Pitchfork Reviews Reviews

huggy g. weinhuggin

Whiney G. Cuddlestein

That Yeah Yeah Yeahs review is something else. I didn't know that anybody still wrote about their journey to the gig - it reminds me of reviews in mid-90s drum'n'bass fanzines where the opening paragraphs would be about how they missed Grooverider's set because the tube train was delayed. And three paragraphs which begin "they play a few more songs" (this being what bands tend to do) is just wow. I have no idea what to make of this guy.

Encores: Do We Still Need Them?

nnnnngghhhhh it's just STUPID that this fucking guy is apparently getting actual writing gigs now.

"sent from blackberry" - idk whether this true of all blackberrys, but mine auto-capitalises the first person pronoun. is he seriously going back to decapitalise every "I" in that thing.

I'd like to know how much he is making his writing deliberately bad to put across the idea that he Tells the Truth and is Not as Other Critics, because everyone knows that capital letters and commas and structure are only used by elitist hacks. I can totally see how this shtick works with some readers.

then they play their first song which is called Rich and was written at a time when she had no money and now, ten years and millions of records and tons of festivals and TV appearances and commercial song licenses they actually are rich and i wonder if the band ever discusses that or thinks about giving it a disclaimer on stage, although i don't know how they'd do that, or if the irony is lost on them? probably not. this really is "rich"

Karen O is pretty much the archetypal trust fund kid. The idea this was written "at a time when she had no money" is just laughable.

ehhh it's just a particularly tedious, long-winded iteration of this sadly not uncommon infantilised faux-naïveté designed to mask his deficiencies. my overriding reaction is just to yell, oh GROW UP kid, you're at least a full three years out of your teens now.

xp

Agree 100%

xp and he appears not to have comprehended the lyrics of "rich" at all, or at least not the ones that go "i'm rich" and "i'm stuck up"

the fact that people still think this kid isn't playing the audience like a harp with the faux-naif shit is kinda worrisome.

but i understand it, because again the alternative is not pretty.

that makes him sound smarter than he is

xpost

i like reading music writing that isn't disingenuous or creepy or overly chin-stroking or infantile but it feels even rarer than usual

xpost: i would have thought so, too, if he'd just stuck to the pitchfork review reviews, but the epic little MY LIFE IN NEW YORK WHERE I HAVE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS posts are just too odd and grandiose and pitch-perfect.

it is blatantly shtick

but its kind of, congrats guy, you totally nailed the 'guy who can't write' voice. well played.

Hadn't read this guy until an hour ago, so playing catch-up. Already profoundly aggravated by his too-pure-for-this-world little-indie-boy-lost act and worried that some people (not here, obv) mistake his statements of the blindingly obvious (indie bands lose their underground cool as they get bigger!) for limpid wisdom. The idea of a Chauncey Gardiner of online criticism makes me nauseous. But yes, he's really nailed that style.

people have praised his writing on this thread! i assume that each and every one of them was trolling because, just, NO, c'mon.

The idea of a Chauncey Gardiner of online criticism makes me nauseous.

I quite like this idea. Criticism is dead anyway, might as well have something completely absurd happen as it all slips into the mire for good.

rip crit

Wish he'd come back here, although I guess one and out is a pretty cool way to go

it's not a schtick

you guys are sad

Karen O is pretty much the archetypal trust fund kid. The idea this was written "at a time when she had no money" is just laughable.

― Position Position, Thursday, 23 September 2010 20:15 (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

just want to say that I hate posts like this more than pretty much anything else written on ILX

what are you, her fucking bank manager?

I went to Oberlin at the same time as Karen O. The thing everyone knew about her back then was that her parents had given her a Rolls Royce that she crashed and wrote off within the space of a week. Believe me, she's never been short of a few $$$.

she ran over a blind kid

intentionally

blind kid was only pretending to be blind

was actually an elaborate ruse to expose the entitlement of the idle rich

there's a fucking bank manager posting here now?

gah!

The thing everyone knew about her back then was that her parents had given her a Rolls Royce that she crashed and wrote off within the space of a week.

for all I know this is true, but it sure the hell sounds like a classic bs rumor

"the thing everyone knew..."

not doubting she had $$, i mean, sure.

waht, i thought Oberlin was a charity school for poors

if she wrote off a Roller bought for her after a week I'm not suprised no-one wanted to give her any more money

I went to Oberlin at the same time as Karen O. The thing everyone knew about her back then was that her parents had given her a Rolls Royce that she crashed and wrote off within the space of a week. Believe me, she's never been short of a few $$$.

― Position Position, Thursday, September 23, 2010 2:15 PM (28 minutes ago)

when was this?

rip rolls royce

so glad that we've moved on to debating whether or not a blogger is a sock puppet to the crucial issue of how rich Karen O is/was

keep on elevatin the discourse guys

to from debating

xp - dude, i just wanted to know when this chick was at Oberlin because i have friends who went there -

she was class of '63 i think

"keep on elevatin the discourse guys"

Wait you are posting here for the elevated discourse? Wow did you make a wrong turn somewhere.

knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque

love how much this guy enrages u guys

congrats, you figured out it's a shtick. so what?

http://www.optimiced.com/wp-uploads/2007/02/minuscule-tv-spider.jpg

means... something...

shtick and voice aren't the same thing. i'd never argue that the PRR guy is as entirely sincere and naively guileless as the character he seems to adopt in his writing, but that doesn't necessarily make his authorial voice fake or a shtick. rather, i think he's probably using this somewhat affected voice to honestly present (and yeah, to stylize) his own point of view. nothing necessarily wrong with this...

i will concede that i've cut the guy too much slack. i don't love his writing. the little lost elf-boy style is sometimes gratingly coy. it's an awfully tired indie trope at this point, and it tends to soft-pedal the obviousness of some of his insights (as dorianlynskey notes). but when he's writing about something that he really seems to care about, as in the lil' wayne piece, his enthusiasm and depth of feeling are both convincing and appealing. i like the way he combines the details of his own inner and outer lives with his music writing, to produce something that reads more like fiction. and i don't think it's great fiction or anything, but i have enjoyed reading it from time to time.

and i don't know, maybe i'm just gullible...

your search for "gullible + dictionary" = 0 results

Honest truth: I thought his Awl piece was one of the best things he's written, just as a piece of writing. Yeah, his tone's incredibly stylized, and he uses a bunch of weirdly transparent conceits, like acting guileless in order to get across a perspective. (That's sort of a clever choice for talking about music, an area that's ripe with everyone having totally different levels of guile.) But in terms of how he uses detail and pace and constructs a piece of writing ... I mean, look, on some level I would have really preferred not to think he's a good writer, you know? But he knows how to put something like this together really well, and to be honest with you he's one of very few people who have even much tried to find a way to write NARRATIVE pieces about music.