pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

hmmm, rethink that take

Sounds like RYM has changed. I was on there a lot in like 2004 and it was pretty quaint -- Mull Historical Society CD-R swaps, "does anyone else like Around the Sun?" etc. A user I admired was really into Kitchens of Distinction...

It's a good place to discover new metal and prog, and enjoy some psychotic writing, and that's about it

You’re thinking of ILM

That's not fair. I never find out about cool new prog via ILM.

lol spock's beard

It depends where you’re looking
There are some users who do hugely deep dives into genres
Reminiscent of the mp3 blog days

it is an excellent place to keep track of one's own listening and discover new things, and generally stay on top of being a music nerd. all the unsavoury window-dressing is kind of beside the point and avoidable

IOW, it's reddit for music nerds

It's like ILM if we still listened to music instead of podcasts

yea I think the reddit analogy works, it's a huge place with a lot of cool niche stuff and it's quite easy to ignore the community at large

one thing it certainly does have is the worst music forum of all time

I use it just for figuring out which album to start with for an artist, does a pretty good job for that

clearly you've never been to /mu/ xp

it basically is /mu/ fwict

Yeah I find RYM v. useful for keeping track of things I've heard and browsing other peoples' lists can be a lot of fun but I avoid the forums/comment boxes like the plague.

pic.twitter.com/FzrhVoNiFn

— Best of RateYourMusic (@Rateyrmusic) June 7, 2019

proud of you imago

lolllllll

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/taylor-swift-you-need-to-calm-down/

This track review deserves a shoutout for focusing entirely on lyrical content (save for a reference to "a hook that’s mostly vowels"); and ending with this thought:

“You Need to Calm Down” is like one of those fancy unicorn cupcakes, an impossibly cute confection designed to distract you from the fact that it’s a mediocre dessert. I cannot think of something I would rather buy into less.

Really -- you can't think of anything worse to "buy into" than a "mediocre," "well-intentioned" "confection" of a track? And is music really for "buying into" in the first place? (Hey -- what about the music, anyway?)

And is music really for "buying into" in the first place?

This is a strange question. Of course music is for buying into, otherwise no one would try to share it with anyone else.

AND no one would try to make a living as a professional musician if they weren't trying to get people to buy into the music they are creating/performing.

I think of an ideology or idea as something you "buy into"; and music as something you listen to / enjoy.

(or, literally, "buy" -- if you purchase it)

I cannot think of something I would rather buy into less.

I can think some music website that should rather buy into a copy editor more.

“Sure I like it, but I don’t, like, buy into it or anything!”

omg i didn't see, i'm famous now lol

This track review deserves a shoutout for focusing entirely on lyrical content

(Hey -- what about the music, anyway?)

Can’t imagine why Pitchfork isn’t parsing the chord changes on a song where Taylor thematically links her social-media haters to the Westboro Baptist Church

(Also the point of the “buy into” line - however awkwardly-phrased - is clearly that this song reads to the author more as an act of lateral career positioning than a piece of music, and they regard it as a failure both in terms of that being an aspiration to begin with and in its ability to succeed at that aspiration)

Pitchfork | The Most Trusted Voice in “Career Positioning”

I’m rolling my eyes but also you’re not wrong

Crumb and 2017 follow-up Locket, both misty and meandering, cast the four-part group as the new kid on today’s jazz-influenced psych block, among bands like Tame Impala and King Krule.

did Tame Impala cover a Kamasi Washington song or something

haha "jazzy" and "jazz influenced" are two classic overused rock crit phrases

the only two King Krule songs I ever subjected myself to sounded like annoying post-punk singer songwriter shit

so I'll defer to others on that point - but of the three Tame Impala songs I own I'd be hard-pressed to point to a "jazz influence"

King krules is p great

lol meant "three Tame Impala ALBUMS" there

xp

4.8 for Madonna.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/madonna-madame-x/

If I wanted someone to write a witty pan, I'd hire Rich.

par for the course

4.8 is way too generous. I bet the editor bumped that score up a couple points after the review was turned in.

it is hilarious to me the way they are still trying against all odds to push frankie cosmos

RichJuz madonna review is so well-written damn

I stopped reading at "grotesque wealth"...

that's the second sentence

she's more than halfway to a billion. only like 300 bernies

Their 2001 song “Everybody Got Their Something” sampled a guitar hook from George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass while also bringing to mind a then-current Faith Evans hit.

anyone care to point out where this reputed sample (it links to "I Dig Love") is? cuz I sure don't hear it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/business/puja-patel-pitchfork-work-diary.html

3:30 p.m. One of two weekly reviews meetings, where we go over our album review schedule, scoring, Best New Music designations and assignments. This is usually the easiest or knottiest meeting of the week, depending on the releases and how strongly the editors in the room feel about them. We try to have at least four people on staff listen to every album reviewed before landing on a precise score. Today, two editors have differing opinions on the score of a smaller album, and we talk about some existential issues with scoring against the legacy opinions of Pitchfork past.

Next day:

1:30 p.m. My weekly meeting with Anna Wintour, the creative director of Condé Nast. Anna is a sounding board on anything big or small. We talk about everything: new developments on major editorial plans for the site, design updates, artists who are releasing new music, ideas around covers, the staff, navigating every kind of business change or hurdle while being true to the site’s spirit and point of view.

Diary of a Madman

1:30 p.m. Our video lead tells me that Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers are on their way to the office studios to shoot for our “Over/Under” series. Last week we ran into the “Queer Eye” cast in the cafe and taped them for the series, too. It’s one of my favorite franchises because of how genuinely funny and random it tends to be.

Funny and random. Can't wait for that one.