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Greg - 2006-11-29 11:27:05
I think they're spot on with Pitchfork. A more basic complaint though, or three: A) Bad writing is bad writing--Their review of the last Hold Steady album was mostly a slam of another review--both reviews were equally terrible. B) Their rating system is blatantly dishonest. They've given scores like 9 of 10 at the top of what are essentially pans. Conversely, they've put albums that got as low as 6 in their Best of the Year lists. I think they know that a large number of people don't read the whole review--and they still want to appease the labels/distributors. C) They're entirely predictable. I know before I read exactly what their stable will like or dislike.
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Alan - 2006-11-29 12:14:40
I've probably read only a dozen or so Pitchfork reviews, but the overwhelming impression I came up with was mean-spiritedness. I'd much rather read pieces where the goal is to explain why something makes the writer feel moved, rather than why something doesn't suck quite as badly as everything else. Probably why I fail as a Goth.
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Paula - 2006-11-29 13:27:40
Mean-spirited combined with shallow/callow. I get the sense that P-fork writers are 20-yr-old guys living in their parents' basements who don't have any depth of field or perspective, and that makes them useless. Gimme a mean-spirited critic who at least has been around the block and has earned a little jadedness. Or, better, gimme a critic who has been around the block and has enough grace and gratitude and maturity to choose to be unjaded.
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chris - 2006-11-29 13:54:37
I know pitchfork comes out of Chicago, but the description; mean-spirited, neither insightful or interesting, cluttered in thought. I tell you its pretty much a spot on description of what I dont like about Williamsburg in Brooklyn
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myspace_music_reviews - 2006-11-29 15:15:24
Dismissive, inaccurate, arbitrary, obfuscatory ... are you sure we're not talking about the Village Voice? Besides, i don't like Pitchfork either, but Sound Team really *don't* have any songs, at least none that i could find.
Still, i guess we don't get on vegetarians for not liking meat; we get on them for *liking* (or at least pretending to like) fake-meat. So, yeah, Pitchfork enables acts like Tapes And Tapes. Big deal. Then the act goes on stage, and the hoax is revealed and we can forgot the whole thing ever happened. Or does Clap Your Hands *still* bother everyone?
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Sharps - 2006-11-29 15:51:21
Re: the ancient computer. Does Dave W. know about this? It's a Pinataland song waiting to happen...
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Paula - 2006-11-29 16:45:27
Jens, I should add that if I were a mere civilian, I could ignore P-fork, but I actually have to consult it semi-regularly for work.
So it not only irritates me as a person, it falls under the same general category of distaste that I have for the lame music they play at the holiday party and notes on the company fridge about how wrong it is to steal food.
Sharps, Dave W. is dead to me. Dead...to....me!!
No, I'll mention it to him.
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Greg - 2006-11-29 18:37:27
If I ignored Pitchfork I'd have one less thing to gripe about. Seriously.. in regards to any kind of media or journalism, my beef isn't so much with what it is, but with what it isn't and what it could be.
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tris mccall - 2006-11-29 18:37:19
i like a lot of the music that gets good reviews on *pitchfork* (not radiohead). but i do not think they've ever tipped me off to anything, or made me think about a record in a different way, or had any insight about why people listen to what they listen to, or why i listen to what i listen to. i always know exactly what they're going to say, and even worse, i always know exactly how they're going to say it. even with all that, i can't tell what it is that they like about music they like, or what it is that they hate about the music they hate. i don't even think the writing is particularly bad. but now all the rock criticism on the internet reads the same, and has the same opinion, and it's mostly pitchfork's fault. well, it probably would've happened anyway, but "tastemakers" are just people who try to instigate a stampede of conformity. that's what we've been living through.
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2fs - 2006-11-29 23:29:53
I hate grade-ranking reviews. Whether they're based on numbers, letters, stars, or any other symbol. In and of themselves, they presume that everything can be boiled down to a simple, hierarchical system, and that people who want to listen to a CD want to know some critic's ranking of that album, and that music can be reduced to an arbitrary ranking. It's crap. Tell me what the record sounds like, how it makes you feel, where it sits historically, why you want to lick the singer's lips, the way the songs remind you of certain design features of a 1939 Ford roadster...but what does any of that have to do with a schoolmarm-like parceling out of some *number*? Is the Pretenders' first album better than Brian Eno's On Land? By exactly 2%? Does it even make sense to rank the two recordings on the same scale? Sure, they're both "music"...but otherwise, grading them (without explicitly delineating what exactly a 6.3 out of 10.0 actually *means* in reference to this music) is as useful as saying, yeah, this shirt I'm wearing is a 7.8, my dinner was a 6.5, traffic on the way home was 2.7, and the feeling of well-being and peace I'm experiencing right now is a 7.9 - 1% better than my shirt! Hrmph. Okay...gimme a minute to slow down my breathing...whew.
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Paula - 2006-11-30 00:19:06
I always strive to feel at least 1% better than my shirt.
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Greg - 2006-11-30 06:29:10
But surely everybody owns at least one shirt that makes them feel at least 1% better. I've got a couple new cotton dress shirts that I'd rate at 9.3 of 10.
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Dave W. - 2006-11-30 09:05:37
I'm just glad they have the internet in the afterlife. Otherwise...boring!
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Greg - 2006-11-30 10:36:45
Dave, my understanding is that it's really an Intranet, because they wouldn't want just any ol' jerk signing in and blogging.
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