pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

BoC >>>>>> BOC

They're so obsessed w/the '90s. The idea of that recent "Top 200 [or whatever] of 1998" -- maybe the decade's worst year for music -- had me lol'ing.

― absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Tuesday, April 3, 2018 1:02 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

p sure that's more reflective of a need for content + the fact that 20th anniversary pieces are ubiquitous than any obsession w the 90s

Geogaddi was better but this feels weird to get worked up over. The BoC debut is definitely a milestone release for its genre, and it’s not like Pitchfork is new to the game of somewhat overstating the importance of important records.
Maybe their new, more naked Content Aggregation approach just makes it grate more, idk

Also I won’t hear a bad word about either Avalanches record

xxpost
I guess, but (a) there are lots of current things the content could be devoted to, and (a) I don't recall the clip of 20th-anniversary pieces being so relentless in past decades, such as in music magazines etc. (though of course it's always been a thing). I know the '90s are big right now...

(I'm also not a publisher of any website, so who am I to quibble with how they get needed page views... I guess it's just funny to see the '90s repped so hard at the moment.)

it's not funny, it's very predictable, this happens every decade

the 90s have been big for years now.

There are possibly 400 better psychedelic albums from the 90s than MHTRTC, and it is certainly not a bad album

also the late 90s was p4k's early years. It's like the way Rolling Stone celebrated every 20th anniversary of 60s this & that back in the 80s.

when i think of pitchfork i think of 90s indie.

Yeah - and my point was that I don't recall "Best Albums of 1988" being done in 2008, etc. (I know they've done "Best of" lists for the '80s as a whole, and every other decade). The '90s are obv. in their wheelhouse, and I guess also what ppl want to read about right now.

Also, I read RS in the '80s, I don't recall features like "Why 'Surrealistic Pillow' Remains a '60s Landmark" or whatever. Obv. there was a big Boomer market for '60s nostalgia at that time. But Pfork seems particularly backward-looking.

https://img.wennermedia.com/920-width/rs-28722-22863_lg.jpg

xp they didn't even do one last year!

yeah rolling stone is as backward-looking as it gets, tho it mainly manifests in glowing reviews for late-period springsteen and u2 albums these days.

RS and every other mainstream music mag has done special Beatles issues every decade!

(RS may be more backward-looking now, I have no idea; but in the '80s I mainly remember reading about current acts, not big features devoted to 20-yr-old albums)

(I'm also totally willing to concede you all are correct, and I'm just more focused on / slightly bummed by the '90s nostalgia for personal reasons.)

the 80s and 90s don't seem to want to go away. but i guess its only fair because the 60s are seemingly forever. me, i'm stuck in the 70s.

(I'm also not a publisher of any website, so who am I to quibble with how they get needed page views... I guess it's just funny to see the '90s repped so hard at the moment.)

― absorbed carol channing's powers & psyche (morrisp), Tuesday, April 3, 2018 11:28 AM (thirty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not funny, it's very predictable, this happens every decade

― flappy bird, Tuesday, April 3, 2018 11:29 AM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

damn wait til we get to 2021 and we get dozens of thoughtful retrospectives on "Is This It." Released in the heart of the final summer before 9/11, The Strokes' scene-shattering classic debut is being reissued in a double CD special edition as well as a four-LP box set complete with outtakes and b-sides. and so on...

Probably already on the schedule.

Surprised that reissue hasn't happened already.

they could just lift the beginning and end from their interpol 10th anniversary review and change the dates

In retrospect, 2001 may have been the very year that we stopped talking about how music sounds, and started talking about what other music it sounds like. "The Strokes sound like the Velvet Underground" was one of the first critical observations to turn into a full-fledged meme.

speaking of that i was at Amoeba yesterday afternoon and Julian Casablancas was wandering around being filmed, probably for a "What's In Your Bag?" segment. i passed by him twice and didn't recognize him at first. he's still holding onto that dirtbag style 100%.

The overwhelming majority of p4k’s content is about contemporary music. While RS may not have published a bunch of “hey this album turned 20 today” articles, they did spend the late 80s putting Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, George Harrison, Grateful Dead etc on their cover and publishing Best of lists mostly full of 60s albums.

Pitchfork's unofficial canon is always being added to, it takes a lot for RS to add an artist to theirs. It's not every year that you get a Foo Fighters.

Is This Is is great. also a better psychedelic record than the BOC one

xpost
I only remember the covers w/Springsteen, Axl, R.E.M. (etc.), but sounds like you know your stuff. (The Dead were still an active band in the late ’80s, of course.) I have an old issue w/Brian Wilson on the cover, but he was releasing an album at the time.

love this one https://images.wolfgangsvault.com/rolling-stone-issue-381/magazine/memorabilia/RS381-MZ.jpg

remember how Johnny Depp used Keith Richards as an inspiration for Pirates of the Caribbean?

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/65/5d/fa655dec02d6d40a9ea37c16f6c2ef8d.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/36/76/97/3676970ac3b4eb0e8a55c1b22df08df2.jpg

(George Harrison & Pink Floyd were still active artists, too! I’m not objecting to Pfork running Malkmus interviews or whatever.)

Boards of Canada are about as active as they've ever been...

The piece isn’t about the band and its current activities.

I stridently demand that the music press remain focused on its historic function of spotlighting new product being released / promoted (even if by older artists); or else music fandom begins to feel like a depressing nostalgia vortex.

I don't know, man. RS put the Who on the cover in 1989. They didn't even have a new album out. They were just doing a nostalgia tour. Even the '89 issue with Jon Bon Jovi on the cover features an In the studio with the Beatles story.

Nothing wrong with that stuff--it was just servicing the core passionate boomer male audience.

I'll probably enjoy it if I read it but the pitchfork/Simon Reynolds/Boards of Canada trifecta is like seeing a new television show with a cast that's all people from familiar dramas of yesteryear

haha

On a different note, I like this series where artists talk about records that were meaningful to them at different stages of life, how they discovered them, etc.: https://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/david-byrne-on-the-music-that-made-him/

I assumed David Byrne was somehow born into "world music" (or would at least want to give the impression that it's always been in his blood) -- it's interesting to know that he got into it mid-career, just by picking up cool-looking records, hanging out in salsa clubs, etc.

lol i love a pedal geek fite broke out

THE HAND PAINTED HERMANEUTIC LABS ORANGE-O-MATIC SPIRALPHAZENEBULIZER IS THE NEW PUNK ROCK

last year every issue of RS had some bit about the 50th anniversary, it was a banner at the top of every issue

Anyone else notice the summaries popping up on (some) artists' pages?

https://pitchfork.com/artists/2173-jay-z/

i loved the 1998 list; imo it's great to go `deep' on the near-past as things become just-out-of-the-rear-view mirror, at the vanishing point of retro horizon. it was interesting for me, personally, as someone who came of age musically just a couple years later; a lot of the albums on that list i was introduced to by friends' older siblings and will always have, for me, the mythic status that confers. also it's crazy that 98 is considered 'maybe the decade's worst year for music' there's so many classic albums on that list

actually my favourite thing about Late Fork is the older gen of critics doing revisionist reviews of classics, the Sunday Review series has been really excellent

a stretch

Police say one woman, the suspected shooter, is dead following YouTube shooting. Four people have been hospitalized https://t.co/xHr1bnlaJI pic.twitter.com/AKN2y8NHdc

— Pitchfork (@pitchfork) April 3, 2018

xpost
What are the 1998 albums you consider classic? I'm genuinely curious...

They should do 1988 IMO - that was a killer year for albums!

arab strap, gang starr, aquemini, american water, black star, hello nasty, refused, big pun, atcq, 400 degreez, dmx are all classics to me!

I agree on "American Water" for sure (and also "Super AE" and "Accelerator" for me).

I also highly rate that year’s Liz Phair album (which didn’t make the list).

decent record but i never thought of it as psychedelic when i could go to Spiritualized or Beck or the Flaming Lips or Cornelius. tbh i find that album a bit monotone and dull.

― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, April 3, 2018 11:10 AM (six hours ago)

I dunno. I think it's extremely psychedelic. MHTRTC suggests and (IME) complements psychedelic experience. All those soft yet vivid kaleidoscope patterns shifting and repeating in elastic time, devoid of meaning but dense with implication, charming as they are inexplicably threatening, the whole ghosted through with the echoes of human feelings that can no longer be understood. Good cop.

I mean, the ability to perceive repetition (or, in fact, anything) as "monotone and dull" tends to fade as the chemicals kick in.

Their Q1 top 100 is like 90% garbage.