Quote:
Originally Posted by enemyat_thesix
the only review site i trust and respect is metacritic |
loz, you laugh, but at what? You don't even GO to the site so how would you know what genres they cover? It's an indie site, and they cover a very broad range of what is going on in American independent music.
As for metacritic, it's not a review site - it's a compendium site like rotten tomatoes. if you "trust" what you see on metacritic, you're only trusting the general consensus of a bunch of reviewers. it's no better than relying on one review. it's really all the same. you're still going by somebody else's opinion. and anyway, at the end of the day i guarantee a person's going to be exposed to a wider range of diverse sounds through an indie site like pitchfork than through a compendium site like metacritic that focuses primarily on music (including indie) that's going to have a more wide-ish sort of audience. i can vouch for that, i've followed both (and other sites) for a while.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by crowquill
What bugs me about pitchforks reviews is the motivation behind their reviews. You can basically predict what they're going to hype/put down, they have a horrendously snobby and pretentious attitude towards music and they don't even attempt to hide it.
|
I can't help but agree with this criticism, though. They are predictable as hell - you know they're going to hype the crap out of anything done by Bradford Cox whether it's the latest Deerhunter thing or the appalling Atlas Sound; you know they're going to react lukewarmly to the latest White Stripes or Beirut effort or whatnot; you know they react fairly indifferently to most any Arctic Monkeys release, simply because historically the band was discovered and hyped by other websites
first (if AMs was "Pitchfork's band" so to speak, the music would have got 9/10s all the way). Half the time you know they'll give a huge mark to some album simply in anticipation of that being the general response of the rest of the critics, and therefore just to fit in and to have "got it right". And it gets worse, I've had a few bones to pick with them elsewhere.
But aside from these negatives I don't think it can be denied that it is a really good place for discovering new music especially for somebody coming from a really narrow underexposed musical background (like half those people who only listen to muse and keane). Just have to bear in mind the importance to exercise caution while one is at it. I guess, as long as somebody has a grasp of what is
wrong with Pitchfork and knows where and how they are predictable, the site is at that point most useful.