pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

I dont know Folklore is pretty good indie folk music, but is it going to inspire a thread with 1000 unicorn pics? I dont think so.

light - if you’re mad at a jazz album getting a sub-8.0 score, don’t take it out on Folklore... it’s totally a 4-star pop album. (I don’t think it makes sense anyway to comparatively rank albums in different genres, but I’ve said that in this thread already.)

I should do what now?

hmm

― The GOAT Harold Land (Karl Malone), Saturday, August 1, 2020 12:59 AM

Ha, I noticed that with the review of the new Greg Dulli album at one point. I briefly thought the days of the inscrutable pan had returned.

Like yeah, it's basically the same as an 8.0, but that anyone with ears could possibly think this record by Ambrose Akinmusire is less good that Taylor's new sentimental pop diarrea opus is wild to me.

As I've noted on here before, pretty much every jazz album reviewed on Pitchfork gets a score of between 7.0 and 8.0. It's the law.

sentimental pop diarrea opus

so you're saying it's watered down?

I assumed it meant the music is all over the place, throw it at the wall and see what sticks kind of thing

I guess that's one way of creating abstract set

*art

The header on the Sunday review reads "Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible."

But some of the albums *were* in the archives at some point, right? Like today, Philip Sherburne reviewed Smog's Knock Knock, which was originally reviewed by Samir Khan.

So was Khan's review scrubbed at some point in the past, or did Sherburne's review replace it? I know that the site has gotten rid of all reviews before 1999, but the Smog record came out in January 1999. Other reviews from that month are still online.

Though probably quite insane, Callahan possesses three very important attributes: an unmistakable voice, a perplexing gift for the language of story, and the ability to make a simple song sound like a universe with impeccable taste in arrangements. He's a true slave of the song, and whatever he may lack in production technique is excused by something most musicians would kill their pregnant cat for: soul.

Why was quality work like this scrubbed i wonder

"honey, have you seen my pregnant cat anywhere?"

shit, pregnant cat!

katherine (if you’re reading) - I believe there’s a typo in today’s Alanis review(?):

just imagine the respose to “Thank U”

Great review. Love the "method to the badness" / "she knows what she's doing" paragraph.

Samir was 19 when he wrote that, just saying

This sounds like someone writing a paper in college about rap lyrics:

Like Cardi, she states what her body needs to reach this level of excitement. Her stellar performance is contingent on whether the other party is equipped to match what she’s bringing

Huh, I thought Sam1r was older than me.

He is! you and I are the same age and I'm pretty sure he's one year older than I am

Ah

This sounds like someone writing a paper in college about rap lyrics:

it's a pitch-perfect replica of a genius annotation

oh baby, state what your body needs to reach this level of excitement

Forgive me, it just seems obligatory

Pitchfork: King PU$$Y Eater revolutionizes our perception of bodies and spaces with his hit single "Goop on Ya Grinch" [7.6]

— nick (@JucheMane) April 14, 2017

prescient tweet

oh my god it's true

In summary, Megan Thee Stallion is a woman of contrasts

That tweet is gold

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I obvs get why everyone's making fun of that track review (the "Cardi kicks off “WAP” with force" part especially reads like a high school English paper) but what I'm wondering is: what *exactly* is the right way to review a song like this? It feels like no matter how you review a raunchy rap song and engage it seriously, it's gonna sound at least a little bit like the goop on ya grinch tweet.. or am I wrong? are there better examples?

I think all you need to do avoid the "Goop on Ya Grinch" effect is just not try to make it sound politically progressive

I used to laugh at how short and matter-of-fact a lot of record reviews in old punk zines were, but now I think I'd prefer it if reviews were just like "Atlanta-style hip-hop with dueling female vox. For fans of NICKI MINAJ and RICO NASTY. Lyric sheet in English and Finnish."

what *exactly* is the right way to review a song like this?

Craig Jenkins did all right.

I mean it *is* politically progressive in its own way, but that’s like the fifth most interesting thing about it and it’s possible to write about that without sounding like a somber lecture about microaggressions or whatever

lol JRN love that style of review: "Brutal Belgian raw d-beat, B+"

^This is OTM, though — in most cases, I think “track reviews” that exceed a sentence or two (i.e., fanzine or trade mag style) are hard to pull off, because... it’s a track, it’s a few minutes long, you can go listen to it, it speaks for itself. Any attempt at elaborate exegesis is bound to feel rickety and beside-the-point. (There are exceptions, I’m sure, like for very weighty or culturally relevant singles in the vein of “This Is America,” etc.)

hardwax house style

I don’t know if I agree with that take? Like, as executed by Pitchfork with their current approach and under their current mandates, sure, a track review that’s being done for perfunctory reasons stands the risk of feeling perfunctory. But I don’t think a song needs to be some sort of multifaceted diamond of obvious talking points to reward detailed examination. Former ilxor and person-whose music-opinions-I-tend-to-respect Marcello Carlin said around 2015 that he could write an entire book about Desiigner’s “Panda” if anyone were inclined to pay him for it, and I 1) believe him and 2) think it’d be pretty good.
(Hoping this doesn’t become some kind of rabbit hole for the thread but I just wanted to put my thoughts down while the above post was still recent)

xp, obvs, no objections to Hardwax house style

I could be wrong! I imagine a good writer could find a lot to say about a very good and/or significant new single... but maybe those stars just don’t align too often?

rather read a book about Tiimmy Turner

I mean that style is gone forever either way, it was a product of print, trying to cram as many reviews as possible in, but it definitely had a certain spartan poetry

I remember the 7” reviews that Douglas Wolk, another former(?) ilxor, wrote in CMJ back in the ‘90s... he had a way of expressing the “you gotta hear this” essence of a new single via a deceptively casual sentence or two. His reviews left you with an appetite to track down each 7”, not feeling like you just digested a mini essay.

(but yes, I concede that the conditions which produced reviews like that are long behind us.)

my understanding is that Douglas' "All the Marvels" book is in the editing stage now.
https://www.instagram.com/allofthemarvels/

I used to write track reviews for a particular electronic publication's online presence, and always found it quite easy-- but I'd grown up with a combo of the Hardwax style and MRR/punk zine style. Three to four short sentences is all a track needs, much of the time.

The Rage Against the Machine review isn't that bad, but a few things made me wince, especially coming from one of the site's editors, someone who's supposed to fix other people's writing:

Here they cast their gaze back through history to reel in half a millennia of theft, enslavement, and slaughter at the hands of the colonial state in the Americas. - the singular form of "millennia" is "millennium"

The gravity of hip-hop and the thick brow of metal - fuuuuuck you, dude

a steroid injection to the carceral state that put thousands of disproportionately Black men into newly constructed prisons - how can a person be "disproportionately Black"?

good catches there

I think all you need to do avoid the "Goop on Ya Grinch" effect is just not try to make it sound politically progressive

― JRN, Saturday, August 8, 2020 10:16 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

bingo

His reviews left you with an appetite to track down each 7”, not feeling like you just digested a mini essay

I like Douglas Wolk and MRR style but I also like and maybe prefer essays, mini or otherwise, when they're smart and interesting

the gravity of hip-hop and the thick brow of metal

yes this is some ignorant bullshit

that put thousands of disproportionately Black men into newly constructed prisons

Heh, I tripped over this one as well. Can't believe this has been proofread because surely you'll catch this.

there's a lot of shit you can say about christgau, but i always appreciated a 2 or 3 sentencer. even if it didn't quite make sense without hearing the record, it at least stoked some curiosity on what he was going on about