pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

The Floyd fandom on here is truly weird.

table, you appear to have mistaken ILM for something other than a classic rock forum?

It's a great piece.

technically an acknowledgement that animals is the best pink floyd album (the decades-old review where p4k gave it a 10 is still up) so i have to give them credit for that

xpost - just say "Pink Floyd rules" once, it feels good

table, you appear to have mistaken ILM for something other than a classic rock forum?

That's a great piece, yet even though I don't think Pink Floyd rules (sorry!) I don't see how or why you wouldn't give that album a 10, and at least on first read the review does not get into exactly what might have made it 0.7 better. Was it docked a smidge for what it begat? For amplifying Waters's ego? For not synching perfectly with "Wizard of Oz"? Not sure. If anything "Dark Side" is one of those super canon albums whose super canon status you *assume* has diminished a wee little bit in recent years, and then you put it on for the first time in a long time and, nope, it's actually still really good.

it reminds me of being in 6th grade Algebra where our teacher said if we completed our daily assignment, she'd give us 94s and I kept saying "why not 100" and she'd say "nothing's perfect" and I said "but you're not grading it for correctness, just completeness", and she said "look it's a damn A now stfu"

I think they docked it on account of AOR radio being sexist, and Playboy readers in 1973 being corny.

playboy readers?

Yep. It’s a weird paragraph

read two paragraphs of the floyd piece, it's just weird and crammed with hyperbole. i just don't see what draws people to writing like that, the tone is so annoying.

I'm not seeing what's hyperbolic and/or weird about those paragraphs other than "Pink Floyd had established themselves as, if not the best psychedelic rock band, then certainly the most technologically extravagant." They consist mostly of reporting?

Lol @ the review spending an entire paragraph discussing the phrase "dark side of the moon. Like a Scalia opinion using Merriam-Webster to define some term as the basis for some dumb ruling.

It can be hard to talk about the music itself

Especially if you wait until the eleventh paragraph to first discuss the music.

Gotta set the stage, man.

the sunday reviews are retrospectives, don’t really I’d rest and the complaint that they don’t spend enough time describing the sound of one of the most-heard albums in history

don’t really *understand

If they weren’t called “reviews” (and didn’t have a rating) it’d all be good I think.

Lol @ the review spending an entire paragraph discussing the phrase "dark side of the moon.

attempts at making profound alienation sound beautiful that aren’t Dark Side or OK Computer inevitably fail.

Hmm idk about that

Re "Breathe", it hits the same haunting and lonely vibe for me as Albuquerque by Neil Young, complete with the absolutely perfect use of pedal steel.

Dark Side is an album that's almost impossible to truly hear — 50 years of cultural context sit between you and it. I mean, I first heard that record probably 35 years ago, and at this point it's like Kind of Blue for me, I have so much of it memorized that I don't know if I could find anything truly new in it if I tried. That's probably why I listen to Animals and "Echoes" more, because I can still be surprised by those. But this piece is a really good exercise in thinking-about-Pink Floyd. And there are probably readers who've never heard the album who will be inspired to do so by reading it. Which is the goal.

Side note: Eric Harvey's Who Got The Camera? is one of the best music books I've ever read.

Seconded

This is one of the biggest selling albums ever; I can wait until the 11th graf to read how the guitars sound on "Breathe" or whatever

criiiiinngggge it’s really fucking sad how so many music writers don’t seem to actually like writing about music, a lot of the time I can’t even tell if they even like listening to music or are interested in it :(

― brimstead, Sunday, August 6, 2023 12:48 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can't tell if this is real.

really hate when writers vaguely allude to things and link those vague allusions to wikipedia articles. happens at least twice in this

otherwise piece is fine, a lot of things i knew restated

Yeah I think it would be interesting if it tried to assess what it sounds like to listen to the album in 2023, rather than just tell you it’s (supposedly) about Watergate and recession, etc.

I didn’t read it, but I don’t think there should be any real rules or expectations on an essay about a 50 year old album

I'm actually really surprised this album had never been reviewed. I'd say that for all the extraneous stuff surrounding this album that makes it huge, it's imo such an intimate and lonely piece of music, it has this outsized reputation as a behemoth but I do find it closer in spirit to Tonight's the Night than it is to a lot of prog rock.

Dark Side is an album that's almost impossible to truly hear — 50 years of cultural context sit between you and it. I mean, I first heard that record probably 35 years ago, and at this point it's like Kind of Blue for me, I have so much of it memorized that I don't know if I could find anything truly new in it if I tried. That's probably why I listen to Animals and "Echoes" more, because I can still be surprised by those. But this piece is a really good exercise in thinking-about-Pink Floyd. And there are probably readers who've never heard the album who will be inspired to do so by reading it. Which is the goal.

Side note: Eric Harvey's Who Got The Camera? is one of the best music books I've ever read.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Sunday, August 6, 2023 12:57 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

All of this. And I just started Who Got The Camera? yesterday, and so far it's brilliant.

Like saying what this “should” describe or do is weird to me. If it was 20 grafs describing bass tone, that’s just as valid as a ‘70s politics exegesis because ultimately the only point of a review of a 50 year old album is to basically be a creative writing exercise

This is well-written but it's so corny at this point to connect everything Floyd back to Syd. What's next, a think-piece on Animals as the answer record to 'Effervescing Elephant'?
Also, neither Ummagumma nor Atom Heart Mother were concept albums, and the latter was a UK #1, hardly indicative of "paltry album sales".

...unless the concept for Ummagumma is "we already hate each other and won't play on one another's songs".

I kind of feel like any album where the artist gave thought to the track sequencing is a concept album.

I feel like any album where the artist determined track sequencing through D20 rolls is a concept album.

Wow, what a fantastic piece!!!

Kudos to Eric Harvey

i feel like i’m too much of a floyd fan to really criticize the voice this piece adopts or its constant dartings away from musical analysis into social context but the “us & them” paragraph is pretty emblematic of how little i’m getting from it, anyone who’s put themselves through the wall or god forbid the final cut knows what happened to waters’ dad. (and did you know there was another war going on at the time of dark side’s release.) if this is a creative writing exercise it comes off way too much like an excerpt from a very dry book

i did in fact enjoy the paragraph about the literal dark side of the moon bc it evinced some style. but whiney’s right, why do i even care, this can be whatever it wants to be bc it’s an album that’s been written about to death, it can even a recapitulation of the recent tweet war between waters and gilmour for whatever reason

They.. tweet at each other?

i did also enjoy how the wizard of oz digression revolves around the specific journalist who wrote about it instead of just being presented as a wacky coincidence that gained purchase with the most profoundly stoned of floydheads, and the way this furthers the metanarrative of technology restructuring our relationship with art and spectacle, yeah maybe this piece is better than i’m giving it credit for, i’m very tired

I didn't know it was Charlie Savage!

criiiiinngggge it’s really fucking sad how so many music writers don’t seem to actually like writing about music, a lot of the time I can’t even tell if they even like listening to music or are interested in it :(

― brimstead, Sunday, August 6, 2023 12:48 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can't tell if this is real.

What do you have against bass tone?

Sorry if you mistook what I said personally or something

― brimstead,

Not at all. This thread has gone in fascinating directions today.

it was just unclear whether the post was sarcastic or sincere. i'm still not 100% but leaning towards sincere now

_attempts at making profound alienation sound beautiful that aren’t Dark Side or OK Computer inevitably fail._


Hmm idk about that

part of what is annoying about this record and this band is really encapsulated by that bogus statement— from day 1 of being aware of this album and Floyd in general, I read all kinds of things about them. “best psychedelic band” “great rock band” “politically and socially astute” “intimate”


and none of that hyperbole has matched up with my feeling while listening to the records.

a friend put dark side of the moon on during an early formative shroom trip and i asked him to turn it off cause did not sound remotely psychedelic to me

I'm way less a Floyd listener than most of you but I too find it an intimate record.

It always struck me (esp compared to adjacent albums, Floyd and otherwise) as a marvel of “clean production”, it sounds just miles ahead of any other contemporaneous album in this regard, even Steely Dan stuff