Many of you are glued to Pitchfork Media daily, for the comprehensive news coverage, sure, but also to learn what the indie music site deems “the best new music.” I’m guessing half the time you mutter to yourself: “What the fuck? Only a 6.0?” But there is a science to this!
In this experiment, we compare PFork’s critics’ recent rants and raves to those of Sarah The Schoolteacher‘s fourth grade students. Sarah regularly screens new indie CDs in her Park Slope classroom and delivers a report to New York mag’s “Jukebox” column. The blurbs below are from her latest column; the PFork blurbs are admittedly selected out of context to suit our comparisons.
And we preface by professing Stereogum has nothing but love for Pitchfork; this is just for fun. We just couldn’t help but notice the scoring simliarities.
The Vines – Vision Valley
SARAH: I have to edit what the kids can hear from this album thanks to lame outbursts like “people are full of hurl.” They notice the same thing I do-it’s divided pretty evenly into melodic songs and blaring, jarring rock. “It’s like they’re two different bands,” one girl notes. We both like the melodic band much better. The rock songs are just background noise. “This is giving me a huge headache,” one kid says of “Anysound.” Yeah.
Rating: 3.0
PITCHFORK: And that’s the short of it. This album’s greatest failing is that there’s nothing here. There’s nothing remotely offensive about Vision Valley that can inspire any sort of righteous fury about the musical hegemony. Unless you’re offended by the f-bomb– there are bits of f-shrapnel sprinkled throughout, to provisionally lend proceedings a certain edge that no amount of power chording can truly hone. And there’s nothing musically offputting about this record, unless relentless mediocrity in the three-chord arts is a capital crime.
Rating: 3.4
Ghostface Killah – Fishscale
SARAH: Regular readers of this column may remember that the only hip-hop I own is a mix my dry cleaner made me (heavy on Kurtis Blow), but I loved this album. The stories he tells are vivid, astonishing, and sometimes heartbreaking. More than once this week, I’ve gotten so caught up trying to catch every word that I missed a subway stop. Best track: “Underwater.”
Rating: 8.0
PITCHFORK: As the album’s other specific tragedies– shitty haircuts, bus stop infatuation gone awry– fly by with deft everyman flourishes, it’s the surreal “Underwater”, with its strange spirituality, that proves most trenchant. The dreamy account finds our hero playing out a possible afterlife allegory while swimming at the bottom of the ocean. “I’m not on my turf,” he confesses as mermaids “with Halle Berry haircuts” offer guidance along the way. In the tourist role, Ghost is as compelling as when he’s recounting pavement-bred stories of his familiar youth.
Rating: 9.0
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Show Your Bones
SARAH: Karen O, new hero to Brooklyn’s fourth-grade girls. “She makes it so obvious that girls are cool,” one of them says (they also feel sorry for her that “someone gave her such a bad haircut”). The songs themselves don’t do much for me, though: Maybe I’m getting old, but when a girl starts screaming as a guitar blares in the background, I start rolling my eyes.
Rating: 6.0
PITCHFORK: For Bones, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs recruited producer Squeak E. Clean, who fits these songs with an array of bells and whistles– not to mention sirens, organs, programmed beats, acoustic guitars, rattling percussion, keyboards, and various studio effects. Most of it, unfortunately, simply seems unnecessary or excessive. In fact, more often than not, these sonic geegaws detract from the band’s intensity, compartmentalizing the record’s explosive moments from the songs themselves.
Rating: 6.8
See? Accurate album assessment is as easy as algebra. But answer me this: why no Pitchfork’s RSS feed?
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Interesting, though apparently my tastes don’t align with 4th graders. I really dig that new Yeah Yeah Yeah’s.
the real question is why pfork hasn’t reviewed birdmonster’s cd yet. talk about dropping the ball on the indie pulse.
on the yeahs: ” one of them says (they also feel sorry for her that “someone gave her such a bad haircut”)”
awesome.
and i love them but i feel like karen o has been defanged on this album. it just makes me sad.
Amen to “why no Pitchfork’s RSS feed?” So annoying!
Pfork is lame.
Pfork is lame. Their snobbery backfired on them. Now I hate them, just like they hate good music. Way to go.
“when god gives you AIDS, make lemon-AIDS…”
ah, pitchfork.
Back to old discussion on indie rock commercial jingles, check out today’s marriedtothesea.com comic.
If you want to go back to the old discussion, go back to the old thread. That I’m in a hall monitor-esque mood makes it no less true.
Maybe she should be teaching the kids instead of using them for cutesy projects.
Yes Ken, becuase you know there is no way a teacher could possibly integrate music into a classroom plan since it isn’t spelled out for us right here in this article.
I know she could, but still what are the benefits of fourth graders listening to Ghostface in class. This could be a good project for older students.
Fish…Scale. Fishscale. There you go.
unofficial pfork feeds can be found here:
http://www.marteydodoo.com/rss/
I think this is awesome for those kids, if I was a parent I’d be fucking thrilled. Would you rather get dragged to a Kelly Clarkson concert or see the Go! Team?
Who said she played Ghostface for the kids? From what I read there, she gave her own opinion, not that of the kids.
You’re right Sean.
as stated in a previous column the kids listen to and talk about music in order to learn how to discuss their opinions with other kids.
http://newyorkmagazine.com/arts/popmusic/features/16019/index.html
Honestly? Kelly Clarkson.
But what’s so bullshit about Pdork is that they review shit based on how indie it is, not how good it is. Pdork for news, AMG for reviews.
Agreed — Pitchfork desperately needs an official RSS feed.
Warning: the marteydodoo feed only kind of works since it often marks every item as new every single day (at least it does in Google Reader).
AMG for reviews?
thats a big negative, ghostrider.
Has pfork reviewed the new centro-matic, and me and google have just missed it?
Shame on them for posting an article about how misra records is underrated, then sleeping on a misra group’s capital G Great record.
fishface? come on, i know someone already corrected you but give ghostface some respect, fishSCALE. fishscale. fishscale.
GHOSTFACE is the shit!
wu-tang forever….
ok, not really….
but, the new disc IS dope….
and so is KAREN O!
but, my 1st grader loves the new flaming lips the best…..
she asked me…
“what would you do with all you power”?
GHOSTFACE is the shit!
wu-tang forever….
ok, not really….
but, the new disc IS dope….
and so is KAREN O!
but, my 1st grader loves the new flaming lips the best…..
she asked me…
“what would you do with all your power”?
If I was Karen O, with all her power, I’d knock the male contingent of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs heads together and tell them to stop using Pro Tools and play just what they feel (Y’know, just like Deacon Blue, man).
This is a cool project for kids to be involved in. Ghostface appreciation in the fourth grade – wish I had that type of education, I wouldn’t be such a geek already.
Pitchfork sucks. The new Flaming Lips record is lovely but then again, this is the site that gave Zaireeka a bad review for being experimental despite it being the best Lips record there is. Your site’s a sucker Pitchfork.
Hey Scott. Congratulations on your link in Gawker!(http://www.gawker.com/news/lenny-kravitz/remainders-a-pricey-potty-for-lenny-kravitz-168365.php)
I hope u feel as great as I did when you linked to me. http://www.stereogum.com/archives/002326.html
Pitchfork is for myspace users… LAME
In the age of No Child Left Behind and standardized tests, the idea of music in the classroom is so refreshing. The lack of pretentiousness in the kids reviews is extremely refreshing (sick of that on Pitchfork).
why do the vines NEED to be offensive? who wrote the rule?
pitchfork blows.
man, pfork really dropped the ball by not reviewing the sirsalvatore myspace site.
YYY’s get an 8 rating here http://www.kevchino.com/index.aspx?review=880
Great Post
the benefits of listening to ghostface are not lost on any age group. in fact, i will rear my children on the wisdom contained in “wildflower”.
you crab-bitch.
Yes, yes, yes, Pitchfork sucks sometimes, but it’s undeniably the supreme source for relevant music news. And although the reviews are often empty and non-descript, the ratings are usually pretty accurate. If a single site can give a rating I agree with 75% of the time, that’s pretty fucking good, so, although Pfork has its flaws, you know you visit daily because it’s the best thing out there.
POST OF THE YEAR
Pitchfork has gotten every good album wrong this year by at least a point, if not more.
why doesn’t Pitchfork have an RSS feed? because Pitchfork wants you to goto their site everyday and click on one of the seven banner ads you’re greeted with on every page.
Yeah, Pitchfork sucks because they don’t have the same taste as me and they didn’t like some of the albums I like. Morons!
I dont get all the Pitchfork hate around here, i mean either it’s your taste or not and depending on the writers it taste changes over the years. Is it just because they are succesfull and well known? If it was an unknown review site would it still get so much hate? I mean, alright already, we get that stereogum doesn’t really like Pfork’s musical taste, and that gum readers aggree with that, but to make yet another post pointing this out is both boring and comparable to what 4th graders do, quite childish.
Keep up the intristing music post, and tone down the Pfork blabla, please,
belgian greetings,
DLY DLRS
Does anyone still care about indie rock? Ugh. I guess there’s still a lot of whiteboys out there who never learned how to dance.
Does anyone still care about hip hop? Ugh. I guess there’s still a lot of people of varying ethnic backgrounds who think they look cool freak dancing.
Now, minimal house? The only thing that has ever been and ever will be relevent is minimal.
you guyz just like bitching, pitchfork is rad
your mom was rad last nite, chad.
as if it werent already obvious..
wu-tang is for the children!!
“Pitchfork has gotten every good album wrong this year by at least a point, if not more.”
Even Pitchfork is aware that their point system is arbitrarily silly. They printed David Cross’s parody that gave pretentiously fake CDs ratings of 6.762. It’s just one person’s opinion, not the word of God.
At least their reviews are consistently fairly well-written.
Terrific! I loved it :)
Hey, I like Pitchfork. Maybe that makes me a horrible pretensions poser, but I don?t care. I find myself agreeing with their reviews more than any other review sites. The only recent notable exception was Rabbit Fur Coat. I mean, 6.1? Really? IMO, it was better than both More Adventurous and Execution of All Things, so… whatever.
When are we going to realize that exposing children to cool music at such a young age, as well as effluvia as baby Ramones tees and such, is just going into result in a bunch of tremendously square children? Their only avenue of rebellion when they get into their teens is going to be listening to things like, i don’t know, Black Eyed Peas. The only reason we’re even remotely interesting as a generation is because all of our partents were listening to the Eagles. You’ve been warned.
So true jens. you know the most annoying kids at coffeeshops arent’ the ones listening to Britney Spears. it’s expected they have shitty taste. Everyone does at some point. It’s those tools talking about VU that just seems odd.
I wish the 4th grade commentary hadn’t been better than Pitchfork’s.
jens and punit’s comments come straight off patton oswalt’s stand up routine.
Patton Oswalt?! When’s he performing again? He sounds like the messiah.
Why is the Ghostface one included, despite it having no input from the kids? Oh, yeah, because then you’d only have two examples, and hence a blog post even lamer than this one.
pitchfork is typically a day behind tinymixtapes.com newswise. just so you know
two things.
pfork is behind A LOT of music sites, not just tinymixtapes. (CMJ as much of a joke as that is, is behind as well on their “news” section.)
also, DLY DLRS sounds like he works for them.
thats all.
Classical singer Russell Watson postpones his forthcoming UK tour after undergoing brain surgery…
Pitchfork does suck. They could care less about the artist or what the intentions they had for the record. All Pitchfork does is pigeonhole artists into groups they don’t belong in and compare them to others that are not even alike in style or sound.
They put these people in a stifling box and expect them to grow and get mad when they do. They act like it’s a bad thing if an artist changes their sound between records. That’s bull. Pitchfork is a pretentious wannabe indie ezine.
What the hell is an RSS feed?
but fishscale really was good.
Pitchfork is officially ridiculous to me as of 2011.
The latest das Racist in the 6′s??
The latest Pink Skull album a 5.2??
It is so obvious that their motivation is indie-cred, and I am not gonna go into detail regarding how their journalists write reviews with a thesaurus strapped to their chest and this desperate need to name-drop an obscure band/musician that resembles/influences the album being reviewed within the first 2-3 paragraphs.
I have discovered quite a few groups in my time wading through that website, but they are the epitome of snobs; the type of people I can take a recommendation or two from but I would never want to have a beer with them, much less get into a discussion about “tunes.”