7.4-7.9 range on the site but my personal ranking was higher. It’s a dance.

Booming posts FGTI!

A lot our folks here have written things for the site that I loved but I’ll have to think on it a bit before shouting some out

The new criticism

it used to be when you published a novel the best you could hope for was a good NYT review now it’s a viral tiktok called “books with A24 vibes”

— rebecca jennings (@rebexxxxa) January 19, 2024

I agree with you rob— the decimal point system Pitchfork implemented was prescient, if anything, and I’d argue that it is/was a reasonable response to an inundation of “too much content”. A cruel but understandable method of sorting

Skeletons

Amazing band, I saw them at Lee’s and the gay bartender spent the whole set craning his neck to stare at the lead singer’s calves (he was wearing shorts). Prodigious calves, that singer

In defense of musicians: I have vivid memories of some absolutely witless and clueless noise album reviews, written by people who never should’ve been allowed to review said records, back in the early 00s. Many of those artists went on to strong careers that weren’t kneecapped by the reviews but yeeeeesh.

Just making sure we posted this

don't give up on @pitchfork. fucking number crunchers at @CondeNast need to get a fucking grip. Fire Anna Wintour and pay your writers and editors. She's old news. How much do you pay that old slag? wtf is wrong with you people? you're gonna bring down the whole house.

— william basinski (@WilliamBasinski) January 19, 2024

hooo boy

one absolutely bizarro detail from this week is that Anna Wintour—seated indoors at a conference table—did not remove her sunglasses while she was telling us that we were about to get canned. the indecency we’ve seen from upper management this week is appalling.

— Allison Hussey (@allisonhussey) January 19, 2024

that's her brand

😬

the ultimate in obsessing over scores, to the point of mostly ignoring the reviews attached, can be found in video game discourse imo

(I also have a pet theory about how a tradition of "objective" factors in video game reviewing - bugs, do the controls work, that kinda thing - have been ported over to other art for a generation, thus the hyper fixation with scores as "objective" measures and the immense anger at something being given the "wrong" score in music/cinema/etc)

Get a grip people, you don't have clearance to see Anna Wintour's eyes! That's a national security measure.

Just responding to this (i can’t get to the original response as it’s in the dead space and my phone won’t let me page through the thread):

As I stated above, I have picked stuff up due to negative reviews too, but I don't think it's true that critics writing negative reviews are, as a rule, writing them in the hopes that their negative opinions will get audiences to pick those records up.

I am not sure it matters what the intentions of the critic are re: encouraging/discouraging someone from picking up an album? The important part is the analysis and contextual placement; that’s what you’re reading and that is what you’re mapping to your own evaluation framework to get a sense of what the album might be like and whether you’d be interested in it. It’s way more complicated than “buy this/skip that” even if that verbiage is put into the review, IMO. At least, it is if the writing/critical analysis is good, and we’ve seen instances on Pitchfork where that has been very good. (We’ve also seen instances where it’s been very bad; IMO the site should never, ever live down the wizard cap Radiohead review, or whichever review it was that was written in wholly botched AAVE, even if those were from an older editorial era.)