pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

I like the old Dusted zine format--writeups addressing the strengths and weaknesses with no metrics involved whatsoever.

This utterly daft paragraph, from the Lindstrom review, is peak Pfork.

"Which can’t be said of the third track, titled by a lousy joke that feels, well, profane. How about we not appropriate the sacrament of an African American spiritual promising biblical deliverance from slavery in the service of a hardware pun? How about we not “Swing Low, Sweet LFO,” with its plinky Pianet and sugary Prophet 6 sweeps, less offensive than Moby’s appropriation of spirituals for car commercials but also, unfortunately, very much not as memorable?"

oh man just wait til he finds out about England's rugby fans

Forgive the wicked Norwegian, for he knows not what he does.

Ha ha, indeed.

(to both posts)

2019 Pfork would give Thom Yorke shit for the lyrics to 'Pyramid Song'.

If Yorke gave an interview today like the one he gave Melody Maker in 1995 ("I've never met a single beautiful woman I've ever liked, it's all about unearned privilege"), Pitchfork would not so much explode as dissolve into a shimmering dark mass of anti-matter.

I was not aware of that quote. CANCELLED.

https://citizeninsane.eu/media/uk/mm/02/img/m1995-03-11MM-3.jpg

Thom Yorke has always been a dickhead. (I accept this is a bit off topic)

I wonder what folk these days would make of the Jerky Boys sketch they named their debut album after. I doubt those guys would pass the wokeness test.

Vice published a piece about this a few years ago:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/6e44q4/the-jerky-boys-could-never-exist-today

".. they do have a track called “Terrorist Pizza.” And the whole call is Ahmed going, “Shut the fuck up! I’m going to fucking kill you!” That’s the whole call, threatening to bomb the pizza place. Jesus Christ. Yes, we’re living in a post-9/11 America, but in hindsight, it still seems pretty fucked up (and also lazy) to call someone and threaten to kill them. People are getting investigated in the UK now for just tweeting about cops. Imagine if you called someone and said you were going to kill them and their family with a bomb. You’d be in federal prison or shipped directly off to Guantanamo Bay. If they came along today, the Jerky Boys’ career would be about three days long."

Thanks yeah.. great piece. Now i also know what grape phylloxera was/is.

counterpoint: new crank yankers episodes are airing now

See also: Logan Paul, et al.

yep, they had an agenda with this list the entire time.

oh no an agenda

not sure how essay confirms the list agenda

the agenda was to piss austin off, and they succeeded wildly

and I'd rather have Jason King write it than anyone else.

I've somehow had the willpower to not look at this list
But I did see Frank Ocean was number one on Twitter

I listened to it again, I don't know what I'm missing with Blonde but I do not get it

the agenda was to piss austin off,

not really. it's just funny to me. they are spewing fox news levels of self-proliferating propaganda. "the most trusted voice in music" or "fair and balanced" — yeah, for that one very specific thing.

the pushing of a narrative is just stupid.

I think AC/DC is the only band I have ever seen successfully open a set with its biggest hit.

I've seen Beyonce open with Crazy In Love and she killed it.

Just realised there's only one St Vincent album on the list.

i'm not mad, i'm laughing.

I listened to it again, I don't know what I'm missing with Blonde but I do not get it

i mean, i was genuinely laughing when reading that piece published this morning. the floundering and excessive self-hyping they're doing at this point to try and legitimize their own position is just laughable at this point to me. feels very juvenile and disingenuous for me to have to add "lol" to all my posts. this whole debacle is literally a joke to me. i've gotten some mighty healthy laughs out of it so far, and i enjoy laughing, so i'd like to continue to add on to the joke.

i don't get the agenda thing, it seems very much in line with a lot of other essays published in tandem w/best-of lists or decade summations, simply taking an aspect of music of the past decade and ruminating about what it all meant and continues to mean.

Which can’t be said of the third track, titled by a lousy joke that feels, well, profane. How about we not appropriate the sacrament of an African American spiritual promising biblical deliverance from slavery in the service of a hardware pun? How about we not “Swing Low, Sweet LFO,” with its plinky Pianet and sugary Prophet 6 sweeps, less offensive than Moby’s appropriation of spirituals for car commercials but also, unfortunately, very much not as memorable?

this writer doesn't understand religion or music

warning: cornball post comin up, but here goes

way upthread someone posted about the explicit editorial directive to focus on the music's impact on the larger culture, how it changed things, etc. that I just found pretty depressing, to be honest. It's not that context isn't important for music (it definitely is), but it strikes me as deeply misguided to privilege context over actual content. It skips over what makes music important and impactful in the first place: the way it emotionally/intellectually/physically engages the listener. Like, what makes music "matter" in the broader context, first and foremost, is that it strikes a chord with the listener - and what strikes a chord with a listener isn't a checklist of "this music was made by artist X and their backstory is Y and their political positions are Z" it's always something deeper and more mysterious and more basic than that.

By way of a recent example, on the Neil Young thread yesterday I brought up the second verse of "Rockin' in the Free World" as a verse that always really hits me, no matter how many times I've heard it. And what gets me about that song and that verse in particular isn't the Reagan/Bush context or the album's "comeback" role in his catalog, it's that specific lyrical image of lost youth, of squandered opportunity, of tragic failure, delivered by a quavery, keening voice over a minor key chord change - that is then immediately followed by that kick into the defiant, major key refrain of the chorus. It's *that sound* and *those words* and the way they're knotted together that is more interesting, more deeply affecting than knowing that it was Neil Young doing it and when and why etc etc. Even if that stuff is interesting (and it is!) it isn't what makes the music affect me in the first place.

A fascinating conflation's happening in your post, Shakey. Your reaction to "Rockin'..." -- a valid one -- is not any different than the listener in 1989 exhausted by eight years of Reagan and bracing himself for four years of Poppy. The difference, though, is how you explained your reaction in musical terms. You could argue that the near absence of any attempt to explain what song arrangements do in many of these blurbs is the disappointment.

well yeah

I guess the specificity of couching things strictly in their original socio-political context annoys me. It can help you understand where the music comes from, sure. But to stick with this particular example, the images and the emotions in the song map onto a whole bunch of other contexts as well - everyone has personal experiences with failure and loss and just trying to keep on going in the middle of regret and sadness, it's not like that's unique to Americans in the 80s.

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.

(NB: I don't believe Eliot)

hamlet piece is completely boneheaded imo, shoulda stuck to cats

his favorite Shakespeare was Cymbeline!

In a similarly universalising mode, I wonder if it's an expression of the flattening and weightlessness of things that, I think, Frederic Jameson gabbed about: every capsule review is a frantic attempt to anchor things as they hurtle past. There's also been a tip towards an ecstatic register in *all* contemporary criticism from what I can make out. Which does chime with Eliot's whole 'indisciplined squads of emotion' schtick.

there's definitely a tone of desperation - "this MATTERS! because it's tied to other things that MATTER!"

but I think the simple fact is that for large swathes of the population, music *doesn't* matter, not like it did for a few decades anyway. People don't invest it with the level of emotional, financial, or psychological commitment that they used to. I mean, you used to be able to make a reasonable guess at what music people liked by the way they dressed, that's how deeply people incorporated music into their identities. That's just one minor example, but that level of engagement for the most part just isn't common anymore. People construct their identities out of different tools now, and music has a diminished role in that, which means they pay less attention to it which means it doesn't have the dramatic impact it used to be capable of.

On the contrary: music is as or more central than ever in identity construction among high schoolers and college kids.

really? maybe I'm just in the wrong world of young people...

but I think the simple fact is that for large swathes of the population, music *doesn't* matter, not like it did for a few decades anyway. People don't invest it with the level of emotional, financial, or psychological commitment that they used to.

ah yes this is provable

have you been to a billie eilish concert

I know you interact with way more of that age group than I currently do

xp

using anecdotal evidence to make this claim is bullshit and you know it

I do know a couple teenage billie eilish fans! my daughter otoh had never heard of her.

xp

using anecdotal evidence to make this claim is bullshit and you know it

I do, I'm happy to concede the latter point and entertain other explanations for why critical discourse has, as Chinaski said, seemed to devolve into a "frantic attempt to anchor things as they hurtle past"

I’m glad we finally get to the Poptimism Classic argument of who knows the most children

I thought it was you!

young's voice on that verse also echoes (intentionally or accidentally) his plaints on "ohio," which i think underscores the hopelessness—"we should have known better," etc

it's not like that's unique to Americans in the 80s

Thank you.