How do you cope with how pretentious pitchfork is?

I always carry a copy of this article from the onion with me in my wallet...
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/pitchfork_gives_music_6_8
Whenever I get pissed at Pitchfork (which is often), I pull it out, close my eyes, take a deep breath, and start smiling. Pitchfork is a great music journal, and if they could just pull their heads out of their asses, fire some of the writers that are clearly only on the payroll in order to spark controversy, and to make Pitchfork seem "edgier than the mainstream", they would be perfect.

they've mellowed with age. i don't think you'd see a review like that '...arab strap' one anymore. it was almost 10 years ago.

if anything, i think they've gone too far the other way and are too willing to rate albums highly for the sake of consistency.

case in point: vampire weekend

p/f did so much to build them up, when they delivered a spectacularly average album, they still acted like it was the second coming. 8.8? really?

The reviews are usually incomprehensibly filled with lit-wank metaphors and references no-one but second year Arts Degree try-hards would understand. But if you give everything they review a try, good score or bad, you're probably going to get at least two really interesting albums a week. Which is pretty good.

One thing I agree with them about is the complete disdain for bands who don't try. Like Jet.

I can't usually be bothered to actually read the whole reviews, but in my experience of some 20+ years of listening to all kinds of music, Pitchfork's ratings have come closer to my own tastes than any other publication. They are not perfect, but usually when they give about 8 or more, there is a very good chance I'll wind up liking the album. Also, I have an emusic account, so it's often a matter of a few mouse-clicks to get the album (they have a link to emusic on every review, in case you haven't noticed). That is actually even cooler than you think it is.

Also, even if they sometimes happen to give scores which are way too low or high, their lists are pretty consistently good, at least from my perspective. Than again, why would I need anyone else's perspective since lists are after all largely a subjective exercise. Anyhow, the lists sometimes include those albums I thought were hugely underappreciated by p4k (Discovery and Rooty being two examples which come to mind) and often exclude those which were overrated (for example, see the differences between the 1999 and 2003 versions of the best albums of 1990s).

So, they might try to be a bit too deep a bit too often, but they still manage to serve me much better than any other music publication.

reviews of albums are snot

They're hilarious. I just take their scores and add about 2-3 for the actual score.

Pitchfork is a secondary symptom of the middle school caste. Remember the oligarchy then? Sure, the thought of some of those kids went quite handily with a fistful of conditioner and an Explosions in the Sky-length shower. But it’s easy to forget that many of the other untouchables were downright fugly. You don’t remember the spark of false hope you culled from that second-hand account of some Chunk-faced linebacker giving Susie-proto-pornlet a fistful of conditioner during the debut of Scream 2? How – you thought – did this guy break the glass ceiling? With his smile? Turns out, he broke it with your dignity. Yes, that’s right. All those horrible things you thought they were saying about you behind your back – well, they actually said them. Because cool is to exclude. It’s like a finite global resource. And everyone is keeping score. But you misapplied the principle. Instead of sabotaging your Peking-superiors, you just started monopolizing everything under the sun, even the stuff you knew wasn’t cool. It was like hording Pogs, or lifting your skinny fists towards heaven, so to speak. And now, you can’t stop. You’re a knee-jerk cultural conquistador. You know that no one is ever going to congratulate you on having heard of Thumb Piano first. In fact, if anything, it comes off as smug, and alienates your friends. But it was never about making friends. It was about leveling up enough to finally pwn bowser and make out with the middle school princess. Thankfully, there are girls who took the same pitiful arc, so you at least have someone to make out with. But let’s be real. You’re two adversaries. You know she eats meat. And in turn, she knows your deep dark secret - you don’t really listen to Wavves. Now you both read pitchfork because it’s self-consciously insular, and generally cryptic to anyone but the most devout holier-than-thou vinyl rats. You are stone-faced, even in the face of genius – if that genius happens to sell more than 500 records. This is your club. No cool kids allowed.

I'm deeply annoyed by the pretentious of much of their writing--and, lest it go unmentioned, of many of the site's fans. However, Pitchfork seems to have gotten better. I've read some things there lately that are surprisingly good. For instance, The Social History of the MP3 and some of the other "P2K" retrospective articles they've recently posted.

I feel that Pitchfork will give an albim a high ranking if it 'pushes boundaries' instead of checking to see whether the music is any good. I understand the desire for artistic growth, but seriously, some of the stuff they laud is entirely forgettable drivel.

Why should pitchfork tone anything down? There are already plenty of magazines that cater to mainstream tastes. Their writing might tend towards the verbose, but I'd rather have that than the dull, laddish pub-speak of most music journals. And how are they pretentious? Because they like unusual indie music and because they like writing about it with a bit more intellectual zeal than you're average music 'critic'? That word pretentious is flung around far too much. If you genuinely enjoy music that pushes boundaries (to your ears) and you like expressing that in a way that might alienate some people (which is something that is impossible to avoid - *some* section of an audience is always alienated with these things, no matter what is produced) then you should feel no shame in what you do.

I don't actually even like Pitchfork that much, nor do I like most indie music; I'm just confused by the inverse snobbery in those that throw insults at it. And this idea that people like the bands they like to "look clever" is another piece of nonsense that is regularly smeared across the internet. I'll admit that it might be true in some cases, but not in many.

[spam]

You people still read their reviews? Pitchfork is about as revelant as Rolling Stone. Nursing home journalism.