pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

still think howe sucks for the edith frost review where he all but called her a whiny bitch

I'll confine my response to the examples quoted on this thread.

Think about the basic properties of beat-oriented electronic music. It emphasizes dynamic action, feelings of speed, impressions of light-- extremes and intricacies of sensation. It tweaks your senses with creative deformations of time and space, with strictly engineered frameworks lurking beneath sleek or gaudy facades.

The listing of "the basic properties of beat-oriented electronic music" lists one thing that could reasonably fit under that description due to its vagueness ("dynamic action") and two wholly spurious descriptive phrases that don't have anything to do with anything ("feelings of speed, impressions of light"), THEN flings them all under yet another umbrella ("extremes and intricacies of sensation") that would have been better suited towards being listed as another property and expanded upon in concrete examples drawn from beat-oriented electronic music rather than poetic hand-waving. The last sentence is just flat-out awkward and would be better boiled down to "it tricks your senses by attaching flashy, unexpected facades to a rigid, predictable structure".

We enter an unspoken contract with the funhouse: To be tripped, mocked, and have our skirts looked up in a spirit of good-natured mischief. It's the same with Clark, and at his best, he honors it. His greatest record, 2006's exquisitely convulsed Body Riddle, was full of spaces as deeply habitable as they were impossible. It was an alchemist's album-- violent where it naturally should have been tranquil (and vice-versa); corporeal where it should have been cerebral (ditto). The acid squelches of "Herzog" were weirdly serene and grounding, their ambient atmosphere charged with live-wire menace. It was, unquestionably, his most humane album.

The first two sentences are fine. The "deeply habitable as they were impossible" phrase is an impenetrable false binary. He calls it "an alchemist's album" and goes on to expand upon attributes that have absolutely nothing to do with alchemy; that entire section should have been about using silence to create the impression of noise or steady rhythm to create the impression of jarring syncopation if he wanted to really talk about using something to create something else counterintuitive. He then ends with a jarring, completely out-of-the-blue assertion about how the album is is most "humane". WTF, please see one set of imagery through before gallavanting off to the next.

Put it this way: You would probably decline to ride a roller coaster designed by the Clark of this album, not trusting that its promise of danger wouldn't be taken to its logical conclusion, the car separating from the tracks.

This is far and away the most cogent and coherent of the quoted sections and I don't have any beef with it at all outside of thinking he really meant "illusion" rather than "promise".

Having said all that, it does scan better in the full article, but that doesn't actually mean it's done well.

(HAHA Dan I love your nickname)

the alchemy thing is a bit sidelong but presumably he means that Clark's dealings with (e.g.) violence/tranquility (and so on) are the same as an alchemist's dealings with gold/lead, yes?

I mostly just wanted to see what page everyone was on here, though, cause sometimes I'm not sure whether people are talking about style and level of clarity and such or actually saying "I don't even know what this is supposed to mean"

haha adding "gold where it should have been lead" would actually be kind of a fun clarifying addition at the end of the sentence

the alchemy thing is a bit sidelong but presumably he means that Clark's dealings with (e.g.) violence/tranquility (and so on) are the same as an alchemist's dealings with gold/lead, yes?

Yes, but he never actually says this. He mentions a whole bunch of things that are X instead of Y and uses a lazy invocation of alchemy beforehand to cover his ass for not explicitly invoking Clark's process or citing how he turns one thing into another; I do agree that adding a "lead into gold" qualifier at the end would have tied the imagery together and made the alchemy invocation make some modicum of sense.

when it's done well, this kind of rococo wordiness can really enhance its subject and make links to things you'd never thought of - this is the worst kind (tho), it's overly wordy AND you get the impression that he didn't really think about what any of the words actually mean or imply.

I mostly just wanted to see what page everyone was on here, though, cause sometimes I'm not sure whether people are talking about style and level of clarity and such or actually saying "I don't even know what this is supposed to mean"

am i allowed to say all of the above? yes? good. also: why this guy is even bringing up alchemy in a music review? honestly, nabisco, i have no idea what you see in this kind of review. like what about it works for you? it reads like a writing exercise gone wrong to me: the words look good on the page together, but when you start to take it apart it's bullshit. like lex and dan say above the review reads poorly because it seems like the guy has not thought about what the words mean or say when they're all put together.

like the fact you think it's sensible and coherent is just mind boggling

In other news... the tumultuous Pfork love/hate affair with the Fiery Furnaces continues today. Looks like they're getting along this time.

― I just wish he hadn't adopted the "ilxor" moniker (ilxor), Wednesday, July 22, 2009 9:14 AM (13 hours ago)

getting the biggest furnaces stan on the internet'll do that

HI DERE otm about the alchemy metaphor; violence/tranquility and corporeal/cerebral binaries aren't really located on clear hierarchies, rather he seems to imply that they rotate rather freely according to his volition. There's an element of control which doesn't jive with the image of an alchemist mixing shit together just to see if she can get gold.

biggest furnaces stan on the internet *to write the review*

lj writes for pfork now?

^lol i thought the same thing

I would read Pitchfork every day if it included logistical beatdowns like Dan's in the side column or something. I don't know what it says about me but I can't get enough of that kind of thing.

Maybe logistical beat-down too harsh - really it's just the kind of comments that a harsh but fair editor would give.

Rob Tannenbaum and Jonah Weiner at Blender used to be great at that kind of editing, though not so harsh obviously. If there was a mixed metaphor, a weak simile or a meandering argument, they'd nail it. But I don't imagine that anyone at Pitchfork has the time to pick reviews apart on that level.

Interesting writing that makes sense? NO TIME! Stand aside sir! I have an SEO conference to attend!!

Not sure whether to laugh or cry at this review...:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13341-hymn-to-the-immortal-wind

Crying, of course, is the end of rational thought.

He's probably right.

In a day where Hot Topic peddles guyliner to millions of male teenage mallrats, it's hard to imagine a time when glam-rock was truly shocking. But there remains one gender-bending device whose provocative, polarizing power remains undiminished: the falsetto-- a sound that tends to elicit both laughter and skepticism, if not outright hostility. Still, it remains a highly effective weapon in the endless war against safe, overly earnest indie-- and few bands brandish it so wantonly as Leeds art-pop quartet Wild Beasts.

^It's like pop music doesn't exist.

ha, yeah, that could use a clarifying "rock" somewhere in there. although really the soul falsetto has dropped off a bit in pop lately, don't you think?

New EP One Foot Ahead of the Other is Zomby's second stab at non-single formats, after last year's revivalist, acid-spiked Where Were U in 92?

uh hello? gaerig goes on for half the piece comparing it to where were u in 92 without once mentioning the hyperdub ep - im not usually one to bitch out pfork but this review is pretty shameful stuff

But there remains one Pitchfork-approved rhetorical device whose provocative, polarizing power remains undiminished: the outrageous remark-- a tool that tends to elicit both laughter and skepticism from the ILM message board, if not outright hostility.

HA!

more like HUH!

HOO-AH!

"seismic, Led Zep-like convulsions"

"a hodgepodge of contorted classic-rock riffage"

warning, muso nitpicking:

When Thom Yorke sings, "I don't know why I feel so tongue-tied," on "Myxomatosis", he sounds as though he's talking himself out of a creative eddy, and what better way to do it than over a crazed, fuzzed-out odd-metered groove?

it's not odd metered

Drummer Phil Selway hardly plays a conventional rock beat anywhere on the album, here using kettle drums to give the song a distinctive buoyancy, while Colin Greenwood's bass part constitutes a second melody

those are not kettle drums

What better way to do it indeed!

"a pleasingly lysergic jangle-pop tip before climaxing with a fireworks-worthy guitar jam"

You just made me want to buy that album though, whatever it is.

the new polvo

"Like Hüsker Dü, the Minutemen, and Sonic Youth before them, Polvo reached their critical peak with an epic double-album statement, 1996's Exploded Drawing"

not really

not totally sure what's wrong with that?

i think a lot of people would say today's active lifestyles is better? i dunno. . . be interesting to see what everyone's favorite polvo is

that's possible i guess? tbf there is a lot more critical consensus to be had on those other bands but i thought a lot of ppl considered exploded drawing the high point.

i think i like Exploded Drawing more now than i did back when it first came out, and for me, anyway, Celebrate The New Dark Age is perfect

yeah new dark age kind of distills the essence perfectly but i love fast canoe and feather of forgiveness so so much.

feather of forgiveness was so so awesome live when they played here within the last year or so

Exploded Drawing was the first thing I heard by them and is probably still my favorite. But "reached their critical peak" doesn't necessarily mean it's their best or even that it's the critical consensus nowadays; I have no trouble believing that it was the Polvo album that got the most attention from critics in the '90s.

seems like a weird thing to point out then: "the album critics gave the most attention to" ???

i mean to be serious for a sec is polvo a band that enough critics even regard to the point where there might be a "critical consensus"? no polvo chapter in our band could be your life iirc.

and yeah when i saw them last year feather was unbelievable--such a jam.

xp Why is that weird?

Because the only ppl who would care are people who are interested in critics?

it's weird thing to point out

I mean, "this album got the most positive attention" makes more sense as a fact to point out than "this album got the most attention from critics" unless you're doing a fall-from-grace "where are they now?" piece.