pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

they did wield the power for a while to push them to another level

i think the interview excerpt that jaymc posted is a good example of what a mixed bag, probably net negative, that power was during that time, insofar as schreiber tacitly admits that he understood pitchforks power to help some artists was contingent on also proving their ability and willingness to hurt others. which not only was obv bad for the many artists, but also just not correct. obviously a publication needs to be seen as evenhanded but its also clear that a lot of artists got unnecessarily ground up in the gears just to prove a point.

well put

xxp Obviously *readers* rate books on Amazon/Goodreads, but do critics? I'm not super-plugged in, but I'm struggling to think of an outlet that reviews books with quantifiable ratings, other than like starred reviews on Kirkus or whatever.

― jaymc, Friday, 19 January 2024 bookmarkflaglink

This is a piece on the damage mere *readers* have inflicted, for free.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/18/goodreads-review-bombing

I also know quite a few bands that were launched into another level because of Pfork. My freshman year at Uni, Skeletons— then a bunch of acid-dropping seniors at my school— got their debut reviewed and given a good score, and then they all moved to New York and a few became pretty instrumental in a lot of the scene there. West Nile and the Bkln waterfront scene of the aughts and early teens would not have been possible without that review, I don’t think

well, that review among others obv

xp
I was going to take issue with imago's "optimization" thesis as I think sites like RYM, Letterboxd, Goodreads, etc. (not to mention streaming platforms) better exemplify the problems with treating art as statistical data. I didn't make that post, because I decided we mean different things by the word. I could buy Pitchfork being influential in amplifying the quant approach, but certainly not solely responsible—digitization is at the root.

With Pitchfork, it never felt like “well, that’s a [critic’s name] 7.8.” Whereas Spin (I’m flashing back to scanning their numeric ratings) felt like individual opinions.

Hm, I'm curious why you think so. Both outlets published reviews with numerical ratings and bylines.

― jaymc, Friday, January 19, 2024 9:05 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Speaking from personal experience, with SPIN the rating the critic chooses are likely to near to what the editor allows. With P4K - totally different ballgame, and what hits me as a 7.0 might strike the editor as a 5.3. It was annoying.

There were things ultimately got say in the 7.4-7.9 range on the site but my personal ranking was higher. It’s a dance.

Booming posts FGTI!

A lot our folks here have written things for the site that I loved but I’ll have to think on it a bit before shouting some out

The new criticism

it used to be when you published a novel the best you could hope for was a good NYT review now it’s a viral tiktok called “books with A24 vibes”

— rebecca jennings (@rebexxxxa) January 19, 2024

I agree with you rob— the decimal point system Pitchfork implemented was prescient, if anything, and I’d argue that it is/was a reasonable response to an inundation of “too much content”. A cruel but understandable method of sorting

Skeletons

Amazing band, I saw them at Lee’s and the gay bartender spent the whole set craning his neck to stare at the lead singer’s calves (he was wearing shorts). Prodigious calves, that singer

In defense of musicians: I have vivid memories of some absolutely witless and clueless noise album reviews, written by people who never should’ve been allowed to review said records, back in the early 00s. Many of those artists went on to strong careers that weren’t kneecapped by the reviews but yeeeeesh.

Just making sure we posted this

don't give up on @pitchfork. fucking number crunchers at @CondeNast need to get a fucking grip. Fire Anna Wintour and pay your writers and editors. She's old news. How much do you pay that old slag? wtf is wrong with you people? you're gonna bring down the whole house.

— william basinski (@WilliamBasinski) January 19, 2024

hooo boy

one absolutely bizarro detail from this week is that Anna Wintour—seated indoors at a conference table—did not remove her sunglasses while she was telling us that we were about to get canned. the indecency we’ve seen from upper management this week is appalling.

— Allison Hussey (@allisonhussey) January 19, 2024

that's her brand

😬

the ultimate in obsessing over scores, to the point of mostly ignoring the reviews attached, can be found in video game discourse imo

(I also have a pet theory about how a tradition of "objective" factors in video game reviewing - bugs, do the controls work, that kinda thing - have been ported over to other art for a generation, thus the hyper fixation with scores as "objective" measures and the immense anger at something being given the "wrong" score in music/cinema/etc)

Get a grip people, you don't have clearance to see Anna Wintour's eyes! That's a national security measure.

Just responding to this (i can’t get to the original response as it’s in the dead space and my phone won’t let me page through the thread):

As I stated above, I have picked stuff up due to negative reviews too, but I don't think it's true that critics writing negative reviews are, as a rule, writing them in the hopes that their negative opinions will get audiences to pick those records up.

I am not sure it matters what the intentions of the critic are re: encouraging/discouraging someone from picking up an album? The important part is the analysis and contextual placement; that’s what you’re reading and that is what you’re mapping to your own evaluation framework to get a sense of what the album might be like and whether you’d be interested in it. It’s way more complicated than “buy this/skip that” even if that verbiage is put into the review, IMO. At least, it is if the writing/critical analysis is good, and we’ve seen instances on Pitchfork where that has been very good. (We’ve also seen instances where it’s been very bad; IMO the site should never, ever live down the wizard cap Radiohead review, or whichever review it was that was written in wholly botched AAVE, even if those were from an older editorial era.)

I posited last week that Pitchfork could have a perfume reviewing offshoot called “Cat Shit”

Dan, I agree with pretty much all of that - I just think that when you're talking about a mission statement for criticism, which is what I took ftgi bf's summation to be, well, you're kind of talking about the critic's intentions, no?

Rather than a straight "I want to help art find its best audience", I think I'd go with wanting to give every piece of art the respect of engaging with it and hopefully finding something to say about it that enrichens the reader's perspective on it...and that can be positive or negative. Readers can then def find that my negative thoughts make them want to check something out - or indeed that my positive thoughts make them want to stay away!

(Dual reference to “shit, cat” and civet)

I have some thoughts.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/some-weekly-100-96774752

xps

example of a negative review that made me want to hear an album: Brent D's notorious Steely Dan review:

"Jamming" sax solos glide over neutered, bassless funk. Glass guitar and percussion clink along steadily like a chorus of jangling Tag Heuers, automatic Lexus locks, popping Le Croix cans, clicking laptop covers, crystal Cristal toasts, and smacking Hollywood cheek-kisses. The same slow-bop pace is rigorously maintained. Vocals exhale so innocuously you have to hold a mirror up under the speaker to make sure it's alive.

it made me think, "my god, they're back and they've still got it."

haha totally

i actually like that writing...also i mean if anyone who can dish it out like steely dan can take a little smarmy negativity

“Clicking laptop covers”?

the ultimate in obsessing over scores, to the point of mostly ignoring the reviews attached, can be found in video game discourse imo

― Daniel_Rf, Friday, January 19, 2024 10:47 AM (forty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

(I also have a pet theory about how a tradition of "objective" factors in video game reviewing - bugs, do the controls work, that kinda thing - have been ported over to other art for a generation, thus the hyper fixation with scores as "objective" measures and the immense anger at something being given the "wrong" score in music/cinema/etc)

― Daniel_Rf, Friday, January 19, 2024 10:52 AM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

to your first point, you have no idea the level of abuse you would get for giving something like a 8.5 instead of 9 or whatever

I mean I'm sure some Pitchfork writers or YouTubers get harsh criticism but Anita Sarkeesian, was getting bomb threats and had to go into hiding in the Bay Area because of death threats. There was an entire outlet that got doxxed (with their close family members as well)

Anything in music media was child's play compared to Gamergate.

to your second point, that's the hard part about reviewing games, because there are controls, systems, user interfaces, etc that can objectively just be broken or not designed correctly...but at the same time there's a level of artistry* there too that's not able to be objectively quantified...but I think that's a great observation that it's leaked into other forms of art...hell, you see all this shit about "Easter Eggs" in movies now, a term straight from games

*my own personal answer to the "art games art?" question is "it depends", some definitely are but I don't consider, say, Tetris or Madden Football or FIFA art.

counterpoint: tetris is art, none of the others are

Also jumping on the “Tetris is art, fuiud” bandwagon

Great read, Ned. Gotta be weird knowing someone pretended to be you lol

Dan, I agree with pretty much all of that - I just think that when you're talking about a mission statement for criticism, which is what I took ftgi bf's summation to be, well, you're kind of talking about the critic's intentions, no?

Sure, but my point is that a well-written pan can put an album in front of the people who would enjoy it in the same manner as an enthusiastic rave, even if the critic is saying “no one should buy this”. It’s the act of processing the criticism that leads to deciding whether to check the music out or not rather than a specific “buy this/skip this” recommendation, and that still fits the central thesis posited for the point of criticism.

I interviewed Alexi Patijnov, I don't think he considers it art, probably doesn't consider game to be art at all. There was a game in Russia using "tetriminos" (the shapes you see in the game) where kids would have to fit them in a box. He was just trying to figure out a cool puzzle game and hit upon the idea of animating/automoting that childhood game.

In general, most of the early game developers (arcade/Atari/etc), didn't really think of games as art, they were in the amusement industry/pinball/etc mindset, plus being early hacker just getting the thrill of "look what I made this machine do"...I know Howard Scott Warshaw (Yar's Revenge) felt the same way.

Also all those puzzle/games magazines (like Games etc)....but they were just trying to get people to play longer

I don't consider "art" a designation of quality in games. Tetris is perfect. I just don't think there was an artistic/expressive impulse behind it, it was just a guy trying to get something to work.

i'm always interested in very thoughtful, negative reviews, but i think when they get personal or nasty or ill-informed, they are simply just without merit. i think that's why it's kinda impossible for me to take Greil Marcus on Lucinda Williams seriously at all, because it's not that he's not into her music, it's that he clearly hates her as a person. Brian Howe's Edith F review on Pitchfork assailed her songs of loneliness and melancholy by saying, god well you're a whiner, of course you're alone (or something to that effect.) So many reviewers look at an artist putting themselves out there as an excuse for some real abhorrent thoughts, which reveal more about themselves than their targets.

however while i think the Brent D Two Against Nature review is absolutely dunderheaded it's also hilariously off-target and doesn't really at this point offend me, but i also think Steely Dan was used to people missing the point two decades before and their reaction was maybe more along the lines of, "really, people are still thinking that about us?"

that new Steely Dan book Quantum Criminals does a nice job of talking about the Pitchfork review of two against nature and also points out the fact that Steely Dan were not considered "cool" when the album was reviewed

https://x.com/ryandombal/status/1748390857051443645?s=20

let's try that again

after 15 years, this is my last day at pitchfork. i am among the essential staffers who are being cut. it's awful, a stupendous blunder. but i want to use it as an opportunity to celebrate some of the pieces i've edited and written, and the people that changed my life...

— Ryan Dombal (@ryandombal) January 19, 2024

Carnage out there

BREAKING: The Arena Group has given notice that it intends to lay off Sports Illustrated’s entire staff, according to an email obtained by FOS. pic.twitter.com/BIIrFyY6x9

— Front Office Sports (@FOS) January 19, 2024

can’t wait for the ai swimsuit issue

jesus, what a week

man...SI...that's really sad

Wow.

Related to all of this (especially with the Condé Nast angle) is this 2023 story on private equity killing science journalism.

70 years, to be destroyed by the Authentic Brand Group.

Great read, Ned. Gotta be weird knowing someone pretended to be you lol

Still wonder about whoever that was.

William Wilson, no doubt.

i don't know what to say today but i keep thinking about this one night in 2012 i stayed at the p4k office so late writing a review that i literally got locked in overnight and couldn't leave til the morning. so many ppl have been so devoted to this place

— jenn pelly (@jennpelly) January 18, 2024

It seems like CN is trying to sweeten its sheets and lighten its load for possible sale. They put their London HQ up for sale last fall. They've sold off some magazines.

My old alt-weekly got killed that way, we were owned by a newspaper company that owned the local daily, and they were given a headcount to come back with. They didn't care about the alt-weekly anyway, it ran at more or less break-even, so it was an easy call to be like "There's 14 people" and just shut it down. Never mind that thousands of people loved it and relied on it, that didn't enter into the equation.

Just saw this obit for a newspaper sports writer. That rise through the locals, learning the craft, building a life around it. Then towards the end it's redundancy and moves from paper to paper till 2008.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/jan/19/ronald-atkin-obituary

re: decimal scores - i agree the 'nuance' they provide isn't really helpful and they probably added to the occasional disconnect between editorial-imposed-score and review which always felt weird whenever i noticed it.

Consider this: do we evaluate films or books in the same way that Pitchfork has taught us/inured us to evaluate albums? Do you ever hear anyone talking about the new Scorcese as being an 8.1 or whatever?

film nerds kinda, but usually just a 5-point or 10-point scale. video game nerds (and the developers and publishers!) really obsess over metacritic scores but video game criticism is a disastrous field that far too rarely digs too much beyond 'does this work' and has more extreme versions of most of music criticism's issues.

it is no longer acceptable to give a Mansun album 9.3 on a whim, or a Fiery Furnaces album 9.6, or do a ridiculously misguided pan of Frances The Mute (you're not forgiven!) - everything has been carefully controlled to fit an acceptable editorial brand, to the extent where scores, BNMs and even EOY lists can be extremely accurately predicted. and the BNM thing has created another interesting phenomenon: when one of pitchfork's writers wants to review something obscure and musically off-brand, and really likes it - if the editors can't be convinced it's worthy of greater hype, it gets flung into the 7.8-8.3 pocket of No BNM For You.

i do agree about this as an issue and it probably could have been managed by being less obsessive about the p4k 'brand' and just allowing things to be given 8.3+ scores without BNM? let BNM serve as the broad recommendation label it currently does but be less precious about scores beyond that - that sort of brand management is always what rubbed people the wrong way about p4k. i think weird misguided pans are something we are better off without, though that doesn't mean negative reviews are bad - if anything having more would be ideal (use the full scale!) but it's better when a negative review is coming from a place of serious engagement and understanding instead of just lazy or cruel dunks. that all comes back to the general score inflation problem where the worst score anything can get these days is like ~4.5 on pretty rare occasion