In the murky and mysterious water that is independent music, there is one online source that is the definitive grandfather of hipster elitism. That website is Pitchfork Media. Began in Minneapolis, Minnesota circa 1995, the publication, updated on a daily basis, is available solely online at http://www.pitchforkmedia.com.
For those with fingers far from the pulse of indie music, the webzine is made up of music criticism, commentary, news, and reviews spanning genres that range from pop-punk to electronica to metal to trip hop.
Those familiar with the site are aware of its vast impact on the opinions and consumption of all things indie rock. Currently, Pitchfork has more than 240,000 regular readers per day and an average of more than 1.5 million site visitors per month. What this means is the Pitchfork (or “P4K” for short) is one of the most read indie music publications on the web.
By speaking to such a large audience, it’s easy to see how huge an impact the webzine could have on record sales, trends, and the musical opinions of both you and I. Pitchfork does, in fact, have this immense cultural currency and they have it in spades.
Bands such as Vampire Weekend, Wolf Parade, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Sufjan Stevens, Girl Talk, Interpol, Deerhunter, and the Arcade Fire, as well as many other, have skyrocketed in popularity due, in large part, to support from Pitchfork Media.
Even bands that aren’t entered into the P4K canon are greatly affected by a favorable review from the site – Amazon’s most purchased albums have an eerie parallel to those recently places on Pitchfork’s Best New Music list.
Beyond question, the webzine plays host to all things hot and hip. If you’re curious about the next big thing in music or what you probably should be listening to but aren’t, you’ll be filled in after just one visit to the site. For this reason, some consider Pitchfork the lexicon of cool.
Although there is nothing necessarily wrong with any of these assertions, with great power comes great responsibility. Sometimes we must be leery of even the most beloved websites in life and Pitchfork is ripe for a closer, critical look.
By winter quarter of my sophomore year at Kalamazoo College, I was a Pitchfork disciple, even going so far as contributing concert photos to the publication whenever I could. However, over the past few years, I’ve come to feel that the cow isn’t as sacred as it seems.
Pitchfork’s biggest draw is its reviews; they have the ability to make or break a new act and crush the perceptions of indie rock elites. Despite their popularity and significance, the reviews are quite possibly the most long-winded, abstract and inane musical critiques available on mainstream web publications.
The publication’s staff writers rarely write about the music featured on albums under review, often calling an artist’s integrity, background, or track record into question instead.
Worse still, the preferred language for reviews is overwrought and unnecessarily complex – it’s easy to get through an eight paragraph review without learning anything about the record and, at its worst, are left confused. After a critical reading of less than ten reviews, it’s clear that Pitchfork staffers prefer the sounds of their own voices to the voices or instruments playing in their Macbook headphones.
Another ridiculous facet of the esteemed Pitchfork review is its arbitrary rating system: a rating out of 10.0. That’s right, albums are rated to a specific decimal point, which gives readers the impression that Pitchfork is a little too hipster elitist for its own good.
Despite the confounding system, the ratings themselves play a seemingly significant, if not puzzling, role in the site. Albums with a rating of roughly 8.3 and higher are placed into the site’s Best New Music section, a move that might lead casual readers to believe that those records are the publication’s best albums of the year.
However, when Pitchfork releases their year-end Best Albums of 200_ list, many of the LPs that were good enough for Best New Music are absent and some records, which were initially given mediocre reviews, are praised.
In fact, P4K’s end of the year lists are often an opportunity for them to play catch up on bands, albums, or trends they may have missed or failed to capitalize on. This very circumstance happened in 2007 when the Dirty Projectors’ then-new LP, Rise Above, earned an initial rating of 8.1, but then jumped to the 21st spot on Pitchfork’s “Top 50 Albums of 2007” list.
It is in these situations that hipster bias runs rampant and journalistic integrity is called into question. The site does not hide what it considers “cool” or “uncool” and this is often reflected in its reviews.
Pitchfork constantly hypes certain trends or bands, such as those mentioned above, giving acts that fall into specific genres of cool more favorable reviews. On the other hand, this leaves more mainstream acts such as Nine Inch Nails or the Foo Fighters left with poor album ratings.
Although I can’t or won’t wholly defend either bands recent output, there is still something to be said here – there is no way Pitchfork would ever review a Foo Fighters record favorably, even if it happened to be the next SMiLE.
The publication’s musical festival and online video network, named Pitchfork.tv, blur the lines of integrity even further. Bands whose videos play on the online TV station or who are scheduled to perform at the webzine’s yearly outdoor festival interestingly earn positive and favorable ratings when their albums are reviewed.
Does Pitchfork have a hidden agenda to control the ebb and flow of indie music? That’s for conspiracy theorists to decide. Without doubt, the site acts in several ways that should get one questioning their motives as journalists.
Despite these criticisms, both blatantly obvious and personally rooted, Pitchfork is an influence juggernaut for a few good reasons. They provide the greatest indie music news feed on the web, constantly updating the happenings of every band that is remotely associated with the noted genre. Furthermore, the site does a thorough job of hosting fresh MP3s, collecting the crème of the blog crop on their Forkcast song review system.
Whether you subscribe to the dogma that is Pitchfork Media or if this is the first you’ve ever heard of the site, I encourage everyone to make their own decisions. Visit the publication, but subscribe to every music blog you can. Most important, be leery of the compromising situations, trend setting, and hipster elitism that has entrenched itself in indie rock journalism.
I will continue to visit Pitchfork on a near daily basis, but I will take everything I read there, or anywhere else for that matter, with a grain of salt.
1 comment:
Hey Man,
I'm thinking the purpose of my surfing and taking music tasting tours on the web these days is about gauging where the genre states are at. For instance, by listening to different artists, seeing who they're working with, comparing the styles, and tracking changes over the last couple decades, I'm getting a better and better idea of how things are trending, who the music hotshots are and where the music hotspots are around the world. What I'm getting at is Pitchfork's esoteric language is just what a person needs in order to do the above. They talk about trends of individual bands, trends in the industry, trends in the culture, etc. Do you find that useful as well?
-Will
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