pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Gentlemen’s Shit Cat Quarterly

gay quotient (not quite gay enough)

It’s pronounced gee-cue, not jih-kwuh

gee-cue gee-cue baby baby baby

Was moved to archive my old pieces from the Pitchfork site today. I was a terrible contributor in many if not most ways, and doubt I ever filed a review on time, but thanks are due to erstwhile ilxor Scott P whose name I haven't seen mentioned in many of the obits, for his infinite patience and great charm, dedication and skill as a writer and editor. Feel like he was a real hero of the Pitchfork story.

lol as if that's not what it's basically been the whole time. the only real "innovation" here is rolling it all into one platform.

(golly, my cynical cynicap still fits like a charm!)

― she fell asleep with her hand around my throat (Austin)

sure bro

The Thom Yorke underwear shoot did nothing to help with that infamous Kid A review iirc.

be careful with comments like that. might summon some forces you don’t want to appear

i.e. Thom Yorke in underwear.

Yeah, Scott P. was a big part of that second era of Pitchfork, between the early anarchic days and the CN sale.

Parker Molloy mentioned him when she wrote about being a P4K intern in 2008, but that parenthetical is kind of brutal!

It was a neat experience that really did teach me a lot about media. I got to work in the same office as some legitimate p4k legends: Scott Plagenhoef was editor-in-chief at the time, Mark Richardson (a truly delightful human being, a contrast to Plagenhoef) sat just a few feet away from me, Amy Phillips was there, Chris Kaskie… I’m just realizing now that none of these names mean anything to 99.9% of my readers. Anyway, these were all big names at Pitchfork, and Phillips was there up until this week.

I’m just realizing now that none of these names mean anything to 99.9% of my readers.

This is why CN figures they can gut the staff and keep the brand going. Pitchfork doesn't have a bunch of recognizable names like Christgau, Hentoff, etc.

Well, Hentoff got laid off in '09.

I'm not sure that any music critics are household names, tbh

household-thony name-tano

ufo is right, GQ Music seems to be entirely features: https://www.gq.com/about/music

so... yeah, maybe just fewer of those(?)

― cellaring potential (morrisp), Monday, January 22, 2024 8:02 PM (yesterday)

the signal from conde is that conde/GQ has little to no interest in music news & criticism, hence sparing some staffers in those departments, but does have interest in musicians as cover stories and profile subjects. i think the idea that larry presented -- a fully synergistic best new music branded multi platform cover story rollout -- is exactly where this is headed. i'll point out that such a practice is pretty standard, and i'm pitchfork has certainly lined up features where everyone involved knew a good review was likely to come as well, though i think pitchfork has always been good about covering an artist w/ a feature, or booking them at the festival, and still being honest about the album. these sorta quid pro quo-ish arrangements are the foundation upon which fashion magazines exist though, so i don't think you'll ever see GQ put travis scott on a cover & then pan his album, and pretty much as a rule journalism execs find the idea of negatively covering a celebrity who can drive traffic to be absolute anathema. will welch's background is in music journalism also, so i'm sure he's being looked at as a proper steward for pitchfork, and prob expressed interest in aligning the brands, though of course i expect the music writing in GQ moving forward to be generally useless

biggest change so far is the greatly increased Adam Franklin coverage

well it's not all bad I guess

xps I'm pretty sure Siskel and Ebert are the only critics that were ever unfireable partly because (unlike, say, Pauline Kael) they were strongly tested in that regard. Siskel above all was even fired for like five minutes as punishment over some disagreement regarding his TV show with Ebert only to be rehired when the Chicago Tribune realized they were being completely stupid.

Just looked up Will Welch lol

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/09/14/fashion/00WILL-WELCH5/merlin_211101828_a5e1fe32-f786-4376-bd49-91af987e0188-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=600

well we share a taste in sofas

That scrunched cushion is killing me

Everything about that guy is killing me. How to tell I would absolutely hate someone with just one simple photo.

looks like nathan fielder going undercover in the pitchfork office for a nfy episode

Current headlines on pitchfork.com:

- Grammys 2024 Ballot: Vote Here
- Oscars 2024 Best Picture Nominations: See the Full List
- André 3000 Announces New Blue Sun Live Tour
- Oscars 2024: Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?,” “I’m Just Ken,” and More Nominated for Best Original Song
- CSS Announce First North American Tour in 11 Years
- The Killers Announce Las Vegas Residency, Playing Hot Fuss in Full
- Frank Farian, Boney M. and Milli Vanilli Founder, Dies at 82
- Oscars 2024: Oppenheimer, Poor Things, and More Nominated for Best Original Score
- Sunny Day Real Estate Announce Diary Anniversary Tour

It’ll be missed. 😭

xxpost I thought that was John Mulaney playing a hipster doofus on Documentary Now

Thankfully saved by Simon Reynolds’ review of Head Over Heels. Gripping stuff.

xxpost Well clearly things are different now. Where’s the story about a band playing a cover song live?

the Will Welch material is interesting, never encountered this particular guy but some guys maybe in that vein. I guess he started out at The Fader in the early 00s and is around my age? it’s as explanatory as anything

Xaviersobased getting BNM today. Is he a pitchfork artist or a gq artist?

he's a soundcloud weirdo who i wouldn't at all have expected to get bnm yet. a positive omen and i will look forward to the gq profile

an artist with a name like that getting BNM'd is a truly dank sign of things to come

you might like him honestly

like to be clear this is an unexpectedly good move and he's very much hypergarbage thread material

okok fine I'll give him a whirl

Haven't heard the album, don't know the artist, but it's a very very good review by Alphonse Pierre. Very informative, analytical, and just very well-written. Hope stuff like this doesn't go away.

Pierre's not a hack.

I'm assuming that in these transitional times, BNM is probably going to mean "Stuff that Alphonse Pierre really likes".

Current headlines on pitchfork.com:

- Grammys 2024 Ballot: Vote Here
- Oscars 2024 Best Picture Nominations: See the Full List
- André 3000 Announces New Blue Sun Live Tour
- Oscars 2024: Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?,” “I’m Just Ken,” and More Nominated for Best Original Song
- CSS Announce First North American Tour in 11 Years
- The Killers Announce Las Vegas Residency, Playing Hot Fuss in Full
- Frank Farian, Boney M. and Milli Vanilli Founder, Dies at 82
- Oscars 2024: Oppenheimer, Poor Things, and More Nominated for Best Original Score
- Sunny Day Real Estate Announce Diary Anniversary Tour

Tbf, there are a lot of numbers, which is very on brand.

whoa didn’t realize frank farian died. hall of fame music industry scum bag

MarkoP at 7:53 24 Jan 24

I'm assuming that in these transitional times, BNM is probably going to mean "Stuff that Alphonse Pierre really likes"

it could do and has done a lot worse

I wrote about Pitchfork in this week's Burning Ambulance newsletter.

I have never written for Pitchfork. I used to pitch them once in a while, but none of my emails were ever answered, so I stopped. I once appeared on the radio with site founder Ryan Schreiber, debating the merits of Metallica’s Death Magnetic. Other than that, I was just a reader, and an intermittent one at that. I’d visit the site every day, but rarely find anything aligned with my interests. But unlike some of the assholes currently celebrating Pitchfork’s de facto destruction by parent company Condé Nast, I don’t view that as a failure of the site. It was vast, and my interests are relatively narrow.

The thing you need to realize and remember about Pitchfork, as it collapses (almost all of the staff have been let go, including people who spent close to two decades shaping it), is that it was never one thing. Indeed, all this past week, as people griped about the site on social media, you could tell when their impression of it was fixed. Some of them still thought of it as a place where white dudes offered snarky judgments of indie rock albums, as it was in the early 2000s. Some thought it had sold out its indie rock purity in order to cover pop music for girls, which is what people were saying in the 2010s. Still others thought it was a bunch of earnest kids filtering music criticism through “woke” identity politics, which was a common complaint a few years ago.

Pitchfork was all those things and more at one point or another. Its editors and contributors threw a lot of ideas at the wall, and they balanced coverage of “indie” “rock” with coverage of “mainstream” “pop” and hip-hop and metal and country and jazz and modern classical and noise and just about everything you can imagine. They even reviewed one of the albums on my label (though it was on more than 40 other labels too, and they credited it to Phantom Limb). Sometimes they could be dilettantish — for a while it seemed like Vijay Iyer was the only jazz artist they’d heard of — and they’d develop enthusiasms (we’re gonna cover metal now!) that would be abandoned after a while as though they’d never occurred at all.

Like I said, Pitchfork was vast. It was the hub of popular music criticism of the last 20 years, in terms of size, in terms of audience passion, in terms of real-world impact (from how its reviews could buoy or sink an album or even a band, to the Pitchfork Festival), in terms of how it shaped the way writers wrote about music. If it wasn’t all good, well, what is? And who cares? It was important. It was necessary. And it sucks that it’s going away. Yes, the brand name still exists. Yes, some staffers remain. Yes, it will continue to publish. But don’t kid yourself, Pitchfork as it was is dead.

What does that say about music journalism as a whole, though? I’m gonna be optimistic (or at least stoic) and say, Nothing. There are as many people interested in reading intelligent writing about music today as there were yesterday. Condé Nast doesn’t see enough profit in that audience to continue giving them what they want. That’s all. The question “is this a thing worth doing?” and “is this a thing I can get paid to do?” are not the same question. So yeah, someone else will have to start rolling the rock back up the hill, doing the work to establish the next big must-read spot. And in the meantime, a million niche blogs and newsletters (like the one you’re reading) will keep on keepin’ on.

But don’t kid yourself, Pitchfork as it was is dead.

Time will tell.

Nah, I think the 'as it was' part is dead on.

Some of them still thought of it as a place where white dudes offered snarky judgments of indie rock albums, as it was in the early 2000s. Some thought it had sold out its indie rock purity in order to cover pop music for girls, which is what people were saying in the 2010s. Still others thought it was a bunch of earnest kids filtering music criticism through “woke” identity politics, which was a common complaint a few years ago.

not sure it's been mentioned but this week's NYT popcast features an enjoyable interview with Ryan Schreiber & Chris Kaskie on the history of Pitchfork

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/arts/music/popcast-pitchfork.html

The question “is this a thing worth doing?” and “is this a thing I can get paid to do?” are not the same question

yep

There are as many people interested in reading intelligent writing about music today as there were yesterday. Condé Nast doesn’t see enough profit in that audience to continue giving them what they want.

This resonates. Pitchfork is dead will never be as it was, but the energy of the people who made it what it was, both readers and writers, still exists.

yeah, and tbh i really do think some Defector-style site could wildly succeed, they've just get out there and seize the opportunity.

carpe patreon

and tbh i really do think some Defector-style site could wildly succeed, they've just get out there and seize the opportunity.

― omar little, Thursday, January 25, 2024 1:24 PM (thirty-one minutes ago)

not a criticism of this post specifically but i think in general when people bring up defector they have to remember a couple of things

1. deadspin was a part of a group of websites where what would now be called something like "community building" was prioritized from the very top of management and threaded through everything the company did. writers were encouraged to interact with and cultivate relationships with commenters, commenters were encouraged to write blog themselves, the line between writer and reader was constantly being blurred, the connection between the two was to be as tight as conjoined twins

2. the deadspin staff quit in a highly publicized event, amid arguments w/ comically evil bosses, during the trump administration, when people (liberal website readers, the press) were highly attuned to stories about i.e. malfeasance of power, people being silenced for their political opinions, unions etc

3. so when they walked off the job you had an easily packaged news story that hit hot button sociopolitical topics (bernie sanders tweeted his support) *PLUS* a very loyal readership base that had been built up over a decade-plus who were ready to follow an equally loyal set of writers & editors to the ends of the earth to keep the website alive

this combination of leveraging a sizable and passionate audience as well as catching run off subs from people who saw supporting defector in the same light as subbing to the washington post, or who maybe just read about the drama in the news and liked the idea of an independent sports site, is very hard to impossible to replicate. a group of writers banding together to start a new music site would have a really big hill to climb that the defector guys, to their immense credit, had already spent 5-10 years scaling