Website: Pitchfork
Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 6:38 am
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!
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!