pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Calling it now that self-titled Liz Phair places in their 2000s list -- the one they gave a 1.4 or something.

Considering the wtf revisionism in the new albums list.

Liz Phair's self-titled album won't place in a new 2000s list, but Avril Lavigne will.

Anniemal better place, that album is a banger.

Early prediction:
10. Discovery
9. Stankonia
8. Sound of Silver
7. Ys
6. Fever To Tell
5. Vespertine
4. A Britney album that isn't Blackout
3. I Am Sasha Fierce
2. The Fame
1. Miss E So Addictive

Avril Lavigne will

Based on this 2018 review, she’s not likely to.

I'm right in the Gen X demographic for maximum Pavement and GBV love but they never did shit for me.

Oh I forgot Extraordinary Machine. not sure where it will place.

Avril Lavigne will

At Lollapalooza this summer, at least two acts covered her, and she showed up on stage with Machine Gun Kelly.

I'd like some posters to show up and tell us that Portishead and Bjork suck ass

xp Yes I know she's having a "moment," but I don't think Pfork blows in the wind to that degree (fwiw, I think Let Go is better than that rating suggests). In a few years, though, I guess who knows.

Pavement suck ass
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Friday, September 30, 2022 12:41 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Pollard's cool, very capable guy who grasps multiple strains of why 60s rock was so explosive & can sort of process & reiterate it -- no shade on Bob. Malkmus can play his ass off, one of the most interesting soloists of the 90s easy, and as a lyricist is much, much more interesting to me than Pollard, who's a pop culture guy. Malkmus is interested in pop culture because he's an 80s/90s academic at heart whether he went to grad school or no, but he's also old enough to be more into some of the sub-pop (sorry) stuff like Ashbury (major influence on his elliptical writing style imo) -- he's just a better writer and storyteller, and again like I'm into the Dead. Pavement are too self-interested to ever actually grow into the jam band they ought to become, but the kernel's there, they're almost a meta-jam band with an Ashbery jones, that's pretty much exactly my alley even if my preferred 60s poets are a little less opaque.

also Pavement has bass tone in their records and GBV tends to EQ their bass really trebly which drives me fuckin nuts.

the table, just knowing you a little & your work & your aesthetics I would honestly say I think you've sold Malkmus short but maybe there's hx there I don't know about.

HOWEVER I think Pollard has a much better idea of how to make an album interesting, at the end of the day Pavement's sense of an album is "the jams we've got" and it's one of their major failings, this interest in form which Pollard certainly has, however he's also a guy for whom "it's got 48 songs!" is not a barrier and honestly come on Bob, not everybody is wired that way

Yeah these two bands seem pretty different to me, in terms of aesthetic & approach (obviously they were both big Matador bands). I’ve never been into GBV, but I understand how they hit the target for some people… I have a friend who’s a big fan.

the top of my personal 90s indie canon is probably electr-o-pura, those three ylt albums are the best

Early prediction:
10. Discovery
9. Stankonia
8. Sound of Silver
7. Ys
6. Fever To Tell
5. Vespertine
4. A Britney album that isn't Blackout
3. I Am Sasha Fierce
2. The Fame
1. Miss E So Addictive

this is impressively out of touch lol

if anything seeing gbv live (more than once) soured me on them

fan-fictioning a pitchfork list they haven't even suggested they were going to do and then arguing about the imaginary results is like... why don't you just ship some Harry Potter characters at that point

Early prediction:

*places ryan schrieber figurine in jar*

the top of my personal 90s indie canon is probably electr-o-pura

Man, this album is so good, and I feel like it just gets overlooked in favor of the other two

(there may also be a “first album by them that I heard” bias at play here for me)

*places ryan schrieber figurine in jar*

― hi hole im dad (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, September 30, 2022 7:05 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I love that this post is literally incomprehensible to anyone under 40

I've seen GBV eight times I think, but none since 2011. Absolutely loved them in the 90s and early 00s. Great drinking band, Pollard can be a showman, and I certainly participated in that whole thing. That 2011 Classic Lineup show felt kind of bad though - needlessly loud; Pollard needlessly drunk (and old).

Count me among the first-album-bias Electr-o-Pura fans!

Pablo and Andrea is my favourite song on that record. When they came to Auckland on their Nothing tour, I called out for them to play it when they took requests for the encore. And they did! I was so stoked.

I was 17 then so I had to get my dad to chaperone me to the R18 show. I think the Neil Young fan in him really enjoyed Ira's guitar workouts.

nice!

My first YLT was President Yo La Tengo. Very influential on me as you can tell.

my most favorite Yo La Tengo album is still Fakebook, which I guess is forgotten now

The video is dated now (although we may appreciate it more as an artifact in the future), but “Kool Thing” was a revelation on late night MTV at the time and it still sounds really good to me. I liked what Garner’s Pitchfork review said about its sarcasm, and how its guitars emphasize every line in the verses with an acidic shoulder shrug. The laser-focused guitar interlude was awesome

“Tunic” was also amazing. That video featured thrift shop stuffed animals, which suggests that they were already friends with the artist Mike Kelley, who did the yarn doll artwork for Dirty. Mike Kelley was an amazing artist, no longer with us, whose art was beautiful and varied. One of his greatest works was Plush Kundalini and Chakra Set, which I got to see in person. He focused on abject art with dark undertones, for example a homely crochet blanket left over from a charity donation, covering dolls and toys as lumps underneath it

Just a last post re this subject: I am not a member of the Ashbery cult— two good books early in career, one mid-career triumph (the flabbergastingly good and underrated ‘Flow Chart’). I actually do agree that Malkmus and Berman have a relation to Ashbery, but for me, that means poems/lyrics that are clever but cold and affectless. There’s nothing that stirs me, tho there’s obviously a lot of talent there.

Pollard’s sense of parataxis and pastiche bears more resemblance to Language writing, in a lot of ways, with some of the attendant gross masculine energy that male Language writers have. Personally, I find his lyrics more interesting because they require me to make leaps in logic and bizarre connections, and I also find his evocations of sadness quite rending at times, partly because they are so absurd.

"Tunic" and "Kool Thing" aren't even my favourite songs on Goo ("Dirty Boots" towers over them imo), let alone my OP2 for the 90s, but idk it's a list where "Believe" is top 25 who knows what can happen

"believe" is good and i can understand it being on the list because it's so influential but it is weirdly high for sure

i do appreciate how its use of autotune still comes across as very alien & distinct from most later uses

"Believe" absolutely belongs.

"Kool Thing" doesn't.

“Mote” or “Dirty Boots” over either of the songs on the list afaic

I honestly don’t understand any form of poptimism that makes room for some of this stuff but not Bel Biv DeVoe’s “Poison” which seems like a Hall of Famet for longtail 90s pop hits

*Famer

Esp since the criteria for like 60% of the list is “Is it a good karaoke song?”

I still think Sugar Kane is so clearly SY’s best ‘90s song; it feels like a no-brainer to me…

the middle 8 of “poison” is all-time but I don’t know about that song lyrically :-/

pre-chorus not middle 8, the “it’s driving me out of my mind” part

At the time I'd never heard beats that hard in a pop crossover outside a Janet single.

That's why songs like "Poison" and "Pony" have weathered the passage of time so well. No matter what they're about, they hit hard.

"kool thing" having a public enemy connection makes it worth a mention.

with some distance i think charles and eddie's "would i lie to you" should replace "what's up." just one girl's opinion

I don’t think “Pony” is on there either? Like I understand pulling the limpdick whiteboy indie canon because that was always insanely overrated, but like pulling BBD and Ginuwine and (I think) Montell Jordan to do the nah Drake meme but smiling for Celine Dion and Garth Brooks is ???

"pony" is in fact at no. 26

"this is how we do it" was omitted in favor of "this is how we walk on the moon" i assume, could only handle one

I think “These Are Days” is a much better “vibe” song than “What’s Up”, but I know no one really likes the 10k Maniacs now.

With every notable omission I guess there’s some sort of political or gossipy reason for it, so I guess “Poison” was considered a touch too misogynistic.

“Mote” or “Dirty Boots” over either of the songs on the list afaic

Yeah "Mote" would be my second pick for that album.

I do agree "Poison" and that beat were classic btw. I don't deny the importance of "Believe" but I hated it and don't have a reason to be objective at this point; that it influenced loads of other music to also sound like shit doesn't earn it points afaic.

I’m going to come out and say that the way the media has seemingly totally turned on Thurston (because he cheated on Kim? because he’s an asshole? both? i can never get a good handle on it?) is really surprising to me. That the cheating is often mentioned as the first thing gives me heavy puritanical vibes that i don’t like.