pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

sadly, you have to have a bunch of rip tweets from famous people to keep the prime Pitchfork real estate

"sorry Gary, Snacks the cat pushed forward the discourse man, you just... don't"

The orange Maine Coon

Addison Rae’s “I Got It Bad” Is Pretty Good

terrific headline

I was surprised when they reviewed Terror Twilight *twice* in the last few years. Seemed to me a bit like old habits (Pavement love) dying hard.

it's somewhat understandable because the first was a sunday review, then the second was the reissue with new bonus material

The Lyle Lovett review is really good. I loved that album in high school.

Both those Terror Twilight reviews are really good, fwiw

it's somewhat understandable because the first was a sunday review, then the second was the reissue with new bonus material

That was the surprise though - at least one other album (can't remember which now) had a deluxe version that they passed over because they'd already done the Sunday review. Since then the Cure's Wish has also been understandably neglected this way (the gap between the Sunday review and the deluxe was only half a year).

I wonder why there wasn’t a Sunday review today.

They sent out an email with links to 10 archival Sunday reviews and a note saying "This weekend, we’re taking a quick summer break to bring you our editors’ picks of 10 of our favorite Sunday Reviews from this year: an all-star ’80s country collaboration, the first Sunday Review of an EP, a ’90s Tejano classic, a singer who helped shaped half a century of pop music, the biggest classic rock album of all-time, and more."

Ah, thanks. I never signed up for their emails.

I didn’t know they did emails

I’ve tried following them on social media, but they just continuously post links to old features/reviews

Today’s Siamese Dream review has some really great parts… I didn’t realize Pfork had never tackled it. I do wish the piece had spent more time talking about other songs and how the album flows, etc.; and less time on Billy interview quotes and lyric discussion.

Also, thought these bits were curious:

Whether it was Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction, Pearl Jam, or, most famously, Kurt Cobain, he barely let an interview go by without mentioning one of his bêtes noires.

Whatever he said about Cobain, it never registered with me… as opposed to his snipes at Pavement, which I thought were surely his most “famous”(?)

Despite a few surface provocations to heavy metal’s machismo, “alternative” was still largely masculine, defined by heavy, menacing sounds and bellowing vocals. Pearl Jam had dared to soften up on Vs. with rough acoustic strummers like “Daughter,” and Kurt Cobain threw a cello into Nirvana’s discordant sound for In Utero, but Corgan arranged “Disarm” like he was furnishing the drawing room in an 18th-century castle: a string arrangement, church bells, a tympani.

Maybe this is pedantic, but those other two albums came out after SD… this makes it sound like they preceded it.

Finally, I wish they had used the original album cover rather than the reissue art (…even though I prefer listening to the remaster!).

Yeah, I hate the revised album art. The original cover is so perfect, easily the best Pumpkins artwork. Then it had to get all Billy’d up. Sigh.

Also, considering how the piece sets up as its theme that "the real story of Siamese Dream is the story of a sound," and spends the next paragraph focusing on the influence of MBV, it feels like a missed opportunity not to note that after months of obsessive recording, Corgan & Vig were too wiped out to mix the album – so they handed it off to MBV/shoegaze guy Alan Moulder.

I know these retrospective reviews don't have to function as Wikipedia entries – and this one seems to deliberately want to move away from the usual focus on the circumstances of Siamese Dream's production (which is totally fair) – but I think a few more lines on those details would have bolstered its own premise.

(Sorry, I have a lot of thoughts on this album!)

Today’s Siamese Dream review has some really great parts… I didn’t realize Pfork had never tackled it.

They had - Ned did a joint review of the 2011 Gish and Siamese Dream reissues. Is this the first time the "not in our archives" rule has been bended to mean "as a standalone review"?

Oh, apologies to Ned… will look back at that. Wonder if he mentioned MBV! ;)

i’m dredging this up from memory so it could be apocryphal or straight up wrong but one of my favorite stories about the siamese dream sessions is corgan recording “mayonaise” on a guitar that went out of tune as soon as he started playing it, which was apparently responsible for that horrible/wonderful feedback sound in the chorus

also my sunday review of jimmy eat world’s clarity replaced an old bad review so like “not in our archives” has been extremely flexible for a while

yeah, the story is it was a cheap guitar that created that weird sound whenever he stopped playing it. the other great "mayonaise" story is that he got the title from "looking in the refrigerator"

Glad it’s not called “Pickles.”

also my sunday review of jimmy eat world’s clarity replaced an old bad review so like “not in our archives” has been extremely flexible for a while

Yeah but I thought replacing reviews that were pulled from the site years ago (because 90s or Ott) was the only flexibility. Regardless I'm all for one publication offering several perspectives on the same record.

Ned gave SD a 10, so this new review is a downgrade

Is this… serious/major touring season? (Maybe it is. I don’t go to many shows these days.)

Had to look at the site for context, but yeah, it's kinda bonkers out there, everyone is touring at once. Though that thing on Fork is pretty loose with the definition of "tour," or even "most anticipated."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/12/magazine/maneskin-rock-band.html

lmfao

by David Brooks

He also comes up in Jon Caramanica's piece on P. Diddy!

I swear this exact article was already published

maneskindela effect

Strangely, today’s retro review covers an album they straight-up reviewed before, and whose original review remains up on the site. (I remember its curious opening paragraph being flagged recently.)

I see they removed the boldface phrase from the intro this time:

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible.

lmao that original review

Oh I see there’s a note at the very bottom:

Editor’s Note: The Sunday Review series is intended to cover albums not included in our archives. This album was previously reviewed on Pitchfork in 2001. Due to an oversight, it’s been revisited here with a new essay.

Why replace this kind of genius writing?

Luckily for Gillian Welch, the path to acclaim in the folk-country genre doesn’t require moving to Oklahoma, Appalachia, or a Mississippi riverbank. Nor does it call for songs about killing people, peddling crack, or mining for black ass–gold (in fact, the latter is probably anathema to the cause).

'Due to an oversight'? Does that mean 'We didn't like the old review', or 'We forgot we already had a review of this up', or?

I like how the OG review returns to the Ice-T thing in the final paragraph, like summing up a thesis.

xp would guess the latter

The little intro in the Sunday Review riles you guys up like nothing else.

Also Ice-T was from Crenshaw

Ice-T was from Jersey.

My theory is they saw folks clowning on the original review (when that was happening months back), and decided to commission a new one. The “oversight” line is appropriately ambiguous. But who knows!

They should accidentally overlook the Bobby Digital in Stereo review

lol this review, what year does this guy think it is?

This is exactly the sort of album you gift a middle-age, mid-divorce dad who’s flailing for direction as he speeds around town in his post-split sports car, cranking the Stones’ anti-romance rants....”

You can picture Dad pounding his hand against the steering wheel in time to “Bite My Head Off,” four minutes of punk so patrician that it takes a blown-out bass solo by Sir Paul McCartney for it to sound remotely tough. During “Driving Me Too Hard,” Jagger threatens to escape to Morocco or the corner bar, then concocts neologisms for crying, an emotionally unavailable man too afraid of these things called feelings to name them. What’s more, it sounds like the Eagles trying to be bland.

number one, the middle aged dad in question in 2023 would want like i dunno a new Deftones record or something...

the guy he's talking about probably would be touched you got him the CD when you visited him in his semi assisted living senior apartment complex with the grandkids

either way like work out your issues with your dad dude

but i dunno i guess writers have like 5-10 more years of boomer bashing left let em enjoy it while it lasts

maybe it's just a way for millennials to feel young again but it feels meaner than it used to

if I was going through a divorce and feeling genuinely lost in life I'd probably be driving around listening to Cake's Prolonging the Magic or something

when he said awww yeah alll right oh no I really felt that

Just wait until they're in their 70s and Radiohead puts out a new album