Pitchfork Reviews Reviews

PRR's has something up on The Awl again:

http://www.theawl.com/2010/09/das-racist-were-not-racist-we-love-white-people-ford-trucks-apple-pies-bald-eagles

*PRR

Loooooove the ending to this piece (yes I read it all):

then we walk to the backstage area and the band is putting away their equipment and Himanshu looks at me and says, "okay i don't wanna be on the record anymore" and i say "okay, what should i write to end this naturally though?" and he goes, "just write, 'Himanshu said he wanted to be off the record and then we hung out'" and i say "okay" and then he left the backstage area to talk to some more people, i think, and then he came back and i said goodbye and i left and then i went to the bus stop in the Hasidic area in Williamsburg and thought about exclusion

Also can I just say I fucking LOVE this guy's interview style, I mean, how refreshing is this if you're Avey Tare??

after a few songs Himanshu goes to the bathroom and i walk behind him to go to the DJ booth and as Himanshu passes the DJ booth he salutes Avey Tare. while Himanshu is in the bathroom i go up to the DJ booth and see Avey Tare sitting cross-legged on the ground in the booth. he is wearing a graphic t-shirt and a white trucker hat with like neon cartoon ghosts on the front of the hat, and the hat has a white brim and white netting. Avey Tare is smiling and drinking a cocktail

i go up to him and crouch down and say "hi, my name is David and i write a music blog — could i ask you three questions please?" and he says "sure!"

i say, "do you believe in god?" but then instantly i regret asking because i should have led off with something on the lighter side

he laughs and thinks for a second and looks at my face and says "hmmmm… it's complicated?" and he looks like he is trying to formulate a more direct response but i stop him and ask him another question because i regretted asking the first question

i say, "do you listen to rap?" and he says "yes" so i say, "what rap?"

Avey Tare says, "mostly late 80s and early 90s hip-hop. some jay dee, tribe called quest, NWA, EPMD"

i say, "okay cool. how do you think the world will end?"

he thinks about it again and looks around. he takes a sip of his drink and looks at my sneakers and i look at the crates of records that are in front of him. he says, "very slowly and painfully" and then laughs and i thank him and walk back to Himanshu who is congratulating his band because they just finished playing

considering that it's barely an "interview", probably not very

that "interview" is completely retarded (shockah, right?)

That shit was so refreshing Avey Tare was like "damn, was that an interview or a Fresca?"

"wow, i love it when strangers come up and ask my if i believe in god"

I haven't actually read the piece yet, but

i say, "okay cool. how do you think the world will end?"

should put this in next year's Da Capo.

not with a bang, but with a review of itself.

I mean I bet Avey's thinking, "fuck, not another standard PR fluff piece, I hate interviews, how many times do I have to talk about Merriweather Post Pavvy changing the world...," and then PRR dude busts out his shit and Avey is all, oh... well then.

That shit was so refreshing Avey Tare was like "damn, was that an interview or a Fresca?"

actual lol ^^

having interviewed avey tare, his seems to be a natural befuddlement.

i don't think you understand how the process of interviewing an indie rock musician works

i don't mean that in a mean way, either.

you're also acting like these questions were original or interesting

In the context of typical music interviews, yes, they're quite original. Show me a non-PRR interview in 2010 in which the interviewee gets to ponder and talk about how the world will end?

I mean I bet Avey's thinking, "fuck, not another standard PR fluff piece, I hate interviews, how many times do I have to talk about Merriweather Post Pavvy changing the world...," and then PRR dude busts out his shit and Avey is all, oh... well then.

― ilxor has truly been got at and become an ILXor (ilxor), Tuesday, September 28, 2010 1:58 PM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark

like, if PRR had gone thru AC's/or avey's press contact & that press contact had set up a time w/ PRR where avey had to push something back so he could talk to some random dude about his music, then maybe yes, he might be 'refreshed' by the interview being only three questions long, thus allowing him to go on with his day

but i doubt that he found some random dude walking up to him in a record store and asking him three questions like "do you believe in god?" to be 'refreshing'

who cares, tbh

apparently you

why is the sky blue

who cares

In the context of typical music interviews, yes, they're quite original. Show me a non-PRR interview in 2010 in which the interviewee gets to ponder and talk about how the world will end?

― ilxor has truly been got at and become an ILXor (ilxor), Tuesday, September 28, 2010 12:01 PM (5 minutes ago)

I think there was something similar in a recent issue of XLR8R actually

ichlugebullets

1. Does this "explain" Pitchfork Reviews Reviews? Does guy secretly want AnCo bro to grind a stiletto into his nutsack? 2 minutes ago via web

2. From what little I know of the world of BDSM, the "submissive" or "sub" has to never use the capital "I" when writing about themselves. 3 minutes ago via web

if only PRR dude had walked up to AC dude and they just shot each other to death right then and there amirite

he looks like he is trying to formulate a more direct response but i stop him

This is the best way to conduct interviews.

just finished reading the piece -- pretty good, tbh

again, that's pretty damn great. maybe the best PRR piece i've yet read. and, yeah, the mini avey tare interview-within-the-interview is pathetic and awkward, but that seems to be the point. not, "oh i got this cool moment with avey!" but, "geez, i guess i was sort of a dork..." or more accurately, it's simply an accounting of the incident without summary comment, allowing the reader to draw his/her own conclusions. i like that approach. basically the whole of the awl piece works that way: it's a series of camera flashes without explanatory notes. the analogy brings to mind the kid outside taking his own exhausted picture at the end of that piece/show, if that kid had taken a self-portrait every couple minutes for a whole evening, his impassive face centered in the middle of the events that swirled around him, a hundred oddly disconnected snapshots leading us through the night.

here, in the das racist piece, he switches back and forth between camera-like observation and more thoughtful analysis, listening to himanshu's words, but also thinking about what they mean, both in a general sense and in relation to PRR dude's own life and family history. and for a piece of music writing about race, identity and exclusion in america, it's pretty damn good. not terribly deep, perhaps, but nor is it wholly insubstantial, and it's hardly an easy subject to write well about.

i liked this one

i feel like people really react badly to people putting themselves in their writing about music. is that part of it? or is it the livejournal-y affectations (which i dont mind)? just wondering why people seem so pissed off by this guy

but that seems to be the point.

in a nutshell, this is all any of you crazy prr stans are saying

it's shit but that seems to be the point.

He doesn't piss me off but he can't write. At best his semantic constructions -- paragraph placements, points of emphasis -- are so weird that I wonder if he's deliberately writing Cocteau Twins lyrics as prose.

no one who couldn't write could sustain a tone as consistent as this dude can.

in a nutshell, this is all any of you crazy prr stans are saying

it's shit but that seems to be the point.

― l'avventura: pet detective (history mayne), Tuesday, September 28, 2010 2:07 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

disagree. writing about a moment in which you behaved awkwardly is not the same thing as writing badly. i'd say that dude's description of his "interview" of avey tare is well-written, but reveals that the interview itself was something of a disaster. enjoyed that. it's reflective of the dude's little-boy-lost stance, which seems to be a dealbreaker for a lot of folks, fine, but when it's handled with a measure of self-awareness, it can be quite funny. i lolled at the faux stupid "i wonder if Das Racist's frequent lyrics about the internet are rooted in not having computers." an easy laugh, maybe, but good enough for me.

I don't like him because it's a slog to get to the end of everything he writes and when you do you realize you didn't actually get any insights about what he was writing about

its like listening to pavements discography over and over again

write it on a tumblr
dad they broke me, dad they broke me

^^^^maybe the best post on this thread i've yet read

it's depressing that there's like 20 legitimately great music writers who post on this very board and you guys don't deconstruct any of their work with a fraction of the attention and scrutiny you pay to this weirdo. like so the new "model" is to be the fucking lil b of music writing?

and you can save the "HAHA SAYS THE HIPSTER TWITTER PUPPIES 1000 REVIEWS DROWN SANDWICH LOLMJIUG@IYV@"

nah, that's cool. but the 20 legit greats should really spend more time posting the legit great work of their peers, so we can all talk about it. i only go on abt PRR dude cuz people keep posting the shit and seem open to discussion about it.

also my peeve w/ the 'quirky interview' is that any time you come up with 'weird' and 'out there' questions like that it's almost always designed to throw the spotlight back onto you, the interviewer, it's like "look how against the grain and weird I'm being, please acknowledge this cool guy whose music I listen to"

feels like PRR dude secretly wishes that in 3 months he'll run into avey tare at some bar and be like "hey I was the guy who asked you those weird questions" and avey tare will be like "oh yeah those were interesting you wanna be featured on my next album" and PRR dude will be like "nah I got tumblrs to post on" but secretly he'll be pleased

i still think he writes tooooo much of the filler stuff. i like that piece although alright though, it makes some good points, but it takes sooo long to get to them & then when it does it feels like there was too much build up, his timing isnt really there yet. sooo much "and then i did this and then i did this" etc. basically just needs some editing

basically just needs some editing

OTM x 100.

I quite like this guy but there are so many bloggers over the last ten years who more thoroughly deserve the weirdly intense praise he's getting.

― Tim F, Tuesday, September 28, 2010 6:38 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark

he figured out the #1 way to get peoples' attention on the internet: being meta. this is why that site called kickpork or whatever the fuck it was got all the attention it did when it launched a few weeks ago

and this from sarahel:

Maybe I'm supposed to already have bought into these details or these types being significant, but all i'm seeing/reading is a bunch of empty signifiers that don't communicate much.

is otm. it's playing to the base.

it's depressing that there's like 20 legitimately great music writers who post on this very board and you guys don't deconstruct any of their work with a fraction of the attention and scrutiny you pay to this weirdo. like so the new "model" is to be the fucking lil b of music writing?

― fuck noOoOO (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, September 28, 2010 8:17 PM

PRR isn't a rock critic.

Generally, his posts fall into two categories: the morning roundup and the longer pieces about his life, indie rock culture, and music. But nowhere in here is he really, strictly speaking, reviewing music. The morning roundup is metacriticism; the other stuff, eh, is a little more complicated.

Somewhere on this thread, someone mentioned LiveJournal; I think it's helpful if we look at his longer posts as online journal entries, written from the perspective of an indie kid, about what it's like to be an indie kid and have indie kid thoughts about indie rock and other music indie kids tend to like in 2010. And I think that a lot of the people who enjoy his stuff are enjoying it because, for them, he's writing in a really fun, easy-to-read style, from the perspective of someone who's just like them, except he's out there doing more exciting things they wish they could do, like hanging out with musicians and interviewing people high up on the indie culture food chain.

I haven't fully thought this through and there's probably a lot more I could say, but I've gotta go do other stuff now.

uh he's a rock critic, sorry

which isn't a bad thing of course

I haven't fully thought this through and there's probably a lot more I could say, but I've gotta go do other stuff now.

http://lateshowwritersonstrike.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/webassets/mallomars.gif

And I think that a lot of the people who enjoy his stuff are enjoying it because, for them, he's writing in a really fun, easy-to-read style, from the perspective of someone who's just like them, except he's out there doing more exciting things they wish they could do, like hanging out with musicians and interviewing people high up on the indie culture food chain.

so it boils down to that PRR is writing slash fiction for other indie fans? which tbh is probably a long-running undercurrent in rock reportage anyway.

that's the best explanation i've heard for him