Pitchfork has landed in the crosshairs of the online magazine Slate, where the subtly named “Die, Pitchfork, Die!” ran today. As our readers know, we have issues with the site–but the piece, by Matthew Shaer (who interviewed your Idolators during the course of his research) amounts to little more than a cursory Google Blogsearch of anti-Pitchfork moaning. Take this bit on Marc Hogan’s blogger-baiting Cold War Kids review:
Hogan’s review was seen by many in the blogosphere as evidence of Pitchfork’s agenda not only to dominate the critical consensus over a record but to control the fate of the band itself. As an editor at the Music Slut wrote to me in an e-mail, “[Pitchfork] purposely wait[s] to review an album to see how the bloggers respond before they form their opinion.” In the case of the Cold War Kids, the editor explained, Pitchfork avoided competing with the blog buzz and managed to chime in just as the inevitable backlash had begun.
Not mentioned is that the Cold War Kids review was actually written after the album came out–release dates being something that bloggers, who love to splash around in the pool of pre-release hype, rarely take heed of. (But that’s a subject for a different time.) And as far as bloggers’ role in the “inevitable backlash,” perhaps their constant churn of “bands to watch” helps fuel the flame that Pitchfork, with its willingness to actually engage records critically, snuffs out by bestowing a sub-5.0 mark.
There’s a solid case to be made about Pitchfork, and its disproportionate influence in the world of indie music. But holding up some blogger-bashing and a three-year-old Dandy Warhols review as evidence that the ‘Forkers want to “poke holes in an established critical consensus”? To us, that sounds more than a little contrarian for its own sake.
Die, Pitchfork, Die! [Slate]
Your pts are all valid….I wish more bloggers would do full-fledged album reviews, it definitely undermines them when after three singles,a band can be annointed “Next Big Thing” status…last year Birdmonster came out with a 3 song EP and they actually made several bloggers’ year end Best Of Albums List. Not to be a dick, but if you put a 3-song album in your top 20 list of the year, at the expense of bands that actually put out whole albums, then you’re retarded.
Wait…Bill Baird? The puppeteer?
the writer keeps returning to the point that pitchfork is often out of lockstep with critical consensus, which i don’t think is a very strong one. he seems a little too concerned with the imagined intentions of the site’s writers and editors… not much to say there.
What, no mention of the infamous Save Ferris review or the equally imfamous Kiss Alive review? No attack on Pitchfork is complete without digging in those old wounds.
The problem is pitchfork is somewhere in limbo between a fansite and a legitimate source of music journalism. When they review some records with wordy, large vocabulary riddled paragraphs and the next by simply showing a video of a monkey peeing in its own mouth, no one knows how seriously to take them.
Which is basically why the problem really lies within the readership. People hate pitchfork because they abuse the influence they have over the “indie rock” scene. But they only have that influence because people blindly listen to everything they say. If everyone read pitchfork with a grain of salt and took the time to make thier own judgements, then maybe it’s control would diminish.
Either Pitchfork needs to establish itself as a legitimate journalistic source or it needs to stop acting like one. And people need to stop following thier orders and formulate thier own musical opinions. The only reason they are such a “pulse” of the indie music scene is because everyone lets them be. Find new sites! There are like a million blogs out there. Pitchfork is nothing big. They review records and scour the internet for mp3s and news. That’s it. If more people woul start writing better web sites then maybe people would go to them instead.
In response to Dr. Proteus – Pitchfork gets the hits and the reputation because they have a large staff and can crank out 6 new record reviews every day – something most MP3 blogs can’t really manage. Yes, there are competitor sites like Stylus, Cokemachineglow, or whatever else – but they don’t update as frequently or run as many reviews (and they all, like Splendidzine, take a certain amount of pleasure in being contrarian).
What bothers me most, and I think what Slate nails them the hardest for, is that the reviewers are just brutally horrible writers. They write line after line of incomprehensible meaningless descriptive drivel. A reviewer should give an idea of what the record sounds like, and an opinion of it – Pitchfork routinely omits the former. Say what you will about their review of Jet (the monkey pissing into it’s own mouth), but at least I understood where they stood on it – read their review of Swan Lake, and tell me if it has 1/8th the clarity.
Maybe I’m out of the loop on this but does anyone really obey Pitchfork (for lack of a better word)? I know the website is a lightning rod, but it seems that people are more interested in whether their reviews of any given band reinforces the readers’ opinion of how Pitchfork will review the band.
I can’t pitcure this imaginary Pitchfork reader that doesn’t frequent other music blogs. If anything influences readers, I imagine it’s critical consensus not a single review on a single site.
The most insightful statement in the whole piece is: “…non-Pitchfork bloggers are the real engines of the site’s influence…”
To be fair, that Dandy Warhols record is godawful.