enemyat_thesix

the only review site i trust and respect is metacritic

__________________
www.myspace.com/arqon
www.myspace.com/xlaststrawx

sleepy jack

I think the fact Pitchforks rated 50 Cent pretty high a few times says enough about how much they know about music outside their own little niche.

__________________

Farfisa

Yeah I don't care much for their biased reviews either :/

sleepy jack

Reviews are kind of supposed to be biased.

__________________

Farfisa

not the word I meant to use.....kind of lost my ability comprehend things at the moment. Happens when i get the sleepys.

sleepy jack

What bugs me about pitchforks reviews is the motivation behind their reviews. You can basically predict what they're going to hype/put down, they have a horrendously snobby and pretentious attitude towards music and they don't even attempt to hide it.

__________________

enemyat_thesix

you completely nailed it, Ethan. +10 points

__________________
www.myspace.com/arqon
www.myspace.com/xlaststrawx

adidasss

And sometimes their reviews are spot on, like Wednesday's review of The odd couple. Anyhoo, like Rainard says, it's all down to personal preferences and it's not like they're the only magazine that hypes bands (for instance, Popmatters gave Hercules and Love affair 9/10 despite the review focusing only on the 5 Antony tracks. 5 tracks does not an album make peeps )
Incidentally, Pitchfork's review of VW was also spot on:

__________________
“Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle.

Last.fm

sleepy jack

Most websites/magazines don't have the ridiculous following pitchfork does though.

__________________

Rainard Jalen

loz, you laugh, but at what? You don't even GO to the site so how would you know what genres they cover? It's an indie site, and they cover a very broad range of what is going on in American independent music.

As for metacritic, it's not a review site - it's a compendium site like rotten tomatoes. if you "trust" what you see on metacritic, you're only trusting the general consensus of a bunch of reviewers. it's no better than relying on one review. it's really all the same. you're still going by somebody else's opinion. and anyway, at the end of the day i guarantee a person's going to be exposed to a wider range of diverse sounds through an indie site like pitchfork than through a compendium site like metacritic that focuses primarily on music (including indie) that's going to have a more wide-ish sort of audience. i can vouch for that, i've followed both (and other sites) for a while.

I can't help but agree with this criticism, though. They are predictable as hell - you know they're going to hype the crap out of anything done by Bradford Cox whether it's the latest Deerhunter thing or the appalling Atlas Sound; you know they're going to react lukewarmly to the latest White Stripes or Beirut effort or whatnot; you know they react fairly indifferently to most any Arctic Monkeys release, simply because historically the band was discovered and hyped by other websites first (if AMs was "Pitchfork's band" so to speak, the music would have got 9/10s all the way). Half the time you know they'll give a huge mark to some album simply in anticipation of that being the general response of the rest of the critics, and therefore just to fit in and to have "got it right". And it gets worse, I've had a few bones to pick with them elsewhere.

But aside from these negatives I don't think it can be denied that it is a really good place for discovering new music especially for somebody coming from a really narrow underexposed musical background (like half those people who only listen to muse and keane). Just have to bear in mind the importance to exercise caution while one is at it. I guess, as long as somebody has a grasp of what is wrong with Pitchfork and knows where and how they are predictable, the site is at that point most useful.