pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

“Does this merit posting in the Pitchfork thread,” I wondered, and well, here we are now.

Yes, I guess it would be more accurate to say that the message was aimed at ticket buyers rather than critics

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/50-songs-that-define-the-last-50-years-of-lgbtq-pride/

this is good; hi alfred

What, no “Glad to Be Gay”?

surprised at no Anthony.

this on 'don't stop me now' either strikes me as a weird interpretation that relies too hard on hindsight, or its just bad writing:

"The song’s wan initial reception may have had something to do with the genders of its love interests, which flip from male to female and back again to assert that frontman Freddie Mercury was bisexual"

it was a top ten UK hit so not too many people could have been put off... I Want To Break Free would have been more obvious, and that was an even bigger hit in most countries.
i'm just not sure this has much of a place in this specific list... no more than say, any Judas Priest hit.

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/50-songs-that-define-the-last-50-years-of-lgbtq-pride/

this is good; hi alfred

― lowercase (eric), Monday, June 18, 2018

hi!

lol apparently i need to brand myself more aggressively as a queer person

same

see if you can ask to write something to replace that troye sivan blurb that's apparently impressed that "cis, white gayness can be a selling point"

that

I Want To Break Free would have been more obvious, and that was an even bigger hit in most countries.

It is also very terrible.

there needs to be a punk version of that list

there is punk on that list

Man, the entire late 80s-early 90s queercore scene - Pansy Division, Team Dresch, Tribe 8, God Is My Co-Pilot really gettin the shaft

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-TglQJachM

I was gonna pitch "Dick of Death."

These Pitchfork lists sometimes have a weird DMZ where it feels like their entire staff was totally checked out

cf. their "The Story of Feminist Punk in 33 Songs" list that has a mysterious deadzone between 2000 and 2008 like the Red Monkey/Scissor Girls/V for Vendetta/Erase Errata axis wasn't totally kicking ass while Pitchfork was propping up all the bearded indie boyz

I liked that list if only bc it covered 80-95 really well

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/chromeo-head-over-heels/

this is one of the most insane things i've ever read

Which is all to say, Head Over Heels sounds expert, expensive, accomplished, while being distasteful in almost everything else. First single “Juice” pours out a sugary, intoxicating groove reminiscent of ’80s boogie masters Mtume, whose Tawatha Agee provides backing vocals, then sours it with some gross ideas about power dynamics: “Relationships ain’t a democracy,” oh, Jesus, gross. “Must’ve Been” is a sort of “Fuck You” after the weed kicks in; it’s hard to get excited about a talk box these days, but Johnson’s guitar is so ticklish, and DRAM’s harmonies so pretty, you might as well giggle, if you can, at the lyric’s macho theatrics. To be fair, it’s the cost of doing business if you’re a fan of the band that brought you “Needy Girl” and “Sexy Socialite.”

If the album is typically weird about women, it’s worse about money. “Slumming It” starts out with, “She got lipstick on my blue collar,” and it’s downhill from there. Imagine “Common People” without the class consciousness, or “Uptown Girl” with a protagonist even less believably marginalized than Billy Joel and a (pretty good) saxophone solo instead of the faux-Frankie Valli lilt. And “Bad Decision” is a very Ivanka Trump kind of love song, in which a guy gives his future over to the credit industrial complex to show his devotion. “Let’s book a shopping trip, maybe I could charter a jet/And I don’t give a shit if I never get out of debt,” he croons. “Take out all my money from the bank/Take you around the corner, buy a ring…You make me want to make a bad decision.” Falling for this acquisition-as-affection is a bad decision too.

motherfucker you're writing about chromeo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Head Over Heels might replace the duo’s trademark mannequin legs on the cover for their own, but these days such co-opting of realness is real meh. It’s genderfluid like a tech bro in a stunt romper drinking a Monster. The farce is strong with these ones.

yeah... the farce is strong... with fucking chromeo!!!!!!!!!!

funny to imagine being chromeo and winking at the woke era by putting on he heels that have always been attached to mannequin legs on your album cover, and then some kid reviews your album for pitchfork without a single trace of irony and is like "this song about a man using his credit card to take a woman on vacation is morally reprehensible"

oh this is the same guy who wrote the troye sivan blurb, nice

lol J0rdan

https://pitchfork.com/news/person-killed-in-hit-and-run-after-dutch-festival/

If we're reading Pitchfork, chances are pretty good we've heard of Pinkpop and you could just say Pinkpop in your headline.

really? is pinkpop a big deal with American millennial males?

It's dumb clickbait. They've never reported on pinkpop before (they would've *maybe* if they've existed in 1992 when Eddie Vedder fell from an amp tower or w/e). Nothing indicating a trrrrr attack either.

yeah to me Pinkpop and Rock Am Ring are as familiar as Glastonbury and Reading

ditto for Summer Sonic

very light on the 'aughts. no Fischerspooner no Peaches no Goldfrapp

how is the new chromeo tho

It's good. If you like Chromeo, you'll be pleased.

i love chromeo

how does the dude look in heels to you

suits Dave better than Pee but they both wear it well

https://pitchfork.com/news/mobb-deeps-havoc-shares-posthumous-prodigy-freestyles-listen/

Wow if Prodigy is freestyling from beyond the grave, he's an even more talented MC than I originally thought

Man, the Gruff Rhys review they shoved down to the bottom of the page over a week after it came out reads much stronger than a 7.8.

After the album came out*

https://pitchfork.com/news/elon-musk-feuds-with-lisa-prank-over-stolen-farting-unicorn-illustration/

Jesus that url

wtf is this shit?

In the living room of his tiny, late-’80s home in Aberdeen, Washington—the small town where it has been said there is nothing to do but “smoke pot and worship Satan”—Kurt Cobain filled a bathtub with half a dozen turtles. They are model beings for shy, hardened people: wise, solitary, with wearied eyes, and the envious ability to escape inside of themselves completely. “Turtles basically have this ‘fuck you’ attitude,” Cobain explained in 1993 Nirvana bio Come As You Are. Giving voice to his aquatic comrades, he went on, “I’m stuck in the tank, I’m miserable, I hate you, and I’m not going to perform for you.” Being a classic water sign—sun in Pisces, moon in Cancer—Cobain naturally related: Those tough exteriors were facades for an overwhelming sensitivity to the merciless world, a feeling Cobain voiced with every note.

that...is from a good review and a solid piece of writing?

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nirvana-incesticide/

p funny to read totally straightfaced astrology in p4k tho

Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed that piece (about a band idgaf about fwiw), it's very good writing, but the astrology bit definitely tripped me up, too. Still doesn't make it worthy of this thread

I actually really appreciated the Incesticide review.

The astrology thing is the worst part of it, but there are like 30 superfluous words in that paragraph, and that goes as well for most of the article. It's awful writing through and through.

why would you even want a concise review of a nirvana album in 2018

Aside from maybe “ Being a classic water sign—sun in Pisces, moon in Cancer—,” I don’t see any superfluous words in that paragraph.

why would you even want a concise review of a nirvana album in 2018

― lowercase (eric), 1. juli 2018 17:45 (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why would you want any review of a nirvana album in 2018? there are no new insights there, no surprises, there's just an endless stream of observations and background facts, kitted together through purple prose, and going on and on and on until it begins to feel definitive. it's in the eight paragraph we get to the music. it's everything criticism should not be, regurgitated details + ornamentation to reenforce what we already know.

Pelly is a writer whose work I almost always enjoy--she's thoughtful and funny and knows what she is talking about--and her only crime afaic is being instrumental in making a household name of Snail Mail, possibly the most offensively mediocre and uninspired indie rock thing Pitchfork has ever put their muscle behind (except for maybe Frankie Cosmos, but at least no one seems to be drinking that particular Kool Aid, despite their increasingly desperate looking best efforts). But that's for another thread.

Frederik, maybe you can link us to a recent review you find exemplifies good music writing and contains no purple prose?

xp idk i got a sense of how a sort of constellation of ideas and influence and reaction from it, does a v good job of placing it w/in that constellation and how it's central to the act of listening to the album, or at least posits that it is, and i think it does so v convincingly. i also doubt a lot of people are aware of the context, and part of the purpose of this series is as a introduction, or reintroduction, of sorts