pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Blonde is kind of a surprising choice

Is MBDTF still their most recent 10.0?

pitchfork isn't a "they."
-J0rdan S.

that's true but they did used to be a publication with a distinctive editorial voice.

here is mark richardson writing about kid a in the best of the 2000s list, where it took the number one spot:

Kid A– with its gorgeously crafted electronics, sparkling production, and uneasy stance toward the technology it embraces completely– feels like the Big Album of the online age.

But you know what? I almost never think about that stuff. It all feels true, of course, but when I slide Kid A into the CD player (how’s that for a retro image?), something else happens. Once that drawer closes and the first chords of “Everything in Its Right Place” start– those haunting, clicking keyboard textures and Thom Yorke’s warped voice– all these other ideas feel secondary. Instead, I get lost in the dissonant horn blasts of “The National Anthem” and hypnotized between the play of the drones and the hissy beats in “Idioteque”; I feel the deep pang of yearning and sadness with the title track, and I rest during the gorgeous Brian Eno-like interlude of “Treefingers”. I’m listening to a brilliant album by an especially creative rock band functioning at its peak.

and here is doreen st. felix writing about blond.

The year 2016 crystallized the political disaster right under the surface. People theorized that we needed anthems to get us through the dark night. Big choruses, hooks as wide as highway signs, regular percussion that could gird us from chaos. But our mood was languorous; jingoism was the problem in the first place. We wanted the blurred, the softened, the existential. “Inhale, in hell, there’s heaven,” Ocean sings on “Solo,” capturing the whiplash experience of being young in this country in one line. Blonde is one synonym for American.

the voice has this kind of easy authority that would be more at home in the new york times. the writing might even be better but it's less personal.

and this connects a little bit to their shift toward pop and r and b, away from indie. the fanzine roots are gone. it's less idiosyncratic. and ilx always hated pitchfork to begin with so i don't think it can even really be seen as a loss. but it's a different publication now.

the last paragraph is a little over the top, but I liked that write-up of Blonde

There's some massive overstatement of the "shift toward pop and r and b, away from indie" going on ITT.

Indie was objectively less of a big deal in the 2010s than in the preceding decade - what seemed like a breakthrough into popular consciousness in 2008 (the year of GAPDYX) was perhaps really a final victory lap, with diminishing returns setting in shortly thereafter. So it's not surprising that a "best of the 2010s" has stuff like Frank Ocean and Beyonce and Robyn in its upper reaches.

But if you look at the recent reviews posted on the website, a more accurate picture of the site's current remit emerges:

- Nick Cave (BNM)
- Summer Walker
- RObert Glasper
- Automatic
- Wilco
- DIIV
- Carla da Forno
- Kris Davis
- Danny Brown
- Glenn Branca
- Kaputt
- WIVES

Based on P4K's own categorisations that breaks down as:

- 6 rock albums
- 1 experimental / rock album
- 2 jazz albums
- 1 pop / R&B album
- 1 rap album
- 1 electronic album

Compared to "old" P4K the most startling aspect of the above is the presence of 2 jazz album reviews, but it certainly doesn't imply that P4K has moved away from being a rock-oriented publication.

Obviously it's less fanzine-ish than it was in the late 90s and early 00s, but that transition had largely occurred even before the site officially became a big thing circa the mid 00s.

I’m happy that they reviewed the Summer Walker album. As a fan, I wish the review gave a little more perspective on her background, and uniqueness as an artist... but you can’t have everything. (Plus, I note the irony inherent in wanting a Pitchfork review to have more essay-like details.)

Not that it invalidates the point but GAPDYX was 2009

I think I've found the stupidest faux-influential line, from Davido - Fall: In the back half of the 2010s, Afropop exploded in popularity, with countless artists attempting to hop on the trend. “Fall” was instrumental in continuing to widen the influence of Nigeria’s music on Western culture, becoming an international anthem along the way. 'Continuing to widen?' Also, Oliver Twist is from 2012, five years before that, if they wanted to include an actual breakthrough for Nigerian music.

And that is the only inclusion from the whole continent on both lists, no? One more than Asia, I guess. Anything from South America?

Nicolas Jaar!

"fall" started to get a bunch of US radio play earlier this year which is presumably why it managed to crossover to p4k writers enough to make the list. it seems to have had the most success of any nigerian pop in the US so far so i think it does count as a minor breakthrough. "oliver twist" was obviously a much bigger breakthrough but the blurb is typical of p4k's america-centrism

Hailu Mergia is on the albums list xpost

there's a few others: J Balvin is the sole South American representation, Fatima Al Qadiri is Kuwaiti, though very much operating within the western experimental scene, and Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican so not South America but still very much from the latin pop world

What happened to the art-rock that's what i wonder. Wild Beasts, Foals, Wolf Alice, New Puritans, Idles etc etc? Great records, loved by all the British critics, loved by The People, worshipped by the Mercury-prize-giving type bods.. totally and completely absent from Pitch4k.

It's also weird to my mind that a band like The 1975 can be named Band Of The Decade on the front of Q (a mag with some of the same writers as Pitch4k), and yet in their top albums list there's only a cursory coupla nods down the arse end. The consensus has gone haywire.

'Murica über alles.

the voice has this kind of easy authority that would be more at home in the new york times. the writing might even be better but it's less personal.

― treeship., Tuesday, October 8, 2019 10:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Tbf, St Felix's regular outlet is the New Yorker.

That Blonde blurb, my antipathy for the album aside, is what I don't want to read in album reviews.

This album is still important because we told you it was important three years ago because the hype for the album was very important and game changing and social media and memes and remember what happened in 2016?

first person plural is a curse

Yeah, I thought Adam Neumann killed We

the "Blonde" blurb (esp the end) made me wonder if any non-American writers participated in this

Insofar as the US is the most diverse country in the world, there is no need to look beyond its borders for cultural commentary of any kind.

(Sorry, I'll stop.)

despite the shoeless grifter's efforts 'we' as a critical fallback remains more popular than ever. blame facebook

aside from very specific, relevant exceptions, music writing that invokes the Trump Era is going to age exactly as badly as all the writing (some of which I did myself) that invoked the Bush Era in the early to mid aughts.

i don’t think I’ve heard blonde yet 🙊 regardless we can all agree jord’s channel orange blurb pwns dst’s (whom i like)

aside from very specific, relevant exceptions, music writing that invokes the Trump Era is going to age exactly as badly as all the writing (some of which I did myself) that invoked the Bush Era in the early to mid aughts.

― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Wednesday, October 9, 2019 10:26 AM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

fixed

never forget:
Sometimes we pick the music; sometimes the music picks us. On September 11, Toxicity was the biggest album in America, an accident of fate that somehow seemed perfectly timed. Just as confused as we were, this was punk metal doing what it does best: using noise to navigate the gray area of our screwed-up minds and emotions. This is the sound of now.

i still don't know how to spell blond(e), that's my big problem with it.

Apparently the title is Blonde, but it says Blond on the cover.

I'd much rather listen to Toxicity than Blonde

Once you see the focus on 'impact' it's impossible to see. From The Archandroid: Monáe’s star would continue to rise from here, from her guest vocal on fun.’s ubiquitous “We Are Young,” to her acting roles in Moonlight and Hidden Figures, to an Album of the Year Grammy nomination for 2018’s Dirty Computer. The ArchAndroid is the genesis of it all. This album is not good because it led to a role on Hidden Figures, ffs.

This is a good piece on 'viral pop'.

on wolf alice, at least, I am one data point among many but I totally forgot about wolf alice on albums and had "don't delete the kisses" at #85, which is wildly low in retrospect

in general a non-trivial amount of omissions can be explained by "shit, I forgot"

(I also forgot nick cave)

Archandroid is exhausting. Electric Lady underrated! I've yet to give Dirty Computer a proper listen.... I really get exhausted with albums that are "important" on arrival.

Imagine if Frank Ocean only put out Endless in 2016. Remember Blonde was like a surprise soon after? I think that was really smart. it gave the main of the two works some damn breathing room. I love Blonde, but damned if I want to listen to it this week. Cripes.

needless to say I wouldn't make a great album reviewer. My vocabulary here isn't helping. I listened to Archandroid before Monae was real famous, it's exhausting in that it's overly long and completely bursting with ideas, half of which work great. "Tightrope" would be on my top 100 of the decade.

Dirty Computer had all this pre-release hype of oh, finally she made a great album (she already had), Prince is all over it (well he was ON the last one), she's a human now (pffffft), err... yeah ok I'll get to it

Dirty Computer is amazing and wonderful and joyous, but clearly it's not languorous enough for pitchfork.

Languorous music is good not bad imho (see post-Romanticism).

Toxicity is pretty good.

That too.

Xpost on Trump era shoehorning, I thought the write up for "Cranes in the Sky" in the songs list was an egregious example of trying to fit something into our Big Political Moment:

Solange dropped A Seat at the Table less than six weeks before America elected Donald Trump as its 45th president. For people who had been listening to the album on repeat during that time, putting on “Cranes in the Sky,” its most moving track, was like popping an Emergen-C for a flu we didn’t even know we were in danger of contracting.

And the conclusion:

At a time when power is something loud and dangerous and brash, “Cranes in the Sky” is an atypical song of revolution. It will be played endlessly, hopefully in less toxic times—not during rallies, or when a candidate walks onstage, but in quiet moments when we need to reflect, recharge, and rediscover our own beauty.

But like, I don't know, the song seems more clearly about someone trying to get away from the city that reminds them of their ex-lover. Maybe I'm being too literal.

All snark aside my issue is not with the paucity of indie here - personally I'd rather listen to Meghan Trainor than Car Seat Headrest, which is saying a lot because I'd rather have my eyeballs extracted with corkscrews than listen to Meghan Trainor - but with the relative absence of other genres besides token indie and cult of personality r&b / rap / mainstream pop. There's been a lot of good afrobeat, jazz, metal, techno, and punk released over the past ten years but you'd never know it reading that list. I'm sure there were also good blues, zydeco, and bluegrass albums released too but I don't expect Pitchfork to cover those because they never have; the dearth of metal, jazz, and techno, however, is disappointing given some very excellent past and present metal, jazz, and techno writers on staff.

lmao i hadn't read any of the write-ups

But like, I don't know, the song seems more clearly about someone trying to get away from the city that reminds them of their ex-lover. Maybe I'm being too literal.

― klonman, Wednesday, October 9, 2019 12:47 PM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean you could always go check what the artist had to say

I used to write and record a lot in Miami during that time, when there was a real estate boom in America, and developers were developing all of this new property. There was a new condo going up every ten feet. You recorded a lot there as well, and I think we experienced Miami as a place of refuge and peace. We weren’t out there wilin’ out and partying. I remember looking up and seeing all of these cranes in the sky. They were so heavy and such an eyesore, and not what I identified with peace and refuge. I remember thinking of it as an analogy for my transition—this idea of building up, up, up that was going on in our country at the time, all of this excessive building, and not really dealing with what was in front of us. And we all know how that ended. That crashed and burned. It was a catastrophe. And that line came to me because it felt so indicative of what was going on in my life as well. And, eight years later, it’s really interesting that now, here we are again, not seeing what’s happening in our country, not wanting to put into perspective all of these ugly things that are staring us in the face.

(source: https://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/solange -- previously she does mention it having a personal resonance as well, but the rest very much accords with the blurb)

she goes into more detail about this on the song exploder episode, it's a good one

Kitty’s proximity to black culture—coupled with glaring, if age-appropriate, knowledge gaps—made her an early target: A 2013 incident in which she misunderstood a reference on Beyoncé and JAY-Z’s “Drunk in Love” spurred thinkpieces and several days of Twitter discourse, but her thoughtful, nuanced Tumblr apology barely registered.

I can't believe that it's been 6 years since "eat the cake, anime"-gate! I still think about that line every time I eat cake or watch anime.

(that is from https://pitchfork.com/features/article/2010s-decade-in-viral-stardom-lil-nas-x-doja-cat-kitty-pryde/ )

"Also, Oliver Twist is from 2012, five years before that, if they wanted to include an actual breakthrough for Nigerian music."

Oliver Twist felt like a tipping point without much of a mainstream follow through - it was probably viewed as something of a novelty at the time. It took a while for artists like Wizkid and Burna Boy and Davido to break through into wider cosciousness (although they always played to massive crowds in Africa itself).