The uppity music review website Pitchfork will release its first book since its online snobbery began in 1995. It will be a paperback guide of the 500 best songs released since 1977, carefully selected by editor in chief Scott Plagenhoef and publisher/founder Ryan Schreiber. Rather than compose a listicle "best of" book on albums or artists, Plagenhoef said they chose songs because, "Listeners are increasingly engaging with songs outside of their parent albums, and some of the most influential and exciting music of the past three decades was released on 7” and 12” records or EPs rather than on LPs—not just in stereotypical ‘singles’ genres such as pop, hip-hop, dance, and dancehall, but in punk and indie as well." Also, it make the task of attaching phrases like "audacious Escobar floss raps" and "a letter of intent from a band that's squatted on the fence, tentative to commit to one particular genre until now" to music reviews much more challenging. [NYO]
Are you intimidated by Pitchfork? Afraid of its writers judging your taste with words to describe music you’ve never heard of? Relax, loser. Intern Anastasia is here to demystify their reviews.
This week: Dodos’ "Visiter"
Rating: 8.5
On Visiter, Dodos guitarist Meric Long alternates between fingerpicking and breakneck strumming while playing in confounding alternate tunings. Logan Kroeber's clattering, locomotive percussion (which includes shoes outfitted with tambourines) is every bit a lead instrument as Long's guitar, and a big reason the band's music has garnered comparisons to the less abstract moments of Animal Collective and the output of other new-primitivist bands like High Places and Yeasayer.
Full review word count: 470
Anastasia says: CONTINUED »
Are you intimidated by Pitchfork? Afraid of its writers judging your taste with words to describe music you’ve never heard of? Relax, loser. Intern Anastasia is here to demystify their reviews.
This week: Fuck Buttons’ “Street Horrrsing”
Rating: 8.6
Floating around the internet last fall before emerging on a 7" in November, Fuck Buttons' ‘Bright Tomorrow’ proved surprisingly resilient. The duo's blunt repetition of simple elements– metronomic drum-machine, chugging synth, blissful keyboard, and distorted screams– seems like a formula for tedium. But the song somehow gets stronger with each replay. For a noise group, Fuck Buttons are surprisingly welcoming– for noise music, anyway– and their mix of dreamy melody and abrasive climax evokes strange stylistic bedfellows: Yo La Tengo and Ministry, My Bloody Valentine and Prurient, Spacemen 3 and Black Dice.
Full Word Count: 503
Anastasia says: CONTINUED »
Are you intimidated by Pitchfork? Afraid of its writers judging your taste with words to describe music you’ve never heard of? Relax, loser. Intern Anastasia is here to demystify their reviews.
This week: The Ruby Suns’ Sea Lion
Rating: 8.3
The cover art for the Ruby Suns' sophomore disc, Sea Lion, is a fitting allegory for head Sun Ryan McPhun: A boy on an island takes pains to try to costume himself, tangling himself in lights and string, and wearing a feather in his hair and a crown on his head. McPhun's work as the Ruby Suns functions in much the same way: Stationed on New Zealand's North Island, the California native dresses his work in global music, nibbling at the edges of unfamiliar sounds but, ultimately, skillfully creating sunny psych-pop.
Full Word Count: 524
Anastasia says: CONTINUED »
Are you intimidated by Pitchfork? Afraid of its writers judging your taste with words to describe music you’ve never heard of? Relax, loser. Intern Anastasia is here to demystify their reviews.
This week: Fleet Foxes’ “Sun Giant” EP.
Rating: 8.7
The opening track on Fleet Foxes' debut EP is the perfect introduction to this Seattle band, whose carefully fashioned songs reward more active listening than your typical indie-roots outfit. ‘Sun Giant’ begins with their soft harmonies reverberating in what sounds like a cathedral space. With no accompaniment, their sustained a cappella notes fade slowly, adding gravity to this hymn of contentment: ‘What a life I lead in the summer/ What a life I lead in the spring.’ The only other instrument is Skyler Skjelset's mandolin, which enters late in the song playing a delicate theme as singer Robin Pecknold hums quietly.
Full Word Count: 699
Anastasia says: CONTINUED »
Notoriously pompous music review site Pitchfork, which is where all the cool kids go to generate buzz for under the radar bands they'll quickly ditch when they grow too popular, is following Vice's business strategy: get into web video. They're launching Pitchfork.TV, which is sleighed to be the antithesis of what MTV has become; that is, they'll show music videos and music-related programming. Oh, except they'll also feature full-length feature films. Ugh. [Pitchfork]
Are you intimidated by Pitchfork? Afraid of its writers judging your taste with words to describe music you've never heard of? Relax, loser. Intern Anastasia is here to demystify their reviews.
This week: Atlas Sounds’ “Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel.”
Rating: 8.6
Bradford Cox spent the summer he was 16 in a children's hospital having multiple surgeries on his chest and back. His condition, Marfan syndrome, has proven difficult to separate from his music. … Cox plays and sings in Atlanta five-piece Deerhunter, but it's tempting to say he actually lives as Atlas Sound…Deerhunter's Cryptograms and Fluorescent Grey EP expertly brought together elements of krautrock, psych, shoegaze, ambient, post-punk, and indie rock, but Atlas Sound's full-length debut turns inward from that band's high-volume squall. Cox also trades the four-track of previous Atlas Sound vinyl splits for a laptop. The result is a gauzy bedroom pop album that drifts from ambient bliss-outs to sadsack avant-garage, from hospitals to heartache, as if passing through different stages of sleep on a sunny afternoon.
Full Word Count: 1,041
Anastasia Says:
Whatever disease Cox is suffering from is irrelevant. The music should stand on its own. CONTINUED »
Are you intimidated by Pitchfork? Afraid of its writers judging your taste with words to describe music you've never heard of? Relax, loser. Intern Anastasia is here to demystify their reviews.
This week: Vampire Weekend’s self-titled album.
Rating: 8.8
If there's anything the happy New York kids in this band have learned from listening to African music, it's the difference between ‘pop’ and ‘rock’: Vampire Weekend's debut album announces straight off that it's the former. The first sound on the first song, ‘Mansard Roof,’ comes from Rostam Batmanglij's keyboard, set to a perky, almost piping tone– the kind of sunny sound you'd hear in old west-African pop…And yet they play it all like indie kids on a college lawn, because they're not hung up on Africa in the least– a lot of these songs work more like those on the Strokes' debut, Is This It?, if you scraped off all the scuzzy rock'n'roll signifiers, leaving behind nothing but clean-cut pop and preppy new wave, tucked-in shirts and English-lit courses…
Full Word Count: 1,085 CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
