This week AOL Music’s got BTS’ You In Reverse, PGMG’s Elan Vital, and TEODM’s Death By Sexy. If that’s not your thing, click around for the Toby Keith listening station and never come back here again.
Thoughts on the latest Spill?
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Despite Pitchfork’s review (doesn’t it seem like they always give highly anticipated new albums from veteran bands 6.8?) I think it’s really, really good.
It’s pretty good. It’s definitely better than Ancient Melodies, but it’s no where near their peak rockness. nice and sparce production though.
it’s fabulous. musically it might be their most impressive to date imo.
songwriting wise however i’d put it 4th after KILAS, PFNO, and TNWWL.
but yeah, such a refreshing return after Ancient Melodies. how Pfork gave that record an 8.3 and this new one a 6.8 i’ll never understand. oh well, who cares.
new BTS is awesome. it’s gonna be hard to top their holy trinity of albums, but it’s better than Ancient…
pitchfork would rather jack off to arctic monkey and bishop allen crap than listen to stuff they went ape shit over in the 90s. all i gotta say is: the rapture…who?
I think the new BTS is fantastic. Not sure where it ranks yet, but I think this will be getting a lot of plays from me this year.
Clearly, AOL doesn’t keep up with Built to Spill:
“This critically-acclaimed, indie rock quintet releases their SOPHOMORE CD, an old-school offering with a modern twist.”
Yeah, The Rapture. Nothing says 2003 better than that.
Pfork does seem to rank vet acts albums pretty damn low most of the time. Case in point: the new lipses, the new YYY’s, Wilco’s last one, Modest Mouse’s last one…All pretty damn good albums. Pfork only likes it if its up and coming and once they’ve came (hehe), they aren’t any good anymore.
How about the Maximo Park and Kaiser Chiefs love fest?
hey, guess what? i love the new built to spill and i still love the rapture’s echoes. go wrap your heads around THAT one, y’all.
I don’t want to defend Pfork, but I would like to set the record straight. I wouldn’t say I’m a pfork fanatic, but I read it everyday, like many of you do too I’m sure. This doesn’t mean I agree with all they say. At any rate,they are not the ones who have championed the Arctic Monkeys. The British press (not to mention the British public who called it the 5th best album of all time) were the ones who made them blow the f up. All pfork did was review the album (gave it a mediocre rating) and subsequently reported on relevant monkey news, because, presumably, some of its readers enjoy them and want to know what they are up to. As far as that Kaiser Chief’s comment goes…when has the fork ever had a love fest with the Chiefs? By the by, they’ve never even reviewed a Bishop Allen record.
kevchino.com gave the BTS a 10/10 they loved it. http://www.kevchino.com/index.aspx?review=875
They also have a contest going on to win a promo only called Time Trap 1994-2006
not to get all lame on you guys, but saves the day and moneen’s new records are streaming on that site, too. if you liked old saves the day, and if you are cool and like moneen like you should, you should check those records out.
i for one fucking love moneen. the lyrics on this album are a step back, but musically they are doing something different from all of the other bands in their genre.
I have to disagree about BTS a little… now I love their ’90s stuff, but I think Pitchfork went too easy on this one. “Conventional Wisdom” is the only track that would have stood out on the classics, although “Liar” and “Goin’ Against Your Mind” are pretty solid. The production is atrocious – I heard an mp3 of “The Wait” live and liked it a lot, whereas the album version has cheesy effects and lazy acoustic guitars, and Phil Ek would have turned “Saturday” into a real BTS song. The songs I haven’t mentioned are pretty forgettable, although “Just A Habit” has the one good guitar solo on the CD (pretty amazing for an album swarming with David Gilmourisms) and “Mess With Time” has a nice riff towards the end.
Pitchfork does suck sometimes: they gave the new Kelley Stoltz album a 6.3 and I love that album, but as Phil mentioned they only gave Arctic Monkeys a 7.4 (not to mention never reviewing Bishop Allen) and they gave EODM a 7.2; not much of a difference. Also, Scott, for those of us who aren’t feeling EODM (I am one of them), I’m sure we would rather listen to EODM than Toby Keith. I don’t like EODM because of their poorly executed cheeseball schtick, not because I prefer the potboiling pop-country of Toby Keith or any other CMT star. To risk readers (“never come back here again”) on a band as mediocre and inconsistant as EODM is pretty ballsy.
I mean, don’t get me wrong: I don’t think that Pitchfork has to agree with me on every album that comes along. But there is a ridiculous elitist trend that can’t be a coincidence, where the quality of an album isn’t considered as much as its level of anticipation. The more anticipated an album is, (especially from artists that were once relatively unknown but now aren’t anymore), the lower the score. (see: every Death Cab album since ‘something about airplanes’)
The next Sufjan will probably get a 6.8, regardless of its quality. Pitchfork seems to feed the backlash.
I’d definately have to agree that Pitchfork favors the unknown and that it nearly always assumes an artits will have a sophomore slump, but there are exceptions. Kanye West (from 8.2 to 9.5), The Wrens (8.5 to 9.5), more recently Ghostface (8.2 to 9.0), and plenty of others. To say that Pitchfork will probably give the next Sufjan a 6.8 is ridiculous; they feel responsible for getting him big (just like Arcade Fire and CYHSY) so they will never give him a poor review, and that’s probably a good thing. If you don’t like Bitchfork so much, which I really don’t, try other online music magazines like Stylus, Coke Machine Glow, or Tiny Mixtapes. But for real, Death Cab has never been anything special, and Transatlanticism was absolutely horrible.
I gave up on Pitchfork a long time ago, at least in terms of its album reviews. Great way to stay up-to-date on new releases, but its reviewers are more concerned about reading their own beautiful words than helping readers judge whether they might want to purchase the CD. I think my jump-the-shark moment with Pitchfork was when a reviewer made a reference to a Billy Ripken baseball card. I happened to know about that card because it was during my college days when two good friends of mine were collecting like crazy (with the sole intent of reselling at a quick profit to true collector geeks) and they showed me the card. Ripken is standing there in a batting stance – yes, Billy, Cal’s brother – a big smile on his face, and the words “fuck face” are written on the butt of the bat in black marker. When a writer starts making pop culture/sports references that 8.5/10 readers are not going to get, I’m outtie.
Question! Is Cokemachineglow done? Or was that a hoax? They had a lead-in page that said that it was going to be their last update. Was that on April Fools day? Am I asking too many questions? I don’t like Stylus. Bye.
not that crazy about the new album. there are a couple tracks that stand out to me, but all it really does it make me want to lie in the grass in the sunshine and listen to ‘perfect from now on’.