i'd agree to an extent.

i think the difference is allmusic.com gives positive reviews to almost everything. since you aren't going to look up bands you don't like, you tend to think 'yeah these guys are right on'. but if you look up bright eyes you'll notice three of the albums get full marks. and for shits and giggles, i'll look up ub40 and notice that six of their albums get between four and five marks too. i'm not going to rush out and buy ub40 albums though.

the reason i really hate pitchfork is that ryan schreiber has gone out of his way to deliberately sabotage the career of tim kinsella because he personally hates his music. rather than say "i don't like it but i'll try and find a writer that doesn't mind it so much" he's just made it open policy to slag every project involving kinsella off. thus, the people who commonly work with kinsella are being tarred with the same brush. considering pitchfork is based in chicago it seems odd to me that they would prefer to heap acclaim on every band from new york or canada rather than try and support their own local music scene. even worse, if you look at most other reviews you will see they have basically read the pitchfork review bullshit and printed almost exactly the same!

and yes, pitchfork's influence does make or break bands as we've seen from stuff like the arcade fire, fiery furnaces, sufjan stevens and fuck it look at my friends in art brut. they aren't a great band but since pitchfork says they are, they sold out every date on their US tour without even having a record available there!

craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap

Crap. They got a few decent contributing writers -- Jess Harvell, Drew Daniel, and Nitsuh Abebe come to mind -- but those guys' writing can be enjoyed far better elsewhere (on I Love Music, for example) so there's no point in trying to cope with Pitchfork's severe graphic and editorial deficiencies. I hate most of what gets called "indie rock" now anyway, so.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/tracks/06-05-17.shtml

i wonder how long until they figure out the song wilco played on conan was a rod stewart cover. does the writer really think they were asking the crowd to sing along on a brand new song?

ctrl-s wrote:(on I Love Music, for example)

What is the official URL for this site? Is it a forum or a web zine? I did a Google search and came up with this address, which refuses to load on my computer:

http://ilx.wh3rd.net/newquestions.php?board=2

I find Pitchfork a useful read, in the same way that WorldNetDaily is a useful read.

Know thy enemy. Not Crap.

John W. wrote:

ctrl-s wrote:(on I Love Music, for example)

What is the official URL for this site? Is it a forum or a web zine? I did a Google search and came up with this address, which refuses to load on my computer:

http://ilx.wh3rd.net/newquestions.php?board=2

That's it. It's a forum. They have chronic server problems, so if you get a message saying TURN BACK YOU POXY FULE just try again later. Lots of music writers and geeks, some musicians, degrees of elitism and snottiness that are truly incredible at times even to me, and a few total assholes, but there are also some smart and reasonably civil people and some good discussions. Much more discussion of pop, hiphop, and dance music than you see here, but really pretty much everything gets covered. Archive searches are key. I've found it useful and entertaining.

Thanks!

i've seen some pretty good discussions on that forum, in addition to a lot of nonsense. there's an "i love movies" one as well, if i recall correctly.

Ally In Exile wrote:there's an "i love movies" one as well, if i recall correctly.

Yeah, I Love Film. It's not quite moribund but it's been sparse lately. Most film discussion in the ILX0R realm now seems to be happening at I Love Everything.