Pitchfork gives Sound Team the 3.7 slap, and bloggers feel the burn. oookay.

Pitchfork is sometimes genius with their bad reviews. i once posted on this review of Weezer's Make Believe, which got a whopping 0.7 (and deserved probably less that that). [read here if you'd like to indulge me.] and their burning-stake take on PANIC! at the disco is one of the funniest things i've ever read.

but sometimes Pitchfork gives entirely unnecessary bad reviews. for the quality of Destroyer's Rubies, this review with an 8.5 can be considered horrible - an absolute crime. and it is extremely hard to say that the reason for it being "a few points shy of a 10.0" is for any other reason than to defy the expectations of the music/mp3 blog community.

i feel like Pitchfork's recent Sound Team review is along the same vein. first of all, the review is late. the album came out a month ago, yes, but we've been talking about Movie Monster for quite a long time prior. it feels too much like PF waits until the 'sphere is absolutely primed, and then makes us gawk with their decision. yeah, Tapes 'n Tapes rock, but can they explain to me exactly why they rock more than Sound Team? what does it for PF? who sits down and decides the next big band? it's ludicrously hypocritical for them to say "This Austin sextet has attracted Next Big Thing-spotters by rolling out the right set of influences," when they know they hold the power to decide just that: the NextBigThing.

finally, it pisses me off to read this article.

Despite more than a year's worth of blog buzz behind them (and a fairly promising performance at last year's CMJ festival), the painfully mediocre debut album from Capitol Records "indie" band Sound Team got reamed last week by your pals at the Pitchfork. In retaliation of the 3.7 rating, the band-- or someone purporting to be them-- posted a YouTube video depicting a sort of Sound Team effigy being mutilated, thrown off a cliff, burned, and dismembered by a Pitchfork. Creepy! That's exactly what we did to our promo copy this weekend!

it's not funny to counter us for kicks. their incentives are lame and this stand-off is ridiculous. if they can't handle the rise of influence from independent music bloggers, even with the same ultimate goal in mind - that is, to share good undiscovered music - and continue relentlessly to step up and imitate the qualities of blog posts (mp3 downloads, youtube streaming, live concert pictures blog-style), we have a bunch of immature foot-stomping adults on our hands. it is never their work i criticize. they are talented people that know their shit; admittedly, they've been on the scene far longer than i, able to state that their '95 mixtape had gems like The Breeders. who knows what i was listening to in '95, besides my parents' radio stations (Jagged Little Pill, probably). and most of them write extremely well. but it is their taunting, finger-pointing, raspberry-blowing blog references and deliberate defiances that piss me off. they've always been pretentious and on some level, that's what people love them for. but they don't need to be so greater-than-thou that they pretend we aren't a force to be reckoned with.

yeah. so step off, yo.  shan  10:37 AM  |  view comments (3)