pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

when your dangling machete reflects it back under your umbrella

http://music.newcity.com/2011/07/14/did-pitchfork-kill-the-rock-critic-the-changing-landscape-of-music-journalism/

sw00ds' remarks:

I’m not really the person to comment on this, given just how infrequently over the years I’ve visited Pitchfork. (I know there are people all over the web who wear comments like that as if they’re a badge of honour or something, but truthfully, I’ve just never felt a kinship with the place or with the bands and genres they are in general known to cover, never really cared for their overall presentation or feel or design enough to even bother delving much into the writing; I’m also not in an endless quest for new music, and haven’t been for over 20 years.) Still, the central thrust of this piece — Pitchfork has been much more successful at promoting the Pitchfork brand than at promoting any individual writers — seems accurate enough. The question is, does it matter? It matters to Jim DeRogatis, who is quoted here while jumping up and down proclaiming that music “is not entertainment” and therefore deserves better (isn’t it? does it?). But does Pitchfork‘s readership care about what Jim DeRogatis cares about? Should they? (If so, why?) Do Pitchfork readers really give a shit about finding “the modern-day Creem“? (Do any of us really need more of that, right now?) Why were no DeRogatis-like experts from Pitchfork‘s actual demographic tracked down for commentary?

Overriding all of this, however, is my growing irritation at the word “curator,” which shows up twice here (it was one reason I also couldn’t resist mocking that Creem story from a couple days ago). When did this stupid notion — of rock critics as “curators” — take root and what can we do to kill it, preferably sooner rather than later?

PF is maybe less personality/writer-driven than it used to be but i don't see how it's a huge break from the past -- it's annoying when people say "Pitchfork says" instead of a writer's name or even just "a Pitchfork writer says" but i think it was that way more often than not with Rolling Stone too

how old is this kid? he talks about interviewing kot for a story "for school" last year, and he's telling us about the heyday of rs, creem, and the voice?

google book search has brought the magazines of yesterday to the youth of TODAY

unless he's some kinda rodney dangerfield oldest-living-freshman this kinda strikes me as parroting dero's line outright, whatever the validity of the argument. if he's in his 20s i'm not sure i'd even trust him to talk about the heyday of, like, spin.

he's the kind of college student who cares what dero thinks, i think it goes without saying we've found a very special kind of useless here

(“It’s also revealing that they don’t allow comments,” DeRogatis notes)

Every time I think I'm being too hard on DeRo he delivers a solid gold idiotism.

call me a company man and a fascist all you want but as long as the comments stay away its pitchfork pitchfork uber alles

i think pitchfork should allow comments for one day just to show everyone how awful it would be

I mean that remark is on the level of Jonah Goldberg saying it's "revealing" how Hitler was vegetarian and lots of liberals are.

It's pretty "revealing" how pitchfork has never published dero's scribblings and now here he is attacking them

It's internet culture generally rather than Pitchfork specifically that discourages "name" writers emerging. There are too many voices talking about everything for particular voices to carry as far as the DeRogatis and others would like.

Have any big name writers emerged over the past 10 years (I mean people recognised as such, rather than deserving candidates like Tom Ewing - who incidentally writes for the big bad P)? I don't think that lack can be blamed on Pitchfork.

i think most of the 'big' voices these days, good or bad, are people who write for one site/blog where all the traffic is from people who specifically want to read that one writer -- in that sense anything with as many writers as Pitchfork is going to seem 'faceless' by comparison

but i mean most critics are simply not gonna be a Lester Bangs cult of personality for better or worse, mostly for better imo

yeah i mean this could just me subconsciously covering my own blanding out as a writer but i'll take 2011 "faceless" (lol) pitchfork over a return to the days of one act plays and open letters to cotton mather every time.

open letters to cotton mather every time.

et tu Malkmus

i think it's hard to say that pitchfork -- arguably the only major music outlet in the world (aside from maybe... nyt?) that actually fosters music criticism -- is killing the 'rock critic'

also, it's like... so easy to trace why consumers now care less about what one person has to say about something that to pin it on one entity displays a real lack of awareness

btw this dude is in grad school

also who the fuck hangs on roger ebert's every word

a fellow Chicagoan with logorrhea.

i think most of the 'big' voices these days, good or bad, are people who write for one site/blog where all the traffic is from people who specifically want to read that one writer -- in that sense anything with as many writers as Pitchfork is going to seem 'faceless' by comparison

Agreed, but can anyone in the former group even be defined as "big" apart from people who made a name for themselves in the 90s at the very latest?

the fact that writers aren't as famous as they used to be isn't exactly unique to music crit, not sure what the point of even focusing on that is

he's the kind of college student who cares what dero thinks, i think it goes without saying we've found a very special kind of useless here

― some dude, Thursday, July 14, 2011 9:44 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bam

what a bunch of self-serious nonsense

I think it's weird to somehow expect the publication to make the writers big or famous. It's going to take some pretty extraordinary writing to make the reader give a shit about the byline, and I think that's probably always been the case.

the fact that writers aren't as famous as they used to be isn't exactly unique to music crit, not sure what the point of even focusing on that is

Not sure if this is addressed to me or to the writer - if to me then i agree? but i'm saying the article fails even to recognise that it's a general truth even just in respect of music crit.

i was responding to you -- if you were asking that question on behalf of the writer or in a devil's advocate way i couldn't tell. in any event what i was saying about identity/personality-driven music blogs doesn't really have to do with whether those people are famous in any real sense.

Well then I agree.

My point is the same as yours I think - which is that the internet just does not facilitate big name music writers, and people who've been able to hold onto their reps in that environment are mostly relics from a prior medium. Even one-person websites can't really achieve this except in respect of very small fanbases with whom the writer often has a social (or at least social networking) connection. The link between the individual voice and the mass audience is broken in this and many other contexts I think.

Interestly, policital punditry is one area where I think the opposite has occured - a relative drop in publication brand power and concomitant rise in name recognition.

i often get the idea that pitchfork writers (reviewers, but obviously the columnists, more) are in dialogue with something, so it seems interesting that they can maintain that, without comments, in an era where comments are practically obligatory on any interweb venture.

I am glad that people have realised that rock critics are not (and should not be) famous. Lester Bangs is not famous outside of a very small circle.

pitchfork likes EMA http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15743-tripper/

...what does this mean?

Conflict, resolution, and character development often slip by unnoticed, eased in their passage by the woozy synths and atmospherics that function as the album's rough-spot-smoothing sonic hand lotion

wait
we're reviewing music here now aren't we

http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Daffy-Duck-masturbating.jpg

"Not since Jonathan Richman has there been a songwriter so willing to convey honest and deep feelings through the most basic pop syntax, and Owens also shares Richman's desire to use familiar song forms to get these essential messages across."

really pitchfork? not since jonathan richman? also, please be more into line-editing

"He has a preternatural gift for turning clichés into into deeply affecting songs, and as they jump from one style to the next, from delicate acoustic balladry to noisy rave-ups, Owens' voice and point of view ground the record and make it distinctive."

I love rave reviews that are basically just "it's good because it's good, and it's just so good at that, y'know?" over and over

as opposed to those quiet rave-ups

Okay, so I can't remember if or where there's been a thread where we pull up embarrassing reviews from the archive, but I was googling reviews of Dark Magus just now and came across this absolute winner from Jason Josephes:

Good old Japan. We bomb them, so they horde this Miles Davis gem, available in the US for the first time. It's the best $27 spent outside of the massage parlor in eons. Yeah, I buy CDs sometimes, too. Why? Friggin' label won't send 'em to us. I'm willing to look the other way this time, because this 2 CD set, to put it simply, rules.

I'm not standing up for the girls review, although I don't think it says "it's good because it's good" over and over, and in a way, even if it had, I don't think I can ever expect much more than "it's good because it's good" or "it's bad because it's bad," as if there were an underlying logic to something being good or bad, unless a critic were to write about something other than the goodness or badness of a work (and this is something I don't think pitchfork reviews do often, except in an intermittent, half-assed way, because it's not what their readers are looking for).

i've always said maybe if pfork didn't insist on these 1,000-word reviews of indie rock footnotes, people wouldnt be always filling them with sprawling, masturbatory prose.

Yeah, it encourages compression, which makes the writing sound unnatural.

I love rave reviews that are basically just "it's good because it's good, and it's just so good at that, y'know?" over and over

― some dude, Monday, September 12, 2011 8:13 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

v. good summation of the problem with that band--if you're not *affected* by the guys voice/lyrics/whatev there's no reason to care about them, and if you are there's no intelligent way to talk about it.

The ineffability of their appeal really works against them. Common problem.

this band, to put it simply, rules

y? because they rule

This is every language problem.

Pitchfork writer Mims