pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

otm. Like many of you, I lived through this Nirvana stuff and there was a lot here I didn't know. I had no idea about Cash Cow, for instance. Also wanna reiterate I don't care at all about Nirvana (especially not in 2018) but the fact that I made it all the way through the piece is a testament, I think, to the strength of the writing.

Nirvana were a shit band, but they're one of those shit bands that a whole new crop of 14-year-olds discovers for themselves every year, so a piece like Pelly's is great. It takes an old, not very good record and with a mixture of history and hyperbole, turns it into a signpost to point 14-year-old boys and girls in potentially worthwhile directions.

Paul – I don’t dig Snail Mail much either, but that seems a bit harsh? (also they were pushed hard by everyone, not just Pfork, in the album’s big promo blitz.)

Paul, a much better example of the same thing: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/hole-live-through-this/ It immediately manages to make a case that this record is better than its reputation, then uses a contemporary quote and explains how that was wrong. It's so much more nuanced and wrestling with the strengths and limitations of what Courtney Love did and could do. Heck, it's better at explaining the limitations of what Cobain was trying to do than the Incesticide review: when Cobain wrote about rape, he wrote sardonically, and from the point of view of the rapist. The irony in his songs was apparently lost on some of his listeners. In that Vanity Fair profile, Love relayed a chilling anecdote she had heard about a girl who had been raped in Reno, whose rapists had been singing Nirvana’s song “Polly” while assaulting her. “These are the people who listen to him,” she said.

Paul – I don’t dig Snail Mail much either, but that seems a bit harsh? (also they were pushed hard by everyone, not just Pfork, in the album’s big promo blitz.)

Ok but profiling emerging artists seems like an odd thing to be pissed at Pfork about...

Nirvana were a shit band, but they're one of those shit bands that a whole new crop of 14-year-olds discovers for themselves every year, so a piece like Pelly's is great. It takes an old, not very good record and with a mixture of history and hyperbole, turns it into a signpost to point 14-year-old boys and girls in potentially worthwhile directions.

― grawlix (unperson), Sunday, 1 July 2018 16:17 (forty-four minutes ago) Permalink

“Nirvana were a shit band” ok bud

I was with Fred (the other big unnecessary line would be the sentence about what turtles are like, which is random and irrelevant) until he said no one should be writing about nirvana in 2018 like what? They’re one of the most significant bands in history lol

classic for "Turtles have this fuck you attitude"

i've loved Nirvana for 30+ years and never heard this line but hearing it now makes me smile

That's not what I meant. I meant that there is no need for 'reassessments' that basically just repeats what's been said for close to thirty years. The Hole review is also a bit about Nirvana, and it's great.

(the other big unnecessary line would be the sentence about what turtles are like, which is random and irrelevant)

funny solecism in it tho that makes u imagine a furiously jealous turtle refusing to come out of its shell

it's not at all random and irrelevant from the guy that wrote "It's okay to eat fish cos they don't have any feelings"

Unperson, you ok bud? Wrong opinion

Ross, you crack me up – wish we could have a beer or something IRL

Ok but profiling emerging artists seems like an odd thing to be pissed at Pfork about...

― i’m still stanning (morrisp), Sunday, July 1, 2018 1:02 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not to get too into the weeds with this but it was an extensive profile that preceded any emergence, that was January 2017, they had one EP and had played maybe 25 shows by that point total, hadn't toured yet. I don't like SM and I'm certainly not pissed about it, it's just bizarre - I mean, she has the best PR people in the world evidently.

In all honesty, that is kinda what I want pitchfork to do, lol. And I don't particularly like Snail Mail either.

xp idk i got a sense of how a sort of constellation of ideas and influence and reaction from it, does a v good job of placing it w/in that constellation and how it's central to the act of listening to the album, or at least posits that it is, and i think it does so v convincingly. i also doubt a lot of people are aware of the context, and part of the purpose of this series is as a introduction, or reintroduction, of sorts

lmao

hi

pelly seems like she has her ear to the ground so i'm not too surprised

i got some chuckles from the new Gorillaz review.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gorillaz-the-now-now/

At 50, Damon Albarn is still writing songs for the world’s most popular cartoon band because he believes in the romantic idea that an international charting group can change the world.

ok right off the gate setting this guy up to be the new John Lennon or something

Cartoons appeal to young people, which makes illustrator and co-founder Jamie Hewlett’s multicultural avatars—2-D, Russel, Noodle, the “imprisoned” Murdoc, and stand-in bassist Ace—a Trojan horse for the kind of politics that people prefer not to hear from millionaires.
The records range from eco-centric protests to dystopian party playlists

really building this up, this is going to be life changing music! what are some examples?

“Calling the world from isolation,” the album begins, a mantra that shape-shifts to allude to Brexit, gun laws, and other political specters.

i guess young kids have never heard the kind of lines Radiohead would have done 20 years ago.

“Baby I just survived, I got drunk, I’m sorry, am I losing you,”

the only other lyric quoted, about getting drunk. yeah pop music isn't exactly at a loss for millionaires talking about isolation and self-harm. it is funny to talk about this like it's some new approach and this guy is some romantic who wants to change the world w cliche rock n roll platitudes. not even rock n roll, this shit about feeling alienated and losing yourself in self destructive consumerism is a staple of mass pop culture. it is the religion of consumerism.

at least Kurt Cobain had a weird sense of humor and some genuine subversive energy to his stuff, the new Gorillaz sounds like an old man pretending to be the Clash.

it is funny to open w a line about changing the world and end the last paragraph saying

Albarn had a shot at rehabilitating his languid balladry on Everyday Robots, his first latter-career album to let his melancholy just exist without ornamentation. The cartoon band can catch you off guard like that, in a summer pop playlist or a branch of Urban Outfitters, which makes the project, in a strange way, a more suitable solo concern than Albarn’s proper solo work. He’s his own institution now, neither a dilettante nor a polymath, comparable to none, still with a schoolboy eye for the absurd and an interest in almost everything. It might be too humble for its own good, but The Now Now is the rare commercial sojourn that feels like a product of real fascination.

this world changing record that is too humble for it's own good, which is the kind of politically subversive music that can catch you off guard in a branch of a retail chain store.

It wouldn't surprise me if star signs show up in Pitchfork reviews or thinkpieces 3 or 4 more times before the end of the year since there is a recent sudden astrology fixation spreading among millennials. Willing to give it a free pass in this one instance though. I never made the connection that the two signs he references in "Heart Shaped Box" comprised his actual star sign.

yeah pisces is in the first line of the song. that imagery is throughout their music. imo it is the west coast connection.

xpost

Great posts, Adam. There was a recent Parquet Courts piece (I don’t think in PF) that did something similar – rave about how smart & political the lyrics of the new album are, and then quote only a few lines that didn’t support that claim in the slightest.

Lol, Jenn Pelly's review of 'Human Performance' kinda did that, a lot of talk about how great the lyrics are, and then the first lines quoted are: You look so nice/ Chinese fried rice

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21597-human-performance/

You could no longer brush these guys off as mere Modern Lovers rip-offs, as you might have around 2012's clangoring, whip-smart Light Up Gold.

Uhhh... you “might have,” if you have an brain-meltingly broad idea of what constitutes a “mere Modern Lovers rip-off.”

yeah, Parquet Courts are actually pretty good and not fucking terrible like the Modern Lovers

Unexpected take... I thought the Modern Lovers’ appeal was pretty universal.

Nah, the Modern Lovers were crap. (I've never heard Parquet Courts and never will if I can help it.)

!

i actually listened to the one citizen king album they put out. it's like beck except not good. anyways one of the members went on to mix j dilla records and the lead dude became an electroclash guy (mount sims)

just want to drop this useless knowledge

lol fuck wrong topic

new parquet courts is their best imo they’ve shed the modern lovers pavement comparisons and really come into their own

jonathan richman the 🐐

I never thought PC sounded much like either of those bands, but nbd.

hot take: snail mail is good

hotter take: investing in an artist based on their potential (often derived through their personality rather than their formal ability to prove themselves thus far) is entirely fine

this is a very anti-moneyball thought process opinion, but sports isn't music

who is unperson irl

Ph1l Fr33m@n

who is unperson irl

Who wants to know?

hotter take: investing in an artist based on their potential (often derived through their personality rather than their formal ability to prove themselves thus far) is entirely fine

― austinb, Monday, July 2, 2018 12:53 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

potential for what? and what personality? I've read a few Snail Mail interviews (including Pelly's thinkpiece) and it seems to me that this is a person with no strong opinions about anything

who is unperson irl

Who wants to know?

Are you Jimmy Ray?

classic for "Turtles have this fuck you attitude"

― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau)

volman and kaylan kind of do...

So does Raphael

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-story-of-girl-groups-in-45-songs/

Good list, but...Wilson Phillips?!

Nothing says 2018 like the fact that I don't know whether that post means you are aghast at their exclusion or shocked by their inclusion from this list (which I have nor read and do not plan to read).

The song is fucking dreadful. Does that help?

Using “girl group” outside the 1960s context is always strange to me (and I don’t think many of those ‘60s groups even liked the term).

I like this one
https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7857816/100-greatest-girl-group-songs

Can it be that the power of corporations like Apple and Spotify has become so great, these companies believe they can bend the meaning of words themselves? We see the reach for that kind of power in politics all the time: the meaning of words like “choice,” “freedom,” and above all “America” are wrestled over, as if determining their interpretation will determine our behaviors. Spotify can push Scorpion on its listeners, but I would venture that no one will like it any more than they did before it became so “recommended.” The use of power to warp language might fool some of us, some of the time. But in the end, that power crumbles surprisingly fast when we assert the truth of words—and own them.

This seems a bit... overheated

Someone's been taking intro to post-structuralism lol