They might have started out making safe decisions, but they got increasingly risky post-Ten days.

Stone Temple Pilots put out some interesting records made interesting by the fact that they weren’t derivative pieces of grunge poo, but derivative of other things like Redd Kross. I mean, I even like a lot of that stuff, but c’mon.

After reading all of this, I guess I disagree with the headline about the review of Ten being “90s revisionism,” which is the word you use instead of “reevaluation” if you don’t like how something was reevaluated. Is it not fair to look back at Ten (and review the rerelease on its own merits as well) and say, hey, I don’t think it’s all that great anymore? I’m gonna be honest: I have a hard time listening to Ten, and I LOVED it in high school. The production is painfully slick to my ears, and the lyrics make me cringe. Jeremy’s overexposure and sledgehammer of a “message video” has forever tainted that song for me. And I can’t help but feel like the album was diminished (not the band’s fault, btw) by all of the ridiculously bad ripoff bands that arrived in their wake. I suspect the Nickelback/Bush/Three Doors Down factor is probably a big problem that a lot of people have with Ten. But is this not a legitimate emotional response to the album?

Having said that, I agree with all of Mike’s larger points about people being ashamed of stuff they liked when they were kids. The mall analogy was a good one. I realized I’ve been trolling around on here (I’ve been procrastinating on a paper, btw, thus all of the internet chatter) without saying that I like this piece very much, which I do.

In my publicist days, I’d often try to find the different types of writers at each publication (he’s the hip-hop guy, she’s the punk person, he’s the experimental dude) because I knew that getting the wrong person to review a record usually meant a worse score. Of course, without having everybody review it, this was impossible to prove, but I saw enough of punk person dismissing indie folk records to know to get them into somebody else’s hands there.

I think that most publications operate this way, but Pitchfork above all others gets saddled with the idea that there is some overarching conspiracy or drive to do certain things, like, for example, dismiss great works of the 90s as has been suggested here by many folks. I just think that we wouldn’t be saying the same thing here if somebody else wrote that review. If Deusner had that review published in Paste (for whom he also writes, I believe), I don’t think we have this discussion.

Everybody has this idea that Pitchfork is always “out to get something,” particularly mainstream rock, but this is a site that gave that last Modest Mouse turd a 7.8, so I don’t know. I’m sure we can all find evidence of something to back up our respective opinions. They publish a lot of reviews by a lot of writers.

Agreed. Understand the regard, don’t share the love. I’ll throw on Surfer Rosa once a year or so, but it’s not in my top 100 albums of all time or anything.

@Lucas Jensen:

We can quibble back and forth all day to no avail about matters of semantics in my word choices to describe the Velvet Underground et al, and I’ll submit that you probably know much more about indie/less mainstream rock than I, but I didn’t think I was going out on a limb in pointing out differences in sound, sensibility, audience, and attitudes between college radio faves and major rock radio acts.

While acknowledging the places that the Pixies, Big Star, and Pavement have under the overarching umbrella of pop and rock, all of these bands went against major prevailing musical trends in rock music in their respective primes for the most part, and they all had off-kilter sensibilities to their sounds. I hope we can agree on that much.

Saying that Pearl Jam’s place is in the boring mainstream rock pantheon wasn’t a statement I thought particularly controversial. Pearl Jam probably owes some of their mass appeal to the fact that they make “safe” musical choices. Look at the Melvins for a counterexample – they come from more or less the same musical scene as Pearl Jam, and they’ve made a career out of not making those “safe” musical choices, the same way Pavement et al have made similarly “unsafe” and unconventional musical choices (lo fi production, occasionally odd time signatures, unexpected vocal harmonies, what have you). For my part, I thought “arty” and “daring” were words that represented that particular type of choices. Fine – maybe those aren’t the perfect terms, but otherwise I think you’re missing my overall point.

But Pitchfork has a reputation for being holier-than-thou-gatekeepers, and while that may be a slight exaggeration, it’s based in fact. Regardless of Deusner being on the up and up–even though his “volley of snarks” included topics unrelated to the music itself and sparked Mr. Barthel’s post–the fact is PF gave Pearl Jam a 6.7 and other reissues from indie-friendly bands got 9.1 or better. And no one should be surprised. (Your assertion that the most recent Modest Mouse is “a turd” and yet it managed to get a 7.8, further fuels the negative PF perception for those of us who frequently find ourselves at odds with them.)

Great discussion, guys. And Mike, thanks for a great post.

My 2 cents; I was kind of like Spankyjoe, I didn’t really “get” Ten when it came out. I’m sure it was partly that it was overexposed, all my friends (including many that weren’t really “into” music) loved it, and I was just kind of…meh.

However, listening to it years later, I think it actually is a very solid album. Sure, I skip the Even/Alive/Jeremy/Black singles since I know I’m going to hear them on the radio in 10 minutes anyway, but other tracks are pretty damn good.

But I’ll admit, it’s hard to “rediscover” an album that never really went away, as per previously mentioned incessant airplay on every modern/classic rock station.