Pitchfork finally reviewed it!

[Disappearing girl]

Haha, I remember reading that "review".

I love The Airborne Toxic Event.

yeah me too! I saw them live and they invited people up on stage. It was quite punk rock for an indie band with a viola player!

What was funny is that TATE bothered to write back to them!

http://www.losanjealous.com/2008/09/17/air...tchfork-review/

I think they really summed up what reviews are all about:

We decided a long time ago not to take reviews too seriously. For one, they tend to involve a whole lot of projection, generally saying more about the writer than the band. Sort of a musical Rorschach test.

I.e. who gives a flying fuck about what Pitchfork says about Green Day? We don't! And I'm sure Green Day (with their huge legion of fans and record sales) don't!

[Greenforaday101]

^^From that letter:

We love indie rock and we know full well that Pitchfork doesn’t so much critique bands as critique a band’s ability to match a certain indie rock aesthetic.

OH SHIT

[justcause]

If you like a BAD review, this has got to be the worst attack on an album I've ever seen. And The Guardian I think gave the same record 4 stars!

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12191-...ne-toxic-event/

That isn't a good bad review - it's not even full-blooded enough to count as savage criticism. To me, a review should stand as a piece of work in itself, even if I never heard or ever choose to hear the album concerned, and as pieces of work, both these reviews suck. They're tedious, dull, smug - I'll leave it at three adjectives - and they certainly wouldn't encourage me to hear any of the bands they hold up as being worthy of their approval. Fuck sake - 'have you tried parsing the lyrics of Holiday or Boulevard of Broken Dreams lately?'! No, have you tried unclenching your ass lately? The last time I parsed anything was at school when they were showing us how to murder poetry, and these reviews read like somewhere between a school report and a technical manual. I've never read anything from Pitchfork before - I just heard it was 'influential'. Now I'm wondering who the fuck is influenced by stuff like this, and why?

[IzButt]

Booo.

Tré Cool-- a drummer who's never really progressed beyond "fast with a lot of rolls" and "mid-tempo militaristic oompah"-- flaunts his competence level with a metronomic anti-creativity.

Shit shit shit.

[frankiessister]

OK, so we all understand by now that the Pitchfork guys don't like 21st CB. They don't like Eminem's Relapse either, gave it a 4.8, just like our boys.

After reading this piece of crap in the disguise of a review I thought, hey, I'd really like to know, what is it that these guys actually do like?

I searched their site and found they'd given a 8.5 to an album called Wavering Radiant by Isis. I don't know about you guys, but I had never heard of this band

so I looked up some information on them and then listened to three tracks off their latest release on youtube (Hall Of The Dead, Hand Of The Host, Celestial).

Now holy fuck, this is some tedious, boring stuff with some of the lamest vocals I've heard in avery long time. And it's just like Pitchfork's review: pompous, pretentious, elitist, pseudo-intellectual... Just the kind of sickening cocktail that makes me puke.

Don't get me wrong, I can handle negative reviews (as a matter of fact, I don't care about reviews at all) and everybody's entitled to their opinion. But after doing my own little bit of research I can say that it's Pitchfork's opinion that I really don't give a shit about.

[Greenforaday101]

I don't think it's fair to say the stuff they say is good sucks, just because they didn't like 21st CBD. They gave a 9.0 to Fleet Foxes, which is one of my favorite bands. So the stuff they give good reviews to usually is quality music. I just think they give those albums high marks for the wrong reasons.

[Colin]

The writer has some serious issues. Talking about Green Day selling out. They sold out back in 93 when they signed for a major label. This review actually physiclly makes me sick. I know its all ooh were all entitiled to an opinion an to criticise shit but this was just plain hatred towards a band. I cant believe i wasted my time reading that crap.

[Eldoon]

I don't think it's fair to say the stuff they say is good sucks, just because they didn't like 21st CBD. They gave a 9.0 to Fleet Foxes, which is one of my favorite bands. So the stuff they give good reviews to usually is quality music. I just think they give those albums high marks for the wrong reasons.

Agreed. I think Pitchfork is pretty hit-or-miss in terms of reviews - but I can't lie - this year alone I've more or less discovered two pretty awesome bands through their "Best New Music" reviews (Japandroids and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart,) and I was in almost total agreement with their ridiculous 9.6 score for Animal Collective's new album early in the year.

The thing that always bugs me about P4k though is how they're so hyper-aware of their own "influence" that they tend to get super self-conscious and, yeah, pretentious whenever they critique. They can do a great service and hype people to really good music and boost an upstart bands' fanbase, or they can be complete dogmatic assholes. And, sometimes, they blur the line between the two. I think this perception of Pitchfork as the "pretentious hipper-than-thou troll" has really started to become their downfall (after all, didn't Airborne Toxic Event's album sell relatively well?)

All that being said, I still don't know why they even bothered reviewing the new Green Day album. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can understand Pitchfork reviewing Eminem's new album more than Green Day's. Perhaps they're playing some kinda joke on us all by giving the two highest-selling May releases 4.8s within a week of eachother.