Pitchfork Reviews Reviews

wahts pitchfork

wrote a particularly smug review of the latest blonde redhead album where he all but dismisses the band's career as a product of new york chic and nothing more

they're kinda mediocre compared to DNA - whose song title they appropriated for their band name - but they're not awful, and i have no problem with other people liking them, even though their career is kinda a product of NY chic

i'm happy to concede that as one possible outlook, but really BH have been around for many years now and have done a lot of things with their sound. seems each time you read about them somebody's having a go at their roots, which by now have more than been transcended.

seems each time you read about them somebody's having a go at their roots

geddit

roots -- like hair

i'm dying - geddit?

shd have just said 'dying' but you had to be all blatant about it

thank you joke-policeman jagger

it's how i'm conditioned

so would your next ban be ... permanent?

it'd certainly be a sb and sides

don't mull it over too much though

well before you go, LJ, I'd like to tell you that I kinda liked that EE song Final Form...the NASA song though is way too Coldplay-ish for me...

glad you could tidy that one up

you're welcome

it's the parting shot this thread needed

GOD u guys this is the prr thread

^^^last of the mohicans

what if James Fenimore Cooper wrote for Pitchfork?

He'd review Deerslayer -- whoops, Deerhunter.

what if renowned ex-soccer player David Platt wrote about the band Ponytail for Pitchfork, praising its Afrobeat influences?

ian cohen is a fun writer imo
not into his taste outside of his feel for late 90s NY tunnel raps but yeah

and then i got to san francisco and met chris and went to the hostel we were staying at and it turned out that our neighborhood, The Tenderloin, is, according to the New York Times who puts it politely, “the most run down neighborhood in San Francisco.” if you live in san francisco you’ll know what i mean when i say it felt like a post-apocalyptic zombie movie because there were no cops anywhere to deal with all of the people who were walking slowly and mumbling to themselves and the other people who were openly conducting drug and prostitution transactions on the street all around us, like handing each other $20 bills and baggies and vials. it felt like the government had collapsed and they moved all the worst-off and deranged people into one neighborhood

and me and chris couldn’t believe it because we thought brooklyn was pretty gritty and we talked about how The Tenderloin felt like new york must have felt in like 1977 when you could walk to 14th St and 2nd Avenue and pick up a prostitute and nobody would bother you, and now it’s so clean it’s like martial law. chris said The Tenderloin was grimier than the bad parts of Baltimore, which is where he’s from, and he referred to Baltimore, Maryland as bodymore murderland

"Mr. Officer, there are people mumbling out here! Mumbling!"

and it turned out that our neighborhood, The Tenderloin, is, according to the New York Times who puts it politely, “the most run down neighborhood in San Francisco.”

O_O

This was one of the most famous red light districts in US history.

I pressed post too early. I was going to add, "And he had no clue about the place's reputation?"

Maybe Pitchfork hadn't covered it.

and he referred to Baltimore, Maryland as bodymore murderland

instant cred imo

it's like he's never even seen the wire

and me and chris couldn’t believe it because we thought brooklyn was pretty gritty
and me and chris couldn’t believe it because we thought brooklyn was pretty gritty
and me and chris couldn’t believe it because we thought brooklyn was pretty gritty

I was going to add, "And he had no clue about the place's reputation?"

In the full piece you find out that he knew nothing about SF and chose a hostel in the Tenderloin solely because it was mentioned in a Belle & Sebastian song. He also spent the entire time there listening to B&S on his headphones and texting while his buddy was hooking up with a girl who worked at the hostel.

like a young hemingway, this kid

and every time i turn around there’s one less number to text to go get dinner

like a modern-day hal david, this kid

Wait, the Kelly Osbourne bit was quoted already but not this:

courtney love looks at me like she’s a bull about to charge me and goes “YOU WRITE FOR PITCHFORK?!” and before she maybe would have started throwing punches, i quickly clarify, “no i write a blog ABOUT pitchfork and other stuff” which doesn’t seem to pacify her that much because she says “WHY would you write a blog about pitchfork? WHY?”

If Courtney Love ever tells me I'm being obsessive and unhinged on the internet I like to think I'll take that as some sort of sign

i just fucking saw that!

it must be really really rare that courtney love comes off as the sane, OTM one in any given exchange these days

also, a brief perusal of his blog (this is actually the first time i've read it directly) = i do not believe he is 4 real, he is totally putting this shit on

I feel like its part Klosterman faux-naive shtick--but then I also work with a guy who talks kind of like this, in long inexact metaphors that make you uncomfortable and angry. Like this one:

i am thinking about how when someone moves away from somewhere they change the place that they moved away from for everyone else who still lives there but they don’t realize it, like if someone delivers you a pizza they are not thinking about you after they drop the pizza off, they are just thinking about the next pizza and the next place to go.

i'm not actually sure that makes any sort of sense at all. wtf is he trying to say?

I know. You just want to say, "No, it isn't like that. Not at all."

jesus, that fashion party post is something.

longer blog title:

"it doesn’t really have to do with pitchfork but i started out writing extensively about pitchfork like every day and it was just boring after a while, like there’s only so many ways to examine pitchfork you know? it stopped being as fun to write and probably was annoying to read. and i just like writing about parties in new york"

for a long time i didn’t wanna tell anyone how much belle and sebastian i listen to because they are a band so firmly entrenched in the indie music starter kit that if you are not over them by 10th grade than that makes you a music n00b

but i am not over them or above listening to Belle and Sebastian, or the Shins or any other band in the indie starter kit, and i guess anyone who tells you they are or thinks they are too good for any art has maybe lost the ability to discern what is important in art and what is just politics, and not that i am not thinking about politics too but i am trying to force myself to think about politics less and i wish i hadn’t spent so much time thinking that listening to popular indie bands like The Shins or Belle and Sebastian and being a cool guy were mutually exclusive tendencies. you might not listen to Belle and Sebastian for a non-political reason but that’s why i didn’t listen to them for like 4 years, i am a fool

I mean, I don't listen to Belle & Sebastian either, but it's not because of indie politics or any sort of cool factor or avoidance of "indie music starter kit" bands... it's because Belle & Sebastian make unlistenable, horrid, awful, shitty music.

Btw "indie music starter kit" is totally a 9.0 Best New Phrase.

The Shins blow, too, sorry I didn't point that out as well.

Also, this is fucking hilarious:

it sullies an otherwise palatable review in which fitzmaurice capably dismantles the new El Guincho record

except where he writes “[El Guincho’s first record’s] formula seemed as if it would benefit from further refinery” because a refinery is an industrial plant where crude substances get purified. “refinement” is the word he’s looking for here

loooooooooool

he's right!

Courtney Love OTM though. Can someone get her to post here?

still think PRR should just drop the reviewing the reviews schtick and just do the long entries about random stuff he does

lol @ Pitchfork being sonned by indie grammar cowboy

I'm pretty burnt out on music writing these days but still check PRR and usually skim it

If this had been 20 years ago and Pitchfork had been around then, Courtney would have been on her knees in the bathroom blowing this kid if he'd said "yes" to the “YOU WRITE FOR PITCHFORK?!” question.

Man, this new functional SB button is GREAT