pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

The Fall are possibly the most overrated band I’ve ever heard.

_my friends, the Fall are the greatest British band of the last 45 years_


I would sign this petition, yes

I just remember Malkmus and Nastanovich being interviewed on 120 Minutes and Malkmus was all quiet and withdrawn. Lewis Largent kept asking "Are you going to talk?"

I read this as "60 Minutes" was like, "what?!"

i know they're touted as a major reference by the band themselves but i admit i've never heard much the fall in pavement. despite being record nerds who namedrop cool bands pavement sound pretty sui generis to me

same with sonic youth

an rem listening thread would be fun

I mean, this basically sounds exactly like the Fall:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT-c-Sdm9GA

Well I guess we have no choice but to eat each other

xp- agree but i don't hear it on any other song on slanted & enchanted

I like all these bands but nobody can touch The Fall, MES is the trump card that wins the “which English-speaking country produces the best rock lyrics” contest

And come now SM is doing-uh the thing-uh that MES is always doing-uh on many early songs-uh

Yeah-uh, his delivery-uh owes a bit to Mark E. Smith-uh.

agree but i don't hear it on any other song on slanted & enchanted

my friend, scroll up for the note-for-note comparison of Conduit For Sale! and New Face in Hell

There's a lot more SY influence obvious in Pavement's early stuff imo, esp Westing. Some of it sounds like Thurston covering The Clean.

I do think their SY and Fall influences are overplayed, and their Kiwi jangle pop influences are underplayed. Early '90s Pavement and 3Ds don't seem so different to me either in terms of sound or influences (although 3Ds obviously sound a lot more like an Antipodean Pixies). But you can tell Malkmus was really into this stuff on their early records.

Really savoring the casual pavement breakdown of a pitchfork sux thread after an up anniversary review editorial fuckup.

I like all these bands but nobody can touch The Fall, MES is the trump card that wins the “which English-speaking country produces the best rock lyrics” contest

all this talk is very comforting for me because i've tried repeatedly, and failed, with the fall, pavement, AND gbv and i always come to the same conclusion: this is alright as long as i never have to hear it again, i guess.

I guess it's cool we're having this argument 30 years later.

why not

gbv

At least the songs are really short.

Pollard is king

I'll just leave these choice Pollard lyrical triplets here for consideration:

My automated spouse
Has a bug in her blouse
Invading my private space

Oh, tropical robots
When you come of age you'll reach the sun
And when you go away you won't come back no more

ok sorry to recenter rem but this whole discussion made me want to reach for the rem records i never reach for, and i think i and most of you have been gravely underrating green for a very long time and for no good reason

It’s my favorite!

green is really good! the one that everyone seems to love that i find dreadfully boring is life's rich pageant. very meh.

I dislike Green! R.E.M. are at their best for me when they’re either being propulsive-oblique or surprising-sensitive. I don’t like goofy R.E.M. (“Stand”) and I don’t like when songs like “World Leader Pretend” hinge themselves on Stipe lyrics that don’t save the song

But I mean… it’s R.E.M. post-Document that makes me speak the unutterable but absolutely true: The Tragically Hip are a better band

green is really good! the one that everyone seems to love that i find dreadfully boring is life's rich pageant. very meh.

Otm. I've never got the hate for Green, or the hype for Pageant.

World Leader Pretend is fire.

I agree w/Austin that Pageant is fairly meh (relatively speaking).

do think their SY and Fall influences are overplayed, and their Kiwi jangle pop influences are underplayed

i distinctly remember when they visited dunedin (must have been very early 90s?) and appeared on an afterschool kids show & they were all omg we love the clean et al

& damn here it is !!!

What a great clip! I don't remember that show, I would've been 10 at the time. I do remember the 3Ds Outer Space video played a lot at the time, and was a staple on Max TV. But I didn't get into Pavement until a bit later, at least around the time of Wowee Zowee.

Thread's going a bit dormant. Someone should come and tell us they've always disliked Low.

hey hey hey I like being stoned

Lol

Just a reminder that today (Nov. 15) is the last day to vote in the Pitchfork 2023 Readers' Poll.

What possible lessons can we learn from 2023’s second re-edition of Daft Punk’s third-best album, in which every sonic detail is the same, other than the absence of drums?

making a very gutsy call with RAM being the 3rd best Daft Punk album

Particularly as its their 4th best (still very strong)

Remembering when they lamented the album's impact earlier in this year just weeks after giving Jessie Ware BNM

(yehyeh all the usual responses/clarifications/explanations to go here)

jessie ware isn't a couple of helmeted french dorks?

lol

doubt much of the "throwback vibe" music presumably in mind was either

seriously p4k (and I disapprove of this less than some might) has always judged music more on its perceived cultural connotations than on the literal sound of it. its criteria have always changed with the times. I think music criticism (especially rock criticism) has done this more often than not, exaggerating or downplaying differences or similarities between music based on the critics' associations and assumptions about the artists and their audiences

*maybe* the chainsmokers listen to jessie ware but you *know* they listen to daft punk. that's the problem

no doubt. it's an intricate business and i'm inconsistent. but it puzzles me that the recent disco/funk favourites (in the UK stuff like this occupies much ground on commercial radio and Radio 2's saps to the present and feels like it has for years) would be seen as a separate development. i remember the demand arriving many years ago and then never leaving. though i guess many (if not me) would say - as silently avoided in the ram review - that the amount of quality revival music has increased.

This site has had the most insane relationship with Daft Punk

“What are we doing here? Honestly, what are we doing with this “drumless” edition of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories? What possible lessons can we learn from 2023’s second re-edition of Daft Punk’s third-best album, in which every sonic detail is the same, other than the absence of drums?”

“...brief moments of drumless enlightenment and acoustic revelation are just about enough to rescue it from the vast cosmic bin of pointlessness.”

vs.

“At times the transformation is revelatory.”

The cat’s cradle cobweb of acoustic guitar and increasingly elastic one-note bassline that briefly surface in “Motherboard (Drumless Version)” are enough to make this the definitive version of the song, even if it took a decade to get there.

I haven’t read this Daft Punk review, but as much as I think “why put out this version of this record,” my next knee jerk is “why *review* this version of this record?”

trust your knee

Like, think of all the other reviews that could’ve occupied that slot, maybe even a new record

But which would get more clicks?

Kevin Shields and Jimmy Page are outspoken fans, and it’s been claimed that Nirvana borrowed the melody of “Come As You Are” from “Eighties.”

none of our reliable journalistic avenues could pin down this "Eighties" rumor.

also, maybe pedantic, but it wasn't a melody they borrowed, it was a chord progression

in other pitchfork-is-dumb news, it's a shame that the otherwise quite good Motian / Bailey review today is marred by the "jazz is like a conversation, man" chestnut

actually, it's a guitar riff. the chord progression is pretty simple and wouldn't be noticeably similar without the riff on top.