pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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

The number thing just seemed like they were going to write something but then stopped at the brainstorming process... but wdik

I never understood "Stateside" to include Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Paraguay, etc.

Stateside = in the United States. Not an expression Americans use very often ime.

The number thing just seemed like they were going to write something but then stopped at the brainstorming process... but wdik

― brimstead, Friday, May 28, 2021 3:08 PM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

its a newsletter wgas

the correct take

It is very odd to be confronted with a video for a terrible song (per Alfred's post a few posts up) where you were in the invite-only audience.

Reviews Explorer:

We've reviewed 43 albums from my bloody valentine and 13 similar artists.

Was this thing even tested at all? Kevin Shields will have a heart attack if he sees those numbers.

I assume that 43 includes albums by the similar artists.

damn Ned that's OG Tin Machine cred, salute

xpost, yep

i was loling at that the morning it came out:

We've reviewed 43 albums from my bloody valentine and 13 similar artists.

the most misleading sentence ever written. what they mean is that spotify identified 13 similar artists, and combined with the reviewed albums by MBV (which we will not tell you here), those 14 artists have been reviewed 43 times, in total. looooooool k

EVER WRITTEN

i think the way to do it would be "We've reviewed 2 albums from MBV and 41 albums from 13 artists similar to MBV"

and then the artist similar to MBV is fucking deafheaven or something

Isnt this a bit like AMG’s Similar Albums tab?

AMG has reviewed 97,525 albums by the beatles and 22,320 similar acts

Re: Albini discussion upthread, I'm not defending it-- y'all know me, after all-- but it's worth pointing out that one attitude among people of Albini's generation is that language policing is idiotic and has little to do with actual allyship. I don't agree, but I've met enough people of various races who feel this way and know it's a tendency.

That said, that review of Cartwright's new record is fine and not worth getting upset at

Returning to the cause-of-death beat—they sound passive-aggressive about getting snaked on the reporting here:

B.J. Thomas, the singer best known for his version of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” has died, as The New York Times reports. Thomas died Saturday (May 29) at his home in Arlington, Texas from complications stemming from lung cancer, as the Times points out.

Lead article: "The 21 Best Indoor Bluetooth Speakers For Every Home"

One of the members of Jimmy Eat World was kinda mad on Twitter about the difference between this weekend's Sunday Review and the original review of the album in question, and how it represented a fairly transparent rewriting of history (the whole "any album not in our archives" thing...).