Pitchfork Shoots Barrelled Fish W/Elephant Gun
The only time a piece of music writing is better than the music being written about is when the music being written about sucks.
This is the case with electronica band Owl City, which makes soulless music. Pitchfork, perhaps in an effort to seem current or some shit, reviewed “Fireflies,” the title track from Owl City’s new album.
Did they review it because it falls under the auspices of experimental music, and yet made it on the radio, providing them with crossover justification? Did they review it because they know what we all know, that you feel less dirty and less derivative when you talk shit about a bad band than when you talk hearts-for-”i”s about a good band?
At least Ian Cohen gave it a “1.”
All I know is that Scott Plagenhoef told me there is an unofficial moratorium on writing about emo at his site. Well, I can see now that this makes total sense: ban good music based on its shitty genre and review shitty music based on its great genre.
Goddamit, Pitchfork, behave!
Comments
Leave a Reply
You can follow any responses to this entry through its comments RSS feed.
2:26 am
Interesting… How’d it come up that Plagenhoef said there’s an unofficial moratorium on writing about emo on P4k? ‘Cause they’ve been doing a bit of it lately (what with Sunny Day, The Get Up Kids and whatnot)… although that would explain why they got rid of some reviews of emo acts from earlier in their existence (be it the 9.7 review of How It Feels To Be Something On or just about every ribbing of JEW, TPR, The Appleseed Cast, etc)
4:24 pm
Hey Leor: The conversation about emo came up when Scott and I were seated next to each other at the Future of Music Coalition’s journalism panel. Scott basically said that Pitchfork saw a clear delineation between “good” late 90s/early 2000s emo, and the crummy shit that rode on its coattails, which (I’m guessing) he would call the Hot Topic wave of emo: My Chemical Romance, The Used, etc.
Oddly enough, Pitchfork reviewed Brand New’s second album, but refused to review Daisy, even though Scott said that there was some pull for it at Pitchfork.
I included that anecdote because I think it illustrates a weakness in letting buzz/trendiness and indie thinking set the standards. I would argue that Owl City received a review because the band’s popularity originated online. Bands that got big on FM first seem to get no love at Pitchfork, and I think that’s a pretty lame standard of measurement, as not all FM-first bands are terrible. (Hip-hop seems to be the only exception to that rule, though Pitchfork does go out of its way to include acts from Rhymesayers and Def Jux, neither of whom get much FM play.)