pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

i didn't know she turned in 20 chapman produced songs for red and now i need to fast forward 20 years to the box set

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, August 20, 2019 10:51 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ya I didn't know that either and same

― flamboyant goon tie included, Tuesday, August 20, 2019 10:56 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it was news to me too! and this is the second time i've done research on this record lol

I also... idk, I don't love the stuff I've heard from 1989-onward, and there is a part of me that feels like I've been bullied by her (as a listener) and I can't describe why, and I feel like I'm in mourning for a songwriter that I once loved and is now gone, I don't even really like the "good" tracks like "Blank Space", but yet, still, I don't think that this new direction deserves some of the vitriol I've observed in this corner or that... there's a craftsmanship to what she's doing now that I appreciate, even if I have no interest in listening to it.

uh, she actually did have professional training at points in time.

― sarahell, Tuesday, August 20, 2019 1:03 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

didn't know that! does check out though

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine), Tuesday, August 20, 2019 11:28 AM (fifty-four minutes ago)

my voice teacher had worked with her at one point. that's the only reason i know lol

Are you having opera training? Cool!

https://pitchfork.com/news/bon-iver-justin-vernon-talks-about-his-critical-eminem-tweets/

TAGS IN THIS STORY
Interviews, Video, Beef

BTW Meaghan Garvey did end up writing about 1989 for Pitchfork - in the end of year list that year: https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/?page=2

i'm not really a fan of the Martin tracks on Red (they feel awkwardly between worlds, the choruses are underwritten & they feel out of place on the album) but the tracks she did with Dan Wilson and Jeff Bhasker are some of her very best, "Treacherous" is probably my all-time favourite TS track and "Holy Ground" is wonderful too

Yeah both those songs are great. The bridge on “Treacherous” is tremendous; and “Holy Ground” may be my favorite cut on the LP.

Oh yeah Holy Ground is so great

And that Garvey write-up of 1989 is totally good, too!

Brad is right to single out “Treacherous” as (and i’m paraphrasing here) maybe the pinnacle of her songwriting craft while simultaneously singling out “All Too Well” as the pinnacle of her songbook.

and the pinnacle of “All Too Well” is the 3rd chorus, when she sings — It was rare, I was there...

(subscribe to my blog, Plaid Shirt Days, for more insights on “All Too Well”)

ugh ugh ugh @ the first paragraph of this

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/elvis-presley-live-1969/

Lana Del Rey
Norman Fucking Rockwell!

POLYDOR / INTERSCOPE • 2019

9.4
BEST NEW MUSIC

I don't know if I've ever heard more than a song or two by her, but in the first two paragraphs of that review she's compared to Springsteen, Lou Reed, the Beach Boys, Elvis, and Dylan and Hemingway, Whitman, and Fitzgerald. Later, Portishead, Carole King and Joni Mitchell. And Elton John. And it's also produced by Jack Antonoff. So ... sure, BNM.

I almost broke my brain wondering which one would rang most true to me. Springsteen, maybe circa Darkness on the Edge of Town.

legit great album

that linda ronstadt retrospective really primed the pump for today's LDR rave

Heart Like a Fucking Wheel

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRIEY7S5RTWOJ093a6VWHvwEaqI1X-RvpQG3vS8U94Re5P6eo-eMQ

Normal Fucking Rockcrit

I was kinda glad to see P4K reviewing those Swift albums? And they were pretty great reads, all of them. Though I remember the pre-1989 days when you'd go into PK4, search for Taylor Swift, and no results came out. Kind of a crown achievement.

P4K sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Tropical Fuck Storm are the latest sufferers of the "your lyrics aren't good enough essays" school of music criticism

Oh? I thought it was a good review, myself. I had a joke about how I wished all bad lyricists were consumed in a tropical fuck storm but I guess it’s a nice image rather than a funny joke

i think the criticism of the lyrics of "the happiest guy around" and "the planet of straw men" is fair if a bit harsh, but the real issue i have is it only spends a paragraph actually discussing the music - ideally a review should engage substantially with both words and music rather than one or the other.

yeah we've kind of been over this already but "punk quartet" and a Beefheart reference fall significantly short of even basically describing their sound, and not even mentioning the male/female vocal interplay is a crime

Between granting nearly full marks to Lana Del Rey, underselling the HTRK album, refusing to engage with Tropical Fuck Storm the band rather than just Gareth Liddiard the poet and panning the new Tool simply because lol Tool, I suppose the Fork is just e-zining as it has always done.

The Tool review contains my favorite jerk move of theirs, where they pan a band they've always hated while praising albums they previously slated even harder

That Tool review falls into one of the most common Tool traps, namely "Keenan is stupid, therefore Tool is stupid." Keenan *is* stupid, but that is as irrelevant to the band imo as any of the stupid vocalists King Crimson has had over the years.

At least it talks about the music.

Won’t somebody please think of the music

I think about it all the time

i love it

the first sentence is pretty great

i don't really think tool sound or operate much like king crimson ever did but it's the only band anyone brings up for comparison

But they shared a producer brad, that makes them the same band

looking over david bottrill's production credits: hey this guy made a lot of records i like! and one king crimson record i don't like very much

who do tool actually sound like? they've always seemed fairly in their own lane but i'm admittedly not the biggest expert on prog

king crimson

I don't think they sound at all like King Crimson, not even a little bit, but yeah, a good exercise trying to think of a good comparison.

the simplest complex alt-rock-approaching-prog-metal you can think of. a kind of helmet-y spartan and grooving quality to the riffs, just extended way more indefinitely and swerving around different time signature shifts provided by a p incredible rhythm section. their earlier stuff is hookier, shorter, and more immediate, self-serious but with bad jokes as a tonic, they were kinda the ultimate ozzfest band imo. then on their third record they broke through into the proggier dimension they've inhabited since. not a lot happens and yet there's enough movement that it never gets boring or feels as long as it is. it's kind of a remarkable, meditative thing they've touched on that only they do

There is something to be said about the interplay (or lack there of) of perma-solo drums and relatively static Helmet-y (good enough comparison) riffs.

Opeth is more metal, but they do some similar stuff. Thinking of this (especially how it ends):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rggQNCS8UjM

LOL I don't know exactly who Tool sounds like, but this band sure sounds like Tool!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y6NvbtLiRU

I know “Sober” and that’s it, I’ve never listened to Tool. Such a good band name! It sounds like a band Fred Frith would be in. Except for the dick-wrench merch they were peddling, kind of ruined it for me, works better as an austere mechanical band name than a dick joke

Hmm, I wouldn't put dick-wrench art past John Zorn (inc. cohort Frith and/or Mike Patton).

lol i remember the first tool song i ever heard was "hooker with a penis," you could not pay me to listen to a song with that title in 2019

The first two tool albums are lyrically the worst but musically my faves. Very frustrating.

i kinda think maynard in dick joke mode and maynard in new age bullshit mode are both very bad lyricists. i also think "prison sex" is a p incredible lyric about child abuse that is for some reason called "prison sex"

His lyrics relative to the songs are often very "Lick My Love Pump."