Most embarrassing Pitchfork review

adidasss · 08-20-2018, 07:11 AM

Now that they've been bought by Conde Nast, they've gone all "serious", but it's worth remembering they made a name for themselves by sometimes publishing stuff like this (that they for some reason still haven't taken down): Death Cab for Cutie Transatlanticism

Excerpt:

"I. INTRO -- (first decision: clever metaphor or witty personal narrative??)

A. (used to be one of favorite bands / accordingly: personal stuff has more depth/heart)
start-shame on band, damn this record. makes me feel old and wise-- uh, but, yeah, am older (a little, SAA was only '99 (98?) in any case-- can say I had it right when it came out-- would give me more leeway (Ich bin expert)-- but, seriosuly not wiser-- shouldn't be made to feel wiser. Trans. decidedly makes me feel wise (see Roget's for new/better word for 'wise'), like i'm all of a sudden worldly and all-aware. Makes me feel like ****ing Kerouac or something. --used to pause the songs when playing for friends and read from the lyric book, made me feel so callow and sheltered and myopic and like I had so much more to see and learn w/ "your wedding figurines: I'd melt so I could drink them in," and "gravitated toward a taste for foreign film and modern plays," (find better lyrics) there was nuance and the possibility of discovery and growth and suggestive prowess even in the face of experience. It was so forward-looking/thinking but had already seen so much.-- with this album: the mystique is gone, these songs are heads turned back over shoulders in commentary and nostalgia: but the scenes are already diluted with age and the pictures aren't as sharp-- nowhere left to go, just idling. Lyrical extension: Opening lines of cd: "so this is the new year / and I don't feel any different." (further (farther?)develop later)"

adidasss · 08-20-2018, 07:26 AM

One of the most notorious ones was so damaging they eventually took it down and replaced it with a new, more favorable review, but the internet remembers:

Belle And Sebastian The Boy With The Arab Strap

Reproduced here in all its glory:

"Mediocrity is not a punishable crime, but if it was, Belle and Sebastian would be enjoying their last meal right about now. This Scottish septet who made a truly wonderful album last year called If You're Feeling Sinister, has decided to parody themselves on their American debut, The Boy With the Arab Strap. And a fine job they did, lads.

Whereas Sinister was filled with huge hooks, loungy chord change-ups, and a fistful or two of bitingly catty lyrics, The Boy is seriously lacking in all of that and more. Sinister was compared to Nick Drake and Fairport Convention; The Boy will maybe remind you of the Starland Vocal Band-- they of "Afternoon Delight" fame. These are songs so sticky they should be hanging from Ben Stiller's ear, and I don't mean that in a good way. In fact, I mean that in the worst possible way.

The band's spacey experiment in spoken word isn't a plus, and neither are the wilted bouquets of bedroom poetry. Are we still learning from the Mel Bay book of guitar? Where are the interesting chords? Only the title cut offers up something fun, even if it does just sound like a glorified Hollies song.

Really, Sinister is well worth your time, but whatever an Arab Strap is, it should be used to batten down the crap song hatch. Maybe next time they'll get it back together. I hope so."

I googled the author, clearly this was the highlight of his musical journalistic career.

**Janszoon** · 08-20-2018, 07:52 AM

Don’t forget this notorious monstrosity from their most annoying reviewer, Brent DiCrescenzo: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6656-kid-a/

Quote:

Radiohead—Kid A

I had never even seen a shooting star before. 25 years of rotations, passes through comets' paths, and travel, and to my memory I had never witnessed burning debris scratch across the night sky. Radiohead were hunched over their instruments. Thom Yorke slowly beat on a grand piano, singing, eyes closed, into his microphone like he was trying to kiss around a big nose. Colin Greenwood tapped patiently on a double bass, waiting for his cue. White pearls of arena light swam over their faces. A lazy disco light spilled artificial constellations inside the aluminum cove of the makeshift stage. The metal skeleton of the stage ate one end of Florence's Piazza Santa Croce, on the steps of the Santa Croce Cathedral. Michelangelo's bones and cobblestone laid beneath. I stared entranced, soaking in Radiohead's new material, chiseling each sound into the best functioning parts of my brain which would be the only sound system for the material for months.

The butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bled upward into the cobalt sky, which seemed as strikingly artificial and perfect as a wizard's cap. The staccato piano chords ascended repeatedly. "Black eyed angels swam at me," Yorke sang like his dying words. "There was nothing to fear, nothing to hide." The trained critical part of me marked the similarity to Coltrane's "Ole." The human part of me wept in awe.

The Italians surrounding me held their breath in communion (save for the drunken few shouting "Criep!"). Suddenly, a rise of whistles and orgasmic cries swept unfittingly through the crowd. The song, "Egyptian Song," was certainly momentous, but wasn't the response more apt for, well, "Creep?" I looked up. I thought it was fireworks. A teardrop of fire shot from space and disappeared behind the church where the syrupy River Arno crawled. Radiohead had the heavens on their side.

For further testament, Chip Chanko and I both suffered auto-debilitating accidents in the same week, in different parts of the country, while blasting "Airbag" in our respective Japanese imports. For months, I feared playing the song about car crashes in my car, just as I'd feared passing 18- wheelers after nearly being crushed by one in 1990. With good reason, I suspect Radiohead to possess incomprehensible powers. The evidence is only compounded with Kid A-- the rubber match in the band's legacy-- an album which completely obliterates how albums, and Radiohead themselves, will be considered.

Even the heralded OK Computer has been nudged down one spot in Valhalla. Kid A makes rock and roll childish. Considerations on its merits as "rock" (i.e. its radio fodder potential, its guitar riffs, and its hooks) are pointless. Comparing this to other albums is like comparing an aquarium to blue construction paper. And not because it's jazz or fusion or ambient or electronic. Classifications don't come to mind once deep inside this expansive, hypnotic world. Ransom, the philologist hero of C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet who is kidnapped and taken to another planet, initially finds his scholarship useless in his new surroundings, and just tries to survive the beautiful new world.

This is an emotional, psychological experience. Kid A sounds like a clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction. It's the sound of a band, and its leader, losing faith in themselves, destroying themselves, and subsequently rebuilding a perfect entity. In other words, Radiohead hated being Radiohead, but ended up with the most ideal, natural Radiohead record yet.

"Everything in Its Right Place" opens like Close Encounters spaceships communicating with pipe organs. As your ears decide whether the tones are coming or going, Thom Yorke's Cuisinarted voice struggles for its tongue. "Everything," Yorke belts in uplifting sighs. The first-person mantra of "There are two colors in my head" is repeated until the line between Yorke's mind and the listener's mind is erased.

Skittering toy boxes open the album's title song, which, like the track "Idioteque," shows a heavy Warp Records influence. The vocoder lullaby lulls you deceivingly before the riotous "National Anthem." Mean, fuzzy bass shapes the spine as unnerving theremin choirs limn. Brash brass bursts from above like Terry Gilliam's animated foot. The horns swarm as Yorke screams, begs, "Turn it off!" It's the album's shrill peak, but just one of the incessant goosebumps raisers.

After the rockets exhaust, Radiohead float in their lone orbit. "How to Disappear Completely" boils down "Let Down" and "Karma Police" to their spectral essence. The string-laden ballad comes closest to bridging Yorke's lyrical sentiment to the instrumental effect. "I float down the Liffey/ I'm not here/ This isn't happening," he sings in his trademark falsetto. The strings melt and weep as the album shifts into its underwater mode. "Treefingers," an ambient soundscape similar in sound and intent to Side B of Bowie and Eno's Low, calms after the record's emotionally strenuous first half.

The primal, brooding guitar attack of "Optimistic" stomps like mating Tyrannosaurs. The lyrics seemingly taunt, "Try the best you can/ Try the best you can," before revealing the more resigned sentiment, "The best you can is good enough." For an album reportedly "lacking" in traditional Radiohead moments, this is the best summation of their former strengths. The track erodes into a light jam before morphing into "In Limbo." "I'm lost at sea," Yorke cries over clean, uneasy arpeggios. The ending flares with tractor beams as Yorke is vacuumed into nothingness. The aforementioned "Idioteque" clicks and thuds like Aphex Twin and Bjork's Homogenic, revealing brilliant new frontiers for the "band." For all the noise to this point, it's uncertain entirely who or what has created the music. There are rarely traditional arrangements in the ambiguous origin. This is part of the unique thrill of experiencing Kid A.

Pulsing organs and a stuttering snare delicately propel "Morning Bell." Yorke's breath can be heard frosting over the rainy, gray jam. Words accumulate and stick in his mouth like eye crust. "Walking walking walking walking," he mumbles while Jonny Greenwood squirts whale-chant feedback from his guitar. The closing "Motion Picture Soundtrack" brings to mind The White Album, as it somehow combines the sentiment of Lennon's LP1 closer-- the ode to his dead mother, "Julia"-- with Ringo and Paul's maudlin, yet sincere LP2 finale, "Goodnight." Pump organ and harp flutter as Yorke condones with affection, "I think you're crazy." To further emphasize your feeling at that moment and the album's overall theme, Yorke bows out with "I will see you in the next life." If you're not already there with him.

The experience and emotions tied to listening to Kid A are like witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on Imax. It's an album of sparking paradox. It's cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike, infinite yet 48 minutes. It will cleanse your brain of those little crustaceans of worries and inferior albums clinging inside the fold of your gray matter. The harrowing sounds hit from unseen angles and emanate with inhuman genesis. When the headphones peel off, and it occurs that six men (Nigel Godrich included) created this, it's clear that Radiohead must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who. Breathing people made this record! And you can't wait to dive back in and try to prove that wrong over and over.

adidasss · 08-20-2018, 08:10 AM

"The trained critical part of me marked the similarity to Coltrane's "Ole." The human part of me wept in awe."

Wow. I have not read this gem before, thanks! :,)

Psy-Fi · 08-20-2018, 08:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Janszoon

Don’t forget this notorious monstrosity from their most annoying reviewer, Brent DiCrescenzo: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6656-kid-a/

That might be the most ridiculous and overwritten review I've ever seen.

adidasss · 08-20-2018, 08:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psy-Fi

That might be the most ridiculous and overwritten review I've ever seen.

I have to agree with you!

I've quickly gone through some of his others and jeez louise...what a self-important douche! And such a bore! You have to read through 2 pages of his personal history before he starts talking about the music! Thank goodness they got rid of him!

The Batlord · 08-20-2018, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Janszoon

Don’t forget this notorious monstrosity from their most annoying reviewer, Brent DiCrescenzo: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6656-kid-a/

Lol crustaceans of worries. What does that even mean?

**Janszoon** · 08-20-2018, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adidasss

I have to agree with you!

I've quickly gone through some of his others and jeez louise...what a self-important douche! And such a bore! You have to read through 2 pages of his personal history before he starts talking about the music! Thank goodness they got rid of him!

His reviews used to drive me nuts. If you notice, in addition to being loaded with naval gazing, he tended to either think an album was the the greatest thing in the universe or the worst atrocity imaginable. Nothing in between.

OccultHawk · 08-20-2018, 12:49 PM

I think that’s a great review of Kid A.

**Goofle** · 08-20-2018, 12:50 PM

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums...gration-loops/

Not only is this album a legit 0.5/10, it also has the most pretentious fans. He gave it a 10.

A TEN.

Quote:

In the early part of the last decade, William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops was the sort of music you passed around. Once you heard it, you wanted to tell somebody about it. There was obviously the sound itself, so hypnotic that it was immediately understood as a classic of ambient music. But there was more to it.

The Disintegration Loops arrived with a story that was beautiful and heartbreaking in its own right. It's been repeated so many times that Basinski himself has grown weary of telling it: in the 1980s, he constructed a series of tape loops consisting of processed snatches of music captured from an easy listening station. When going through his archives in 2001, he decided to digitize the decades-old loops to preserve them. He started a loop on his digital recorder and left it running, and when he returned a short while later, he noticed that the tape was gradually crumbling as it played. The fine coating of magnetized metal was slivering off, and the music was decaying slightly with each pass through the spindle. Astonished, Basinski repeated the process with other loops and obtained similar results.

Shortly after Basinski digitized his loops came the September 11 attacks. From the roof of his space in Brooklyn, he put a video camera on a tripod and captured the final hour of daylight on that day, pointing the camera at a smoldering lower Manhattan. On September 12, he cued the first of his newly created sound pieces and listened to it while watching the footage. The impossibly melancholy music, the gradual fade, and the images of ruin: the project suddenly had a sense of purpose. It would become an elegy for that day. Stills from the video were used for the covers of the CDs, and eventually, the hour-long visual with sound was released on DVD. The video is included with the four volumes of the music and two new live pieces in this lavish and impressive box set.

The beauty of the music is not easy to explain. There are plenty of pieces that work in a similar way-- the beat-less drone pieces of Gas, a few of Gavin Bryars' most heartrending works, the experiments in memory by the Caretaker-- but it's hard to quantify this music's special pull. Each of the nine pieces on the original four volumes has its own character, yet all are related and function like variations on a theme. "Dlp 1.1", marked by a plaintive horn sound, has the air of a dejected fanfare, a meditation on death and loss (it was this loop that was paired with the 9/11 video). "Dlp 2.1" is more of a metallic drone, filled with anxiety and encroaching dread. The source material on "Dlp 4" sounds like a soundtrack to an educational film, not terribly far from the warble of an early Boards of Canada interlude, but the chaotic ripples of distortion make it seem even more uneasy. "Dlp 3" feels like a snippet from an impossibly lush and shimmering Debussy piece stretched to infinity and then lowered into an acid bath. The moods and textures of these pieces are all different but they become more powerful in relation to one another.

There's an irony to the four volumes of The Disintegration Loops appearing here on vinyl for the first time, since the defiantly analog origin of the music is central to its appeal. Even 10 years later, the internet is generally a poor space for contemplating the end; there are few digital metaphors for the process of dying. With Basinski's pieces, the metaphor couldn't be more simple. This music reminds us of how everything eventually falls apart and returns to dust. We're listening to music as it disappears in front of us. Hearing the music on vinyl, with its inherent imperfections, and imagining the records changing over time, lends another layer of poignancy.

Given the central idea behind the project, the length of the individual tracks is important. The first, "Dlp 1.1", is just over an hour long, and its source only lasts a few seconds. To listen to the entire piece is to hear that segment many hundreds of times, and the progression from "music" to silence happens incrementally with each play. But the loops don't fade linearly. It often takes a few minutes for the obvious cracks to appear, and then the tumble toward the void speeds up at the end, presumably because the cumulative runs against the tape head had loosened even the bits of tape that were still hanging on. The process is so gradual it focuses attention in unique way; I find myself examining each new cycle to discover what is left and what has vanished.

It's possible to use this music in the quintessential ambient sense, allowing it to play in the background while doing something else. The sound is uniform and drone-like, so you can adjust the volume and not worry about it intruding. But there is something uncanny about the emotion embedded in this music. It never feels neutral, so it's hard for me to just have it playing in the background. Part of that is what I know of how it was made, and part of that is the nature of the loops themselves. Basinski has a rare feel for mood and texture. The sounds on their own are haunting, and Basinski has a wonderful ear for how a loop can work, how to capture these bits of incidental music in a place where there's just a hint of tension that is never released.

One unexpected twist in The Disintegration Loops story is that some of the work was later performed. New music ensembles have charted the progression and decay of the pieces and scored them for a live setting, and recordings from two shows are included in this box set. (One of the performances is by the ensemble Alter Ego, who partnered with Gavin Bryars and Philip Jeck in 2007 to record a new version of Bryars' "The Sinking of the Titanic". The presence of Alter Ego reinforces the thematic and emotional connection between the two pieces.)

I was skeptical of these live versions at first, but over time they made more sense. They bring a different quality to the experience and offer a subtle twist. The key to live recordings lies in the rests. Little by little, the players have to insert a bit more silence into the piece and hold that silence as they cycle through the same phrase. And there's something especially tense and uneasy about hearing this happen in a moment with live performers. It also makes it difficult for the audience to know exactly when the piece has ended, and when it finally does, they explode with applause and, presumably, relief.

I've owned many box sets and this is possibly the most gorgeous and substantial one I've ever seen. There are CD and vinyl versions of all the music; the vinyl is heavy, and the pressings are very well done. There's a book that has liner notes from Antony Hegarty, David Tibet, Basinski himself, and others. But most of the book consists of blown-up frames from the video piece. It's almost like a flip book, as each new shot brings us a little closer to darkness. For me, it functions like a more tolerable version of the video piece, which, even after all this time, I still have trouble watching. I respect it and understand that it might work very differently for someone who was there, but it's still difficult for me to watch footage of burning Manhattan in an "art" context.

It's been said that box sets are tombstones, but this one feels like a living and breathing thing. And there's an irony in that too. The obvious observation about The Disintegration Loops is that it's about death, but of course, life gives death meaning. A couple of days ago I was listening to "Dlp 4" while riding the subway to work. For the track's early half, I was gripped by the sublime beauty of the repeating music and I was lost in my own world completely. But then as it started to break apart and silence took over I started to become aware of what was around me. I could hear the engines, the rattle of the tracks, and the voices of people in the subway car. The music had me thinking about the biggest questions-- why we are here and how we exist and what it all means. And then as the last crackle faded and the music was no more, I took in my surroundings and looked around at the faces and I was right there with everybody and we were alive.

08-20-2018, 07:11 AM	#1 (permalink)
adidasss Slavic gay sauce Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Abu Dhabi Posts: 7,993	Most embarrassing Pitchfork review Now that they've been bought by Conde Nast, they've gone all "serious", but it's worth remembering they made a name for themselves by sometimes publishing stuff like this (that they for some reason still haven't taken down): Death Cab for Cutie Transatlanticism Excerpt: "I. INTRO -- (first decision: clever metaphor or witty personal narrative??) A. (used to be one of favorite bands / accordingly: personal stuff has more depth/heart) start-shame on band, damn this record. makes me feel old and wise-- uh, but, yeah, am older (a little, SAA was only '99 (98?) in any case-- can say I had it right when it came out-- would give me more leeway (Ich bin expert)-- but, seriosuly not wiser-- shouldn't be made to feel wiser. Trans. decidedly makes me feel wise (see Roget's for new/better word for 'wise'), like i'm all of a sudden worldly and all-aware. Makes me feel like ****ing Kerouac or something. --used to pause the songs when playing for friends and read from the lyric book, made me feel so callow and sheltered and myopic and like I had so much more to see and learn w/ "your wedding figurines: I'd melt so I could drink them in," and "gravitated toward a taste for foreign film and modern plays," (find better lyrics) there was nuance and the possibility of discovery and growth and suggestive prowess even in the face of experience. It was so forward-looking/thinking but had already seen so much.-- with this album: the mystique is gone, these songs are heads turned back over shoulders in commentary and nostalgia: but the scenes are already diluted with age and the pictures aren't as sharp-- nowhere left to go, just idling. Lyrical extension: Opening lines of cd: "so this is the new year / and I don't feel any different." (further (farther?)develop later)" __________________ “Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle. Last.fm

08-20-2018, 07:26 AM	#2 (permalink)
adidasss Slavic gay sauce Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Abu Dhabi Posts: 7,993	One of the most notorious ones was so damaging they eventually took it down and replaced it with a new, more favorable review, but the internet remembers: Belle And Sebastian The Boy With The Arab Strap Reproduced here in all its glory: "Mediocrity is not a punishable crime, but if it was, Belle and Sebastian would be enjoying their last meal right about now. This Scottish septet who made a truly wonderful album last year called If You're Feeling Sinister, has decided to parody themselves on their American debut, The Boy With the Arab Strap. And a fine job they did, lads. Whereas Sinister was filled with huge hooks, loungy chord change-ups, and a fistful or two of bitingly catty lyrics, The Boy is seriously lacking in all of that and more. Sinister was compared to Nick Drake and Fairport Convention; The Boy will maybe remind you of the Starland Vocal Band-- they of "Afternoon Delight" fame. These are songs so sticky they should be hanging from Ben Stiller's ear, and I don't mean that in a good way. In fact, I mean that in the worst possible way. The band's spacey experiment in spoken word isn't a plus, and neither are the wilted bouquets of bedroom poetry. Are we still learning from the Mel Bay book of guitar? Where are the interesting chords? Only the title cut offers up something fun, even if it does just sound like a glorified Hollies song. Really, Sinister is well worth your time, but whatever an Arab Strap is, it should be used to batten down the crap song hatch. Maybe next time they'll get it back together. I hope so." I googled the author, clearly this was the highlight of his musical journalistic career. __________________ “Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle. Last.fm

08-20-2018, 08:10 AM	#4 (permalink)
adidasss Slavic gay sauce Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Abu Dhabi Posts: 7,993	"The trained critical part of me marked the similarity to Coltrane's "Ole." The human part of me wept in awe." Wow. I have not read this gem before, thanks! :,) __________________ “Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle. Last.fm

08-20-2018, 12:49 PM	#9 (permalink)
OccultHawk one-balled nipple jockey Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Dirty Souf Biatch Posts: 22,033	I think that’s a great review of Kid A. __________________ 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Member of the Year & Journal of the Year Champion Behold the Writing of THE LEGEND: https://www.musicbanter.com/members-...p-lighter.html