November 29th, 2006
Pitchfork’s haters and My Bloody Valentine comparisons
After last week’s brouhaha about bloggers as reviewers, Matthew Shaer has an excellent article over at Slate about music review site Pitchfork subtitled “The indie music site that everyone loves to hate”. A Music Slut editor quoted in the article outlines Pitchfork’s review policy thus:
“Pitchfork purposely waits to review an album to see how the bloggers respond before they form their opinion.”
(Nothing new here, I once worked with a journalist who regularly googled several reviews of the same album before writing one of their own).
While Shaer has this to say of the music site’s attitude to review writing:
“Typically—but not always—the big temples are defiled, the blog favorites are knocked down a couple of notches, and bands that Pitchfork has “discovered” are praised unto high heaven.”
Via the article I also got a laugh out of discovering a blog called Predictfork that tries to guess what rating Pitchfork will give to upcoming albums.
Meanwhile, the Merry Swankster recently pointed out that even if you’d never heard of Japanese band Asobi Seksu, it’d be easy enough to conjure up a review with a few well-chosen phrases, notably a comparison to My Bloody Valentine. MS then posted a funny follow up post citing the frequency with which MBV comparisons occur among blog reviews. At least he includes himself in the list (twice) and heck, I’ve done it (“guitar flanges that My Bloody Valentine would be proud of”) with Serena Maneesh.
A lot of people (myself included) can find some of the writing on Pitchfork verbose and pretentious; but it also throws up some sharp, insightful assessments. Plus, for the most part, I agree with their assessment of certain new Irish album (which, as of today, is number 22 in the US charts).
November 29th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
Nice one Sinead.
I guess I’m too late to be the first to say: ‘Pitchfork - I prefer the early stuff.’
Jim.
November 29th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
There’s an ad on d’telly for Damien Rice’s album here in the UK describing him as “the most influential singer-songwriter of this generation”. I couldn’t hear what was said in the second half of the ad because I was shouting and thumping the arm of the couch.
December 1st, 2006 at 8:04 pm
The early Pitchfork? ie when they used to slate dance albums for the lack of meaning in the lyrics? at least now they have some experts in particular fields, eg Phil Sherburne…one of the best music writers around, period.
It makes me laugh when people complain about music writing for being “pretentious” or “verbose”. I seriously think most people just want to look at a review and see “THIS ALBUM YOU’RE GOING TO BUY ANYWAY IS GREAT”, “THIS BAND YOU HATE ARE CRAP” and that’s it.
Complaining about verbosity in music writing, or any other form of writing is like complaining about wetness in a shower.
Most album reviews in the press are a pathetic 80-100 words at best…what was it Bill Hicks used to say? “it’s your world we’re living in…”
I remember in the early days of Pitchfork, I used to hate it and anyone I knew who liked anything beyond meat and two veg indie despised it….now all those people WRITE for it! It really has changed…I think for the better.
December 2nd, 2006 at 11:06 am
Ronan, whether we like it or not, all writing can fall prey to verbosity and reviews about music, film and books tend to be the most likely vehicle for it.
I’m a bit confused by your second paragraph as it seems a bit contradictory. Yes, most people want to know “is it good, should I buy it?”, and that’s the very nub that often gets lost within overly florid reviews.
I’d have to disagree with your analogy, because music or review writing doesn’t have to be overly verbose. By the same token, being descriptive about what you’re hearing, reading, watching is not necessarily being verbose - there’s a distinction. Some people just write like that, and Pitchfork is an apt example of a publication where such writing regularly appears. Have you read a lot of the reviews? Or the examples given in the article? I love words, descriptions and like some of the writers on Pitchfork, but bandying around superlatives and obtuse paragraphs does not necessarily constitute good writing.
Personally I like longer reviews too and it’s very frustrating (as a journalist) to have a limited world count when you feel you’d love 500 words to really tackle something, regardless of whether you liked or loathed it.
Kav, I’ve seen the ad. Who thinks up those sweeping statements, I wonder? Oh and if you missed them, The Chili Peppers were on Later with Jules Holland last night. If you missed it, you can watch it here:
December 2nd, 2006 at 6:01 pm
IMO Pitchfork is one of the better places for writing about music, generally, perhaps the writing is over egged due to the longer format, in some cases, and people will always disagree over who does and doesn’t do this in a publication.
But when I read people criticising Pitchfork for being pretentious I can’t help but wonder if they’re actually irked by the fact that people are writing long protracted pieces about albums which break the traditional “is it good/bad” format of the newspaper/magazine review.
Personally I disagree that “is it good/should I buy it” should be the point of a review, my favourite writers give me a sense of what a record is like rather than whether I should spend money on it…I’d read their reviews of anything, I decide myself what albums to buy, but I read Simon Reynolds/Phil Sherburne/Paul Morley because I enjoy their writing, on whatever it is, even when I completely disagree with what they’re saying….
anyway this post has gone upwards of 500 words now : )
December 2nd, 2006 at 6:03 pm
just should add, I don’t think “one of the better places for writing about music” is a title worthy of much…..
December 3rd, 2006 at 10:39 am
Accusing Pitchfork of being pretentious has nothing to do with the format. Personally I prefer longer reviews, but they’re not favoured (often just for space reasons) for publications. Reviews for the Ticket are 140 words and some weeks, it kills me as I’ve got so much to say about an album.
A lot of dedicated music magazines, however, have the space and editorial unity to favour them. Not all of the writing on Pitchfork is pretentious, but when I read something that is so OTT that it makes me either cringe or laugh out loud (unintentionally), I can’t think of it as anything else. Some of the chest-beating paragraphs are just too much for this gal. But that’s just a portion of the content Pitchforck produces, and I’ve read some quite brilliant stuff on there too.
By the same token, I don’t have to agree with someone’s view to enjoy their writing. (I rarely have the same view as Mark Kermode about film, but I respect his writing). And yes, Paul Morley IS one of the better music writers out there.
I never said (and certainly don’t believe) that the “is it good/bad” concept is the point of the review. Christ, imagine! Personally, I don’t write reviews based on an “good/bad” premise, but that’s all some (not all) people want from a review, particularly if it’s a film or a play. They don’t want to know about the post-deconstructionist subtext: they want to know if it’s good enough to fork out 35 quid for a ticket.
I used to write quite long reviews here (you can find them in the various categories on the right) but I just haven’t had the time of late.
“one of the better places for writing about music”.
Phew, for a minute there, I thought it was me who’d said that.
If I can finish by digressing, Muse.ie the music review mag is relauching soon so I wonder if they’ll go down the longer review route or keep things short. Should be interesting to find out.
December 4th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Hey guys,
Just noticed your referral to Muse.ie, so I thought i’d respond to let you all know what our ‘editorial policy’ will be.
In short, we don’t have one.
Muse.ie is being developed with a focus on moderated user generated content i.e. we provide the best tools possible to help our users review gigs, albums, and other yokes, upload personal ‘top ten’ charts, and generally have a say. By moderated, I mean that if someone goes on and calls a band or musician a ’stupid f**king w**nker’, we give the review the boot, and give the offending contributor a bit of a clip on the ear because being a w**ker has nothing to do with the music the aforementioned w**ker creates.
The reviewing contributor can give a 1 - 10 rating to the act, but the best bit is that users can reply to the initial review, give their own review, and give their own rating. The rating is then based not just on the initial reviewers rating, but an aggregated figure based on combined reviews and comments.
More groovy things we’re doing include tagging: lets say someone reviews a band they think sounds a bit like Jerry Lee Lewis (or something!) - they can then add ‘jerry lee lewis’ as a tag, so other users who might like Jerry Lee Lewis can browse through the site and stumble across a review of this particular band someone else reckons sound like Jerry Lee Lewis. Kinda Last.fm’ish really.
For me personally, there were a few reasons to revive Muse.ie. For one, I used to read it back in the day and even applied for jobs with them (they never replied - booh).
The other reason is that the music business is a money churner for many, and it’s very easy for those in the money making chain to have their opinions formed by record companies, and not their own god given ears.
By giving full control of the users, we’re aiming to get rid of the biased, pointless articles you mention above.
Cheers,
H