The Strokes

pitchfork, i agree.

I don't have access to youtube while at work so I can't link it but there is a pro-shot version of 'Under Control' from the Austin show if you so please.

all i know is there are 4 videos or 5 on the levi's facebook. Not youtube

the strokes don't have beards, canadian accents or wear plaid shirts. of course they were going to give it a terrible review.

the album is solid, with some outstanding moments, just like the last record.

no one else sounds like the strokes. no one about can play guitar like nick & albert. few other bands from the past decade have a back catalouge of their quality. they still look like utter dons. these are all reasons why i still like them, will go see them again and quite frankly couldnt care less about what a student-written amateur website thinks of them.

well fucking said.

Well said there, I agree.

Funny thing about Pitchfork is that they save their high ratings only for bearded incompetent folksinger who pretend they are super-poor and for equally incompetent american rappers who pretend they are super-rich. Quite surreal that the stuff they hype the most is so extreme and incompatible, but then again I doubt they know anything released before 1999.

I agree with most of the criticisms of Pitchfork, but it's still easily one of the better musical magazines/websites out there IMO. Which isn't saying much, I know.

i just threw a wrench into your drivel

pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14279-innerspeaker/

Guess there's always some kind of exception...Tame Impala, Deerhunter, Animal Collective etc etc, but their choices are for the most part very predictable. They support a couple of scenes (like the new american rural folk, or the multi-millionaire r'n'b industry) and destroy with incredible cynicism (and a pinch of sadism) professional bands that used to be cool and popular but have lost their momentum, like the Strokes or Weezer.

maybe because it is warranted.

another example

pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14040-stuck-on-nothing/

THIS, Ladies and Gentlemen. THIS post right here. my exact thoughts summed up pretty damm well. I dont hate pitchfork, but everything chrissies said here is spot on.

Bill, beside the extemporary examples (we could find hundreds!) would you deny that Pitchfork has a...tendency that is quite predictable in their reviews, or they prefer certain characters better than others for reasons that are not always related to the actual quality of the music?

I've seen them praising artists to death, milking them like cows only to throw them away like trash six months after because they thought their momentum was gone. Also, I've seen them giving ridiculously low ratings just as a provocation, which is fine and funny if you are a lonely kid who runs an amateur music blog but it's just stupid from "professional music journalists". I mean, you remember that review where they gave British Sea Power an "U.2" rating?

Now, I haven't listened to the Strokes album and I can't care less, but a low rating fits with Pitchfork's politics, as the Strokes are too old to be cool for the younger generations and too young to be considered an old band worth revaluating.

And, I don't know what your thoughts on this are, but I think that something like "deserved sadism" in music criticism should be rare and applied only when there's clearly bad intentions from the artists. For example, Allmusic.com totally annihilated and ridiculed records of bands like Nickelback and Limp Bizkit, but the aggressive reviews were warranted by the offensive and stupid content of the records themself.

btw I challenge you at listening to their +8 records and see how many we like.

I think the onus is on you. You're the one picking bones in a thread vilifying Pitchfork for a review of a album you've never even heard. I think the Strokes album is their worst to date and not a patch on their prior albums, so I tend to agree with the Pitchfork review. You also mention Weezer above. When was the last time Weezer was any fucking good? Hell, even Steve thinks they are shit now. Fuck, they're doing insurance jingles here!

In fact, Pitchfork gave Pinkerton a 10. A 10 from them is very rare. They gave the deluxe remastered Pinkerton a 10, and the extras disc a 3.5. I dont see anything wrong with that.

Just for starters:

Here's the forum's top 10 records from last year alone and the scores from Pitchfork:

1. Best Coast - 8.4
2. Butterfly House - 5.8
3. High Violet - 8.7
4. Kanye - 10.0
5. Plastic Beach 8.5
6. Ariel Pink 9.0
7. Ryan Adams - 6.9
8. LCD Soundsystem 9.2
9. Soft Pack 7.1
10. Arcade Fire 8.6

The fact is, despite a few definite differences, Pitchfork tends to rate the records we rate highly, high. Only one of those scores is below a 6. I consider 6 to be an average to good record. I dont agree with those scores on The Coral personally, but such is life. The Pitchfork score is from one writer.

They also don't hand out 9s/10s like candy. They are definitely anal and probably take some things way too seriously, but on that same token, look at the 9s and 10s and see how many you like. Id bet you like more than you dislike at the very least. Their 10s alone, I like probably 75% of those records. Records from the likes of the Beatles, Stone Roses, Otis Redding, Dylan, etc.

The problem with Pitchfork is the people who use them as the only tool to judge music. Music is subjective. If the person they have reviewing BSP (whom I love) gives them a 5.738236, I don't fucking care. On the same hand, Pitchfork is brilliant with news, and they are more often right about a record than wrong concerning this forum's taste. They are also excellent about getting artists notoriety who deserve it. They're not perfect and shouldnt be treated as such, but they're definitely a helluva tool for discovering music.

There's praise and criticism to be laid at every single music review site like Pitchfork, but if you're going to talk all this mess and try to prove points at least do so with some sort of fact.

Weezer's latest records are great in my opinion (apparently Allmusic agrees, giving them 4.5/4.5/4). Oasis have got the same high ratings on allmusic, corresponding to the same low ratings on Pitchfork. I'm not saying that all music sites should agree, but clearly Pitchfork has built a reputation for being a cynical website that can make you or break you with their extreme ratings and thanks to these caustic reviews whose only intention is to make the writer look smart. Zero (∅) to the Flaming Lips?! Both a zero and a ten to the same Bob Pollard record, what does that mean? 1.9 to Lateralus by Tool, you gotta be kidding me!!

They are famous for showing gratuitous hate to random artists/records. Some artists actually sent them letters after inexplicable reviews. I repeat: why shouldn't you take it seriously? They have 30 millions page visited daily, they have sponsors and a whole festival...isn't it serious for people in the music business? Wake up, they're not some lonesome lad sitting in front of his pc writing provocative stuff on his blog! It's ridiculous that a website so influential is ruled by the lunaticity and immaturity of a couple of writers.

I'm not inventing the wheel when I say that for Pitchfork you're either an "in artist" or an "out artist", come on. And that most of their effort is spent for pushing American artists. And their reviews are a fucking snobbish rhetoric exercise. And it's their fault if there's so many dumbasses like lamarx who listen to fucking Rihanna and all these new hip hop "money and bitches" idiots whose only thing that makes one different from the other is the brand of sunglasses they wear indoors. As if any rock fanatic really needed a quick dose of false, cheap, auto-tuned music built to sell.

I'm posting in a thread arguing against a reviewing system, I can't care less about the Strokes. What I said is about Pitchfork, haven't said anything about the review of the Strokes. Also, can't care less how do you use it, honestly. A tool, a catalogue, a calendar, whatever. You can't deny they are one of the most important music websites when it comes to reviews, and people believe what they write, however exclusive or incomprehensible it might be. You can take their reviews with a pinch of salt? Good for you. Most of the independent records sales nowdays DEPEND on Pitchfork (since it's a resource for 80% of the "alternative community") so for people releasing records it is serious business. It's not a surprise that our lists and their lists do match, because most of the stuff we talk about here, we get from there...that's enough of a fact: some of the lists I've seen on here are exact clones of theirs, as if it is some people's ONLY source.

By the way, Pitchfork was looking for reviewers some months ago. The main request was to assemble your top-10 records of 2010 and a couple of random reviews. Two Thousand and Ten. That's what you need to know.

this post got me thinking about the bizarre situation pitchfork finds itself in,

their way of music journalism is clearly post-'professional music journalism', ie journalism from a time when only few privileged people had free access to music and the opportunity to express their opinion to a large public.

In times like that music reviews had to be 'objective' in many ways because it helped the readers getting an idea what the music sounded like and was worth buying in the end.

However, in times where every music is freely available to anyone, there's no need for a false attempt of 'objectivism' in music journalism, it's much more about the writer's wit and his ability to detect the cultural relevance and how interesting his opinions on whatever he's reviewing is. That might be the reason for pitchfork's success, because it's a way of journalism that fits in well with the way people consume music.

It's not only the music that is freely availabale these days, but being able to write about music shouldn't be such a priviledge anymore: people can just start websites from the scratch, there's millions of blogs etc, I'm not sure how pitchfork started but I guess it was just someone writing about new releases in his bedroom.

In a climate like that no website should be as important as pitchfork is, because by virtue there's nothing objective in their reviews and it's just some people who express their opinions like millions of others do on other websites, yet they are in this absurd situation that their website is so important that it indeed makes or breaks bands. It's absurd.

Let's hope Pitchork gives my album a good review.

I have changed my mind from hating to death Pitchfork to actually get just what I need from it. I find a lot of interesting news there and enjoy reading the reviews of the records I dig (positive or not). Of course, I do it with a pinch of salt.

Like Simone says, they're incredibly predictable, totally subjective and the most snobbish place on Earth. The most annoying thing to me is they tend to center the slagging reviews in non musical evidences (past facts, cliches, lack of originality in sound, lyrics, just cos they're Oasis or Eels), but they can praise highly some other acts (Best Coast comes to my mind) with similar features. All and all, I'm agreeing with them more and more lately, but it's as much due to me widening my tastes as to trying more Pitchfork recommended albums.

So basically all of you are partly right except Chrissie, who I would like to kiss right now.