pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Sodomsky is a really good writer.

I’m not a huge Cure fan but I’ve always really loved the guitar sound on wish

Wait, I wasn't saying Disintegration is a bad album! I'm not trying to kill my idols. I don't like giving partial ratings, it's probably an 8.6 for me and I'd still consider it one of the top 20 albums from the 80's.

I think all of these Cure albums are essential... maybe in this order:

Disintegration, Pornography, The Head on the Door, Faith, Seventeen Seconds, Wish, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me.

I’ve always really loved the guitar sound on wish

― brimstead, Monday, May 30, 2022 10:04 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm, its best feature, reminds me of the miles-deep guitar tone from contemporaneous church records but like as glimpsed through a fog

oh its other best feature is that it's the boris williams fireworks show

Would like to chime in once again and remind everyone who hasn't heard it that Lost Wishes has a lot more of the kinds of qualities that Brad mentions. It is so highly recommended.

Also Moka otm. Stating the plainly obvious, but: Cure in the 80s, classic for a reason.

"Wendy Time" strikes me as an improved "Hot Hot Hot!!!"

That song was once so collectively hated, it was only referred to as "W*ndy" on an old fan forum.

I think of it like a bizarro world take on "Let's Go to Bed." The original demo is much more brooding and Simon-centric. It's got a groove.

The one track for whose sake I won't endure a single insult: "High." It's everything I want from jangly Cure singles. Plus, it's licky as trips and kitten as a cat.

Adore the single version for that harpsichord(?) that sits deep in the mix whereas the album version is just too spare without it.

Loved the T&CII versions of Wendy and Cut and was aghast when I first heard the studio cuts.

"Cut" on Show >>>>>>

Re the guitar tone, on Disintegration and Wish most of the leads and melody lines are played on the Bass VI rather than a standard guitar, gives it that bell/piano quality. Same goes for The Church of course.
viz
https://post-punk.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/prayertourshirt.jpg

This guy has several Cure videos where he plays a Bass VI and the main hooks/riffs from each album.

I adore this specific sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDqLtg96fvA

Oh wait only two albums Wish and Disintegration. Still pretty cool to hear isolated.

there's lots of great stuff on wish it just doesn't hang together that well, but really disintegration is the only one from that period that isn't a wild stylistic grab bag

The problem for me is that they sound like they're pandering to their audience rather than following the muse.

uhm, maybe not the case since you didn't like it?

(kidding, ikwym)

Lol

Austin otm tho, following their best/richest "dark" record with their second-poppiest record ever is hardly pandering

The problem for me is that they sound like they're pandering to their audience rather than following the muse.
― assert (matttkkkk), Tuesday, May 31, 2022 6:08 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've always found that there is something fabricated in the band's affects, but it's part of the appeal, the tragicomic goth figure etc.

This discussion (and the article) had me revisiting Wish and it's better than I remember it being - I still think it's a bit of dip from their classic run (I basically love all the '80s albums except The Top) but there's lots of good stuff there, the songwriting maybe just feels a bit unfocussed at times? Agreed on the praise for the guitar sound, that's a large part of why I love 'Open' so much, one of their strongest opening tracks.

don't think my dissonance from ILM consensus can be summarised any more succinctly than by our respective attitudes towards The Top

Ha, I thought it had some supporters on here but I could be wrong.

pretty big fan here, also partial to Blue Sunshine

I feel their peak was Seventeen Seconds and Faith, and though all the subsequent 80s records have some good songs, they're marred by self-consciously stretching for effects, whether in the "goth" or "pop" directions. The only 90s stuff I've heard was seven songs on Greatest Hits and on that evidence it seemed to me that Smith had completely lost whatever made him a distinctive songwriter.
As for the Pitchfork review, it felt like the writer was trying to put the best spin on "they were past their prime".

Nothing wrong with self-consciousness!

I accept that Smith was willing himself to be in a sour mood recording the early '80s doom trilogy.

wish was the last album of their prime! & one of the better ones of it

xps to Halfway

Many present tend to be fans of bands' softer phases though, when they matured and started crafting songs rather than violently hacking them into being. I differ; I have time for Wish (especially FTEOTDGS and End), but the notion that it could represent any sort of pinnacle in the wake of that Seventeen Seconds through The Top run feels madly fanciful to me. Watching Me Fall (and 39) off Bloodflowers feel to me like a much more successful approach to the epic wall-of-sound style they adopted - be theatrical, go berserk with it

That said, you've basically just dismissed Pornography as schlock rather than one of the most singular and brilliant achievements in art-rock history, so

I love The Top to bits, but then I love albums in which self-indulgence, commercial indecision, and a heap of drugs produce material this colorful and wack.

you've basically just dismissed Pornography as schlock

I think it's a sincere and credible effort, and I especially like "A Short Term Effect", but the strain of overkill is starting to show in the sound and the lyrics.

Nothing wrong with self-consciousness!

OK, but not if it comes across as forced, "willed".

Self-consciousness by nature is willed.

We're getting into a semantic argument when we should be doing the unstuck.

Get Hovvdy!

wonderful terry callier piece on today's archive review. props.

I really enjoyed Jesse Doris' review of NOW That's What I Call Pride! today

Pitchfork 🤝 Donald Trump
“‘YMCA’ is a bop”

it isn’t?

I mean, I guess if you’re a DJ playing someone’s third wedding…

that review's existence is one of the most confusing things p4k has done

I really enjoyed Jazz Monroe's write-up on Tilt that I read, just now

A "very nice" for making the connect to "Kraft", high five for that one!

I do wish music writers would commit to expressing their interpretations and judgements about the fundamental building block sonics of what they're listening to instead of quoting lyrics and relying heavily on biographical background to "set the scene". I have so much I'd love to type about Tilt and it's all about the music and wouldn't ever need to re-re-re-re-reiterate the Walker Bros./"Scott 4 flopped"/drunk in the 70s/'here are some quotes' things that people who're actually interested in Scott Walker have already tattooed seven times on their hearts

Anyway hooray for Tilt and good work Jazz Monroe

^^^

I have so much I'd love to type about _Tilt_ and it's all about the music and wouldn't ever need to re-re-re-re-reiterate the Walker Bros./"Scott 4 flopped"/drunk in the 70s/'here are some quotes' things that people who're actually interested in Scott Walker have already tattooed seven times on their hearts

I’m sure I’m not the only one here who would love to read this if you do end up typing it out!

I see many good perceptive bits in the reappraisal. I liked his referring to a lyric sheet "strewn with unidentified remains. Displaced images, fished from mysterious backwaters of history..." It's disorganized, though: preface, nut graf...then it goes back for more history before returning to the album.

very disappointing "end of an era" site redesign today, as much as one could imagine it coming

news to the top, reviews buried below, rip music criticism

I'm not seeing that on my desktop; it's three news stories in a horizontal line, then six reviews stacked vertically, then more news below. And there's a nav bar at the top and "Reviews" is the #2 slot.

yeah, it doesn't look any different than it has recently

On the phone you have to scroll down past the 3 stories, but that's been the case for awhile now

It looks fine.

I think it looks ok, too, but agree that it sucks to see the Reviews section a footnote. I thought I'd heard/read that their users still engaged with their reviews more than you might think.

Does the SEO benefit accrue differently if certain words are above the fold vs. anywhere on the homescreen? If so, I suppose it would make sense that someone is more likely to be searching for a current news item and land on Pitchfork vs. whatever new music review happened to post that day.

A quick search for "1975 new album" (one of the headlines currently on the homescreen) puts Pitchfork at the top of google.