I don’t hate on Pitchfork. I visit the site daily, I’m going to their festival for the second year in a row, and, for the most part, I agree with their music taste. That’s not to say that I swear by them or that they’re always right. Rather, I believe they’ve done much more good than harm in the music world, and I get a bit tired of seeing people immediately dismiss a new band because of hype that Pitchfork has given it. (Just learn to think, everyone, and it will be OK.)
That said, sometimes Pitchfork reviews are unforgivably bad. Whether it is because the reviewer decides to tell a cute story rather than review an album, or because they talk about “the cultural zeitgeist” rather than review an album, or whatever, Pitchfork has a tendency of being Kinda Lame on Occasion. I exclude the reviews are clearly joke-oriented from my criticism, because there’s nothing I love more than a good laugh at Louis XIV’s expense. Instead, the reviews I take issue with give albums either incredibly mediocre or inexplicably wonderful scores without saying much of anything about the music contained within.
So, we here at Swim Through Frequencies have taken it upon ourselves to compile a list of:
The Five Lamest Pitchfork Reviews Ever Without Mentioning that Flaming Lips Album they Gave a 0.0 Because They Already Know that was Silly
1. The Weakerthans – Left and Leaving
Rating: 6.1
Sam Eccleston, throughout his four-paragraph and two-line review of Left and Leaving, does not mention one single song title. In fact, he only ever quotes lyrics from the album once, and he GETS THEM WRONG. So, you might ask, what does he spend the review talking about? Well, the first two paragraphs (of, I will remind you again, a four-paragraph review) debating whether or not The Weakerthans are Punk or Emo.
And that’s retarded.
One listen to Left and Leaving by anyone with even a fleeting knowledge of punk rock should be more than enough to determine that this album is far, far away from punk. So John Sampson used to be in Propaghandi (a fact that Eccleston seems to think is important enough to mention again and again), does that mean his entire musical catalogue has to be punk rock?
Then, after a paragraph where he basically says he’s kinda bored with the record without doing any actual, you know, REVIEWING, the final paragraph is ONCE AGAIN a meditation on punk being “dead”. I’m not even really convinced that he listened to the album past the first song whose lyrics he misquotes.
2. Minus the Bear – Highly Refined Pirates
Rating: 5.4
Eric Carr says he can sum up Minus the Bear’s debut album in a sentence provided to him by his brother: “It’s indie rock. Eh.”
If I could sum up his review, I would choose this sentence provided to me by Eric Carr: “How can an album as tight, consistent, and energetic as Highly Refined Pirates be at once so thoroughly unimpressive?” That’s actually a good question, Eric! I would answer YOUR question with a question: “What makes sense about that sentence?”
I don’t have a problem with Pitchfork not liking this album. They can not like whatever they want. My problem with the review stems from two factors:
1) They gave MTB’s debut EP, This is What I Know About Being Gigantic, an 8.6. MTB’s sound did not change nearly enough (especially if Carr admits that the album is “tight, consistent, and energetic) to warrant such a score drop from EP to album. A different person wrote the review for the EP, however, which may be part of the issue.
2) Carr, like Eccleston before him, keeps the actual reviewing of the music to a minimum. He repeats over and over that he’s heard it all before, but with no specifics to back his opinion up. Even when he actually mentions song titles (he mentions two that he likes in the last paragraph, both conspicuously at the beginning of the album) he doesn’t say anything about them, just that he thinks they’re pretty good.
3. YACHT – I Believe in You Your Magic is Real
Rating: 6.8
Dan Deacon – Spiderman of the Rings
Rating: 8.7
Both of these albums, while certainly not incredibly similar, can be described as “Glitch Pop.” In Rob Mitchum’s review of I Believe in You…, he cannot freaking stop comparing it to Max Tundra’s 2002 Mastered by Guy at the Exchange. He just cannot stop. As far as I can tell, the fact that YACHT’s album is influenced by MBG@TE but isn’t as good as it (in Rob Mitchum’s opinion) is reason enough to give the album a 6.8. Alright, whatever.
The review of Dan Deacon’s Spiderman of the Rings, however, an album clearly influenced just as much (if not more so) by MBG@TE, never sees Tundra’s album mentioned once and gets slapped with an 8.7. Again, different reviewers, but you’d think someone would have gone “Hang on a minute!”
4. Art Brut – Bang Bang Rock and Roll
Rating: 8.9
To get right to the point, Rob Mitchum’s review of Art Brut’s debut album reads more like a press release than a piece of music journalism. Accented with big, CapsLock’d, bold excerpts from the album’s lyrics (which just make me feel like Eddie Argos is shouting at me even when I’m not listening to his music), Mitchum can’t seem to get over how fucking funny these cats are! Every time he mentions a line, its either “sly” (about “Formed a Band”) or “the best joke on the album” (about the title track) or “hilarious” (a sweeping statement about pretty much the entire thing). It hurts me that, just because indie rock is “Too Too Serious” or whatever, whenever someone shows up with even the slightest hint of humor (Argos, James Murphy) they’re hailed as saviors. I doubt many people would find anything laugh-out-loud funny about Bang Bang Rock and Roll. Maybe Argos’ plea for kids to “Stay off the crack!” at the end of “My Little Brother,” but there HAS to be something more to the album than just some witty one-liners, right?
Apparently not for Mitchum. “Art Brut, through their thoroughly unpretentious embrace of pretentiousness, are the most punk new band I've heard in years, punk having lost itself long ago to the pretentiousness of unpretentiousness.” Yeah, alright. Whatever.
5. Joanna Newsom – Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band EP
Rating: 8.7
Alright now, before someone gets the wrong idea, we here at Swim Through Frequencies love Joanna Newsom with all of our hearts and souls. We even love “Colleen”, the only real song on Newsom’s three-song Ys Street Band EP. That’s right, the EP is three songs long, two of which are simply orchestrated (and, in the case of “Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie”, unnecessary) versions of old songs. So, what makes this EP worth reviewing, let along slapping a “Best New Music” label on it? Fuck if I know. Pitchfork HAS a section for individual tracks, and “Colleen” could have easily been reviewed there. It’s basically all Doug Wolk talks about in his review anyway. Although I can hardly find fault with Wolk’s writing (he does a fairly good job, he’s just got so little material to grapple with) the review is unnecessary, absurdly highly rated, and awarded “Best New Music” seemingly just because it’s from Newsom.
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