pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

I assume because p4k came out of the same racist edgelord indie culture and no reviewer thought to bring it up before or it would have hit too close to home

the comparison isn't skrewdriver it's cocorosie or something idk

do they really have the power to sink albums these days

But Pitchfork has reviewed the previous four RS albums without even mentioning this quarter century-old gaffe, so why effectively sink an album on the day of its release by dredging this up now?

Gee I wonder if there's anything about the different reviewers that might clue us in here. Something that unlike the previous two reviewers might make Terry not dismiss the n-word as a "bad word"? Cool to get some white people's thoughts on the statute of limitations on racial slurs though, thanks, there hasn't been enough of that in our public discourse.

This thread's persistent desire to view pfork as some kind of totalitarian culture committee or treeship's relentless need to make a sadface at cancel culture can end up making you look pretty ignorant.

this stuff can sometimes irk but it didn't seem like a bad approach here - "note the offense, note how the artist's approach has changed, then go on to talk about the new record" as is done here seems perfectly fine to me

lmao at getting mad at this review

yeah tbh it strikes me as an extremely fair & broadminded way of handling that, not ignoring, excusing or forgiving that stuff while also not defining him by it. the whole context of how & why its brought up in the review is to talk about the ways in which hes changed. a totally fair cop imo

yeah i didn't think it was unfair

This is like saying no one can ever say "in retrospect, naming a band 'Rapeman' was a bad idea" when talking about Steve Albini

Having checked out the song in question, Terry was, if anything, overly generous: the word's not just in the title, which that review kind of implies is the case

I was struggling to think of a good analogy but Albini is a good one.

has albini talked about that any time recently? i vaguely remember it in Our Band Could Be Your Life, but it seemed to be not much more than wanting to shock people

within circles that care about albini that exact sentiment is still v much a thing xps

that sucks.

the azerrad book was so uncritical (not just in his case) it pissed me off

his edgelord thing had a clear ideological edge to it which I'm sure he's keen to disavow now- but it's hard to miss unless you're really trying

this is the most substantial conversation I've seen w Albini wrt these issues

https://www.listenlistenlisten.org/stevealbini/

in general having talked to a lot of people who have worked with him, is he's sort of the inverse of a lot of "sensitive guy" indie creeps in that his public persona is problematic but people who know him seem to say great things about him personally (latter day Shellac/producer era Albini)

that's a very good interview, thanks!

albini is legitimately confounding to me wrt this stuff. i think i posted elsewhere about seeing him go on a weird tirade of sexual insults at a female fan for talking at a shellac show a few years ago, and he definitely has been known to still throw around an n-bomb from time to time, in the context of "can you believe ignorant rappers say this?" but then other times like in that interview he can be super intelligent & insightful about allyship, he clearly thinks deeply about that stuff and cares a lot, but just seems to be saddled with some kind of weird compulsion leftover from the 80s re:"taboo language" where he just cant resist putting his hand on the hot stove from time to time. its so weird.

In an April 2020 interview on the Conan Neutron's Protonic Reversal podcast, Albini expressed regret for the name of the band, saying that he didn't feel he had been "held to account for being in a band called Rapeman". He added that "it was a flippant choice", calling it unconscionable and indefensible. He later likened it to getting a bad tattoo.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeman

The highest-profile promotion I've ever seen the Reigning Sound and Greg Cartwright receive is from Beto O'Rourke and Tom Scharpling, not the music press, so I'm not sure how much impact the Pitchfork review will have on their fortunes.

Feel Like I Have To Defend Myself. 1 Idk Who The Fuck Steve Albino Is 2. I Dont 'Nigger Everything Insight' 3. I Never Say Fuck U To Drivers

— Tyler, The Creator (@tylerthecreator) August 10, 2011

"Steve Albino" is still the funniest thing Tyler ever said

The History of Pitchfork's Reviews Section in 38 Reviews

They include the monkey pissing in its own mouth but somehow don't illustrate the piece with a picture of a dog licking its own balls. Oh well, at least there's this, from the intro:

For a large swath of time, the site was run mostly by middle-class white guys in their 20s and 30s, and a decent chunk of the taste and writing reflected that limited perspective.

And there is an ILX mention! (Check the Lizzo entry towards the end of the list.)

Caption to the article about how Eddie Van Halen influenced the new Mdou Moctar album:

Eddie Halen photo by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns. Graphic by Drew Litowitz.

the review explorer thing that they created is incredibly dumb

excited to read the article tho

yeah, the data and the visualization did not see eye to eye on that one

The reason this very thread started!

Did you know our review of Kylie Minogue's Fever started out as an April Fool's joke? The joke didn't come close to landing, but it did mark a turning point for Pitchfork

Read how, along with other fun facts from our reviews section: https://t.co/R0DKPtbz1y pic.twitter.com/UOpdUeN9hQ

— Pitchfork (@pitchfork) May 25, 2021

cowards left out the coltrane review

Pitchfork Reviews Reviews is back!

The list is 38 and my joke was that it was originally 40 but they had to cut Coltrane at the Vanguard and an Eve B**low review

lmao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5fH5Qa0ELg

brings me so much joy. every so often i'll be listening to a jazz record and hear a voice in my head say "It’s only when you listen to a perfect old jazz tune like this that you realize how much drum-n-bass is derived from this music."

Oops, they did it again:

Power Trip’s Riley Gale Cause of Death Revealed

lots in here
https://last-donut-of-the-night.letterdrop.com/p/on-disclosures-settle-and-revisiting-criticism

ugh why is it numbered

Yes, that is a bad call

my standards are probably too high for a regularly published music writing newsletter. i like larry

why does it matter if it's numbered? i don't understand *why* it is but it doesn't bother me ... but wonder if i'm missing something.

It lends it the tone of a philosophical treatise.

just a pet peeve really, if you're using numbers to break up a piece but the numbers don't even signify discrete ideas and in fact it could all just be part of one paragraph, it's very distracting

i have also totally done this myself which is the origin story of every pet peeve i have about writing

I think if you're gonna number your paragraphs you are obligated to include the total number in the headline.

35 Thoughts About Some Dumb Fuckin' Thing

(#27 will blow your mind)

5 Dumb Thoughts About Things Out This Week You Should Listen to Now

Catching up on that retrospective of reviews and I did a doubletake at this quote about Broken Social Scene:

Released in Canada in October 2002, the album had yet to arrive Stateside when Pitchfork’s Best New Music review ran the following February.

When people talk about something happening "Stateside" don't they mean "this side of the ocean"? Like, the same side that Canada is on? I would only ever use that expression in contrast with UK/Europe. Or have I always misunderstood, and I was shockingly old when I learned something today?

(I know there is probably a better thread for this but I can't think of what it is)

As a Canadian, I've always taken it to mean "on the US side of the border" (land or sea).

huh!

As a US citizen, I have always parsed "Stateside" as "within the borders of the United States"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hakgZ65dmfU