pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

the kids do this all the time. That's how my students know I@n's name.

BNM is huge 1) because it has a landing page 2) because they don't award that many BNM albums or tracks, that landing page doesn't turn over nearly as fast, so it's surfaced for much longer, with anything else on a website, once it drops off of the main page it's already gotten probably 75-80 percent of the hits it will ever get

sufjan for the win

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20218-carrie-lowell/

this is a HOT one, baby!

lol at that last paragraph

The second-half of my argument against quantitative "objective" metrics is that it's terrible not just for music but for music writing and writers

Honestly, 9.3 is too low.

Don't call it a comeback. On his new album, Sufjan Stevens makes the tears rain down like a monsoon...

9.3 BNM

what would Stevens' mom award it

(Alfo she's dead that's the point of the record)

OK so I fucked up the verb tense.

lol at that last paragraph

― salthigh, Monday, March 30, 2015 11:45 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why lol?

this is a HOT one, baby!

― some dude, Monday, 30 March 2015 15:42 (2 hours ago) Permalink

i keep hearing this in Christopher Walken's voice, ala the following:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/536145

giving 9.3 to a sufjan album is what pitchfork does it's like you all want the world to stop spinning

I don't think anyone overtly protested that.

I just assumed they gave Sufjan and Kendrick the same score so they can decide later which one is album of the year

lol, probably

or it can be like 2013 where they gave yeezus a higher score than the album that got their #1 EOY spot (inasmuch as that matters)

the article isn't the most sophisticated thing and her argument has some weird things missing (like, almost everyone in TV on the Radio is black, and they're one of the best reviewed and best known indie bands in the US) but whenever there's an article even hinting at race people get fucking defensive and weird and it stirs up all kinds of shit.

which is not the fault of the person who wrote the article

ha, one of my reactions to that article was to reflect on how I actively try to enjoy TV on the Radio in a manner that I don't for most bands, largely because they are a successful majority-black indie band

i brought up tvotr on facebook and someone pointed out that she was specifically talking about southeast asian indie people? so, they didn't count. that she was specifically looking for more people who looked like her.

just ick, all of it.

sometimes these kinds of articles/essays/blog posts can be useful when someone says something like: why aren't the online magazines writing about...goes on to name cool asian-american indie rock bands that aren't being written about.

but they didn't really do that here. which makes me wonder if there are cool asian-american indie rock bands that people aren't writing about. and like i said above, there are certainly lots of cool/fashionable indie rock bands in asia. there are like a zillion bands that sound like my bloody valentine in japan alone. not that they get written about much here either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xLjq2aYnxw

Salon Music doing the MBV thing in 1995.

or, you know, slowdive...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8_a2IYmdOM

sufjan eating a banana on best new music... forever

or, you know, indonesian dropkick murphys fans...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp6LmvIVlDk

want more bands like this here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaOLR9N0WVM

are cool asian-american indie rock bands that people aren't writing about.

The funny thing, there were actually a good number of '90s ur-indie bands in the mode being talked about that featured all or mostly Asian members. Seam, Versus, Cornershop, +/-, Kicking Giant, Cibo Matto, Blonde Redhead ...

But maybe her bugaboo is that there aren't many right now? Who knows. Like, did she mention Toro y Moi? Yeah Yeah Yeahs? Dirty Beaches (RIP?)? Thao and the Get Down Stay Down? Regardless, if you get specific and sub-divide enough then yeah, eventually you'll come up short in the "people just like me" department.

wait what happened to dirty beaches

Somebody cleaned them

I think he broke up?

http://pitchfork.com/news/57227-dirty-beaches-calls-it-quits/

yeah, he is going to change the name of his project i guess

pitchfork is like the only place on earth that ever cared about deerhoof

Females of Indian origins in 90s bands: Sonya Madan of Echobelly and Shivika Asthana from Papas Fritas.

if someone could explain to me why people care about Dirty Beaches, i would appreciate it.

You don't want to step in tar in your bare feet.

gotta stick up for deerhoof here and say that they're a legitimately popular college rock act and not just a bunch of tapes n'tapes-(or clap your hands say yeah)-style pitchfork darlings

"The funny thing, there were actually a good number of '90s ur-indie bands in the mode being talked about that featured all or mostly Asian members. Seam, Versus, Cornershop, +/-, Kicking Giant, Cibo Matto, Blonde Redhead ..."

and speaking of shoegaze, miki berenyi had a huuuuuge influence on future dream poppers.

When did we slide from "South Asian" to "Asian" in this conversation

taking a headcount of artists the writer could've mentioned only serves to highlight that it's possible to take a headcount, out of the whole giant sprawling world of indie rock bands who have had some manner of a national profile

Man, she should turn her scope on Hollywood.

dude

Exactly. Mostly dudes. White dudes. And that is a field where what you look like is explicitly important.

Pretty important in indie of you are going to be mistaken for a mini cab driver every time you hang around outside after a gig.

Srsly though, if you have people saying that indie, whatever that might mean, feels like a gated community and your response is 'oh, there is a Japanese woman playing bass in a band that got reviewed in 2013' it may be worth doing some more listening.

ok so we've covered the "why isn't she paying attn to ___ which is worse??" argument, i guess we can expect "she's the REAL racist" any minute now

I get that, but if your argument is predicated in no small part on "there are not enough people like me, and these are the four examples," then really every excluded or overlooked example weakens the argument. Especially if you're vague about criteria. That's why I think the essay would have worked better as a strictly personal account of what it is like to be or feel excluded, because the way it was presented the piece unfortunately boils down to the banality of numbers. But obviously there could be lots of people "just like me" and I can still feel left out, overlooked, excluded or underrepresented. The cultural blinders and insensitives of indie and really all music across the spectrum is pervasive, and I guess I would have preferred a piece along those lines as opposed to something that felt both very specific (south Asians in indie) and yet still somehow incomplete.

But obv, write-on, writer. I'd rather something provocative and incomplete than boring, and she does bring up plenty of great points regardless.

good that you made your voice heard then