pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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.)

I posited last week that Pitchfork could have a perfume reviewing offshoot called “Cat Shit”

Dan, I agree with pretty much all of that - I just think that when you're talking about a mission statement for criticism, which is what I took ftgi bf's summation to be, well, you're kind of talking about the critic's intentions, no?

Rather than a straight "I want to help art find its best audience", I think I'd go with wanting to give every piece of art the respect of engaging with it and hopefully finding something to say about it that enrichens the reader's perspective on it...and that can be positive or negative. Readers can then def find that my negative thoughts make them want to check something out - or indeed that my positive thoughts make them want to stay away!

(Dual reference to “shit, cat” and civet)

I have some thoughts.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/some-weekly-100-96774752

xps

example of a negative review that made me want to hear an album: Brent D's notorious Steely Dan review:

"Jamming" sax solos glide over neutered, bassless funk. Glass guitar and percussion clink along steadily like a chorus of jangling Tag Heuers, automatic Lexus locks, popping Le Croix cans, clicking laptop covers, crystal Cristal toasts, and smacking Hollywood cheek-kisses. The same slow-bop pace is rigorously maintained. Vocals exhale so innocuously you have to hold a mirror up under the speaker to make sure it's alive.

it made me think, "my god, they're back and they've still got it."

haha totally

i actually like that writing...also i mean if anyone who can dish it out like steely dan can take a little smarmy negativity

“Clicking laptop covers”?

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

― Daniel_Rf, Friday, January 19, 2024 10:47 AM (forty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

(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)

― Daniel_Rf, Friday, January 19, 2024 10:52 AM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

to your first point, you have no idea the level of abuse you would get for giving something like a 8.5 instead of 9 or whatever

I mean I'm sure some Pitchfork writers or YouTubers get harsh criticism but Anita Sarkeesian, was getting bomb threats and had to go into hiding in the Bay Area because of death threats. There was an entire outlet that got doxxed (with their close family members as well)

Anything in music media was child's play compared to Gamergate.

to your second point, that's the hard part about reviewing games, because there are controls, systems, user interfaces, etc that can objectively just be broken or not designed correctly...but at the same time there's a level of artistry* there too that's not able to be objectively quantified...but I think that's a great observation that it's leaked into other forms of art...hell, you see all this shit about "Easter Eggs" in movies now, a term straight from games

*my own personal answer to the "art games art?" question is "it depends", some definitely are but I don't consider, say, Tetris or Madden Football or FIFA art.

counterpoint: tetris is art, none of the others are

Also jumping on the “Tetris is art, fuiud” bandwagon

Great read, Ned. Gotta be weird knowing someone pretended to be you lol

Dan, I agree with pretty much all of that - I just think that when you're talking about a mission statement for criticism, which is what I took ftgi bf's summation to be, well, you're kind of talking about the critic's intentions, no?

Sure, but my point is that a well-written pan can put an album in front of the people who would enjoy it in the same manner as an enthusiastic rave, even if the critic is saying “no one should buy this”. It’s the act of processing the criticism that leads to deciding whether to check the music out or not rather than a specific “buy this/skip this” recommendation, and that still fits the central thesis posited for the point of criticism.

I interviewed Alexi Patijnov, I don't think he considers it art, probably doesn't consider game to be art at all. There was a game in Russia using "tetriminos" (the shapes you see in the game) where kids would have to fit them in a box. He was just trying to figure out a cool puzzle game and hit upon the idea of animating/automoting that childhood game.

In general, most of the early game developers (arcade/Atari/etc), didn't really think of games as art, they were in the amusement industry/pinball/etc mindset, plus being early hacker just getting the thrill of "look what I made this machine do"...I know Howard Scott Warshaw (Yar's Revenge) felt the same way.

Also all those puzzle/games magazines (like Games etc)....but they were just trying to get people to play longer

I don't consider "art" a designation of quality in games. Tetris is perfect. I just don't think there was an artistic/expressive impulse behind it, it was just a guy trying to get something to work.

i'm always interested in very thoughtful, negative reviews, but i think when they get personal or nasty or ill-informed, they are simply just without merit. i think that's why it's kinda impossible for me to take Greil Marcus on Lucinda Williams seriously at all, because it's not that he's not into her music, it's that he clearly hates her as a person. Brian Howe's Edith F review on Pitchfork assailed her songs of loneliness and melancholy by saying, god well you're a whiner, of course you're alone (or something to that effect.) So many reviewers look at an artist putting themselves out there as an excuse for some real abhorrent thoughts, which reveal more about themselves than their targets.

however while i think the Brent D Two Against Nature review is absolutely dunderheaded it's also hilariously off-target and doesn't really at this point offend me, but i also think Steely Dan was used to people missing the point two decades before and their reaction was maybe more along the lines of, "really, people are still thinking that about us?"