I've been to a ton of Gaslight shows, and the Sink or Swim songs really go off live, but I struggle with how they sound on record.
I haven't seen Gaslight in forever because of a personal anecdote I'll probably blog about someday but they sound very enjoyable live
People really hate the echoey production on that one, but I always liked how cavernous that record sounds.
Can someone give me the rundown of what happened here, because that is hilarious and I didn't know about it.
The lyrics they posted on Bandcamp back when the album came out had "buttface" in place of the swear words, and Cohen's review calls the album juvenile because they say "buttface" multiple times.
When this review came out I was so amused and then I became an adult and now I think about another adult my age posting this and it's so embarrassing
I know it really doesn’t matter, but I’m a little salty that the re-review of Clarity was still only an 8.6. Bleed and Futures deserve re-reviews too, but I know we’ll likely never get them. They didn’t get around to “correcting” the Something To Write Home About review until the 25th anniversary edition. Pitchfork hated “emo” back then. And only begrudgingly gave LP1 a 7 something originally. (Looking at the re-review, it also got an 8.6. Maybe that’s their cap for foundational emo records lol.)
It’s especially funny, given that he later decided The Hotelier were like his favorite band, when he rebranded himself as the emo guy.
This explains why their review for Sunny Day Real Estate’s The Rising Tide was so savage. Sunny Day Real Estate: The Rising Tide A go-to example of piss-poor music journalism.
I forgot how unreadable these reviews are. "Oh you thought our last album review was pretentious?! Well wait til you read this!"
The Read Music - Speak Spanish review is one of my favourite examples of early 00s Pitchfork nonsense. I do enjoy snarky reviews though, even if I disagree with them - strong opinions, even “wrong” ones, are fun to read. Desaparecidos: Read Music - Speak Spanish
People used to make me feel so bad for not writing like that. I think I tried it a few times because I felt so bullied and didn't feel like a "real" critic or writer because I didn't. Comments like "does it bother you how bad you are at writing compared to P4k" was in one of the staff interview/Q&A things we did have stuck with me for years. I remember when I wrote that review for Save Rock and Roll there was some comment that was like "if you cut out the first few and last few paragraphs maybe this would be a mediocre review." Finally figuring out what I wanted to say, when, and how I wanted to write about music and not caring about that shit was the best thing I ever did. I never wanted to write like P4k and when I look back at their reviews now, and how much of the music ended up standing the test of time vs the gatekeeping dickishness, I'm mad I ever let it get to me.
I just hate snobbery, and most "snarky" reviews are exactly that to me. Someone who was never going to like something, and who didn't give it a fair shot, getting their rocks off because writing mean things about art they deem unimportant or trivial is "funny." Pitchfork wielded a lot of power for a few years there, and hurt or destroyed careers with that type of criticism, and for what?
There’s still a lot of great writing published on Pitchfork. True, they had an edge-lord vibe and an anti-emo bias for a few years, but they walked that back—and time and time again they featured some great albums which in turn influenced the musical landscape. They were a cultural touchstone and it really shouldn’t be denied. Now, after acquisitions and their recent years’ shift toward poptimism and click-baiting with sensationalist headlines, they lost a lot of that remaining goodwill. A shitty trajectory. But I hesitate to say the writers aren’t/weren’t any good.
I've always been confused why its always mentioned. I thought they were generally known for being horrible reviewers/writers that no one took them seriously anyways. Maybe I have that wrong but I cant say i've read more than a handful of their reviews in my entire life.
P4k is like any collective of reviewers where there have been some I've very much enjoyed and some that made me roll my eyes repeatedly. I do think the latter were recruited often for music in this general ~scene~ so I get the negativity about em. At the end of the day yeah they were definitely culturally important, in positive and negative ways alike (which is why they're coming up so much, otherwise why would we bother talking about em). I think they had good writers by the standards they wanted to have which doesn't align with Chorus which doesn't align with Sputnik which doesn't align with so on and so forth. And it's good that other places didn't align with/sound like Pitchfork in their reviews and if Jason's getting requests to take that approach it's dumb as hell, I'm so glad this site doesn't sound like P4k. I appreciate em for the amount of music they introduced me to and if they reviewed something I liked and gave it a shitty write-up I ignored it because at the end of the day even though they were important their opinions didn't matter, I dunno I took them liking something a lot more seriously than I ever took them disliking something