pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

also posted today (coincidentally I'm sure)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/latasha-indie-artist-nft-cryptocurrency_n_62548388e4b0723f800fd92d

The 34-year-old is creating freedom in her music career through cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens ― essentially unique digital assets (usually art), transmitted on a cryptocurrency blockchain, most popularly Ethereum. These NFTs are housed in the ever-evolving metaverse, a term The New York Times describes as a convergence of virtual reality and a digital second life.

After years of dealing with an industry that typically undervalues musicians, Latashá set out to become one of the first artists to publish her music videos to the blockchain as NFTs for others to purchase. As a result, she’s seen more success in the past year than she imagined possible.

She told HuffPost that she wants to share that knowledge with artists who are often disempowered.

“I really do believe that being the artist that I am right now, and in crypto, I’m finding a home for me,” Latashá said. “I push for women rappers to find space in crypto because I think they will really win here more than they ever have. And I know for so many women rappers, they dealt with trials. I don’t want to see that for artists anymore. I just want to see people in their wellness.”

Hooray for free enterprise

Summer Walker does a lot of tweets like this

Hey y'all! @SnakethereumCC, a dope new NFT project with exclusive holder benefits that has got me obsessed with the NFT space. Dey Rgiving away 1x Free #nft & 10x WL spots.

Follow @SnakethereumCC
RT & LIKE
Tag 2 friends
Presale is May the 30th. Don't miss it out
#paidpromo pic.twitter.com/qxCtpsJNIW

— SUMMER WALKER (@IAMSUMMERWALKER) May 23, 2022

#paidpromo

If there's truly a "democratizing" aspect to it then I guess cool, but crypto/NFT is absolutely a "this is where I get off the train" moment for me personally (even in a professional context, i.e. my job, I grit my teeth when it comes up).

Don't you want to see people in their wellness though?

I'll catch their wellness avatars in the M3t4verse

in other news, i thought this was a good article.

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/the-woes-of-being-addicted-to-streaming-services/

lots of things are technically democratizing but uncool tbf

nfts are an obvious scam and someone at conde nast is looking for a little help fattening/legitimizing their "holdings." pfork's a useful idiot, but we knew that already.

I'm pretty fuckin cynical but I would wager that the "Music and Technology" week was not a top-down Conde imperative to sell NFTs and probably just an idea to make the incredibly boring world of modern music look interesting.

The ads are for Amazon TV show Night Sky, which my have prompted some tech synergy but I'm not going to look up what Amazon TV show Night Sky is about

sissy spacek! j.k. simmons!

not a top-down Conde imperative to sell NFTs

agreed. they just got nfts out of the way first because they're obviously the dumbest.

let's see how the week unfolds.

problem with these music and tech pieces is they're largely fairly banal or even outright stupid if you pay any attention to the tech world - NFTs are a tiny niche that absolutely aren't the future of music or going to have any sort of impact on how music sounds more broadly and uncritically hyping them up is very irresponsible, and the "metaverse" probably doesn't mean too much for music right now because it's not a coherent concept yet, just some fragmented things a marketing buzzword is trying to tie together

The Cure Wish retro review was trite and poorly written, I thought. And the rating about double what it should be.

Really? I thought it was fine and needed saying.

I thought it was good (I don’t know the album).

I guess I just dislike the record a lot, but the potted-history felt like the writer had a quick flip thru the discography and a few articles rather than knowing the band and its oeuvre. And “Any one song from these records has enough character, vision, and atmosphere to spawn the careers of five entirely new bands”? Please. I finally bailed at “dark, artsy music”.

It was the brief history of the band as seen from the vantage point of the immediate post-Wish comedown. Bit confusing to follow and plenty of cliches to be found, however if all you know is Disintegration or "Just Like Heaven" it serves as a fine context-provider for the album.

(Agree the rating is too high.)

Wish >>>> Disintegration

but I'm an outlier, therefore the rating makes sense

It’s refreshing to see one of these Sunday reviews that jumps right into taking about the album, instead of detailing each band member’s first experience touching an instrument etc.

Alfred as much as I respect your knowledge and taste, I'm one of "those" Cure fans

idk that score is about what i'd have expected considering its place in the cure's discography

i'd put it just a little lower but i don't tend to rate cure albums that highly

Same. They recorded no "masterpieces" or whatever but every album b/w 1979 and 1992 has great songs, some more than others

Have long considered Disintegration overrated and even then, rating it below Wish makes me chuckle.

Will say this: as implied in the review, the b-sides from Wish are *easily* their best. Some of them are better than 80% of Disintegration.

Bit disappointed this review completely overlooked Mixed Up; surely that was an indicator that things were reaching terminal velocity?

the b-sides from Wish are *easily* their best.

I had to change my shorts in July 2016 when they played "This Twilight Garden" in the first 40 minutes.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-cure-wish/ fwiw

I’ll be basic and say “Disintegration” is their best album. That said I don’t think I’d rate it higher than 8.

Pornography, The Head on the Door and Faith are all 10s. But this seems to be about killing your idols so carry on.

*Ott siren*

*yelling above siren* I loved Disintegration when it came out but now find it pretty dull, excepting "Plainsong", "Lovesong" and "Untitled". Remain pretty fanatical about everything up to HOTD.

i'm totally basic and still think disintegration is the best album ever

some people think it is too long or some of the songs are bad; i argue that the length actually succeeds in making it feel deeper and denser, particularly in the way it's paced, starting off with impressionistically-formed pop songs which steadily warp into something way more gnarled and disturbed and by the time you hit the "prayers for rain"/"same deep water as you" stretch you feel like you've wandered so far into the record you'll never find your way out again. title track ironically refocuses things just as the mood of the record is at its most broken. "homesick" is an expression of desperation and denial, "untitled" one of reluctant, realistic acceptance. idk it's just so beautifully constructed, a big goth pool shrouded in mist and surrounded by exotic plants and i can't resist sinking into it. helps that every song is great i must admit

this is a ridiculous place, where i feel like i need to write a post defending disintegration

disintegration is their best

sometimes "prayers for rain"/"the same deep water as you" can be too much at times but if you're in the mood then they really really work

"last dance" is inessential but not bad, that's the extent of my complaints

I surrender and agree

as for Wish, though …

Wish and Disintegration are not far apart. Wish is refreshing, poppier, slightly excessive, in continuity with Disintegration and basking in its glory at the same time as it's in its shadow with lesser heights and consistency. I return to Wish more often for some reason, so I'm not shocked anyone prefers it to Disintegration, and I still think "From the Edge" is among their best songs. If the Cure wrote a masterpiece album, it's definitely Disintegration, though I value all their classic albums almost equally.

That's about as evocative a defense as I've read, Brad. Good read.

idk Disintegration was the first Cure album I bought at time of release, found it a drag ("Lovesong" still leaves me cold), then worked my way backward to THOTD and Kiss Me and thought, whoa, okay, I get them now. And these days I accept how fully Disintegration provides an immersive experience. Generally, though, "Sinking" earlier and "To Wish Impossible Things" handle the hothouse despair more succinctly for those of us who get that succinctness isn't the point for Disintegration's admirers.

this is a ridiculous place, where i feel like i need to write a post defending disintegration

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Monday, 30 May 2022 06:59 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it is the deep purpose of this place (i mean not the pitchfork thread specifically or indeed disintegration specifically, but i guess the need to write posts abt things that matter)

disintegration is great. it's maybe even their 5th-best album

can't much speak on wish since disintegration is the only cure album I can remember listening to the whole way through (have listened to it a thousand times though, masterpiece)

I’ve never been able to get into them— should post about that in the appropriate thread, probably

Pornography, The Head on the Door and Faith are all 10s

otm even though when THOTD came out I felt it was too mersh, but that was me & those were the times

i'm totally basic and still think disintegration is the best album ever

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Monday, May 30, 2022 1:43 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Same. And you completely and perfectly nail its appeal--at least for me--in those few sentences above

for all the "cold chilly goth" atmosphere that it's supposed to have, disintegration has always sounded like a very hot, almost muggy, album to me. it's like one of those august evenings where it's pretty much dark, maybe a bit of orange left on the horizon, and you can feel the heat coming off the pavement. maybe it's been too hot to be outside otherwise. insert "the same deep water as you."

even though i still like it, wish is the one that hits me like a relentlessly windy dark grey morning in january. when "friday i'm in love" is on, maybe the sun peaks through the clouds for a moment.

i like wish a lot, i feel like "doing the unstuck" is pretty underrated(?) (i have no sense of these things but when robert smith sings "happy!!!!" in a cure song i assume it's an underrated cure song), but it's much more disjointed than disintegration. it begins and ends awesomely, tho

Disintegration sounds like August xpost

brad otm. "doing the unstuck" has always been one of the highlights for me. when join the dots came out, the previously unissued extended mix blew me away:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBN39lxAnFc

really does make you wonder what the hell has taken so long with the deluxe edition.

anyway, just wanted to take this opportunity to point out that pfork said something about one of my favorite bands and they managed to not only not be embarrassing, but actually repped for them pretty well. gold clap for pfork on this one.