I highly doubt that many, I'd even go so far to say that ANY, of the P4K contributors have journalism degrees, are currently studying journalism as a major or minor in school or (and this is most important) have practiced journalism professionally via slogging it out on a metro desk in some medium-sized town.
I've often wondered, what with the purposefully obtuse writing style exemplified on Pitchforkmedia from time to time if some of them aren't English or Creative Writing majors that are desperately trying to get their name out there in the guise of writing reviews. Take for example this review for Bob Drake's The Shunned Country by Dominique Leone. I've read many of her reviews and while some of them are very insightful it always makes me second guess the intentions of the writer when the review has absolutley nothing to do with the music. In this specific review not one piece of the recording is referenced. What good does it do anyone?
quote:
Not many normal folks live around here anymore. I walked near the gates of the old house, but too near, cognizant as I was of whomever might be resting inside. This place was so barren of life and movement; you'd think nothing had been born here in 50 years. It reminded me of the Midwest, in America, driving there for hours on a two-lane highway nested between endless gray and brown fields of wild grass, barbed wire and the occasional wooden barn or tool shed, such as I was passing now. Of course, this is countryside in France, a world away from Illinois and what I never considered more than the Drab American Backdrop. I'd heard the people here stopped answering their doors after having one too many strange things show up. What a strange story.
I'm going to see my friend Bob. He lives about 10 kilometers north in a cottage with his wife. He records all his music there in his own old, wooden barn. It's kind of funny to think that in the middle of all this decaying landscape, withering branches and mud that squirms like maggots near puddles of last week's rain, sits old Bob Drake recording music like some castaway of an art commune hell-bent on making folk hymns for ghosts, interspersed with avant-prog etudes and fragmented horror-show symphonettes. I have to admit that I wasn't looking forward to making the trek from Razes to Caudeval. After you pass the main road, there's not much but the "scenery". This place is cold.
Nobody around here is willing to discuss the events that led them to dynamite the graveyard. I asked a few townspeople in Razes about it, but got only abrupt frowns in return, as if I'd said something offensive. I'd read about it before the flight, knowing Bob was into that kind of thing. However, seeing this place now, I wish I'd read more. Staring at this old house (curiously, it seems generally well kept-- I wonder if someone still lives here), rotting wood and whistling wind behind me, yellow-gray skies and the sun completely obscured by some pretty fucking odd cloud formations has me semi-spooked. I mean, I'm not deathly afraid of anything, but I have a chill that I can't pin completely on the breeze. The clouds are elongated and bending in unnaturally bizarre ways, as if God was strung out and particularly pessimistic today.
The reputation of the house by the river isn't so good, and from what I understand, it wasn't exactly improved by what they found there after the recent storm ("freakishly localized", per Bob, though he tends to get macabre in weird moments). I've been staring at the front door for fifteen minutes now, getting colder and thinner in my cheek. I hate it when my mind wanders like this. I hate it because I'm at the mercy of whatever "spirits" inhabit this place. Like the wind, and that damn chattering grass. I don't think I've ever heard grass make noise like that. I don't think I've ever heard grass click and resonate like hollow wood. Hollow, dead, decomposing wood. Brown and black, and wet with muddy water, housing the eggs of mosquitoes and bacteria and parasites eating the life out of long-buried roots. Even the stars rot here, so the wolves can fly at night, driven by the scent of blood and small, crushed bones of whatever birds were unlucky enough to choose this route from the north. They say a noxious looking oily cloud came down into the yard here one day, and ever since then the things that grow here are deformed. Poisonous and evil. Where is the sun?
Yes, and now someone is looking at me from the house. I hate it here. Why did I come this way? I can truthfully say that if I could pick a time to kick the bucket, I'd pick some other day. Who's there? "Hello?" No one answers. "Hello? Can you help me?" No one answers. The wind around my neck is coarse; it makes my hair scrape against my head, just like the grass in the yard of this house. I'm opening the gate. I've heard a lot about this house. I've heard too much, and haven't seen enough. I'm coming to the front door. I'm doing it. I'm going to open the door. "Witch house" be damned. Yellow fangs, loathsome tittering, hybrid blasphemy, morbid atrocity, paws-like-little-hands be damned. This is the shunned country. I bet you can get a place here real cheap. I remember he said, "if I were you, I'd avoid it." The shunned country. I'm going to open the door now. I'm tired of being afraid of this house. I'm tired of being afraid.
Most of these indie zines "tell it like they mean it."
Pound for pound, I think PopMatters does a consistently better job with each disc it reviews (late, but reviewed nonetheless). Their first two sentences of the Dresden Dolls' Yes, Virginia review sets things nicely: "For all the Marcel Marceau greasepaint, garter belts, bowler hats, and lipstick, there’s no façade whatsoever when it comes to the music of Boston’s the Dresden Dolls. Emotional, honest, and often blackly comedic to the point where you don’t know whether to laugh or to squirm, singer/pianist Amanda Palmer and drummer Brian Viglione are unflinching in their performances, hammering out Kurt Weill-inspired chord progressions and massive, Bonham-esque percussion with an intensity that’s a long way away from the music of the more sullen piano balladeers of the world."
It tells me everything I need to know.
Then there's the Matt "The Saurus" LeMay of Pitchfork, who throws this little number our way: "The Dresden Dolls are everything a moody acoustic two-piece typically doesn't want to be: theatrical, affected, and profoundly self-aware. Singer and pianist Amanda Palmer gleefully eviscerates singer-songwriter clichés; even when she plays fragile, she does so with smirking duplicity. If the pleasure of listening to music like this usually lies in examining the singer's fractured personal world, the Dresden Dolls both invite and punish such voyeurism-- Palmer pretends that she doesn't know you're looking, then turns around and gleefully stabs you in the face."
Uh...huh? What the fuck does that even mean? Seriously, Matt, I need to know. And — Oh! Poor form! — you used "gleefully" twice!
Sorry, but 90% of the writing on Pitchfork is worthless. You're right — it's not journalism; it's amateur criticism.
Posts: 1652 | Location: Philadelphia, PA | Registered: 15 September 2004
Pound for pound, I think PopMatters does a consistently better job with each disc it reviews (late, but reviewed nonetheless).
Completely agree. Popmatters is the only online music review site I go to at all anymore. Good, clear writing and some genuine variety in the albums they review. I don't see any other mainstream site trying to point out that there are actually decent country and jazz records being released in the 2000s. Plus their features are actually worth reading.
Then there's the Matt "The Saurus" LeMay of Pitchfork, who throws this little number our way: "The Dresden Dolls are everything a moody acoustic two-piece typically doesn't want to be: theatrical, affected, and profoundly self-aware. Singer and pianist Amanda Palmer gleefully eviscerates singer-songwriter clichés; even when she plays fragile, she does so with smirking duplicity. If the pleasure of listening to music like this usually lies in examining the singer's fractured personal world, the Dresden Dolls both invite and punish such voyeurism-- Palmer pretends that she doesn't know you're looking, then turns around and gleefully stabs you in the face."
Uh...huh? What the fuck does that even mean? Seriously, Matt, I need to know. And — Oh! Poor form! — you used "gleefully" twice!
Sorry, but 90% of the writing on Pitchfork is worthless. You're right — it's not journalism; it's amateur criticism.
Ha ha ha. . This is classic P*&$%!fork. Meandering non-sensical bullshit that makes you want Amanda Palmer to hurry up and do exactly what he's afraid she's gonna do to his face. "Fractured personal world" indeed. Get your head out of your ass sunshine...
Posts: 354 | Location: Havana, Cuba | Registered: 14 March 2006
All I know is that on my computer Popmatters is a lot slower than just about any other website I go to. It's definitely slower than Pitchfork. I think it's because they have all these moving and complicated advertisements.
Posts: 3929 | Location: NE Indiana | Registered: 14 April 2005
As I can see from all of the other statements on here, I'm not the only one that thinks this doesn't make any sense. There are plenty of great online review sources available. I really don't see why Pitchforkmedia is so prevalent. Here are some of my personal favorites, I'm sure you're familiar with them from Metacritic at least.
I mean this is only a few, I'm sure there are plenty of others as well. How come when you mention online music reviews to anyone, Pitchfork is the first thing to come out of anyone's mouth? This is where the real problem lies. When exactly, at what point did Pitchforkmedia become the first AND last word?
I'm much more keen on NYT or All Music Guide. I get most of my recommendations from listings like Forced Exposure, Other Music, Insound or Aquarius Records. P4K, as overbearing as they may be, has turned me on to some awesome music, though, I should admit.
No offense to PopMatters or fans of them, but they take some of the most banal, silly stuff REALLY, REALLY seriously and sometimes completely from the wrong angle. I mean, they dissect everything so academically. Its as if they0 wouldn't know brevity, wit or humor if it bit them in the ass. The only reason I still go there is to read Adrien Begrand's metal column "Blood and Thunder," which is consistently great stuff. Love that guy.
I get most of my recommendations from listings like Forced Exposure
Forced Exposure isn't an online review source, it's a distro, a distro that primarily deals, 99.9%,in only ridiculously obscure avant-garde recordings. After reading your post about your top albums of the last four or five years I find it really hard to believe that someone who is down with avant-garde composers and noise would then turn around and name Tool, Coldplay, or Death Cab For Cutie some of the best music of the last few years. I don't see how someone who has been exposed to seriously experimental music and enjoyed it would find such banal, boring artists valid in the context of anything but top 40 radio.
That list was a list of most significant music, not necessarily best in quality. My personal list judged purely on quality looks different. My list you saw up there was a musicological excersize.
And Forced Exposure does reviews, or at least summaries and/or employee picks. Look harder.
And besides, if I like a wide, wide variety of music, that shouldn't be held against me I don't think. Sue me if you want to. You'll win. I'm guilty. Guilty, I say, guilty.
Note: What do you consider "seriously experimental" music?
I stand by my statement that Forced Exposure does not have reviews. Every site that sells music has blurbs attempting to describe what they sell. I don't think a pararaph constitues a review. Their site does have employee picks, which are so beyond obscure that most people would have no frame of reference.
As for what music I would consider seriously experimental, here is a short list by no means all-encompassing: Keith Fullerton Whitman, Herman Nitsche, Alistair Galbraith, Dead C, SunnO))), Earth, Double Leopards, Prurient, Wolf Eyes, Black Dice, Yellow Swans, Fennesz, Tim Hecker, Phill Niblock, Rafael Toral, Conrad Schnitzler, Phillip Werren, Glenn Branca, No-Neck Blues Band, Jackie-O Motherfucker, John Zorn, Merzbow, Mouthus, Excepter, Greg Davis, Sun City Girls, Can't (Jessica Rylan), Acid Mothers Temple, Nautical Almanac, Growing, GHQ, Magik Markers, William Basinski, Belong, Daniel Mensche, Boredoms, <<<VRSSN>>>, White Rainbow, Carlos Giffoni, Peter Rehberg, Masonna, Boris, Sightings, Sunroof.......
Maybe "write ups" would be a better description. Regardless, they turn me onto new music and its a major source for me.
I am a HUGE, HUGE Zorn and Tzadik fan for the record, and he (along with GYBE's Constellation Records) have turned me onto great experimental music. A majority of which I've listened to is actually from a Jewish perspective, and has made me more involved with my own Jewish background/culture. Marc Ribot, Mike Patton and all this Jewish experimental music I have yet to explore makes me proud to be Jewish.
quote:
Their site does have employee picks, which are so beyond obscure that most people would have no frame of reference.
...And that's EXACTLY why I like this site! I have NO idea what I'm in for! That's a REAL listen.
Originally posted by Yay!: And Forced Exposure does reviews, or at least summaries and/or employee picks. Look harder.
As does Boomkat and Amazon.
________________________________________________________ "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." - Hunter S. Thompson tinymixtapes.com / The Skinny / PopMatters
Like I said before, I visit Forced Exposure enough to know that they have employee picks and blurbs about releases. I don't see how a blurb that comes word for word from a press release by the label that released it makes it an objective critical review.
This is a blurb from the Important Records website about the new Mouthus album The Long Salt.
quote:
Free/tribal percussion spatter 'n clatter duels with endlessly mutating three chord sludge-riffage beneath thick, poison clouds of delayed-out vocal groan. Truly CHOCK full of manic bad-mood energy but maybe psych-droney and resin-soaked enough for the new crop of crunchier noise-heads to nod to as well. Electric guitars strung with duct tape and drums equipped with hundred-year old heads are jettisoned into deep space and dynamited, combusting so vividly that the afterimages soak our retinas with mandalas of interwoven earthworms and beer funnels for hours afterwards.
This is from the Forced Exposure "blurb" about the record:
quote:
This album is a return to more abrasive and heavy Mouthus territory after forays into acoustic instrumentation and, yes, a Fleetwood Mac cover on their recent Troubleman full-length. Free/tribal percussion spatter 'n clatter duels with endlessly mutating three chord sludge-riffage beneath thick, poison clouds of delayed-out vocal groan. Truly CHOCK full of manic bad-mood energy but maybe psych-droney and resin-soaked enough for the new crop of crunchier noise-heads to nod to as well. Electric guitars strung with duct tape and drums equipped with hundred-year old heads are jettisoned into deep space and dynamited, combusting so vividly that the after-images soak our retinas with mandalas of interwoven earthworms and beer funnels for hours afterwards."
Now does that look like an objective, critical review?
This message has been edited. Last edited by: jonathanbrisby,
I think Pitchfork has good taste in music. They've created a buzz (or helped create a buzz) for many deserving, underappreciated artists, many of whom have benefited greatly from the exposure.
On the other hand, the writing in Pitchfork is horrible. Just horrible.
I would say pitchfork is influential, but only to snobby hipsters who are so egotistically attached to their musical interests that they make it their lifes mission to make everyone else listen to "good" music. If I could get through one of their articles, maybe it would be different.
_______________________
"My initial response was to sue her for defamation of character, but then I realized that I had no character."
This thread has got far too serious in Frank's opinion. It was better when we were slagging P*%$!fork off. Hook us up with some other ridiculous review quotation leland. Sarcasm is not the lowest form of wit...
Posts: 354 | Location: Havana, Cuba | Registered: 14 March 2006
. This is classic P*&$%!fork. Meandering non-sensical bullshit that makes you want Amanda Palmer to hurry up and do exactly what he's afraid she's gonna do to his face. "Fractured personal world" indeed. 
