In the last decade, no organ of music criticism has wielded as much influence as Pitchfork. It is the only publication, online or print, that can have a decisive effect on a musician or band’s career.... [W]hatever attracts people to Pitchfork, it isn’t the writing. Even writers who admire the site’s reviews almost always feel obliged to describe the prose as “uneven,” and that’s charitable. Pitchfork has a very specific scoring system that grades albums on a scale from 0.0 to 10.0, and that accounts for some of the site’s appeal, but it can’t just be the scores.... How has Pitchfork succeeded where so many other websites and magazines have not? And why is that success depressing? A lengthy history and review of
Pitchfork [Media], from an inexpensive online alternative to a music zine, to "indie" music kingmaker, and thoughts on pop music (criticism).
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 24, 2012 -
109 comments
"We were so dumbfounded at the noise that was coming out of our instruments it took us a while to get a handle on what we were hearing, let alone thinking in terms of how any records would be structured." Music journalist Ned Raggett assembles the oral history of British experimental rock group
Disco Inferno's five EPs.
posted by Houyhnhnm
on Jan 23, 2012 -
17 comments
When we did "Beat It," Michael came in the van with us to scout locations. I remember saying, "I'm hungry, let's stop for a pizza." Michael said, "Oh good, I've never had a pizza." This is a 25-year-old man who'd never had pizza. Now he wasn't accessible like that. He was a superstar, but then he became a deity.
I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution
is a hugely readable and fun new oral history of the first decade of MTV. Veteran music writers Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum interviewed many of the era's major players, putting a microscope on the biggest, weirdest, and most memorable videos of the time, and [Pitchfork is] thrilled to present the following excerpt.
posted by obscurator
on Oct 27, 2011 -
28 comments
I think that we can all agree that the best-selling duo in rock history, Hall & Oates, are pretty freaking awesome. They recorded some of the greatest songs in pop history, including "
Rich Girl", "
Kiss on My List", "
Private Eyes", "
I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)", "
Maneater", and "
You Make My Dreams Come True".
They were incredible live.
And they participated in the greatest back-alley song-writing duel of 1978.
Also Daryl Hall considers himself a modern-day warlock.
However, last night the world learned that Hall and Oates's are sad.
They are extremely saddened by the upcoming departure of Alan Colmes from his show Hannity and Colmes, and they have chosen to express their sadness through song.
[more inside]
posted by ND¢
on Dec 12, 2008 -
88 comments
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are a band that, less than a year ago, were making music without the help of a record label, pressing CDs themselves and selling them at concerts and on the Internet. Then the following happened:
June 9: Dan Bierne writes about the band on his MP3 blog,
June 14: Pitchfork Media posts a review of the song "In This Home On Ice",
June 15: Blogger Gothamist posts an interview with the band,
June 20: Blogger Stereogum announces the band's show at the Knitting Factory,
June 21: Gothamist reports that David Bowie was in the audience at the Knitting Factory show, and
June 22: Pitchfork posts one of a slew of reviews of Clap's first album.
Now, they've been named to dozens of
critics 'best of' lists,
they're playing Conan and Letterman, and are about to embark on a new tour. Why choose today to post an article about a band blowing up written in November you ask? Because
their tour kicks off tonight at the 9:30 club in DC, and you can
listen to it live.
posted by ND¢
on Mar 8, 2006 -
140 comments
NPR’s Live Concert Series site offers recordings of recent live performances by
James Brown,
Sinead O’Connor,
Iron & Wine and Calexico,
Son Volt,
My Morning Jacket,
The White Stripes, M. Ward,
Sigur Ros,
Bloc Party,
The Decemberists, and live tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. ET,
Colin Meloy.
posted by ND¢
on Jan 27, 2006 -
46 comments
pitchformula.com This project combines a computer science background and a songwriting hobby with an unhealthy obsession for popular music reviews. In it, I attempt to come up with a new computer-assisted songwriting method which takes music critics' opinions into account. By writing software to statisically analyze the content of several thousand record reviews from the Pitchfork music website (www.pitchforkmedia.com), I generate a set of compositional guidelines based on the musical preferences expressed by the critics. I then use those guidelines to write and record a couple of original songs, discussing in detail the relationships between the songs and the data that I have collected. [via music (for robots)]
posted by soundofsuburbia
on Jun 16, 2004 -
18 comments
And so it begins: while I've already seen half a dozen "best ___ of 2002" lists, the year end list I look forward to,
Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums list is out for 2002. It's just the right mix between "so mainstream there are no surprises" and "so indie even your second cousin's girlfriend's brother in that band hasn't heard of them" though perhaps they're leaning towards the latter this year, seeing how I've only heard about a quarter of all the albums listed.
posted by mathowie
on Dec 22, 2002 -
55 comments
The Mailbox Bomber's band sucks , according to
Pitchfork Media, one of the most intellectual and pretentious music review sites on the web.
"Can you feel the pain?" Helder implores on "Back and Black," a passable stab at Incesticide-era Nirvana, albeit with horrendous lyrics and a gratuitous punk-rock stomp at the coda. "Stop the game!" Helder winces, as though squeezing out a fat one, and we really can feel the pain.
Related issue: the
band's webpage (also discussed
here) has been taken by Angelfire down for "violation of terms of service." Still,
Google's cache of the page reveals nothing objectionable. Is Angelfire right to take down the webpage of a nationally known criminal (the first time I can think of that the issue has arisen)? Or do their Terms of Service really have a "no domestic terrorism" clause?
posted by tweebiscuit
on May 9, 2002 -
28 comments
