pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

can’t tell how many of the twitter replies comparing this to [shit-but-poplar album with a lower score] are celebrating or complaining or doing irony or what. i don’t object to them reviewing this but the actual review is irritatingly precious about it

I mean I do find it amusing that it has a higher score than the Bleachers album from the day before.

To reply to Josh -

I feel like there are far less track reviews than there once were

all the outraged indie dorks on twitter have made me decide this review is good actually

I wish they would stop reviewing music for children and go back to reviewing, uh, Olivia Rodrigo and Lil Xan

i wish they would just stop.

This is probably my favorite piece of writing on the entire site, at least right now

https://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/onix/cvr9781534470903/daniels-little-songs-for-big-feelings-9781534470903_lg.jpg

Slept on classic

https://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/onix/cvr9781534470903/daniels-little-songs-for-big-feelings-9781534470903_lg.jpg

Slept on classic

Reviewing music for kids (in a legitimate / non-gag way) can actually be done, and a significant % of Pfork’s readers probably do have young kids. So they could do it for real if they wanted.

(It was actually valuable info for me to learn there’s a new Peppa album; we’ve been listening to the last few singles that dropped)

Are there really people who read the Peppa review as something other than a critique of poptimism-or-whatever

I read it as the site checking to see if readers are conscious or out cold

i like that it scores higher than the new one from The Bleachers and is directly above it

Cool idea for a Sunday review - I definitely remember seeing t-shirts etc of this band w/the xian kids in HS

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dc-talk-jesus-freak/

brad shoup is a really good writer and the right person to write about a dc talk album. really looking forward to reading it

Ah, memories of the teen church that was the tour stop MxPx, Five Iron Frenzy and a bunch of Christian death metal.

They weren't big enough for DC Talk but they had a separate room that was either Christian rap or a Christian rave room (lol) depending on the night.

I'm too old for this shit. Plus, Catholic, so all the kids I knew in high school who were real strong believers were just really into U2 and The Alarm.

Fond memories of these guys in a high rotation christian churches ad in Australia to show how hip they were - bantering interview intercut with their cover of “Jesus is (Still) Alright With Me”, I still quote their lines to my brother.
My name is Toby Mac and I give it the rock that it needs. Some people think the Christian lifestyle is a boxed in kinda lifestyle, wearing a bow tie … when you come / to the one / that is known / as the son / of the G, to the O, to the D, never dumb …

I've heard of this band over the years, great review, never want to hear anything they've ever done.

I prefer my CCM to be utterly demented yacht rock jams (Second Chapter of Acts) or naive indie pop (The Innocence Mission), or even gospel house, which I love.

Saw DC Talk several years before "Jesus Freak," when they were just tryhard RUN-DMC fans opening for Degarmo & Key. Even at 14, or whatever age I was, it was immediately recognizable as pure c0rn.

Ahh, there's a surprisingly comprehensive tour date archive online

February 11th Huntsville, AL Von Braun Civic Center Opening for DeGarmo & Key

So I was close. Had just turned 15.

this is hilarious

“Birdy Birdy Woof Woof” demolishes preconceived notions about animal vocalists—“The birds go woof, and the dogs go tweet!”—as Peppa enlists friends and frequent collaborators Suzy Sheep, Pedro Pony, and Candy Cat to sing in one another’s styles.

Fond memories of these guys in a high rotation christian churches ad in Australia to show how hip they were - bantering interview intercut with their cover of “Jesus is (Still) Alright With Me”, I still quote their lines to my brother.
My name is Toby Mac and I give it the rock that it needs. Some people think the Christian lifestyle is a boxed in kinda lifestyle, wearing a bow tie … when you come / to the one / that is known / as the son / of the G, to the O, to the D, never dumb …

Hahaha, are you me? This still plays on a constant loop in my head.

My name is Kevin… *Toby Mac in the background* “Kevin K!!!”

*extremely seriously* My name is Michael Tate. And I’m bringing to soul to this party.

It’s a freedom in Christ.

Listening to 2nd Chapter of Acts

This is really something

had no idea sixpence none the richer were a ccm act before the jesus freak review, but i guess i wasn't aware of anything by them except "kiss me"

yeah I didn't like when they started to get tricky

haha, wow

In truth, Jesus Freak was a Nashville pop-rock record: impeccably performed and results-oriented. As with so many Music City productions, the collective CV of its players is boggling: Shania Twain, Reba McEntire, Jerry Jeff Walker, Scritti Politti.

great review

UMS, 2nd Chapter of Acts were first introduced to me via the instagram of Carly Ptak. The bridge to this track (running in circles/running in circles) was playing in the background of some video she filmed, and I became obsessed with them for a month or so. Have a bunch of their records now lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agUnLvQNQX0

Though I think Ocean Liner is a bit better tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHFwggBzIrQ

Going to revive the CCM thread, sorry y'all.

All this CCM fetishization is way less fun when you didn't grow up in a nigh-abusive christian 80s milieu. Fuck these asshats.

or way more fun, whatever

my straight-up abusive (psychologically, if you ask me) christian 80s milieu had a country band that kind of sounded like the flying burrito brothers, during their better songs. i've never heard CCM. but yeah, if they were ever played at any jesus camp (maybe i've heard them there) while some kid finally gives in to the pressure and sacrifices his life to a megachurch, or turning point usa or anything in that nexus, then yes, fuck these asshats 4 life.

had no idea sixpence none the richer were a ccm act before the jesus freak review, but i guess i wasn't aware of anything by them except "kiss me"

I don't think I actually knew that but just assumed. There was a Lilith Fair-adjacent subgenre of Jesus music that all the girls in my grade with convertibles were really into and Sixpence was definitely in the CD rotation.

sixpence's faith background was written about quite a bit at the time, iirc, but never with the letters "ccm" attached. the phrases "christian rock" and "ccm" were the kiss of death for anyone who wanted to be played on mainstream pop/rock radio, and artists and labels knew to avoid them at all costs if that was their goal. you could cover gospel songs and talk about your savior jesus christ all you wanted, but if you got labeled with either of the magic phrases, your mainstream radio career was over. that, at least, is my memory of the time.

I believe that it was a common clause in a lot of recording contracts at that time that artists that had been signed as mainstream acts were forbidden to "go gospel".

This passage from a 2004 John Jeremiah Sullivan essay comes to mind.

The fact that I didn't think I heard a single interesting bar of music from the forty or so acts I caught or overheard at Creation shouldn't be read as a knock on the acts themselves, much less as contempt for the underlying notion of Christians playing rock. These were not Christian bands, you see; these were Christian rock bands. The key to digging this scene lies in that one syllable distinction. Christian rock is a genre that exists to edify and make money off of evangelical Christians. It's message music for listeners who know the message cold, and, what's more, it operates under a perceived responsibility—one the artists embrace—to "reach people." As such, it rewards both obviousness and maximum palatability (the artists would say clarity), which in turn means parasitism. Remember those perfume dispensers they used to have in pharmacies—"If you like Drakkar Noir, you'll love Sexy Musk" Well, Christian rock works like that. Every successful crappy secular group has its Christian offbrand, and that's proper, because culturally speaking, it's supposed to serve as a standin for, not an alternative to or an improvement on, those very groups. In this it succeeds wonderfully. If you think it profoundly sucks, that's because your priorities are not its priorities; you want to hear something cool and new, it needs to play something proven to please…while praising Jesus Christ. That's Christian rock. A Christian band, on the other hand, is just a band that has more than one Christian in it. U2 is the emplar, held aloft by believers and nonbelievers alike, but there have been others through the years, bands about which people would say, "Did you know those guys were Christians I know—it's freaky. They're still fuckin' good, though." The Call was like that; Lone Justice was like that. These days you hear it about indie acts like Pedro the Lion and Damien Jurado (or P.O.D. and Evanescence—de gustibus). In most cases, bands like these make a very, very careful effort not to be seen as playing "Christian rock." It's largely a matter of phrasing Don't tell the interviewer you're born again; say faith is a very important part of your life. And here, if I can drop the openminded pretense real quick, is where the stickier problem of actually being any good comes in, because a question that must be asked is whether a hardcore Christian who turns 19 and finds he or she can write first rate songs (someone like Damien Jurado) would ever have anything whatsoever to do with Christian rock. Talent tends to come hand in hand with a certain base level of subtlety. And believe it or not, the Christian rock establishment sometimes expresses a kind of resigned approval of the way groups like U2 or Switchfoot (who played Creation while I was there and had a monster secular radio hit at the time with "Meant to Live" but whose management wouldn't allow them to be photographed onstage) take quiet pains to distance themselves from any unambiguous Jesus loving, recognizing that this is the surest way to connect with the world (you know that's how they refer to us, right We're "of the world"). So it's possible—and indeed seems likely—that Christian rock is a musical genre, the only one I can think of, that has excellence-proofed itself.

Not sure I agree with that, but in the end that has more to do with genre distinctions, Christian sectarianism, stadium faith vs. private faith, etc.

I have never heard the term “CCM” before.

switchfoot have always had way stronger ties to the christian rock scene than say, u2, who just happen to be a very successful band that occasionally mention their faith in their lyrics

been checking out the All Saves Freak Band, house band of this early 70s Christian cult, pretty cool, def that feral hippie vibe

all SaveD

That essay def jibes with my experience of Xian rock when I was 13-14, bands were always presented to us as "oh you like Metallica? You should just listen to [Xian band] instead! They are exactly the same and you won't go to hell!"

The way it was always smuggled in as "normal music" profoundly creeped me out when I was a kid and still makes my skin crawl to this day

A buddy of mine in high school worked at some big Christian chain bookstore that sold those product parody T-shirts with Christian logos and slogans and had a pretty big music section that was exactly predicated on that RIYL model. I particularly remember a sign saying "Like 'Gangsta Rap'? You'll like...". There was a also a sizable Christian ska/punk section.

Xian ska is a whole thing, the band/theatre kid pipeline to ska was equally prevalent in Xian circles it seemed like

The existence of Christian ska made me think that Five Iron Frenzy were a bigger deal than they actually were.

The existence of Christian ska makes me think Satan is Real.

i was a heavy ska fan in high school and for the xian kids it was some of the only music i was into that they'd latch onto, even secular stuff. something about the midwestern band geek/christian kid axis i think

I definitely got the full-court press on listening to Petra a few times in sunday school