Rainard Jalen

That is, my tastes in modern indie. I really cannot be arsed to go to all the sites, so if one indie-oriented site captures a fairly broad range of what is coming out, and without any shadow of a doubt Pitchfork does do at least that, then I'm happy with that site. Of course, ultimately if I don't like something then I don't like it, simple as that. But I'll at least give it a good listen.

That's obviously not what I meant. What I'm saying is that if I personally think a record is unspectacular and bad from the get-go, I would not be particularly bothered by just one critic (such as Pitchfork) thinking that it is good. I would be more bewildered and riled at finding that the whole spectrum of music journalists think it's the best thing since sliced bread. And it follows perfectly logically that the wider a certain viewpoint on something, the more worthy it is of being commented on and discussed.

Me claiming that it's a good album by "low" standards is no more presumptuous than your own claim that it is a good album by "any" standards.

Clap clap. Re-read what I wrote. I typed 9. If you have an issue with recognizing that a 9 followed by a period, a space and then a new sentence also beginning with "9" does not equate to 9.9, then you should brush up on your comprehension before trying to expose some error. To make it simpler: a NINE or above is a very rare grade on Pitchfork Media. It is uncommon for any more than say 5 or 6 albums to get that in any one year. It practically guarantees that the album will be in their yearly top 10.

You may or may not be all that familiar with the main body of music journalism these days (I am not judging, I don't know), but you ought to have noticed that reviewers in the main are disproportionately much kinder to indie/alternative music than they are to virtually all else. The compendium site Metacritic provides the best evidence of that. Albums with meta-averages of 80 or more are completely overwhelmingly albums of indie rock/alternative bands. Why is this? It's because the main body of widely-read music journalism these days is fairly heavily indie oriented. When albums like Sound Of Silver and Person Pitch get incredible averages, that's the indie hype machine at work.

Actually, you know what, this is quite a pointless argument. I cannot believe for one single moment that you would deny the existence of the indie hype machine. It basically refers to the collective excitement of indie mags/webzines and their readership about one particular artist or new album, that to a lot of people outside of the readership circle appears to be nothing particularly great, at least not what is being made out. Jackhammer and I, for example, and a number of other people I know, both agreed on The Field's From Here We Go Sublime being way way overhyped by the indie music journalists. Other examples that were discussed by a number of people on these boards earlier on in the year were the Arcade Fire's Neon Bible and LCD Soundsystem's Sound Of Silver, both of which were VERY widely felt to have had their value well exaggerated by the generality of journalists. I'm not sure what you are saying, Sam. Are you making out that I am saying something controversial here, because I assure you that is not the case. People have been sick and tired of the overhype that comes out of indie music journalism for years, and I say that being a person from among the readership.

Let's settle this here and now: what I express is my opinion, and I am entitled to it. If I see fit to speak of an album in highly negative terms, then that's my right. Of course I'm not saying that everybody should agree with me - it's not for you, however, to be telling me that I am doing this, that or the other, throwing all sorts of baseless accusations, when all I'm really doing is: expressing my intense dislike for an album.