pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Lol Snrub

(Sometimes stylized as MRSNRU8)

Yeah, tbqh despite some occasional good writing (often by people who post on here, afaict), P4k seems more and more like Rolling Stone or Spin seemed to me in the early to mid aughts-- often straining for relevancy while simultaneously focusing on big-tent shit that no one who actually cares about music wants to pay attention to.

but presumably gets clicks

It points more toward the irrelevancy of P4k to a certain younger demographic than anything. I have plenty of friends with teens, and none of them give a flying fuck about Wilco, and rightly so! But do the more nerdy and strange among them click on the OPN and Arca reviews on P4k? Sure.

I guess I just stopped reading it as much because of what has been pointed out, that so many of the reviews and news focus on shit that doesn't matter to me...aka contemporary guitar driven music, which is overwhelmingly mediocre.

I'm not exactly capn save a p4k but I don't know that there's a good way to make everyone happy on four reviews a day tbh

I mean, my idea would be to stop reviewing reissues of albums that suck.

Or stop trying to be everything to everyone.

The difference is that in the early to mid 00s Rolling Stone and Spin were being overtaken by p4k. Not sure there’s a big outlet overtaking p4k, or if such a thing will ever happen again

xp I have a sort of opposite suggestion, which would be to expand their coverage ever further. They could publish multiple reviews per week in genres they barely touch, in addition to what they’re already doing. (It’s what we did at a successful, for awhile, music dot-com in the early 2000s.) Maybe this would turn off readers who are just looking for “cool music”; but otoh, maybe Pitchfork could lead their readers toward appreciating a wider lens.

I may have said this before on here but P4k held the party line during the SoundCloud rap and Supreme bedroom pop era and basically got their milkshake drank by No Jumper and Pigeons & Planes.

xpost

I mean, my idea would be to stop reviewing reissues of albums that suck.

― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table)

I'm listening to a Mary J. Blige reissue.

Wilco reissues are for core p4k readers what CSN box sets are for core RS readers

Or stop trying to be everything to everyone.

― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table),

I think this is...wrong. The rockcrit generation emergent after 2012 is more hospitable to Black, disco, and country than Pitchfork's original crew, and god bless'em -- I'm older than they and hated the condescension. Acting as some sort of arbiter, whatever their clicks in 2020, works.

It's a circular argument. To stop being Everything to Everyone would be retreating to covering Wilco-esque bands.

im pretty sure the fraction of guitar music covered by p4k is at an all-time low in 2020

#atlast

I may have said this before on here but P4k held the party line during the SoundCloud rap and Supreme bedroom pop era and basically got their milkshake drank by No Jumper and Pigeons & Planes.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Saturday, November 7, 2020 2:17 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

sounds like it was a good strategy, since no ones ever heard of either of these and both those turned out to be short lived fads?

young millenial/gen z are still checking p4k from what i can tell. gen z are still pretty young so time will tell but imo they don’t have a v strong cultural identity. they mostly just rehash millenial stuff. like “lofi” and the poppy tiktok r&b

I'm a Fork contributor with no insight into the e-board's machinations, I should note.

you kinda have to try being everything to everyone since streaming services are turning the majority of listeners into taste omnivores (or at least this is my impression - hardly anyone I know speaks in genres anymore)

I can see where P4k would do better to be more expansive, ie the exact opposite of what I was saying up thread. To me it makes sense to either focus or go big, and going big makes more sense.

(I also admit that yes, a lot of where I am coming from is related to my inability to understand what people hear in a lot of newer guitar-driven music)

they cover a lot less of it than they used to!

I know this is not a good thread for this sentiment but I think Pitchfork has actually done great job of becoming much more inclusive and diverse of a great variety of music and genres in the past 5 or so years

I may have said this before on here but P4k held the party line during the SoundCloud rap and Supreme bedroom pop era and basically got their milkshake drank by No Jumper and Pigeons & Planes.

I unfortunately just clicked on that site for the first awful time in years and read an idiotic "what does it mean to be an industry plant?" article and my day is already ruined

sounds like the sort of thing an industry plant would say

your momma's so old she knew industry park when it was just a plant

Pigeon and Planes seems to have been mostly wiped off the web and exists as a few articles on Complex?

And No Jumper seems to be a merch site for a podcast or something

what a buch of sellouts amirite

If they conceptualize music as a cool lifestyle thing, and/or focus mainly on appealing to the youngs, they’ll always be chasing trends. Why not be an authoritative source of music info & insight for everyone who loves music? (But I guess that’s what an oldster would say.)

they’ll always be chasing trends

just like they always have.

if they were smart, they'd start a network of sites, each with a different specific focus but all revolving around music news and reviews. kind of like what the gawker cluster of sites was to gossip and social media news.

They’ve done branch off sites at least four times and they’ve all been absolute fiascos

They haven’t tried one about antique guitars yet

The trends will still be there, they don't have to ignore them. I feel like the niche they've fallen into - "aging Millennial, outgrowing "indie," interested in SNL and RRHOF updates" - may be an increasingly limiting one.

argue about what P4k should or shouldn't do or shouldn't or shouldn't be all day long if you want but a review of a reissue of Summerteeth is not a review of an album that sucks

I had just cited one that as part of the trend of reviewing lots of reissues. (Also, to be clear, I don't claim to know how to publish a successful music website in 2020. I'm just approaching this as a reader.)

If anything, they should probably be reviewing even more albums that suck! As long as it's new & somewhat notable.

point in their favor re: covering obscure stuff: one of the acts they reviewed today (Jake Muir) makes collage-based electronic stuff and currently sits at 712 monthly Spotify listeners

i've been pointed towards all sorts of gems like that via pitchfork!

the Topdown Dialectic albums, for example, both sit at <20K plays per track, and are incredible. it's not a mainstream music kind of thing (more like a honed version of late-90s autechre), but they're some of the best electronic releases in the last few years that i've heard.

I also think it's really cool they gave Angel Bat Dawid such prominent placement and a BNM! I mean, well deserved and it's not like that's a household name.

Just checked and its the fifth Best New Album tagged as 'jazz' this year. Must be a record for them?

(The other four are Jeff Parker, Nubya Garcia, Jyoti, and Makaya McCraven's reworking of Gil Scott-Heron)

Their jazz coverage is so weird and micro-focused; for a few years they would only review Vijay Iyer albums, then they branched out and reviewed a few other ECM artists, and now they're 100% in the tank for International Anthem. Which is a great label, make no mistake, but their jazz coverage is obviously (to me, because I know who the relevant publicists are) publicist-driven in a way that the rest of the stuff they write about isn't.

austin which is worse - pitchfork or the private prison system?

topdown dialectic is insanely fucking good and it’s fucked up that all their stuff is like 50 physical copies

Agreed and I think KM only mentioned it to brag about his copies ;)

that is 100% true!

i only picked up vol. 2, though (massive edition of 250!)

the 2 LPs are both free online, though, in the usual places

austin which is worse - pitchfork or the private prison system?

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, November 9, 2020 10:38 AM

two of the same thing.

dude