pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849495 in a series.)

Mods please delete if needed - but in response to lamenting that the Pitchfork thread hasn't split, here's a potential solution.

Maybe should slightly rename to "pitchfork is even dumber" or pitchfork is dumb and dumber or whatever to avoid confusion.

How about "Pitchfork is Dumb: 2023 and Beyond"?

Wonder how many people unfamiliar with the artist read "Oneohtrix Point Never Announces Live Shows in New York, Europe, and Asia" headline thinking it was a complaint?

oneohtrix point never her

come to new york, europe, asia

more like, "oneohtrix point never heard of 'em", amirite?

Seems strange to refer to (Venezuelan-American) singer Devendra Banhart as “Venezuelan”… unless he’s stated a preference for that(?)

Not really? In South Florida there's slippage. I identify as Cuban, Cuban-American, or American depending on the context.

Yeah obviously people can refer to themselves that way, but I wouldn’t refer to someone else that way (especially in a “journalistic” context).

He was born in the U.S. to a Venezuelan mother and American father, spent his early years in Venezuela, and then moved back to the U.S. as a teenager. I can't tell whether he has dual citizenship.

If I'm editing that dek, I would probably change to Venezuelan American, but he has also said in interviews that he considers himself Venezuelan.

2013: "Do I consider myself Venezuelan? I do. I am."

2019: "I spent most of my life feeling like a Venezuelan in America and then like an American in Venezuela, and then things got so bad in Venezuela that I just felt really like a Venezuelan."

Oh ok, that seems fair

and the Worst Headline of 2023 award goes to

https://pitchfork.com/features/podcast/taylor-swift-eras-tour-concert-movie/

"On Duster’s 2023 album Remote Echoes—their third since regrouping in 2018—they leaned hard into the muted guitars and muttered vocals that give their music the feeling of a shared secret."

Philip you silly goose that's a compilation of cassette only material from the 90s

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/the-shoegaze-revival-hit-its-stride-in-2023/

Evan do you ride for any of those new bands listed? I’m way behind on the “show me a new Shoegaze band” tbh

Also kind of feels like he forgot that "space rock" is a term...

He gets close when he calls Windy & Carl "spacey post-rock", and then goes on to try to fit Duster into the shoegaze ecosystem without mentioning "space rock" at all, so that evidence points me to think he isn't aware of the genre tag? IDK

brimstead I like the Hotline TNT album for sure, but one not mentioned I really like is They Are Gutting A Body Of Water.

However these may not be the style of shoegaze you're looking for... what are some favorites?

yeah I’m open to everything really, I was just wondering because there’s so many of them out there and I trust your taste

I appreciate that! Ultimately I'm not perfectly on top of everything shiny and new, but here's another really fun new band I've been listening to:

https://jjuliee.bandcamp.com/album/pushing-daisies

TAGABOW rules ... one of the best examples of the genre getting reshaped by youngsters.

probably just left them out because their last release was 2022, and this is, presumably, a "year-end" kind of thing.

Fair!

Latest Flyying Colours seemed a little slept on too

https://cdn.vor.us/event/582695/b8d2d6dcf8874e3da32f35fea9c95b88.image!png.538902.png.PMF24_Lineup_1-1_FINAL.png

De La isn't a headliner?

they headlined it back in 2007. was amazing.

https://x.com/misterminsoo/status/1767930571869622453

https://x.com/misterminsoo/status/1767930571869622453?s=20

trying again

Every single person knows this is true.

Quite a statement to make about a band I've never heard of.

They must be feds.

In January 2021, then President-elect Joe Biden invited the Black Pumas to perform during his Celebrating America primetime special during the President's Inauguration activities.

not sure who else from that july 19 lineup would be a better headliner

ML Buch, obviously

I guess Pitchfork didn't even review last year's Black Pumas album. Does seem a little odd.

Wow, except for the Gen X bait and one or two newer others (Wednesday) I think I'm almost at a total loss.

I'm in for Day 2 with those top 4 acts. Rest is a bonus for me, and it's nice to know I can show up at 7 if it's hot.

I'd like to see Kara Jackson live.

Sweeping Promises are great

This really brings us full circle to the beginning of the first p is dumb thread:

Donald
Oh my God, what just happened at P-Fork
Mon Apr 1 07:08:25 2002
63.167.209.146

I'm not going to spew any elitist bullshit, but Alanis Morrissette, Kylie Minogue? Oh my fucking God. I'll stay for a little while to see if P-Fork still serves my needs, but with today's front page, I'm not counting on it. I understand the career move, but I just don't think it's going to serve me any more.

I don't think I've ever heard Black Pumas, but it does seem off-brand. My impression has been that they're a band that exists to get Grammy nominations.

a harbinger of terrible things to come after the GQ merger announcement

are the ppl who book the festival beholden to gq/condé

a friend was musing that that spot was prob originally for r**** m*****

red hot chili meppers?

i mean it’s just speculation, the world may never know

Robert Mugabe

My impression has been that they're a band that exists to get Grammy nominations.

They were nominated for three years in a row for the material from their first album - 2019 as Best New Artist, 2020 Album of the Year for the deluxe version of the same album, 2021 for a "Live from Studio A" performance of the songs from the first album.

They also appear to exist to keep pressing plants in business, not counting represses or just ones pressed at different plants, I counted over 28 different pressings of the debut record in different colors and formats (45" versions). It's kind of insane.

"more than a love song" from last year was cute (re: black pumas) but yes very much a grammybait noncommercial radio kind of act

rivers muomo

my black pumas opinion: i like the song "colors," but not enough for me to seek out any of their other songs

I was going to guess Roisin Murphy but the letters don't match the the ***

i counted wrong

rivers muomo

― the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili), Wednesday, March 13, 2024 1:52 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao

Black Pumas headlines festivals literally around the world. They are in a similar zone to Mumford of being super popular but people don't actually register them as popular. This is kind of the most desirable zone to be in, everybody makes a ton of money and the Internet routinely does the "Who???" thing with you and you just cash checks and do half the promo work at most.

In the early years, S&E had a “Dog of the Week” segment where they quickly dismissed films that didn’t even warrant thumbs. Mostly schlock horror, grade-Z sex comedies, Bruce Lee ripoffs, and occasionally something actually good like The Brood.

whiney otm. i cant remember how i found out about it but i know that by 2001 i was checking it daily for the news updates, i didn't pay any mind to the reviews until many years later. it was exciting to have a one-stop-shop for announcements of tour dates & releases.

i remember once they posted a news item about Calvin Johnson breaking his finger, iirc it didnt cause any cancelled shows or anything, it was just that he broke his finger and was expected to recover, and that was when i realized "oh theyre just going to post 4 news items a day no matter what huh"

I mean it's not a complaint in any way unique to Pfork but earlier trying to read the Thom Yorke thing on Safari (I know I know) and the ads kept shifting the paragraph, it was completely unusable. Whats the end game here?

I mean, it's been the case for the last 10+ years but I really don't understand how anyone thinks most commercial web sites are in any way usable without an adblocker

new content every day was definitely huge at a time when you couldn't open up an app and just infinitely scroll. google reader was a big deal for the period where smaller blogs would sporadically post and you could get updates aggregated, but it wasn't really monetizable for the aggregator or for a large site like p4k where you want to drive people to open the webpage to serve up those ads, and people would continue visiting regardless of notifications because they gave you _something_ even if was meager

it hasn't been THIS bad for 10 years.

I do find it interesting that people don't seem to acknowledge how much Pitchfork has changed, like these opinions from 2006 preserved in amber, the site is faaar from dominated by white male indie rock now just browse the reviews

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/

They've definitely taken a different direction

Well, yeah. People still associate the site with Schreiber, who hasn't worked there in 6 years.

I mean, it's impressive how they've managed to build from infuriating 16 dudes checking the site in their dorm's computer lab to infuriating stan armies for mega pop stars.

did you look at the reviews page?

Not sure if that was aimed at me, I'm well aware of the wider net. Just a snarky note about how the site's always had an element of pissing people off, intentionally at the start and not so much now.

jon otm. my initial hate-reads of pfork back then always had an element of awareness. i wasn't familiar with the phrase "obvious troll is obvious", but the concept certainly isn't new and seemed like part of their schtick. i was mad because i couldn't believe people were falling for it...

...as i read it daily to see what they were dropping the ball on this time. sigh. in the end, successful troll was successful.

I think we have collectively acknowledged it’s changed, with a lot of axe grinding on top

I’m not sure where things are at now. Spin circa 2004 maybe? Less culturally relevant, kind of rote in a way. I honestly just go to what a couple writers are covering and scroll through and most of my music news is via instagram and a cursory listen on streaming. and ilm, obvs

I like kieren reynolds-press’ column

Did the comments section already kill Pitchfork? lol

angry Lily Allen fans attack!

Angry stan mob, armed with (you guessed it) pitchforks

Angry mob can actually attack the Pitchfork office since they can't work from home anymore.

https://pitchfork.com/news/bon-iver-fable-salmon-is-now-an-official-pantone-color/

https://✧✧✧.tik✧✧✧.c✧✧✧@✧.nwh✧✧✧/video/7632433177583176991
i find this tiktoker pretty annoying but otoh it is funny that kieran press-reynolds' article about wikipedia editors and music subgenres is centered around a guy who spent a solid year glazing kieran press-reynolds (and simon reynolds) online

https://✧✧✧.tik✧✧✧.c✧✧✧@✧.nwh✧✧✧/video/7632433177583176991?_r=1&_t=ZP-95x0MHKEFVm

uh you can't link to tiktok i guess?

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/meet-the-young-wikipedians-writing-the-front-page-of-music-history/

Which person do you mean?

https://pitchfork.com/news/pitchfork-founder-ryan-schreiber-is-releasing-a-memoir/#intcid=_pitchfork-article-bottom-recirc_7b996b78-ad7f-4204-9449-b5f732b7b277_modern-bert

A synopsis describes Weird Era as “an Almost Famous-like memoir for the 21st century,” in which Schreiber—who left Pitchfork in 2018—“opens up about running the most influential, and infamous, music publication of the internet age.” Topics include the adoption of a decimal rating system, the indie rock boom, and the inside story of the site’s acquisition by Condé Nast.

Chapter 5: Shit, Cat

i would have to watch the tiktok again to get the details but basically "aradicus," who is the editor referenced the most heavily in the article, used press-reynolds as a citation source in a ton of his wikipedia articles and wrote several posts praising press-reynolds effusively in the year leading up to this article

tik✧✧✧.c✧✧✧@✧.nwh✧✧✧/video/7632433177583176991?_r=1&_t=ZP-95x0MHKEFVm

can i post this? just add www. in front if you want to watch it.

ugh

the tiktoker is b.nwhite and the video was posted four days ago
i don't even really care about this "controversy" or know if it's reliable, now i'm just annoyed that i can't post a link to something

surely the career of this wikipedia editor will skyrocket after this exposure

shoutout to the ilx mod community for banning tiktok links

Aradicus

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8g3mFRH/

Ha, ok found the b.nwhite tik tok one about Aradicus

loved Kid Mero's album rating interview - an absolute beautiful troll job.

incel slang in the zara larsson album review subhead, two flavors that do not go well together....

I think "mogging" has broken contain on incel culture, it's pretty much just standard brainrot fare at this point.

i do not find that explanation to be exculpatory

really good article on a very deserving subject!

https://pitchfork.com/features/how-jeff-parker-changed-the-sound-of-jazz/

xpost MOG has had its cutesy moment in culture but it still stands for (alpha) Male Of Group.

also feel weird that they're platforming this weird anti-trans diss song by a streamer that p4k's audience more than likely would never have heard of

which song?

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/young-dabo-bleed-jane-remover-diss/

^^ this article

Yeah and linking the video prominently giving it further views.

I think you guys have misapprehended the dynamic here if you think pitchfork is some huge platform for brainrot instead of the brainrot ecosystem being something pitchfork should comment on rather than allowing to flourish without critique

I think you guys have misapprehended the dynamic here if you think pitchfork is some huge platform for brainrot instead of the brainrot ecosystem being something pitchfork should comment on rather than allowing to flourish without critique

like in the 2010s when pitchfork was the place ppl went To Find Music its a different story. now critique is kind of all they have

nice to see GHC writing about something other than how much he loves Phish

xp i get that, and i understand commenting on the brainrot ecosystem (like in kieran press-reynolds' columns) but does an article like that really need a tweet and an ig grid post, etc.?

like, i get that it is important for people putatively in the underground rap community to say, "it sucks that so many people in this community are sexist and transphobic," but they use dabo's press photo and link to the video and are pretty value-neutral in the headline ("evil" and "pure evil" has been used plenty of times by the website as a positive word)

it is definitely a change from the old era of pitchfork where massive massive artists like xxxtentacion would get mostly ignored because of character issues

I reflexively ignore rap music that scans as “internet shit” and let me tell you, that has never proven me wrong

Like it’s genuinely weird watching shit like phonk and Bladee and Haunted Mound and brainrot music break containment into mainstream media when it’s been so reliable to just dismiss this stuff out of hand as “internet shit”