Pitchfork is a website which primarily focuses on reviewing indie music. Generally speaking, I like the site a lot and admit that its writers are far better at writing than I ever will be. In fact, the site's reviewers introduced me to some of my favorite acts – including MGMT and Springsteen. Occasionally, though, their writing seems as though it's trying a little too hard to prove something. "Pitchforked" highlights these moments.
The practice of taking questionable writing and making fun of it was made popular by the blog Fire Joe Morgan. FJM is defunct, but the tradition continues on at Kissing Suzy Kolber (I also love KSK's usage of all-CAPS to make a joke funnier). I don't think I'm ripping them off; rather, I'm just expanding their idea from sports to music. Still, I'd feel sleazy if I didn't credit them with the idea.
One final note: Pitchfork is known to retroactively edit posts without warning its readers. This means that some of the quotes I feature here may no longer be part of what's posted as the "official" review. Believe me - I didn't make these quotes up.
From the review of Talib Kweli's Gutter Rainbows:
"The beats on Gutter Rainbows are tight-enough neo-soul by committee-- 13 producers handle 14 tracks -- and most of it sounds like faintly modernized versions of Rawkus-circa-2002 boom-bap, with the occasional outlier in the form of a post-"Hello Brooklyn" old-school banger (Khrysis' "I'm on One") or atmospheric synthesizer dirge (Blaq Toven's "How You Love Me")."
Wait for it….wait for it…
"But isolating the beats from the rapper seems futile."
Bam! I feel like the ENTIRE previous sentence was all about isolating these beats. You just compared them to something called Rawkus-circa-2002 boom-bap (not to be confused with Rawkus-circa-2003 boom-bap, which was entirely different).
From the review of Destroyer's Kaput:
"Every era has a sound."
For example, the Victorian Era is known for a hilarious amount of fart sounds due to the 19th century invention of the whoopee cushion.
"But Bejar's essential complexity ultimately feels human. It seems absurd to look for genuine wisdom in music in 2011, when we're constantly gorging ourselves on the all-you-can-eat buffet of post-modern web culture."
I like how you started a sentence with 'but' – classic hipster proseslinging. But I don't know about "constantly gorging myself on the all-you-can-eat-buffet of post-modern web culture". Are you calling me fat? I tried to eat the internet ONE TIME. Gimme a break!
From the review of The 1900's Return of the Century:
"If the sentiments are tough, the music itself is tender, borrowing from Belle & Sebastian and Brill Building pop to create a sound that is both pastoral and urbane, straightforward yet sophisticated."
Pastoral, but urbane. Straightforward, but sophisticated. Esoteric, yet accessible. Light, but great-tasting. Mud-wrestly, yet classy.
From the review of The Jayhawks' Hollywood Town Hall/ Tomorrow the Green Grass:
"What the Jayhawks never drifted toward was success-- at least not the kind that they and their fans felt the music warranted. Even so, a full 25 years after forming, the Jayhawks don't come across as also-rans, which is itself a minor miracle."
Other minor miracles include: convincing people that Animal Collective is a good band; making Park Slope the new Williamsburg; Zooey Deschanel.
"Those tightly intertwined vocals are reset in a dusty, electrified setting, marking perhaps the Jayhawks' greatest innovation."
Sadly, the Jayhawks would lose to Creighton in the second round of March Irony.
"The five bonus tracks neither distract from nor add to the original, but they do reveal the tracklist as a model of economic editing and sequencing."
Neither distract nor add! Hipsters are not constrained by our math operators. Addition and subtraction are played out. Actually, Pitchfork would never say something is "played out" since the term itself is dated. They would say something like "…the once formidable duo Addition & Subtraction – an early-decade dancehall staple which rose to towering heights on the strength of its bubblegum synthesizers and devil-may-care baselines – ultimately descended into self-parody in mid-2005."
Damn that's actually pretty good. Maybe Pitchfork is hiring?
No comments:
Post a Comment