pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

yeah... gotta have a balance at least.

This is great: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-jambu-e-os-miticos-sons-da-amazonia/

the music is uniformly thrilling, blending the syncopated shuffle of carimbó—a beat, originally played on hollowed-out tree trunks, that’s part galloping horse, part drunken stumble—with trance-like woodwind melodies, throaty sing-alongs, flickering rhythm guitar, and the overdriven sonics you might expect from a genre whose pioneers ran their electric guitars through church PAs powered by car batteries.

There's got to be at least one review of an instrumental album that doesn't discuss the music at all.

the music is uniformly thrilling, blending the syncopated shuffle of carimbó—a beat, originally played on hollowed-out tree trunks, that’s part galloping horse, part drunken stumble—with trance-like woodwind melodies, throaty sing-alongs, flickering rhythm guitar, and the overdriven sonics you might expect from a genre whose pioneers ran their electric guitars through church PAs powered by car batteries.

Now that's more like it.

That is a perfectly written review!

That's a great review not only because it provides vivid descriptions of the actual sounds, but because it avoids wide-eyed "world music" clichés, too. There's no suggestion that listening to this music will in any way improve you as a person - it's just awesome music.

otm

AND it made me listen to the album, which is the point.

Yep, good review of something I've never heard of but now want to check out. Reviews like that one only reinforce how crappy the others are.

This was last week or whatever, but I guess Yoni Wolf can't catch a break. You figure they would throw them a 6.8 or whatever by way of apology for past pans, because who cares anymore, but nope.

New review: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/why-aokohio/
Old review: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17136-mumps-etc/

The only time me or anyone I know pay attention to @pitchfork is when we hop back in a time machine and head back to Y2K. They get so much wrong it’s comical. It is literally the Fox News of the music industry. They only get clicks by people like me tweeting negatives like this.

— Yoni Wolf (@YoniWolf) August 7, 2019

Also, @mehan_j you are a dick and you haven’t really listened to my work. You have only read the press release, which you have thoroughly regurgitated in “your” poorly written slander piece.

— Yoni Wolf (@YoniWolf) August 7, 2019

Too bad this follow-up tweet is kinda daft... I doubt Pfork’s mediocrities are due to Big Rockcrit conspiracies

The formerly respectable blog called @pitchfork is nothing but a tool for their big 10 corporate parent to promote work owned by other big music corporations and squash real independent artists. Swim in your coin you sold out washed up shill. Guess what, we aren’t going anywhere.

— Yoni Wolf (@YoniWolf) August 7, 2019

Poor Pitchfork! They sucked when they promoted The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, they suck now they're corporate Trumpist shills!

"The only time me or anyone I know pay attention to @pitchfork is when we hop back in a time machine and head back to Y2K," says guy from Anticon

that god awful site did same shit to both of us this year. trashed albums that clearly hadn't even been listened to. same incredibly creepy girl did both, she even got lyrics wrong repeatedly when quoting them despite having lyric sheets for both, somehow. among many other issues

— WILL GOD FORGIVE US??? (@fugazi420) August 7, 2019

Reading that Why? review and LOL'd at this patronizing line:

There’s also an accompanying visual album, made in partnership with — no joke — a director who randomly DM’d Wolf on Instagram

Whoaa, seriously no joke? This artist made a creative connection on social media? Let me sit down while I process that, how crazy!

Hmm "incredibly creepy" might be over-egging the French toast in that author's case, but I can think of other music writers for whom it absolutely applies. Yoni's point that "the artists are not going anywhere" is pretty apt, you can whack-a-mole a Tim Kinsella all you want but he's still getting his 76 years of life, it's better to keep the reviews ad rem

god bless all of y'all who still write about music critically, I know I couldn't handle it in this world where an artist can just broadcast themselves taking a shit on you for thousands of their fans.

xp but

If a review doesn't tell me a single thing about what the record actually sounds like, it's effectively useless.

― does it look like i'm here (jon123), Thursday, August 15, 2019 9:21 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

no, it's not, because this is 2019 and I can easily find out what a record sounds like by, you know, listening to it

also if you're going to criticize someone for "getting lyrics wrong repeatedly" then you should at least do the arduous research of going to his twitter profile, which will tell you that he is a man and not a "creepy girl"

and not the same reviewer, even

that tweet was by someone else, who apparently runs a label or manages artists? idk.

I think he was talking about reviews of two of his artists, but idrc and I'm not defending him

that makes more sense but I'm still stuck on "creepy girl"

this is 2019 and I can easily find out what a record sounds like by, you know, listening to it

So what do you want from music criticism? Because the writers that avoid or eschew musical description, in my experience, replace it with some combination of parsing-of-the-lyrics and discussion of the artist's romantic life/commercial ups and downs/political statements, if any/relative degree of "cancelled"-ness. Do you - specifically you, katherine - consider that good and valuable critical discourse? If so, why? I'm genuinely interested because that's 180 degrees from what I want from an album review.

Oh, apparently that's Ricky Eat Acid's twitter account (or one of them).

He (Sam Ray) is speaking about Arielle Gordon (a girl, can't speak to her creepiness) and the album reviews to which he's referring are the most recent American Pleasure Club album and his wife Kitty's most recent album, both of which (numbers-wise) didn't crack 6.0, and both of which are imo excellent albums

I didn't realize that Kitty album had come out, will check it out.

It's called Rose Gold and I think it's terrific

feel like music description serves the same purpose as describing a scene in a film or a book which i guess you could just watch or read. also sometimes in the act of description you uncover ideas about a song or a record. it’s not either/or, it’s as much the text as the lyrics, no rigorous criticism should exclude one to prioritize the other unless the music at hand is instrumental or very about conveying something through its lyrics. but then when streaming seemed about to take over everything i read a lot of critics who thought descriptive criticism in the consumer guide sense would be useless in an age where you could just queue up any record. i disagreed then and i still do but also i write a lot of things that people don’t read so ymmv

It's entirely possible that the "purpose" of writing about pop music is not the same as what I think the "purpose" is of writing about what I write about (jazz, mostly). But for example, when I reviewed the new Slipknot album it was way more interesting to me to talk about how different the music sounded from their previous albums (very different!) than what Corey Taylor was yelling about (mostly the same shit he's been yelling about since 1999!).

This is a prickly discussion because discussing your strategems do nothing except expose yourself. Suffice it to say that each publication will have its own standards, and shrewds critic usually bends those standards to their will.

When writing blurbs I tend to emphasize description because the well-chosen word will explain things to the non-crit listener, i.e. most people; also, explaining how this harmony complement that organ line and why it affects me is what I hope connects with readers, for it's what connected me to my favorite writers as a young man ("Yes! She hears what I do!").

Ignore those typos.

what Corey Taylor was yelling about (mostly the same shit he's been yelling about since 1999!).

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Thursday, August 15, 2019 3:26 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don’t think this is true at all, the new slipknot album is very obviously about divorce

The problem with artists crying bullshit about criticism and the incompetence or ignorance of critics is that those same artists hedge their complaints when the coverage is positive. As if those positive pieces are not written by the same purportedly ignorant, incompetent critics.

i don’t think this is true at all, the new slipknot album is very obviously about divorce

You may be right; what registered most with me were the usual misanthropic slogans. I find his lyrics for Stone Sour much more interesting than his lyrics for Slipknot, generally.

I am in favor of descriptions that describe the actual sounds, especially if they have points of reference — I’ve found old albums or bands to listen to that I hadn’t heard after reading a review of a new one I liked.

The reviewer should not, however, say that a song sounds “like artists X and Y had a baby”

what if the baby took acid tho

The thing about most (not all, sadly) music being available for streaming is that it means there is an INSANE amount of music available to stream. So ideally criticism makes a sincere effort to describe what the music sounds like. Not that that has to be THE ENTIRE review, but give me something. Get me interested. (This doesn't have to mean referencing a lot of other bands, btw.) Make me want to hear what you're writing about. Extra-musical narrative stuff by and large is extraneous and when that stuff dominates a piece I tune out.

Which *isn't* to say that lyrical content shouldn't be discussed, of course. It's a balancing act.

That said, all of us have probably written reviews thick with musical description, then submitted them ... then had editors cut multiple passages out for unknown reasons, thus neutering the intended impact. (Alfred, I am *not* referring to you in that company.)

xp

(Meaning: As an editor you never did that to me.)

So what do you want from music criticism? Because the writers that avoid or eschew musical description, in my experience, replace it with some combination of parsing-of-the-lyrics and discussion of the artist's romantic life/commercial ups and downs/political statements, if any/relative degree of "cancelled"-ness. Do you - specifically you, katherine - consider that good and valuable critical discourse? If so, why? I'm genuinely interested because that's 180 degrees from what I want from an album review.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Thursday, August 15, 2019 5:42 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes? if the artist engages with these things in their music -- and more often than not, they do -- then it is not only good and valuable critical discourse, but arguably necessary to do a thorough job. you can discuss, say, "thank u, next" (example chosen because it's playing on the speakers here) without discussing the artist's romantic life/commercial ups and downs, but by doing so you're neglecting a significant part of the intent of the song, as well as how it is received by most of its audience, and likely missing the point.

however, the existence of the latter two examples suggest that this is yet another complaint about social justice warriors ruining criticism, disguised as concern about the music

this is particularly exacerbated by how many of my favorite lyricists, if their lyrics are discussed at all in reviews, have what is a significant component of their record dismissed with non-statements like "poetic" (a poem is a form, not a genre) or "oblique" (maybe the lyrics wouldn't be oblique if you engaged with them for more than 15 seconds).

you can discuss, say, "thank u, next" (example chosen because it's playing on the speakers here) without discussing the artist's romantic life/commercial ups and downs, but by doing so you're neglecting a significant part of the intent of the song, as well as how it is received by most of its audience, and likely missing the point

This is both totally understandable, and a huge part of why I feel completely alienated from modern pop music. As has been established, I prefer instrumental music to music with lyrics. But when I listen to music with lyrics, I prefer lyrics that are "universal" (ha ha) rather than lyrics that are "diaristic". Having Googled the lyrics to "thank u, next" my instant responses are a) this is terrible, and b) this song is un-coverable. It's so completely personal to Ariana Grande that I'm surprised any listener could even find it relatable! Even the parts that are sort of universal (learning to be self-reliant, wanting to get married to someone you really love) are undercut by a punch line about the song's commercial success.

it’s completely coverable, you just change the names and maybe what you learned from those respective exes!

I’d imagine someone’s already done a ridiculous cover in costume substituting fictional characters from a movie

that is, karaoke-style

..hesitating to wade into the fray on this topic, but "universal" and "diaristic" are two asymptotes, there is no way for a songwriter to write a lyric as one without the other, and there is no way for a listener to parse a lyric without both bringing in their personal (i.e. universal) experience as well as what-they-know about the author of the song. (Even a listener will parse a song differently if the author is anonymous, or the authorship is ecumenical.)

There is no way "Thank You, Next" is objectively terrible, it is a imho perfect pop song with a brutally moving epiphany (when Ariana resolves to love herself), the autobiographical elements are handled extremely well-- considering her highly reported-upon romance with Pete Davison, and Mac Miller's recent death, a song that concerned "relationships" would be impossible for a listener to hear Ariana sing without filtering it through either of those public relationships; the fact that Ariana bluntly names both romantic partners-- as well as another dude I guess-- is a coup, as far as I'm concerned.

And here I am, unperson, doing that thing that you dislike, talking about the lyrical content and eschewing any comment on the musical material.

Your latter two examples-- "yet another complaint about social justice warriors ruining criticism"-- I would describe differently; I feel that there is always an element of music criticism where the author is seeking to exert some level of control over the artist. It is not just informing the reader, or persuading the reader, there is a top-note of abusive control that is present. It has become a more visible mechanism, in my purview, in recent years ("Iggy Azalea? Didn't we cancel her?") and the language of "social justice" has abetted it. I wouldn't say "social justice warriors" are ruining criticism, because there is no social justice involved here; the language of social justice is being co-opted and misused by certain critics in the place of actual criticism.

ffs "I'm so fucking grateful for my ex" is the most bittersweet and wonderful thing, equal parts savage and appreciative, a balm to anybody with heartbreak. "Uncoverable": I would absolutely cover this song, and I would be pleased to position myself fictitiously as a former recipient of Pete Davidson's hollow gaze, that sexy frog prince

to fgti’s excellent appreciation of “thank u, next”, I will add that it I find it v funny how unperson, in his Sheldon Cooper-ing over encountering a pop lyric, declares it to be somehow “undercut” by the artistry of a semi-ironic punchline.

Haven't heard the WHY? album yet but Sam Ray (Ricky Eat Acid) is a bad person who has done some pretty despicable shit I'm sure will come out eventually. And whether or not the review is crap, it's never a great look for an artist to complain about reviews on Twitter.